The hand of friendship
On 4 August 1914, Great Britain declared war on Germany and the First World War started. Three days later, the Society of Friends (the Quakers) convened an ‘Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in Distress’, so that relief work could begin as speedily as possible.
The reasons that they gave were twofold. As Christians they felt that they should help “innocent ‘alien enemies’ – cut off suddenly from homes and means of livelihood, and without the protection of their own embassy”. But they also took the long view that helping enemy aliens would alleviate a few of the many problems that the disaster of war would inflict on all involved.
The history of the committee during the war was recorded by Anna Braithwaite Thomas, a driving force behind the committee’s work, in her 1920 book St Stephen’s House: Friends’ Emergency Work in England 1914 to 1920.
The National Peace Council, which was created
