Abstract
Within a few weeks after the declaration of war, the organizations which had always considered themselves as last bastions of peace — the Socialist International and the International Peace Bureau — disbanded. Most socialists, who had never condemned war in itself and had never questioned the possibility of distinguishing between defensive and aggressive warfare — in particular those with a democratic and liberal background — considered their respective countries to have been unjustly attacked. As well as several pacifists, they aligned themselves with their governments.1 Only a minority of absolute pacifists sought to reinforce internationalist aspirations which were threatened by the war, and to give expression to all the ‘free voices’ that emerged from the war-affected countries.2 Placed under strict surveillance, they endured arrest and expulsion, their bases were closed, their publications censored, their homes searched, and their passports withdrawn.3
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Notes
On this issue, see G. Procacci (1989) Premi Nobel per la pace e guerre mondiali (Milano: Feltrinelli), pp. 82–111
S. E. Cooper (1991) Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe, 1815–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
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S. E. Cooper (1991) ‘Pacifism in France, 1889–1914: International Peace as a Human Right’, French Historical Studies, 17:2, pp. 359–86.
B. Bianchi (2012) ‘I pacifisti italiani dalla guerra di Libia al primo conflitto mondiale (1911–1919)’, in F. Degli Esposti, L. Bertucelli and A. Botti (eds) I conflitti e la storia: Studi in onore di Giovanna Procacci (Roma: Viella), pp. 187–207.
Those who condemned war itself denied the existence of a non-aggressive patriotism, advocated the abolition of all forms of military organization and proposed conscientious objection. They were mostly Christian anarchists who were heavily influenced by the thoughts of Tolstoy. Among those who posed the question of war and peace at the international congress in Amsterdam in 1907 were Rudolf Grossmann and Domela Nieuwenhuis, since 1904 the head of the International Anti-militarist League. On Grossmann, see R. R. Laurence (1999) ‘Rudolf Grossmann and Anarchist Antimilitarism in Austria before World War I’, Peace & Change, 14:2, pp. 155–75.
B. Bianchi (2004) ‘Tolstoj e l’obiezione di coscienza’, in B. Bianchi, E. Magnanini and A. Salomoni (eds) Culture della disobbedienza: Tolstoj e i Duchobory 1895–1910 (Roma: Bulzoni), pp. 9–122.
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On the activities and contacts of French pacifists, see R. Rolland (1960) Diario degli anni di guerra 1914–1919: Note e documenti per lo studio della storia morale dell’Europa odierna, 2 vols (Milano: Parenti).
On the Friends War Victims Relief Committee, which was funded by the Society of Friends, A. R. Fry (1926) A Quaker Adventure: The Story of Nine Years’ Relief and Reconstruction (London: Nisbet)
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In the post-war period, the conscientious objector Fenner Brockway, who initiated setting up the organization, was among the founders of War Resisters International (WRI), the most important and radical pacifist organization between the two wars, which was focused on conscientious objection and on the refusal to support the war effort. In the late 1930s, WRI was represented in 24 countries. C. Chatfield (ed.) (1975) International War Resistance through World War II (New York and London: WRI).
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Much has been written about the Hague Conference and about the WILPF’s pacifist internationalism. Apart from A. Wiltsher (1985) Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War (London: Pandora)
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The Bureau International de la Paix (BIP) and the Inter-Parliamentary Union for Peace (IPU) postponed their commitment to peace until the years after the war and devoted themselves to humanitarian work. The international organizational network disintegrated. The only tenuous link between the various members of official pacifism during the war was represented by the Organisation Central pour une paix durable, established in The Hague in 1915, which excluded by statute the elaboration of proposals to hasten the end of the conflict. Grossi, Le pacifisme européen 1889–1914, pp. 385–401; B. Bianchi (2009) ‘La dissoluzione del pacifismo e la nascita di un nuovo internazionalismo’, in B. Bianchi, Laura De Giorgi and Guido Samarani (eds) Le guerre mondiali in Asia Orientale e in Europa: Violenza, collaborazionismi, propaganda (Milano: Unicopli), pp. 53–72.
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Mary Sheepshanks (1872–1960), born in Liverpool, was engaged in social work, first in Liverpool and afterwards in London. She joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (from 1908 to 1913) and then the IWSA. Straight after the outbreak of the war, she went to the Netherlands to help Belgian refugees and later assisted German families in England. After the war, she became secretary of the Fight the Famine Council and, in 1927, secretary of the WILPF; in Geneva she edited the journal Pax International. In 1929, Mary Sheepshanks organized the first international scientist’s conference on the consequences of aerial bombardments on civilians and, in 1930, Europe’s first conference on statelessness. At the beginning of the 1930s she went secretly to East Galicia to record the atrocities committed by Poles in Ukraine. S. Oldfield (1984) Spinsters of this Parish: The Life and Times of F. M. Mayor and Mary Sheepshanks (London: Virago).
Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948), a Hungarian suffragist, was committed to peace and internationalism during the Great War. She held conferences in the United States and in Europe and participated in the organization of the Hague Conference. In the aftermath of the war she went into exile to Vienna and then to the United States, where she was denied citizenship because of her pacifism. H. Josephson (ed.) (1985) Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders (Westport, CT: Greenwood), pp. 862–5.
There are a vast number of research studies on Emily Hobhouse (1860–1926), the British pacifist who first raised the question of concentration camps in the South African war and who, in 1916, secretly went to occupied Belgium and to Berlin ‘in the interests of truth, peace and humanity’. For a brief biography, see S. Oldfield (2001) Women Humanitarians: A Biographical Dictionary of British Women Active Between 1900 and 1950: ‘Doers of the Word’ (London: Continuum), pp. 102–6.
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On the activities and pacifist thought of Jane Addams, see B. Bianchi (2006) ‘Discours de paix: Les interventions publiques et les écrits de Jane Addams contre la guerre (1915–1919)’, in S. Caucanas, R. Cazals and N. Offenstadt (eds) Paroles de paix en temps de guerre (Paris: Privat), pp. 181–94.
Quoted from G. Fraisse (2010) Les femmes et leur histoire (Paris: Gallimard), p. 490.
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M. Vernet (1917) ‘Au femmes, aux mères!’, La mère éducatrice, 1:1, p. 3.
M. Vernet (1920) ‘La grande misère des enfants d’Europe’, La mère éducatrice, 3:6, p. 67.
M. Vernet (1918) ‘Noël’, La mère éducatrice, 2:12, p. 18.
D. Buxton and E. Fuller (1931) The White Flame: The Story of the Save the Children Fund (London: Longmans), p. 5.
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M. Vernet (1920) ‘Une proposition’, La mère éducatrice, 4:2, p. 14.
C. Mulley (2009) The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, Founder of Save the Children (Oxford: Oneworld), p. 243.
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Bianchi, B. (2014). Towards a New Internationalism: Pacifist Journals Edited by Women, 1914–1919. In: Hämmerle, C., Überegger, O., Zaar, B.B. (eds) Gender and the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137302205_11
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