The 'League of Nations' was an
international organization founded
as a result of the
Paris Peace Conference in
1919–
1920. The League's goals included
disarmament, preventing
war through
collective security, settling disputes between
countries through
negotiation,
diplomacy and improving global
welfare. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked an armed force of its own and so depended on the
Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to economic sanctions which the League ordered, or provide an army, when needed, for the League to use. However, they were often very reluctant to do so.
Benito Mussolini stated that “The League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.”
After a number of notable
successes and some early
failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the
Axis Powers in the
1930s. The onset of the
Second World War suggested that the League had failed in its primary purpose — to avoid any future world war. The
United Nations Organization replaced it after the end of the war and inherited a number of agencies and organizations founded by the League.
Origins
''A commemorative card depicting American President Wilson and the "Origin of the League of Nations"''
A predecessor of the League of Nations in many respects were the international Hague Peace Conferences, 1899 and 1907. The "Hague Confederation of States" as the Neo-Kantian pacifist Walther Schücking called it, formed a universal alliance aiming at disarmament and the peaceful settlement of disputes through arbitration. The concept of a peaceful community of nations had previously been described in
Immanuel Kant’s ''
Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch'' (
1795). Following the failure of the Hague Peace Conferences - a third conference had been planned for 1915 - the idea of the actual League of Nations appears to have originated with
British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey, and it was enthusiastically adopted by the
Democratic United States President Woodrow Wilson and his advisor
Colonel Edward M. House as a means of avoiding bloodshed like that of
World War I. The creation of the League was a centerpiece of Wilson's
Fourteen Points for Peace, specifically the final point: "A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."
The
Paris Peace Conference accepted the proposal to create the League of Nations (
French: ''Société des Nations'',
German: ''Völkerbund'') on
January 25,
1919. The
Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed on
June 28 1919. Initially, the
Charter was signed by 44
states, including 31 states which had taken part in the war on the side of the
Triple Entente or joined it during the conflict. Despite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, the
United States neither
ratified the Charter nor joined the League due to opposition in the
U.S. Senate, especially influential
Republicans Henry Cabot Lodge of
Massachusetts and
William E. Borah of
Idaho, together with Wilson's refusal to compromise.
The League held its first meeting in
London on
January 10,
1920. Its first action was to ratify the
Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I. The headquarters of the League moved to
Geneva on
November 1,
1920, where the first general assembly of the League was held on
November 15,
1920 with representatives from 41 nations in attendance.
David Kennedy, a professor at
Harvard Law School, examined the League through the scholarly texts surrounding it, the establishing treaties, and voting sessions of the plenary. Kennedy suggests the League is a unique moment when international affairs was "institutionalized" as opposed to the pre-World War I methods of law and politics (Kennedy, 1987).
Symbols
The League of Nations had neither an official
flag nor
logo. Proposals for adopting an official symbol were made during the League's beginning in 1921, but the member states never reached agreement. However, League of Nations organizations used varying logos and flags (or none at all) in their own operations. An international contest was held in 1929 to find a design, which again failed to produce a symbol. One of the reasons for this failure may have been the fear by the member states that the power of the supranational organization might supersede them.
Finally, in
1939, a semi-official emblem emerged: two five-pointed
stars within a blue
pentagon. The pentagon and the five-pointed stars were supposed to symbolize the five
continents and the
five races of mankind. In a bow on top and at the bottom, the flag had the names in
English (''League of Nations'') and
French (''Société des Nations''). This flag was used on the building of the
New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940.
Languages
The official languages of the League of Nations were
French,
English and
Spanish (from
1920). In 1921, there was a proposal by the Under-Secretary General of the League of Nations, Dr.
Nitobe Inazō, for the League to accept
Esperanto as their working language. Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate,
Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux did not like how the
French language was losing its position as the international language of diplomacy and saw Esperanto as a threat. Two years later the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula.
Structure
The League had three principal organs: a
secretariat (headed by the
General Secretary and based in
Geneva), a Council, and an Assembly. The League also had numerous Agencies and Commissions. Authorization for any action required both a unanimous vote by the Council and a majority vote in the Assembly.
Secretariat and Assembly
The staff of the League's secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the
civil service for the League.
Secretaries-general of League of Nations (1920 – 1946)
★ Sir
James Eric Drummond, 7th Earl of Perth (1920–1933)
★
Joseph Avenol (1933–1940)
★
Seán Lester (1940–1946)
Each member was represented and had one vote in the League Assembly. Individual member states did not always have representatives in
Geneva. The Assembly held its sessions once a year in September.
