Nowell Pritt, Upton Sinclair, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, and others) defended the Moscow Trials of the Stalin purge era in the Soviet Union from critics. Davis claimed that, as a former Chairman of the Legislative Commission on Jails in the State of Connecticut, he had seen hundreds of criminals confess based on overwhelming evidence against them. He compared that experience to the confessions given by defendants in the Moscow Trials. He did note that "there is a lot of false testimony in a trial of this kind." For the rest of his life, Davis worked on and off as visiting professor at colleges and universities. During the 1940 presidential elections, Davis served as delegate from Connecticut to the Democratic National Convention. World War II During World War II, he headed YMCA POW efforts in Canada. From 1943 to 1944 Davis worked as a correspondent for the Toronto Star in Moscow. In January 1944, he was part of the delegation of Western correspondents who visited the graves in Katyn forest at the invitation of the Soviets. He believed the Soviet version that the Germans were the perpetrators. From 1939 to 1945, Davis was involved in a libel lawsuit he filed (see below). In 1949, he led a peace mission to Europe. Promoting Enduring Peace In 1952, Davis founded the organization Promoting Enduring Peace, Inc., in which he remained active through 1974. The group issued reprints of articles in pamphlet form that opposed the militarism of the mid-1940s, and formally formed the organization in 1952. As its first director, Davis organized many trips to the USSR during the Cold War, in an effort to continue communicating with Russian leaders. In 1957, his group met for two hours with Nikita Khrushchev. In 1970, his group met with Alexei Kosygin. In 1973 and 1975, Davis led similar trips for educators to China, which had been controlled by Communists since shortly after World War II. He proposed creation of the Gandhi Peace Award on March 13, 1959. He presented it to the first recipient, Eleanor Roosevelt , the following year. Controversy Davis supported world peace and international cooperation with all nations, which included working with the Communist states of the USSR and China. Most scholars recognize that his support was based on admiration for Communism and its leaders. Scholar Judy Kutulas writes that Davis found Joseph Stalin to be an impressive intellectual and one useful