ABSTRACT
George Lansbury presided over a new Peace Pledge Union, whose 1933 annual conference resolved unanimously to pledge itself to take no part in war. The Labour Party, now the nation's second largest, did not accept systematic pacifism but did urge vigorous efforts toward peace under the League of Nations. Makiguchi died in prison in 1944, but Toda would carry on his work after the war, providing new voices for peace not only in Japan but internationally. It was in Europe, finally, that another complication arose, revealing the extent but also the weakness of the peace sentiment, coloring the balance between peace and war at the time and subsequently. The focus is on the conference in Munich, in September, 1938, at which the leaders of Britain and France gave in to German demands for seizure of part of Czechoslovakia.
