Podium: Michael Bartlet - How to Prevent the Outbreak of Wars from a Speech by the Political Secretary of the Society of Friends at a Quaker Meeting House in Maldon, Essex

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I WOULD like to start by offering you a quote by Kathleen Lonsdale, from Quaker Faith and Practice.

"Friends (Quakers) are not naive enough to believe that an appeal to God in a nation which is in an aggressive mood will necessarily be successful in converting the tyrant or preventing aggression. Christ was crucified; Gandhi was assassinated. Yet they did not fail. Nor did they leave behind them the hatred, devastation and bitterness that war, successful or unsuccessful, does leave. What can be claimed, moreover, is that this method of opposing evil is one of which no person, no group, no nation need be ashamed, as we may and should be ashamed of the inhumanities of war …