SURVEY

of People, Places, and Organizations involved in progressive education and therapeutic community-related approaches to living and working

KENNETH C. BARNES

(17 September 1903 - 29 May 1998)

Newsletter sent by Kenneth Barnes to friends in the United States during the Second World War

May 25th, 1940

Bedales Lodge, Petersfield
Hampshire, England.

Dear

Ever since Christmas, when I received many greetings from friends in the States, I have intended to write a letter that I could duplicate and send to each of them. Now at last I have sat down to do it. When nearly three years ago I sailed from Southampton to go to the World conference, it seemed an unpropitious time to be leaving home. The danger of war weighed heavily on my mind until the excitements of a first visit to the States drove these thoughts out of my mind. Looking back now, from a war situation becoming rapidly more menacing, that time seems by comparison almost carefree. I can hardly believe that during that summer of 1937 I was so thoroughly enjoying myself. War makes even the most uncertain peace an almost heavenly thing. But I remember that "peace" was itself an unreal thing. Spaniards and Chinese were being slaughtered then; we just happened to be outside the conflict then – the lucky ones – for a while. But I look back upon my experience in the States that year as one of the things that has made life worth while, something I could look back upon with satisfaction even if I knew a German bomb was going to strike next week.

Here in the country we seem to alternate between two totally different worlds, each making the other at times seem totally unreal. It has been a lovely spring: one of the loveliest I can remember; week after week of glorious weather, with plants and trees springing into triumphant life after the exceptionally severe winter. My garden has been ablaze with hundreds of tulips (they are the one thing I – a poor sort of gardener – can grow) and the fruit blossom seems to have been heavier than I have ever known it before. Viewing all this it seems impossible that there is a vast destructive war in progress, that a little more than a hundred miles away men are slaughtering each other with the most efficient weapons that science can provide. But at night, even while I write, I can feel a low rumble, and every now and then whump, whump, whump, as high explosive bombs fall on their targets. Then the countryside with all its beauty seems for the moment like a stage illusion, and the only real thing is man's infinite capacity for evil. But only for the moment – for those awful hours in the middle of the night when faith and hope are at their lowest ebb. During the day, as I see country folk going about their jobs on the land, I can say, with Thomas Hardy, "War's annals will cloud into night and their story die". I suppose the most disturbing fear at the back of one's mind is that though there may be a better world ahead we shall not live to see it – that we and our children shall perish before even the faintest glimmer of dawn. My wife and I often feel that we, and many like us, having achieved in relative security an experience of friendship and love – and a realisation of some at least of our aims in education and community life – that we have become almost too vulnerable for the world as it is outside our circle of friends and co-workers. So few of us have known what real insecurity means – insecurity of livelihood and of life itself – that we wonder whether we can face it - face it perhaps separated, alone.

It occurred to me in Meeting last Sunday that perhaps Friends have lived too much in the future. We have struggled for and longed for a future of peace and have made all our aims depend upon the achievement of that peace. The result is that we are too shattered when it becomes apparent that we cannot have that peace either for ourselves or others. We have now to learn how to live in an utterly insecure world and how to know the eternal things – not in a future where conditions will be all nicely set in our favour – but in the unpropitious present. Having children makes one's fears and responsibilities seem very much greater than they would otherwise be. As the days go on and they roam through the fields and watch with intense interest the nesting of birds with young hatching out, we often say – well, that's one more day of happiness for them whatever the future may hold! The children themselves seem unperturbed. Roger (10) is now very "tough" and would almost like an air-raid, just for the fun of going to the school trenches. Rosalind (11) thrusts it all on one side and dislikes our discussing war or politics in her hearing. That's her way of escape, and long may she be able to do it! The older children in the school are less able to put it out of their minds – but in a way they seem to be able to face the war with more courage than most adults. One boy, whose home is at Harvard, came calmly back in November. He didn’t want to be out of it. He wanted to go through it with his friends here rather than sit in safety in the States; and he still feels like that, although in the last few weeks the danger has become far more real.

