In addition to showcasing Quaker's history and work within London, Friend's House is home to several incredible archival materials that display the ethos of the Quaker community, such as the pursuit of pacifism. 

Amongst the archival ephemera at Friend’s House, what stood out to me the most was a spiral bound book of children’s illustrations from the Spanish Civil War as a “Thank You” response to the relief efforts initiated by Quakers. 

As discussed at Friend’s House, Quakers and Bloomsbury shared many links. Both groups were white, upper middle class, pacifists, and (considered by the society around them) slightly “off.” Additionally, members of Bloomsbury, such as Roger Fry, and peripheral members either came from Quaker families or practiced Quakerism.

The strongest link between the two groups (in my opinion) is both groups’ active pacifism during the Spanish Civil War. Our course sees this active pacifism first hand in our course reading of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas. Friends House provided insight and credibility to Quaker efforts of active pacifism through the numerous archival material provided. 

I studied a series of illustrations created by infantilized children of the Spanish Civil War. The illustration that stood out to me most is of a skeleton with numerous weapons strapped around it, leading a charge of indistinct figures that look to be holding up a flag and weapons. The illustration starts at the top right corner of the paper, and the skeleton leads the march toward the viewer. A trail of darkened pencil smudges runs from the skeleton’s feet and down the center of the paper. I am unsure if this trail is of dirt or blood. The only context provided in the image is (written in Spanish) “Fascist Propaganda.” 

Through the child’s perspective, the viewers understand war and fascism to take on a literal vessel of death and violence through the figure of the skeleton. This piece also serves as a valuable study on child perspective and art as well as the understanding of the effects of war on children. One can look to understand how art acts as a coping mechanism/communication device for an age demographic not yet old enough to speak for themselves.

With all of this in mind, I am reminded of the concluding note from Dr. Foster’s Spanish Civil War Lecture Part Two. In it she states, “There is an apprehension of interplay between the self and other, and how the self is constituted by the very other. War, in particular total war, puts all of these channels under erasure, eroding the community, breaking down the material networks of survival, and stages a material assault on the ethics of care and intimacy that is called into being when two bodily entities face each other.”

In these images, one can see this interplay occurring between the children and the Quakers. Like the efforts of Bloomsbury and Woolf, the Quakers are working to resurrect “The ethics of care and intimacy,” actively being dissolved in these children by the lingering impacts of World War I, the current assaults of the Spanish Civil War, and the looming threat of World War II. Through these illustrations, viewers are provided tangible evidence that portrays a nuanced spectrum of the embers of humanity still existing within these impacted children.

In Woolf’s Three Guineas, she sets out to answer the question of how to prevent war. Woolf’s feminist and pacificist ideologies experience several intersections. One of these most notable moments is when Woolf writes, ““For,” the outsider will say, “in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country.”” In this quote, Woolf implicates the patriarchy with the cause of war. Woolf’s writings worked to serve as aid for the war in calling attention to victims suffering in the crossfire of an uprising fascist ideology. Although the Quakers and Woolf responded to the Spanish Civil War through differing modes of action, both sought to aid those in need through their work.