Presidents of General Assembly of League (1920–1946)
★
Paul Hymans (1st time) 1920–1921
★
Herman Adriaan van Karnebeek 1921–1922
★
Agustin Edwards 1922–1923
★
Cosme de la Torriente y Peraza 1923–1924
★
Giuseppe Motta 1924–1925
★
Raoul Dandurand 1925–1926
★
Afonso Augusto da Costa 1926–1926
★
Momčilo Ninčić ) 1926–1927
★
Alberto Guani 1927–1928
★
Herluf Zahle 1928–1929
★
Jose Gustavo Guerrero 1929–1930
★
Kingdom of Romania Nicolae Titulescu 1930–1932
★
Paul Hymans (2nd time) 1932–1933
★
Union of South Africa Charles Theodore Te Water 1933–1934
★
Richard Johannes Sandler 1934
★
Francisco Castillo Najera 1934–1935
★
Edvard Beneš 1935–1936
★
Carlos Saavedra Lamas 1936–1937
★
Tevfik Rustu Aras 1937–1937
★
British Raj Sir
Muhammad Shah Aga Khan 1937–1938
★
Eamon de Valera 1938–1939
★
Carl Joachim Hambro 1939–1946
Council
The league Council had the authority to deal with any matter affecting
world peace. The Council began with four permanent members (the
United Kingdom,
France,
Italy,
Japan) and four non-permanent members, which were elected by the Assembly for a three-year period. The first four non-permanent members were
Belgium,
Brazil,
Greece and
Spain. The
United States was meant to be the fifth permanent member, but the
United States Senate was dominated by the
Republican Party after the
1918 election and voted on
March 19,
1920 against the
ratification of the
Treaty of Versailles, thus preventing American participation in the League. This prompted the United States to go back to policies of
isolationism.
The initial composition of the Council was subsequently changed a number of times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on
September 22 1922, and then to nine on
September 8 1926.
Germany also joined the League and became a fifth permanent member of the Council on the latter date, taking the Council to a total of fifteen members. When Germany and Japan later both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was eventually increased from nine to eleven.
The Council met on average five times a year, and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 public sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.
Other bodies
The League oversaw the
Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems. These were the
Disarmament Commission, the
Health Organization, the
International Labour Organization, the
Mandates Commission, the Permanent Central
Opium Board, the Commission for
Refugees, and the
Slavery Commission. While the League itself is generally branded a failure, several of its Agencies and Commissions had successes within their respective mandates.
; 'Disarmament Commission' : The Commission obtained initial agreement by France, Italy, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies. However, the
United Kingdom refused to sign a 1923 disarmament treaty, and the
Kellogg-Briand Pact, facilitated by the commission in 1928, failed in its objective of outlawing war. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military buildup during the 1930s by Germany, Italy and Japan.
; 'Health Committee' : This body focused on ending
leprosy,
malaria and
yellow fever, the latter two by starting an international campaign to exterminate
mosquitoes. The Health Organization also succeeded in preventing an epidemic of
typhus from spreading throughout Europe due to its early intervention in the
Soviet Union.
; 'Mandates Commission' : The Commission supervised League of Nations
Mandates, and also organised
plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they would join, most notably the plebiscite in
Saarland in 1935.
; 'International Labour Organization' : This body was led by
Albert Thomas. It successfully banned the addition of
lead to
paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an
eight-hour work day and forty-eight-hour working week. It also worked to end
child labour, increase the
rights of women in the workplace, and make
shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen.
; 'Permanent Central Opium Board' : The Board was established to supervise the statistical control system introduced by the second
International Opium Convention that mediated the production, manufacture, trade and retail of
opium and its by-products. The Board also established a system of import certificates and export authorizations for the legal
international trade in
narcotics.
; 'Commission for Refugees' : Led by
Fridtjof Nansen, the Commission oversaw the repatriation and, when necessary the resettlement, of 400,000 refugees and ex-
prisoners of war, most of whom were stranded in
Russia at the end of World War I. It established camps in
Turkey in 1922 to deal with a refugee crisis in that country and to help prevent disease and hunger. It also established the
Nansen passport as a means of identification for
stateless peoples.
; 'Slavery Commission' : The Commission sought to eradicate
slavery and
slave trading across the world, and fought forced
prostitution and
drug trafficking, particularly in opium. It succeeded in gaining the emancipation of 200,000 slaves in
Sierra Leone and organized raids against slave traders in its efforts to stop the practice of
forced labour in
Africa. It also succeeded in reducing the death rate of workers constructing the
Tanganyika railway from 55% to 4%. In other parts of the world, the Commission kept records on slavery, prostitution and drug trafficking in an attempt to monitor those issues.
