Marcelle Capy

In the early 1930s, she was an active member of the Ligue internationale des combattants de la paix (International League of Fighters for Peace).

Still in Toulouse, intending to become a teacher, she went on to take the preparatory classes for the École normale supérieure de Sèvres but, after listening to a lecture on Tolstoy by the socialist politician Jean Jaurès when she was 18, she decided instead to become a journalist in Paris.

[3] From then on, her life's work was to target pacifism, the role of women in contemporary society, and humanitarian socialism addressing in particular suffering and poverty.

In August 1915, together with her partner Fernand Desprès, she was forced to leave the Bataille syndicaliste which supported the pro-government Union sacrée during the First World War, while the couple remained ardent pacifists.

In 1924, she founded a pacifist education association called Les Amis de la Paix and attended the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom conference in Washington, D.C.

After the war, she travelled to Egypt with her sister Jeanne Marquès, publishing L'Egypte au coeur du monde in 1950.