[1] Caroline Playne formally approached pacifist work some time around 1905, and quickly became a committed activist and member of a wide range of organisations.
Alongside this humanitarian work, Playne joined the Union of Democratic Control when it was formed in 1914, hosting events for the organisation at her London home.
[10] Both pioneering and idiosyncratic, Playne's historical work draws heavily on the emerging methodologies of social psychology to argue that the War represented a collective "neurosis" of the European mind.
[11][1][12] Preoccupied with "the mind and the passions of the multitude", Playne deployed a vast array of sources and quotations to critique European culture before and during the War, especially its nationalism, imperialism and militarism.
[13] She argues that the technological and social developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries "disorientated" and "disjointed" European societies, and was especially damaging to the "mental calibre" of the cultural elite.
[15] The reason for this study is the belief that there was a strange failure in the reaction of men to the vast accession of knowledge and power which conjured up a period of rapid material and mechanical development and change.
Instead of being able to adjust themselves, to fashion their minds, to strengthen their nerves in order to meet the constant fresh developments which their attainments achieved, the human reaction was inconsequent, over-indulgent, lopsided and therefore disastrous.