All for a Scrap of Paper

In the Cornish town of St. Ia, Bob Nancarrow returns from Oxford hoping to spend an afternoon with Nancy Tresize. His affection for her sits uneasily beside their different attitudes to military life. Nancy admires soldiers, while Bob has inherited his Quaker father's belief that war conflicts with Christianity. Joseph Hocking places this personal disagreement within a community suddenly stirred by the outbreak of the First World War.

The novel follows the pressure that public appeals, political arguments and reports from abroad exert on Bob's convictions. An account of a peace meeting in Germany and a reported order from the Kaiser leave him unsettled and eager to read further. Cornwall's coastal setting, courtship and questions of national duty give the story several points of interest. Readers can examine how a wartime romance turns a young man's private loyalties into a debate about faith, conscience and Britain's obligations.