88 J.-A. PEMBERTON
aimed at rallying opinion behind four measures deemed necessary for
peace: guaranteeing the inviolability of treaty obligations; the reduction
and limitation of armaments; the reinforcement of the LON’s ability to
prevent and stop wars through the effective organisation of collective
security and mutual assistance; and the establishment of mechanisms
through which the LON could remedy situations likely to provoke war.^3
These measures were approved by the IPC’s executive committee
in April 1936, and then tabled for discussion at its first congress which
took place in Brussels between September 3 and 6, 1936.^4 Held at the
Palais de la Centenaria and at the stade du Heysel, the IPC’s World
Peace Congress attracted more than five thousand people, a promising
sign for what was intended to be a mass movement, and included speak-
ers enlisted from Belgium, China, France, Great Britain, India, Norway,
Poland, Romania, the United States and the USSR among other coun-
tries.^5 Although the issue was not forced but was handled discreetly, the
congress bore witness to the continuing shift in the peace movement
away from an uncompromising pacifism towards a policy of firmness in
the face of threats or acts of aggression: a policy of collective security
whether via the League or via more limited security pacts.^6 A Chinese
delegate at the congress in Brussels put the case for a policy of firm-
ness in declaring that to match ‘non-resistance against war is to work
against peace’ for it is to ‘provide a tiger with a pair of wings.’ A message
addressed to the women of China issued by the Commission Feminine of
the RUP at the French national congress of the RUP held at the end of
September in 1937 in Paris invoked what the message described as these
‘noble words’ in support of the organisation and defence of peace. In
regard to the war then being waged by Japan against China, the message
stated the following: ‘do not believe that distance renders us less sensitive
(^5) Mazuy, ‘Le Rassemblement Universal pour la Paix,’ 40–1, RUP to the secretary general
of the IIIC, 26 August 1936, AG 1 IICI-B-V-4, UA.
(^6) Mazuy, ‘Le Rassemblement Universal pour la Paix,’ 40. For the shift of opinion in
favour collective security, see Birn, ‘The League of Nations Union and Collective Security,’
- See also Alfred E. Zimmern, ‘The Problem of Collective Security,’ in Quincy Wright,
ed., Neutrality and Collective Security: Lectures on the Harris Foundation, 1936 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1936), 72.
(^3) RUP to the secretary general of the IICI, 26 August 1936, AG 1 IICI-B-V-4, UA, and
Mazuy, ‘Le Rassemblement Universal pour la Paix,’ 40–41.
(^4) RUP to the secretary general of the IICI, 26 August 1936, AG 1 IICI-B-V-4, UA.