burden of the world's suffering. They endeavour to exhibit, humbly
and modestly, the power of sacrificial love, freely, joyously given, and
they venture all that the brave can venture to carry their faith into
life and action. In the American civil war, in the Franco-Prussian, the
South African, the Balkan, the Russo-Japanese, small bands of Quakers
revealed the same spirit of service and the same obliviousness to danger
which have marked the larger groups that have manned the ambulance units
and the war-victims' relief and reconstruction work of this world war.
In this present crisis they have gone wherever they could go,--to
Belgium, to France, to Russia, to Italy, to Serbia and Greece and Syria
and Mesopotamia,--to carry into operation the forces of restoration and
of reconstruction. They have not stood aloof as spectators of the
world's tragedy. They have entered into it and shared it, and they have
counted neither money nor life dear to themselves in their desire to
reveal the power of redeeming and transforming love.

Slowly the sincerity of the Quaker conviction about war has made itself
felt and limited legislative provisions have been made, especially in
England and America, to meet the claims of conscience. The problem which
confronts the law-maker, even when he is sympathetic with the rights of
conviction, is the grave difficulty of determining where to draw the
line of special exception to general requirements and how to discover
the sincerity of conscientious objection to war. The "slacker" is
always a stern possibility. There must be no holes in the net for him to
escape through. The makers of armies naturally want every man who can be
spared from civilian life and can be utilized for military operations.
It has consequently often seemed necessary for law-makers to be narrow
and hard toward the obviously sincere for fear of being too easy and
lenient with those suspected of having sham consciences.

During the Civil War in America, President Lincoln, eager as he was to
win the war, was always deeply in sympathy with the Quakers, and he
stretched his administrative powers to their full limit to provide
relief for conscientious convictions. In the early stages of the great
conflict the President wrote the following kindly note in answer to a
message from New England Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends:
"Engaged as I am, in a great war, I fear it will be difficult for the
world to understand how fully I