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94 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION In assessing the contribution of Friends to the growth of Philadelphia, he overlooks no occasion to criticize their peace testimony. Indeed on page 55 he ascribes "the supineness of Philadelphia politics" to their nonresistant philosophy, although on page 113 he rather inconsistently admits that Quakers are really pretty combative folk. On the credit side he mentions the tolerance, the good sense and charity, the concern for education, and the cooking of the Quakers. And he offers a backhanded compliment whose implications Friends will do well to ponder when he says that they are "invariably outstanding and noble, once something has happened." „· t·, , », TT , Frederick B. Tolles Big Flats, New York In Downcast Germany, 1919-1933, by Joan Mary Fry. London, James Clarke and Company, Ltd., [1944]. 146 pp. 3s. 6d. THIS is a well-told record of the visits which a brilliant and spiritually sensitive Quaker woman made inside Germany during the years between the first world war and the advent of Hitler's rule. It should be read along with Elizabeth Fox Howard's Across Barriers which appeared a year ago in order to get the full span of English Quaker concern on Germany between these two wars. Joan Fry's insight into the German mind's response to military defeat, to occupation by foreign troops, to girding itself for its new experiment in government is profound. One of her audience told her after a meeting that not only was the physical soil of Germany terribly depleted after five years of continuous cropping with very little replenishment of its fertility, but that the very soil of their mind and spirit was worn out. The book documents the alleged division of labor between British and American Friends whereby the latter were principally absorbed in the administration of a vast child-feeding project, while the former, although engaged in some small relief projects especially in connection with student feeding, felt a special concern for ministering to the ideological and spiritual needs of the Germans. Joan Fry's account of the large number of meetings addressed and of her attempt at orally interpreting the spiritual and social aspects of the Quaker approach to life occupies much of the book. Without the American child-feeding the Germans would have had no great convincing public demonstration of these principles at work, but it can be also emphasized that without the interpretative work of Joan Fry and others of her persuasion, it is doubtful if the little nucleus out of which the German Yearly Meeting sprang could have been rallied. Appearing at an hour when the balancing of these two functions is again a central problem of Quaker foreign service, this book with its rich insight will be eagerly read and pondered. , _ „ Douglas V. Steere Haverford College Vol. 34, Autumn 1945 ...

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