Until now we in England have hardly felt the war in any physical sense. Food is plentiful and the rationing not severe. Sugar is the only article which we would really like more of – for the consumption of home-made jam and marmalade in our household is prodigious. I have been digging my garden with great energy and now have a large part of it planted with vegetables. I have also started keeping poultry and the children are getting a great deal of excitement fetching in the eggs and keeping a record of them. We collect kitchen waste from our neighbours to help feed the fowls. During the Easter vacation I took a group of my scholars to a mining town in South Wales to help dig allotment gardens (destined to provide food for the elementary school dinners), We went down one of the mines – it was my first experience – and wandered miles underground. We all had a hack at the coal face with pneumatic drills, working in a space only two feet from floor to ceiling, with a noise of conveyors round us like hell let loose. Incidentally I might mention that the filthy "cage" in which we descended the mine was faster than the express lifts in the Rockafeller Building – 1800 feet in 45 seconds! We saw enough to realise that insecurity is no new experience for miners. Many of the pits are re-opening now and some men will be returning to work after ten years or more of enforced idleness.

There's one way in which the war has affected us physically. Few of us have been able to keep cars going. Four gallons of "gas" a month won't take a car very far, so we've just put our cars in cold storage and taken to bicycles. Very good for us physically! I remember that a bicycle was a bit of a joke in the U.S. and that one of the friends to whom this letter is addressed was thought a bit queer because he left his Zephyr at home and pedalled to his work. Whatever would Americans think of the sight on a Saturday morning in a country town as everyone pedals to market? I must confess that I get a certain amount of satisfaction from seeing all those "gentry" and dignified old ladies who came into town in their cars before the war, now sharing the democratic bus or sitting very erect on the vulgar bicycle. One of the boys with me in South Wales rode all the way home in one day to London – 145 miles in 12 hours. Our own boy Roger has the cycling fever too. He went out the other day "to watch birds"- but he was away most of the day & came back very pleased with himself having ridden 40 miles to Winchester and back.

You will have heard in your own newspapers about the evacuation of women and children from the towns. Those first few days in September were exciting and interesting. We really expected raids immediately and everyone in the reception areas became friendly and helpful and sympathetic. Rich and poor were all ready to co-operate. "Superior" and stand-offish people dropped their attitudes and hobnobbed with others normally below their consideration. We thought that the social mixing caused by evacuation was going to be an immensely valuable thing. But after the passage of a month or two, with no raids to give it the quality of necessity or to maintain the generous impulses at first evoked, we became more aware of the great problems and difficulties raised by evacuation than of the good things it had brought. The billeting of children with foster parents of a different social class has made very great psychological difficulties – alienation from the real parents or opposition to the new, or quarrels between the two sets of parents. To many people the whole business has been an eye opener on social conditions, especially to those who have received slum children. Formally conservative people have been heard to say that it's a bit doubtful whether our social order is after all worth saving if it tolerates such conditions as these children, filthy and often hygienically untrained, must have lived in. A friend of mine – a pacifist in the last war and now Town Clerk in a "reception" area, after visiting the home – in a dockland slum – of one of the families evacuated to his district (the children in that family were aged 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 3 months) said that he hoped if there were a raid a bomb would land on that district and blow the houses and people in it to smithereens, so horrible were the physical & moral conditions of the area.

To educationalists and psychologists the experiment has a great deal of interest and opportunity, however, and there must be a large number of children deriving great benefit from a country life that they had never known before. The pity of it is that there are so few teachers who are really eager to make use of their new opportunities. Given new and unfamiliar conditions, indeed of thinking what new opportunities to provide, these dull souls drop back to the most stereotyped round of tasks that can be performed with pencil and paper: reading, writing and arithmetic provide the limit of their vision. In peace time a few progressive educationalists can produce a superficial appearance of enlightenment in our educational system, but as soon as the support and stimulus of nice equipment and buildings are removed the poverty of inspiration in the rank and file is exposed (and in the rank and file I include headmasters and headmistresses – who are if anything less enlightened than those who serve under them).

