ading up to the decision to go to war. This led to a tremendous amount of pressure on Congress and the president as these citizen groups represented "special interests" and each of them had assertive agendas; the war in Europe was in the news on a daily basis, and great concern about America's future involvement stirred heated emotions.
             One of those groups was the Woman's Peace Party, which was founded in 1915, with an agenda to promote the principle of "the sacredness of human life; this group called for an immediate armistice in the ongoing war and supported an American mediation of the war. Another group was the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) – which, "within months," had branches in "every major city" in America, Knock writes.
             Former president William Howard Taft helped form the League to Enforce Peace (LEP), which, according to Knock, "had established four thousand branches in forty-seven states" within two years. The LEP advocated the creation of a world parliament, which,
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