“Spain - The Response to the Need”

“Spain - The Response to the Need”

Journal Entry

This journal entry from January 1st, 1937 is found in a Quaker weekly journal from 1937 where it informed other Friends how the Friends Service Council (the British corollary to the American Friends Service Committee), together with the Save the Children Fund, were providing relief for Spain. Along with specifying where concerned Friends can send donations, this journal discusses who the Quakers were helping as well as why they were helping. It explains how the Quakers were giving relief to the children of Spain regardless of which side they were on. To the Friends, it did not matter if the Spanish refugees were on the Nationalist or Republican side; the article emphasizes the need for “impartiality” in the Quakers’ wartime relief work. The article goes on to explain that their “neutrality was a neutrality of active intervention on behalf of those whose chief enemy was war,” underscoring that the primary goal was to aid those who were the victims of the war (i.e. the women and children). By assisting the children of Spain, the Quakers were attempting to raise a new generation devoid of hate, one that could then hopefully bring an end to war once and for all.

TOMMY IE

The Friend