When we have the benefit of hindsight, i. e When we have the benefit of hindsight, i.e. we know what actually happened, it is all too easy to conclude that what happened was inevitable and that in each of the countries that fought in WW1, amongst the people, the politicians and the military, everyone was in favour of war. But there were alternative voices as well. In the first half of 1914, as tensions between the Great Powers intensified, many trade unions, socialist movements, some women’s rights campaigners and pacifist organizations in Europe, the British Empire and the United States were publicly demonstrating their opposition to war.

Anti-war sentiments in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism#/media/File:WeFightCartoon.jpg In the USA a popular song of the time was “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier”. Right up to 1917, when the United States entered the war, there was strong opposition to US involvement in the war within the US Congress and significant parts of the print media as well as from pacifist groups, the Socialist Party of America and the labour unions. When President Woodrow Wilson ran for re- election in 1916 he used the slogan “He kept us out of war” Political cartoon published in 1910 in an anti-war book titled ‘War-- What For?’ by George R. Kirkpatrick, a member of the Socialist Party of America and a leading pacifist. The caption reads: “Leading Citizens want War and declare War; Citizens Who are Led fight the War”. (Public Domain United States)

The Spartacus League As late as 25 July 1914 the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany was calling on its membership to demonstrate against the possibility of a war. In response 750.000 people went out on to the streets to demonstrate. However, once war was declared the SPD leader, Friedrich Ebert ordered party members to support Germany’s war effort. Some party members left the party, including Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg who, in 1915, formed the Spartacus League (Spartakusbund) and continued to publicly denounce the war. Liebknecht stated his opposition to the war as follows: “It is an imperialist war, a war for capitalist domination of the world markets and for the political domination of the important countries in the interest of industrial and financial capitalism. Arising out of the armament race, it is a preventive war provoked by the German and Austrian war parties in the obscurity of semi-absolutism and of secret diplomacy.” Rosa Luxemburg, founder member of the Spartacus League, and a vocal opponent of the war, at a party gathering of the SPD in Berlin in 1907. (Photographer Unknown, Public Domain Germany)

Opposition to war in France In France the Socialist Party and the General Convention of Workers (CGT) opposed war arguing that it would just lead to workers killing each other in the interests of their capitalist bosses. → Jean Jaurès, leader of the French Socialist Party. He was a resolute opponent of militarism and opposed the legislation to extend conscription in 1913. In early 1914 he attempted to organize a general strike against the war. He was assassinated by a French nationalist on 31 July 1914. (Photograph by Nadar, pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, 1904, Public Domain in France)

Anti-war protests in Britain In Britain, before August 1914, many in the Liberal Party, the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party and the trade unions were actively opposed to war. The women’s suffragette movement split with some becoming actively involved in the campaign to recruit soldiers while others were active in the anti-war campaign and in 1915 many of the latter were prominent in the setting up of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. → Willie Gallacher, Glasgow-based member of the Independent Labour Party who led the Clyde Workers’ Committee in 1914 which organized anti-war protests amongst the workers in Glasgow for which Gallacher and others went to prison. He later became a member of the Communist Party and was the last Communist MP to sit in the British Parliament. (Gallacher Memorial Library, Glasgow Caledonian University Special Collections and Archives, Public Domain United Kingdom)

Bolsheviks opposition against the war In Russia the Bolsheviks opposed the war from the outset, proclaiming it to be an imperialist war, the purpose of which was not to defend the nation but to seize foreign territory and markets in the interests of foreign capitalists who now owned much of Russian industry. Also opposed to the war were the pacifist followers of the author Leo Tolstoy, led by his biographer, Valentin Bulgakov. → Between 1914 and 1917 Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik movement, was in exile in Switzerland. Russian socialists, like other socialist groups in Europe, were split in their attitudes to the war. Lenin made it clear what the Bolshevik position was: “The war is being waged for the division of colonies and the robbery of foreign territory; thieves have fallen out and to refer to the defeats at a given moment of one of the thieves in order to identify the interests of all thieves with the interests of the nation or the fatherland is an unconscionable bourgeois lie.” (Gallacher Memorial Library, Glasgow Caledonian University Special Collections and Archives, Public Domain United Kingdom)

Bolsheviks opposition against the war International movements such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) – commonly known as “the Wobblies” also actively opposed the war. The IWW had its organizational base in the USA but also had support in other English-speaking countries and in South America and Europe, particularly amongst the dock workers. ← Satirical poster produced by the Industrial Workers of the World to highlight perceived inequalities in the conscription system. (Public Domain Australia)

Pressure for Peace This collection has been made by Bob Stradling within the Innovating History Education for All project with the support of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union and the Evens Foundation. (US Library of Congress, ggbain.18848, Public Domain United States)