Pacifists in action

While some Quakers sought to save lives by campaigning against the war, others wanted to help war victims directly. Hilda Clark from Somerset had qualified as a doctor – unusual for a woman at the time. She was 33 when the war started.

In September 1914, Hilda spoke to Meeting for Sufferings, the national committee of British Quakers. She encouraged them to appeal for volunteers to help civilian war victims. The committee agreed and she was soon sending letters home about her work in France (as we shall see next week). Hilda's friend Edith Pye later described the origins of Hilda's vision.

We had thought and talked of little else during those early weeks of the first world war. Hilda Clark had always in her mind the thought of the mothers and children behind the fighting lines in France, in the knowledge that the whole of the country's energy must perforce be taken up on the military side. She had enlisted the interest of T. Edmund Harvey, and between them they had gathered together a group of young people eager to help, some of whom were deeply concerned to express their pacifism by sharing the dangers of the battlefield without bearing arms.

The Society of Friends [Quakers] accepted the concern and made it theirs, and from that moment our whole life and thought were bound up in the work.

I myself was then living with Hilda Clark, who had set up in general practice in London with a view to investigating working class ill-health. As I was at the time occupied with the organisation of trained nurses, it seemed advisable to see what was the situation in France with regard to the need for them, and on September 26^th 1914, I went to Paris.

By that time, the Friends War Victims Relief Committee, with headquarters in London, had taken shape and could count on twenty young men, six nurses, some of whom fortunately were midwives also, three motor cars, and about £3,000. Before I left London, Hilda Clark asked me to be sure to find out if there was any opening for this group of pacifists behind the French lines where the Battle of the Marne was raging.

Many more strings were pulled before finally the expedition started for France on November 5^th, 1914. No-one knew what work they were to do. Grim tales of the sufferings of women and children behind the lines floated about Paris, most of them exaggerated, but the little band of doctors, nurses and orderlies were prepared for anything and expected the worse.

The head of the expedition was Mr T. Edmund Harvey. There were three doctors, including Dr Hilda Clark, who was responsible for the medical organisation, eleven trained nurses, of whom several were midwives in addition to their training; one medical student, two qualified chemists, one sanitary inspector, and fourteen men with various qualifications as chauffeurs and orderlies. Very few of these were members of the Society of Friends, but all were united in the keen desire to help mitigate the suffering caused by war, and the men at any rate felt themselves debarred by conscience from taking part in any military organisation.

It is clear that Hilda regarded their mission as a pacifist one. People often infer that pacifists are passive. How would you define the word?