Well... a careful reading would show, I do not think the British army should not have retreated from Dunkirk... I do think, however, that to issue an order to bayonette the French allies, and not inform them of the plans to leave was not in the best tradition of friendship.

As to Quakers being ineffectual, the point is that if the rest of the world had been as helpful in dealing with the German famine, the nazis would not have had as much fertile ground to grow.

I suggest, when you state the war against Hitler was a war to save the victims of nazism, you might read about the Saint Louis. This event and the testimony of Jewish escapees from the death camps whose pleas to bomb the rail lines were ignored by Britain and the US.

I would have you point out a single nazi death camp which was targeted for liberation - rather they were overrun as the war progressed. The lack of concern for the inmates of these camps is completly understood in light of the treatment of displaced Jews and Roma people by the British after the war. I suggest you might look into the camps on Cypress.

The fact that Britain was able to evacuate it's own people from a region it destablized is hardly anything to pat yourself on the back about. Do read about the efforts of BP and Kirmit Rockafeller in setting up the present mess in the Middle East.

As to Quakers effect on war. After nations act towords each other in brutal and sociopathic ways, and war breaks out, there is not much any passifist can do ... other than not join in the continuation of the brutality, it is a time we cannot change the world, only not be changed by it. As long as national identities are built around dressing up and marching down the street to the blare of bad music, while folks throw flowers, there is not much hope to deal with the real problems which place us on the bring of extinction.

Frankly, I think the time to pat yourselves on the back is when you help bring the world together to face the problem of imminent self destruction - not by war, but by neglect.

All the best
Lorcan