THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS AND THE WAR. [To .T92 EDITOR
OF THE " SPECTATOR."' Ssn,—Mr. R. Christie Burn " fights as one that beateth the air," and while repudiating my figures corroborates them by his own. If, as he tells us, his school has fifty-six Quaker Old Boys in the combatant Services and one hundred and eleven in civil employ- ments, humanitarian and other, it obviously substantiates my thirty-one per cent. in arms from six of our schools. I thank him for his support. He further agrees that statistics called for by our Yearly Meeting sixteen mouths ago are still unavailable. My statements as to Quaker subscriptions to War Loan and payment of war taxes he passes in silence.
But, since writing, I (and Mr. Burn) have fuller information. The editor of the Friend, that well-subsidized and quasi-official organ of British Quakerism, weary of delays and suppressions. has spoken at last. His estimate of twelve hundred young Friends in arms is a shock to our Pacificists. I can conceive Mr. Burn exclaiming, " Mine own familiar Friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, bath lifted up his heel against me! " Mr. Burn does not allude to this declaration, which by implication disposes of his claim that "the Society of Friends remain: over• srhelmingly Pacificist;" for these twelve hundred have not been expelled from our communion, but enjoy the enthusiastic sympa- thies of parents, relatives, and multitudes unrelated to them -by blood, the whole constituting a large proportion of a membership of twenty thousand.
I am incompetent to follow him into the ethics of newspaper correspondence. If, as he holds, it is wrong for me to address you, can it be right for him? Why should he post you three- quarters of a column of declamatory argument to Show that Friends do not write to the papers? The plea that the Press is debarred me comes strangely from Pacificist Friends, one of whom was recently fined for printing (it is said) seven hundred and fifty thousand copies of an objectionable tract, while three others are in gaol at this hour for paying a needy Scotsman to publish illegally matter which our Society's printers had declined
to handle.—I am, Sir. &c., H. M. WALLIS. [We cannot continue this correspondence.—En. Spectator.]
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