Bedales – the school in which I work – has not suffered as much as we expected from the war. We lost many children through the heavy taxation that fell on their parents, but we gained more through parents taking their children away from schools in towns and sending them to this (relatively!) safe area. But as taxation increases there are more and more requests for rebate of fees, so we do not know how serious a situation we may have to face. The war has done one good thing – it has given reality and necessity to the "outdoor work" that has always been a feature of our curriculum. For sometime past with several other members of staff I have been pressing for a voluntary system of outdoor work instead of a compulsory one. We continued to press for this in spite of the urgent necessity of the work. We had our way – and how much more work is being done voluntarily than was previously done compulsorily, and there is much less watching of the clock. Large squads are at work every afternoon on the farm and vegetable garden, and a new tractor, just presented to us, is being kept busy. My squad is draining a filthy pond into which a lot of Diesel oil from the school power plant had escaped. There was great excitement as we burnt off the surface oil, and when we broke down the dam into the deep drainage channel which we had cut. It is amusing how children love to wade about nearly thigh-deep in black mud! We are striving within the school to maintain complete freedom of thought and expression in matters concerning the war, and hitherto I think we have succeeded.

You may be interested to know how Quakerism & pacifism faces the war situation – or at least how my Quakerism and pacifism faces it. This is a far more difficult situation for the sincere pacifist than the last war provided – not difficult as regards the way he is treated, which has been hitherto rather lenient – but difficult to adjust himself to mentally. We know too well from the refugees we meet how destructive are the aims of Nazi power, how openly they set out to destroy those human qualities of mercy & loving kindness that Christianity has fostered. And we know how terribly widespread is their success among their own folk in this horrible task. It is clear that there can be no compromise between the Nazis and the Western powers except by a move towards the same effort and philosophy on the part of the latter. There is no pacifist solution to the conflict. Pacifists may urge the necessity for an early peace; but a non-pacifist government cannot negotiate a pacifist peace. If it negotiated any peace at all at this stage, it would be a bad peace, drawing Britain still further into international crime. It seems that the war must go on – and there must be few pacifists who in their hearts can contemplate with anything but horror the ultimate success of Nazism. And any attempt to cut oneself off entirely from the war effort can be only illusory. It may have seemed possible in wars when our own home country was not seriously menaced (perhaps that is why there are so many pacifists in England compared with other countries). Any day now the streets may be littered with wounded civilians who have little enthusiasm for war & its glories. Which of us will refuse to help in that emergency – and which of us will not find himself hoping that fighter planes and A.A. guns will deal effectively with the raiders? In the past we've tried to put pacifism on a logical working basis. We’ve suggested that non-resistance is not only the right policy, but the one that will work. But it is clear that there are limits to that argument. We have not allowed for the strength of evil in man. So far in this war it has been the weak and more or less unarmed who have suffered first – quiet and inoffensive countries such as Norway and Denmark. The principles that can be applied to the immediate direct relations between one man and another cannot be applied just so to the relations between masses organised in national groups. If we were a nation completely united in pacifism we might work out – as Gandhi has done – a technique of non-violent resistance which would effectively deal with the aggression in the long run. But in the meantime we are not such a nation. We are involved in a desperate war which cannot be stopped or settled in a pacifist manner, and the pacifist has to adjust himself to what is, not to what might be. So long as he eats food he depends on the armed might of the British Navy. If he tries to impede the war effort he makes for a chaotic condition out of which no good can come, not for any pacifist settlement. Has he any function at all as a pacifist while he is inevitably involved in compromise? I think he must find some other justification for his stand than just the feeling that he cannot kill. Being tied in with the community as we are we cannot avoiding helping others to do the killing, even if we refuse to do it ourselves. I don't think there is really much difference between killing and helping to kill, however passive our helping may be. We all share the social responsibility for the processes that have resulted in this war. The refusal of the C.O. to kill does not clear his conscience or save his soul. It is rather a gesture telling others how he wishes he could clear it. This seems to me to suggest his function. It is not to keep his integrity and his hands clean, but to keep something alive that might otherwise perish in the might of war. It doesn't perhaps matter much at what point of compromise each conscientious objector draws the line. What does matter is that he shall publicly assert his sincere desire to practise his way of life as far as he as an individual is free to do so – in what he believes is genuinely the service of the community. Looking at the matter broadly, it seems to me very important that there should be a certain proportion of conscientious objectors in the community and that the state should be forced to recognise their demand for consideration. There will then be less chance of us going Fascist in this country than if every man accepted the State as the highest authority. But I have no patience with those C.O's who would refuse to pass on an air raid warning, or to conduct school children to air raid shelters. But what do I do if a parachutist drops in my back yard? If I can't deal with him by guile or gentle persuasion I think I shall have to compunction in knocking him out – provided I can get within striking distance without getting shot! Nor do I think I should hesitate to inform the Defence Corps of his arrival! When it comes to an attack on this country I think the C.O. will have little difficulty in deciding what to do. There will be enough rescue work to be done among the civil population to employ ten times the existing number of C.O.'s.

