Book Reviews

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A Question of Conscience: Con-scientious Objection in the Two World Wars
Felicity Goodall (Foreword by Lord Soper)
(Hardback, 212 pp ISBN 0 7509 0740 1)

This handsomely produced book chronicles the experiences of 60 or so British conscientious objectors to the two World Wars. It does this largely in their own words, supplemented by telling photographs of individuals, groups, families and other memorabilia.
The compiler, Felicity Goodall, has arranged the accounts and reminiscences chronologically in 21 chapters.

I strongly recommend this moving record of courageous opposition, often shaken by doubt and self questioning, to the war fever that fruitlessly swallowed up so many lives. While many here are Christians, the compiler has deliberately spread her net wider, to remind us that pacifism is not just a Christian prerogative.

In both World Wars the Society of Friends, co-founder of Church and Peace, was the only religious organisation to adopt an official anti-war policy, and many Quakers are represented here. Amongst other denominations the Church of England is the least in evidence. Christian COs consigned to Dartmoor prison, where they broke stones and lived mostly in solitary confinement, were refused permission by the (Anglican) Bishop of Exeter to use the prison chapel. The Quaker Mark Hayler comments wryly: "If we'd been murderers we'd have had a free hand."

These are ordinary men and women - Goodall includes poignant accounts by the wives and families of COs, who often faced hostility and insult - searching their own consciences. Some, especially in World War I, faced incomprehension and brutality with astonishing courage. The book is not a history, but the inter-war rise of pacifism is well documented.

Out of many sincere moments of doubt I end with just one, from Ken Shaw, an Anglican who had signed Canon 'Dick' Sheppard's Peace Pledge and registered as a CO against his family's wishes. Years later, after the war, he visited Anna Frank's house in Amsterdam: "And it was in Anna Frank's house that I, for the very first time, had grave misgivings about whether I'd done the right thing or not." His wife and son bought a copy of the diary for him and inscribed it - "Dad, we think you were right."

To order, contact:
Sutton Publishing
Phoenix Mill, Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GB-GL5 2BU

Stephen Tunnicliffe

The Reconciliation of Peoples: Challenge to the Churches
(1997, 50 pp) ed. Gregory Baum and Harold Wells

This collection of essays examines the "pioneering activity of reconciliation" in predominantly Christian churches. Essays discuss efforts at reconciliation taking place in South Africa, Rwanda, Chile, Korea, Fiji, Palestine, Serbia, Northern Ireland, Poland, Germany and Canada. Theological perspectives on reconciliation are also included as introduction and afterword.

To order, contact:
WCC Publications, 150 route de Ferney, CH-1211 Geneva 2

RI 5 / Oct 1997