Ironically, in other words, the very failure of the peace movement to stave off World War I created the conditions for its eventual success. Many more European survivors of war, especially the victims of its worst depredations, were now ready to demand peace from their states. The overthrow of the Russian Empire and the birth of the Soviet Union portended a new equation. America’s entry into the war in 1917 in the name of what Wilson gravely called “peace without victory” did so even more.
