George Fox was once offered a captaincy in Cromwell's army. "I told them," he wrote in his Journal, "I knew from whence all wars arose, even from the lust, according to James's doctrine; and that I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars."
The Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, which began to form around George Fox exactly 300 years ago, has done its sober best to take away the occasion for war by refusing to bear arms. "The leveled gun, the battle-brand, we may not take," wrote Quaker Poet John Greenleaf...
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