At the same time great progress was made upon the Continent.
In Italy a League of Peace and Brotherhood was founded as early as 1878, by Signor E.T. Moneta.
A workmen's peace association was formed at Paris in 1879, by M. Desmoulins and others, under the name of the Société des travailleurs de la Paix.
At the close of 1882, The Danish Peace Society, or "Society for the Neutralization of Denmark," was founded in Copenhagen, with Fredrik Bajer, M.P., as chairman, and twenty-five local associations in Denmark.[32] There is also at Copenhagen a "Women's Progress Society," which, with Mrs. Bajer as president, placed the cause of peace prominently upon its programme.
At a meeting of members of the Riksdag, in the spring of 1883, a Swedish Peace Society was formed, which has for its object to co-operate with the International Arbitration and Peace Association of Great Britain and Ireland, in working for the preservation of peace among nations, and the establishment of an International Tribunal of Arbitration, under the mutual protection of the States, to which disputes that may arise may be referred. The first chairman of the society was S.A. Hedlund, who has long laboured in Sweden for the spread of information as to the efforts of the friends of peace.
The same year a Norwegian Peace Society was formed, which, however, like the Swedish sister association, has been apparently only dead-alive of late.
This is the result, certainly in great degree, of the slender interest taken by the cultivated classes, who in general pose as either indifferent or antagonistic to peace work; indifferent, because, in ignorance of the subject, they look upon organized peace effort as fanciful and fruitless; antagonistic, because they see in these efforts a hindrance to getting the national defence strengthened by increased military forces. As regards Norway, there are, however, signs that a different view of things has lately begun to make itself felt.[33]
In France the peace societies received strength in 1884, through the foundation by M. Godin of the Société de Paix et d' Arbitrage International du Familistère de Guise (Aisne), Godin's activity has embraced not less than forty-two departments in France. Besides these may be named the Société d'Aide Fraternelle et d'Etudes Sociales, the Société de Paix par l'Education at Paris, the Groupe des Amis de la paix à Clermont-Ferrand, La Fraternité Universelle Grammond, Canton de St. Galmier (Loire), and the Association des Jeunes Amis de la Paix, Nîmes.
The International Arbitration and Peace Association for Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1880.[34] This association, with which the Scandinavian society should co-operate the most closely, has a worthy chairman in Mr. Hodgson Pratt, a man whose devoted and untiring zeal has made him a distinguished leader of the peace movement, to which he has dedicated the whole business of his life.
His sphere of action has also included the Continent, and borne good fruit. Amongst others he succeeded in instituting peace societies at Darmstadt, Stuttgart and Frankfort; a committee of the association at Budapest; and in Rome, the Associazione per l'Arbitrato e la Pace tra le Nazione, with Ruggiero Bonghi as president; and also in Milan, the Unione Lombarda per la Pace e l'Arbitrato Internazionale.