Friends in Philadelphia

They held to the belief of their founder George Fox (1624-91), that no one could know Christ without "quaking and trembling." So, although they called themselves Friends the irreverent called them Quakers. Today there are 160,000 members of the Society of Friends. Their organized groups, called "meetings," are spotted irrelevantly over the map of the world. Largest is the London Yearly Meeting, with 20,000 members. Next in size is the Five Year Meeting of Indiana, located near Richmond, Ind. with 16,000 members who differ from most Quakers in having formal services with paid pastors. The combined Race Street and Arch Street Meetings of Philadelphia (15,000) are now practically reunited, after having been respectively Hicksite and Orthodox Quakers as a result of a schism a century ago.* Next largest are the Africa Eastern Group (7,000), the Madagascar Yearly Meeting (6,000), the Guatemala Yearly Meeting (3,600). Once, 17 years ago a world conference of Friends was held in London. Last week 1,000-odd members of the world's Quaker meetings met for the second World Conference of Friends.

Influential in world affairs out of all proportion to their numbers, Quakers, compared to most sects strong in faith, are peculiarly passive. Fanatical flamboyance of word or deed is abhorrent to them. Their informal meetings, where they sit in sombre clothes heeding the mild words of those of their number who may be moved to prayer, are the antithesis of the average Protestant revival meeting. Their preoccupations are peace, temperance, social service, the Godly way of life. Their Friends Service Committee, active in rehabilitating jobless U. S. coal miners and ministering to the needy of both sides in the Spanish War, is Anna Eleanor Roosevelt's favorite charity to which in the past two years she has subscribed $30,000 of her radio earnings.

Last week's meeting in Philadelphia offered an extraordinary view of this extraordinary church. The only Quaker President of the U. S., Herbert Hoover, never an active churchman, was absent but many another famed Quaker was present. Quartered at two Quaker colleges Haverford and Swarthmore, both in Philadelphia's environs, the Friends met daily in Swarthmore's roomy Field House and its towering limestone chapel. Foreign delegates soon learned that the chapel was given by Philadelphia's rich Quaker Clothier family, while the other-half of the ownership of the city's famed department store, the Quaker Strawbridges, are benefactors of Haverford.

Many a British Friend is also a merchant for a century ago Quakers were forbidden by law to attend British universities were thus barred from most professions. Friends founded Barclays and

Lloyds Banks, established such trade-names as Colman's Mustard, Huntley & Palmer's Biscuits, Jacob's Biscuits. Three families, the Cadburys, Frys and Rowntrees, made fortunes in the chocolate business. Among delegates in Philadelphia last week were Barrow Cadbury, a fox-bearded little man who was chairman of Cadbury Bros., Ltd. until five years ago, and his wife Geraldine, a Dame of the British Empire who told reporters: "I put 'D' on my cards but I wouldn't like to be called Dame." Energetic Joan Fry of the Bristol chocolate-making family was present, but B. Seebohm Rowntree, head of his family and business, did not appear as he had planned to.

Quaker T. Edmund Harvey, a British M. P., and James G. Douglas, a onetime

Irish Free State Senator were in Philadelphia. Madagascar sent the clerk of its meeting, a Negro whose name is simply Andrianaly. For the benefit of reporters he played with his hands, arms and elbows a twelve-stringed instrument called the valiha. Thirteen of Germany's 250 Friends were permitted to make the trip to Philadelphia. One of them, Hans Albrecht, said to a reporter: "The future of Quakerism in the Reich is assured. Perhaps I should not say that, for if the government hears of it, they may say, 'Hello, what is this?' and we might find our status changed."

Like other Quakers, unaccustomed to the light of publicity, he was afterwards upset .to see his diplomatic slip in print. Two of Japan's 700 Friends talked to reporters before the press agent of the conference, nervous John Reich of the Friends Service Committee, could stop them. Said Quaker Seiju Hirakawa: "The present invasion of China by Japan is motivated by a militaristic clique which is trying to protect the Manchukuo experiment ... a colossal failure. Ninety per cent of Japan is against the present undeclared war. . . ." Said Ryumei Yamano: ''In Japan we have no freedom of speech."

Only a handful of Friends wore plain bonnets or broad-brimmed black hats, but the use of the oldtime Quaker ''thee" and "thy" was common. No one quaked or trembled, as would once have been permissible, but there was some public weeping, notably by British Quaker Harvey, who sobbed after being moved to pray that he might become a "candle of the Lord"--a traditional Quaker expression. The meetings at which such prayers were voiced, in accordance with Quaker belief that the Lord furnishes inspiration,, for them, were the first in Quaker history at which portable microphones were used. Many a Friend found the flow of his inspiration halted; some declined flatly to voice their thoughts, and at one time the whole system broke down.

Votes are never taken at Friends' meetings, and even if they were, dissident Friends would not consider themselves bound by the results. Most that a meeting does is to decide that "the sense of the meeting" subscribes to this or that generality. Chief matter on which the second World Conference was in agreement was that Quakers must be forthright, militant pacifists.

Chairman of the Conference was one of the world's most respected Quakers, Dr. Rufus Matthew Jones of Haverford. Author of 40 books, longtime philosophy professor, Quaker Jones represents the broadening and liberalizing of Quaker thought which, without cooling its emotional nature, has kept the sect its self-respect. Dr. Jones, 74, is tall, pink-cheeked, white-crested, talks with the crisp accent of his native South China, Me.,, of whose Yearly Meeting he is still a member. He still lives on Haverford's cricket green, a professor emeritus, likes to watch from his window the sport which he once played and which remains a major one at the college. Quaker Jones held to his pacifist principles through the World War, helped organize the Service Committee afterward to mop up wherever possible in its wake. Good-humored, he is fond of telling stories about his Quakerism, such as how a conservative Friend, at a Philadelphia meeting at which Dr. Jones was to speak, arose and prayed: "Oh Lord, prepare our minds and hearts for the untruths we are about to hear." Once in England he used the expression "I was thinking" at a meeting, whereupon a woman said: "Rufus, thy testimony was interesting, but thee does wrong to think in meeting." Once, also, he was mountain-climbing with a member of the Rowntree family and two guides, and complied with the guides' request to pass a liquor bottle from one to the other. At this Climber Rowntree stuck his Alpine stock into the snow, intoned a quotation from the Friends Book of Discipline: "Are Friends careful to avoid the use of liquors and the passing of them to others?"*

Last Sunday Friend Jones spoke to the Conference and the world on an international radio hookup. Said he. "Quakerism as a way of life partakes of a universal spirit. . . . It is a movement at heart mystical, i. e., seeking fellowship with God. . . . Quakers . . . are bound to keep humble and to recognize their littleness. The Quaker philosophy of life sees in a human spirit something that of all things in the universe, is most like that ultimate reality we call God, Who is Spirit. Spirit like ours cannot come from anything else than Spirit."

*Elias Hicks, a Long Island farmer (1748-1810) preached doctrines which smacked of Unitarianism, seceded from the Society of Friends to form his own group. *As much as members of a tolerant faith may be, U. S. Friends are currently incensed at the makers of Old Quaker Whiskey, and at advertisements for Old Taylor Whiskey which lately featured a picture and a poem of Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier.

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