I am continuing this letter on a Sunday evening after listening to members of the school orchestra playing the Brahms Clarinet Quintet. Again the contrast between man's will to evil and his unlimited power to create beauty! There is one interesting thing worth mentioning: the war has not yet destroyed the creative and cultural interests of the population. Many musicians were thrown out of employment last September. Beecham disbanded the London Philharmonic but the players got together to reconstitute it and run it themselves – Myra Hess organised daily lunch hour concerts at the National Gallery and they have made a striking success – attended day after day by rapt audiences of quite ordinary people – the lunches being served in intervals by voluntary workers. There is a feeling that we mustn't leave it till after the war to recreate society and culture. Inspired perhaps by the amazing work done in education and social change on the government side during the Spanish Civil War there are many people saying: Begin here and now! Dorothy Sayers, our leading detective story writer, has written a book on these lines "Begin Here". Another interesting book is by Sir Richard Acland, a nominally Liberal M.P. who has come to the conclusion that we cannot win this war unless we adopt public ownership of production without delay. His book "Unser Kampf" (a 'Penguin Special') has brought him so much correspondence that an organisation has been created to further his proposals. Incidentally, he is the son of Sir Francis Acland, M.P. who in his later years turned from the Church to Quakerism. It's interesting to see the holder of one of the oldest baronetcies (from 1600) in England becoming more socialist than the Labour party. I think he is right, and it is significant that our new Government has had to take a few steps already in the direction that he advocates.

What will America do, I wonder? If she is to come into this struggle at all she ought to do it now. I am able to detach myself from my own personal feelings about fighting and I try to see the world events as a historian or an impartial observer. None of the nations (including America) are pacifist in any real sense, however much they dislike war. They believe ultimately in armed force for the preservation of order and civilised standards. This being so they should use their force as efficiently and expeditiously as possible. As Prof. Macmurray said to me once: it is as immoral for a Nation that believes in force to withhold that force when according to its own principles it ought to use it, as it is for a Pacifist to engage in war. That applies with terrible truth to England's failure in regard to Manchuria, China, Abyssinia, Spain, Czechoslovakia, and it will apply to America's action too. If America believes that the Allies cause is a just cause and that to wage war for it is right, then America ought to be wholly in it too. Does this seem a surprising argument for me to put forward? If America were genuinely & constructively pacifist it would not apply, but we all know perfectly well that the U.S. is no more able to apply pacifist solutions to the conflict than is Britain or France.

I think this letter has helped me to work off some of the feelings that were getting me down during the past week. Having imagined and faced the worst that can happen – invasion and the destruction from the air that may come any day now, I can face it with more courage. If faith in God means anything it must mean that this conflict is not meaningless, but part of the process by which mankind achieves maturity. Adolf Hitler may after all be the instrument of God. Although he sets out to destroy all that Christianity has tried to establish, history may show that he succeeds only in achieving the opposite. Haven't we all longed to get rid of an evil economic and social system that destroys men's souls no less effectively than war? Hitler is hastening its end and he will not survive its fall. I would rather he didn't drag me and those whom I love down with him into the ruin – but perhaps that's the price we must pay! I hope I shall be alive ten or twenty years hence. What is happening now and what will happen, if full of peril and terror, is also probably the most interesting phase in the world's history – and I do want to see it through!

Moreover, I want to see the States again someday – and bring my wife to see them too. I still feel a sort of proprietary interest when I see Broadway lights in a movie film or when I read in Damon Runyon's "More than Somewhat" of the mythical Good Time Charley's little speakeasy in West 47th Street! By the way, that book provided me with much needed comic relief after depressing news bulletins. I read the stories to the family in the best New Joysey accent!

