<P> In France, women activists from both the working - class socialist women's and the middle - class suffragist movements formed their own groups to oppose the war . However, they were unable to coordinate their efforts because of mutual suspicion because of class and political differences . After 1915 the groups weakened or dissoved entirely as their leading militants left to work within nonfeminist organizations opposing the war . </P> <P> The women's suffrage movement in Britain split on the war issue . The main official groups supported the war, but it was opposed by a number of prominent women's rights campaigners, including Helena Swanwick, Margaret Ashton, Catherine Marshall, Maude Royden, Kathleen Courtney and Chrystal Macmillan . and Sylvia Pankhurst . It was an early coalition of women's campaigning with pacifism that later led to the formation of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915 . </P> <P> Although the onset of the First World War was generally greeted with enthusiastic patriotism across Europe, peace groups were still active in condemning the war . In Britain, the prominent peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse went to prison for refusing military service, citing his convictions as an "International Socialist and a Christian" Many socialist groups and movements were antimilitarist, arguing that war by its nature was a type of governmental coercion of the working class for the benefit of capitalist elites . The French socialist pacifist leader Jean Jaurès was assassinated by a nationalist fanatic on July 31, 1914 . The national parties in the Second International increasingly supported their respective nations in war and the International was dissolved in 1916 . </P> <P> In 1915 the League of Nations Society was formed by British Liberal Party leaders to promote a strong international organisation that could enforce the peaceful resolution of conflict . Later that year the League to Enforce Peace was established in America to promote similar goals . Hamilton Holt published an editorial in his New York City weekly magazine the Independent called "The Way to Disarm: A Practical Proposal" on September 28, 1914 . It called for an international organization to agree upon the arbitration of disputes and to guarantee the territorial integrity of its members by maintaining military forces sufficient to defeat those of any non-member . The ensuing debate among prominent internationalists modified Holt's plan to align it more closely with proposals offered in Great Britain by Viscount James Bryce, a former ambassador from the U.K. to the U.S. These and other initiatives were pivotal in the change in attitudes that gave birth to the League of Nations after the war . </P>

Who opposed us involvement in world war 1 and why