ABSTRACT
The Bureau International de la Paix, an organisation founded in 1891, which had enjoyed considerable prominence on a European level and was presided over by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Henri La Fontaine, refrained from undertaking any significant political actions. In 1914, a significant portion of the European anarchist movement supported the Entente, hoping that the defeat of the central empires might signify the progress of democracy and, ultimately, anarchism. Feminist mobilisation against the war also continued in 1915In Italy, like in Germany, very few intellectuals decided to take a clear stance against the war. One of them was the young literary critic Renato Serra who distanced himself from the dominant warmongering rhetoric and ended up writing "the most desperate and most anti-rhetorical" pages on the war. The discussion about peace taking place in the early stages of the war represented, in general, an attempt to confute the warmongering rhetoric that had preceded and accompanied the outbreak of the conflict.