June 9th

I intended to bring this letter to a close at this point, but I see that I have gone to a third sheet, and I may as well fill the other side now! Since writing all the above we have gone through more and more heart-stopping crises. The evacuation of the British Forces from Dunkirk held our attention for many days, and now that it has been accomplished we are beginning to hear how it was done. The stories are a compound of the grimmest horror with a heroism that is almost comic. I suppose it was the sort of situation in which the British temperament is seen at its best – sudden spontaneous co-operation to tackle an apparently hopeless situation, and bringing it off in face of overwhelming odds. Every sort of craft went out from the harbours of the S.E. coast. Thames tugs with strings of barges, all the paddle steamers from the resorts along this coast, fishing boats; and it appears that even schoolboys got over with small motor boats, doing several trips, bringing a few men at a time. The soldiers had to wade out neck deep to meet the boats and clamber into them, and then get away through the hail of bombs and bullets. But no doubt you will read of this in detail in your own papers. The moral effect of the achievement in evacuating these men has been great, I think. The thought of their being trapped and destroyed was terrible – and to have achieved the miracle of getting them away has brought an immense relief and a certain amount of confidence in fact of a bad military situation.

I am losing a lot of sleep now, and feeling somewhat the worse for it. As a warden supervising evacuation of children to the trenches in the event of an air-raid I have to get up and go out to the school whenever there is a "stand-by" warning – which is nearly every night! We have had one actual air-raid warning. The sirens shrieked at 1 a.m. and the children tumbled out of bed, dressed and came out in perfect order, following the line of dim lights to the trench. They did it in about 6 minutes, and only one child (out of many whose ages range down to five) had to be helped to dress. The trenches are electrically lit and comfortable so that once there they could be amused or could curl up to sleep.

What a world! After twenty years of working & hoping for peace here am I, up every night in a steel helmet, parading about with a gas mask and calculating what are the chances of a random bomb hitting a school in the middle of this countryside. So far none has come within sufficient range to make us feel that this is a dangerous area.

It is interesting to read in The Friend a report – coming through America – that the Quakerschule at Omman is still going on almost normally. I wonder how long that will be so. I expect that the Germans have so far had little time in which to examine and interfere with such institutions.

I was not myself able to go to Yearly Meeting this time, but I gather that although it was not very inspiring & such proposals as were put forward were rather vague, yet it did set an example in quietness and calmness – and example which is sorely needed. Many of the progressive intellectuals who have been fighting Fascism in one way or another during the past years, have found the war situation, with disasters rapidly following each other, terribly wearing & productive of tension. Some of the calmness among Friends must be admitted as due to blindness – to putting our heads in the sand, but by no means all of it. Friends can contribute to this community a calm courage which will ensure that no military defeat need involve moral defeat too, and a confidence that God's purpose for humanity will be achieved, even if it has to be through disaster involving the collapse of all Europe.

My wife thinks this letter will be so long that you will not read it, even if the Censor allows it to get through. I'm afraid it will be difficult to read – please forgive that! My wife also says that it's like a last despairing cry from the Old World! I hope it won't be the last – and I don't think it's really despairing.

One of our staff has suddenly sent his wife and two children off to the States on the liner Washington. A terrible wrench for him, but the opportunity was offered, and he seized it. It set my wife and I thinking whether we could bear to send our children away if such an opportunity came our way. She herself would not go, but the situation is every day getting so ominous (it is now June 13 & the Germans are nearly at Paris) that we might consider sending the children anywhere rather than have them endure what may be coming.

Well, I'm nearly at the end of the paper – I must finish.

With good wishes & greetings to you all

Yours sincerely,

Kenneth C. Barnes

RETURN TO SURVEY MAIN PAGE

RETURN TO: SURVEY: KENNETH C. BARNES HOME PAGE

RETURN TO: SURVEY: KENNETH C. BARNES GUIDES TO AVAILABLE MATERIAL, AND MATERIAL FROM THE ARCHIVES

Association of Therapeutic Communities	PLANNED ENVIRONMENT THERAPY TRUST	Charterhouse Group
Therapeutic Community Open Forum		RadioTC International
The WebSearch the Site

This page authored by: Teresa Wilmshurst