Women were among the earliest anti-conscriptionists, and founded two well known international peace organizations still in business today, the War Resisters International, and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

THE ANTI-CONSCRIPTION MANIFESTO 1926 was signed among others by Henri Barbusse, Annie Besant, Martin Buber, Edward Carpenter, Miguel de Unamuno, Georges Duhamel, Albert Einstein, M K Gandhi, Kurt Hiller, Toyohiko Kagawa, George Lansbury, Arthur Ponsonby, Leonhard Ragaz, Romain Rolland, Bertrand Russell, Rabindranath Tagore, Fritz von Unruh, and H G Wells.

HERE IT IS:

'It is our belief that conscript armies, with their large corps of professional officers, are a grave menace to peace. Conscription involves the degradation of human personality, and the destruction of liberty. Barrack life, military drill, blind obedience to commands, however unjust and foolish they may be, and deliberate training for slaughter undermine respect for the individual, for democracy and human life. 'It is debasing human dignity to force men to give up their life, or to inflict death against their will or without conviction as to the justice of their action. The State which thinks itself entitled to force its citizens to go to war will never pay proper regard to the value and happiness of their lives in peace. Moreover, by conscription the militarist spirit of aggressiveness is implanted in the whole male population at the most impressionable age. By training for war men come to consider war as unavoidable and even desirable.'