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On September 19, 1931, Japan began the process of converting the Chinese province of Manchuria into its own puppet state of Manchukuo, thus calling into question an earlier pronouncement about the prospects of peace just nine days before, However, peace movements fare best when optimism is seasoned with a dash of pessimism: although the former gives their ideas plausibility, the latter is needed to give them urgency. In the early 1930s, the mixture was therefore ideal: the optimism carried over from the post-Locarno period ignited with the pessimism generated by Japanese, German, and Italian behaviour to stimulate the most intense phase of peace activism ever, of which unquestionably the highlight was the extraordinary Peace Ballot of 1934–5.

In contrast to conventional studies that interpret the interwar period in state-centric terms, this chapter reveals the wide variety of transnational relations that developed at that time. It commences by showing how, despite its short-term deleterious consequences for transnational civil society, the First World War provided opportunities for a new generation of international NGOs to develop. These associations were influential at the Paris Peace Conference and they established extensive working relations with the League of Nations, with their influence peaking at the World Disarmament Conference. However, the chapter also shows how factors that in the short term had facilitated the expansion of transnational civil society were in the long term to contribute towards its contraction in the period from the Great Depression to the Second World War.

This chapter suggests that the World Disarmament Conference of 1932 should not be written off as easily as it was, and that it might have achieved positive results if it had been held earlier. It also considers the British ‘Peace Ballot’ of 1934 — often dismissed as a ‘pacifist’ exercise — yet which was characterized by Winston Churchill as expressing a ‘positive and courageous policy’ to contemplate war under the League's authority. The ultimate failure of the League of Nations in the 1930s is not a reason for dismissing the efforts made by its supporters to prevent war, and they remain a significant example of popular mobilization. The chapter concludes by looking at the legacy of Tolstoy and Gandhi towards the emergence in the twentieth century of a coherent doctrine and practice of non-violent protest. Although Tolstoy's ideas are often regarded as idiosyncratic, they inspired Gandhi and many activists in the peace — and particularly the pacifist — movement in following decades.