Friends

Soon after General Degoutte occupied the Ruhr, there was submitted to him a report that 127 Germans were being confined in one room, indecently. He accepted the report at face value and was merciful. He did so, because the report was signed by a representative of the Society of Friends.

This incident, reported by Robert M. Lovett, of the University of Chicago, illustrates the respect which the Quakers, a tiny English and American sect, have won in the last decade.

In all the world there are about 150,000 Friends or Quakers, most of them American. When it seemed that if the world were to be saved, it must be saved by war, theirs was a position of extreme embarrassment. "They were inwardly pledged to a way of life, which, if extended through the

world, would eliminate the seeds of war. They could not of a sudden change the faith of a lifetime and substitute the methods of war for the slower forces of love and cooeperation."

Their answer to this challenge of faith was an unparalleled contribution to relief work after the War was over. First they helped France. In 1919 they began to help Austria. Next year they went into Germany and Poland; last year to Russia.

Last summer they fed 500,000 German children one meal of 500 calories every day at a cost of two cents per meal--all this in spite of a violent American prejudice against helping Germans even of tender age.

Now the Society of Friends have assumed the heaviest responsibility in their history. Accustomed to little budgets of a few thousands a years, their relief of Germany has assumed $10,000,000 proportions, and they have the assistance of public citizens of all sects--Bernard M. Baruch, Paul D. Cravath, Charles W. Eliot, etc. This committee is headed by Major General Henry T. Allen who states: " America has never made war upon children."

If America decides to keep an indefinite number of thousands of German children alive, it will be through the Quakers.

Coincident with the added prestige which this tiny sect has earned, there is a tendency to utilize the name " Quaker " for commercial purposes. This tendency is stoutly opposed by the Quakers of Reading, Pa., who seek state action to curb it.