The peace committee of the Old Haverford Friends Meeting presents:
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| "I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion for all wars." - George Fox (the Founder of Quakerism) | |||
There is no security except in creating situations in which people do not want to harm you. The fundamental Quaker postulate lays on us the obligation to consider and cherish every human being. It follows, for those who follow that postulate, that they can not do to human beings the things that war involves. The primary reason for this stand is our conviction that there is that of God in every one which makes each person too precious to damage or destroy. While someone lives, there is always the hope of reaching that of God within them: such hope motivates our search to find nonviolent resolution of conflict. (From "Faith and Practice", Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, pages 152 and 154) | |||
Victory of the Loud Little Handful |
by Mark Twain |
| The loud little handful - as usual - will shout for the war. The pulpit will - warily and cautiously - object... at first. The great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men... Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. Mark Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger" (1910) |
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