92 J.-A. PEMBERTON
friend, Salvador de Madariaga, a former Spanish delegate to the LON
and a prominent New Commonwealth figure, felt moved to state that
Cecil’s advocacy of the IPC, which Madariaga dismissed as a complete
‘red herring,’ was an example of the ‘rash courses and serious errors of
judgement’ into which Cecil’s ‘impulsive, forward temperament’ some-
times drew him.)^20 At the same time, in order to gain and hold onto
mass support, elements within the IPC leadership, Cecil among them,
sought to veer the movement away from left-right political controversies
and this meant avoiding such divisive issues as the war in Spain.^21
By no means all supporters of the IPC/RUP appreciated its vaunted
apolitical stance and the attempts to distance the movement from the
issue of the violence consuming Spain. In this regard, Rachel Mazuy
draws a distinction between the English conservatives associated with
the League of Nations Union (LNU) in the movement and those adher-
ents of the IPC/RUP who adopted a more radical anti-Fascist stance.
She argues that the role of the French Communist militants in the move-
ment, especially those associated with the Comité mondiale contre la
Guerre et le Fascisme, was more significant than Cecil perhaps thought
or its official history concedes, even though Communists remained in a
minority in terms of the movement’s leadership.^22
However, it would be wrong to put the support for Republican Spain
solely down to the Communist presence in the IPC/RUP. Indeed, for the
sake of the movement’s strength, some of its Communist adherents actually
joined in attempts to distance the movement from the question of Spain.^23
(^20) Salvador de Madariaga, ‘Gilbert Murray and the League,’ in Jean Smith and Arnold
Toynbee, eds., Gilbert Murray: An Unfinished Autobiography (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1960), 182.
(^21) Birn, ‘The League of Nations and Collective Security,’ 151–53.
(^22) Mazuy, ‘Le Rassemblement Universal pour la Paix,’ 40. Rachel Mazuy points out that
French Communists leant ‘active support’ to the movement up until August 23, 1939. She
notes that in ‘refusing the German-Soviet pact of the summer of 1939, the RUP demon-
strated’ that it was clearly ‘not an association directed by the Communists’ (ibid., 41).
(^23) Birn, ‘The League of Nations and Collective Security,’ 151. Birn notes that a ‘spon-
taneous demonstration on behalf of Republican Spain’ at the 1937 congress of the RUP
in Paris, was ‘checked by the veteran Communist Marcel Cachin’. Mazuy, similarly notes
that the intervention of the Communists in the movement was conducted with ‘great
prudence,’ adding that Cachin went as far as to write that it would be ‘dangerous if the
movement is identified with certain political parties’ as this would weaken it. Mazuy, ‘Le
Rassemblement Universal pour la Paix,’ 41.