Internationalists within the LNU urged the British government to place its military forces at the disposal of the League of Nations to resist further aggression. This was a forlorn gesture, since by then there was no hope that the moribund League could respond. During the crisis over Czechoslovakia the LNU urged Whitehall to stand up to Hitler and sharply criticized the policy of “seeking peace by surrender to force.” 69 As Chamberlain left for Munich the LNU leadership called for Britain to join with France and Russia in warning that an invasion of Czechoslovakia meant war. The pacifists of the PPU reacted differently. They argued for political and economic concessions to Germany and proposed a world conference to create a more equitable international order. The PPU leaders insisted that they were advocating fundamental transformations in the international system not defeatism, but in fact their position amounted to appeasement. Many pacifists, like Britain’s leaders, clung to the naïve belief that it was still possible to negotiate with Hitler. They misunderstood the diabolical nature of the Nazi regime and believed that reasonable concessions would satisfy Hitler’s ambitions.
When Chamberlain returned with “peace in our time,” some peace advocates reluctantly accepted the agreement as “an inglorious peace,” in Vera Brittain’s words; but many others condemned it.70 The WILPF declared that the Munich settlement “cannot be called peace because it is not founded on justice.” 71 In India Gandhi accused England and France of cowardice. They have “quailed before the combined violence of Germany and Italy,” he wrote. “Europe has sold her soul.” 72 Gandhi argued for resistance to fascism through “the use of nonviolence as a weapon,” although he offered no specific ideas how this might be done, for which he was criticized by prominent Jewish intellectuals such as Martin Buber and Judah Magnes. In France the APD condemned the agreement as an attack on Czech sovereignty. Its leader Theodore Ruyssen warned that it would only increase the likelihood of war. Some integral pacifists defended the agreement, but the ranks of pure pacifism were rapidly dwindling. Ruyssen and many others recognized that war was now inevitable. Their only hope was that the coming conflict would destroy fascism and that the principles of collective security might rise from the ashes to gain greater political recognition and support.
In the United States support for pure pacifism rapidly diminished. Internationalists and progressives worried that the campaign for neutrality was weakening the will to resist fascist aggression. James Shotwell and supporters of the League of Nations Association launched the Committee for Concerted Peace Efforts, which worked to defeat the Ludlow amendment and promoted selective arms embargoes against aggressor states.74 Progressives abandoned the Emergency Peace Campaign, which began to unravel in late 1937. Many of those who previously called themselves pacifist became uneasy with the term and were uncomfortable allying themselves with conservatives and right-wing isolationists in support of the Ludlow amendment. Major organizations that had supported the neutrality campaign, including the American Association of University Women and the National Council of Jewish Women, ended their affiliation with the National Council for Prevention of War. Peace groups found themselves increasingly isolated from the mainstream coalition they had helped to build just a few years before.
The Emergency Peace Campaign