; 'Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women' : This committee sought to make an inquiry into the status of women all over the world. Formed in April 1938, dissolved in early 1939. Committee members included Mme. P. Bastid (France), M. de Ruelle (Belgium), Mme. Anka Godjevac (Yugoslavia), Mr. HC Gutteridge (United Kingdom), Mlle. Kerstin Hesselgren (Sweden), Ms. Dorothy Kenyon (United States), M. Paul Sebastyen (Hungary) and Secretariat Mr. McKinnon Wood (Great Britain).
Several of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the
Second World War. In addition to the International Labour Organisation, the Permanent Court of International Justice became a UN institution as the
International Court of Justice, and the Health Organization was restructured as the
World Health Organization.
Members
An anachronous map of the world in the years 1920–1945, which shows the League of Nations and the world.
''See main article on
League of Nations members''
The League of Nations had 42 founding members excluding
United States of America, 16 of them left or withdrew from the international organization. The
Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the only (founding) member to leave the league and return to it later and remained so a member until the end. In the founding year six other states joined, only two of them would have a membership that lasted until the end. In later years 15 more countries joined, three memberships would not last until the end.
Egypt was the last state to join in
1937. The
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was expelled from the league on
December 14,
1939 five years after it joined on
September 18,
1934.
Iraq was the only member of the league that at one time was a
League of Nations Mandate. Iraq became a member in
1932.
Mandates
Main articles: League of Nations Mandate
League of Nations Mandates were established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. These territories were former
colonies of the
German Empire and the
Ottoman Empire that were placed under the supervision of the League following
World War I. There were three Mandate classifications:
; '"A" Mandate' : This was a territory which "''had reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a "Mandatory" until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.''" These were mainly parts of the old Ottoman Empire.
; '"B" Mandate' : This was a territory which "''was at such a stage that the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee:''
:
★ ''Freedom of
conscience and
religion''
:
★ ''The maintenance of
public order and
morals''
:
★ ''Prohibition of abuses such as the
slave trade, the arms traffic and the
liquor traffic''
:
★ ''The prevention of the establishment of fortifications or military and naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than political purposes and the defence of territory''
:
★ ''Equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other Members of the League.''"
; '"C" Mandate' : This was a territory "''which, owing to the sparseness of their population, or their small size, or their remoteness from the centres of civilisation, or their geographical contiguity to the territory of the Mandatory, and other circumstances, can be best administered under the laws of the Mandatory.''"
(Quotations taken from ''The Essential Facts About the League of Nations'', a handbook published in
Geneva in 1939).
The territories were governed by "Mandatory Powers", such as the
United Kingdom in the case of the
Mandate of Palestine and the
Union of South Africa in the case of
South-West Africa, until the territories were deemed capable of self-government. There were fourteen mandate territories divided up among the six Mandatory Powers of the
United Kingdom,
France,
Belgium,
New Zealand,
Australia and
Japan. In practice, the Mandatory Territories were treated as colonies and were regarded by critics as spoils of war. With the exception of
Iraq, which joined the League on
October 3 1932, these territories did not begin to gain their independence until after the
Second World War, a process that did not end until 1990. Following the demise of the League, most of the remaining mandates became
United Nations Trust Territories.
In addition to the Mandates, the League itself governed the
Saarland for 15 years, before it was returned to
Germany following a plebiscite, and the
free city of
Danzig (now
Gdańsk,
Poland) from
15 November 1920 to
1 September 1939.
Successes
The League is generally considered to have failed in its mission to achieve disarmament, prevent war, settle disputes through diplomacy, and improve global welfare. However, it achieved significant successes in a number of areas.
Åland Islands
Main articles: Åland crisis
Åland is a collection of around 6,500 islands mid-way between
Sweden and
Finland. The islands are exclusively
Swedish-speaking, but Finland had sovereignty in the early 1900s. During the period from 1917 onwards, most residents wished the islands to become part of Sweden; Finland, however, did not wish to cede the islands. The Swedish government raised the issue with the League in 1921. After close consideration, the League determined that the islands should remain a part of Finland, but be governed autonomously, averting a potential war between the two countries.
Albania
The border between
Albania and
Yugoslavia remained in dispute after the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and Yugoslavian forces occupied some Albanian territory. After clashes with Albanian tribesmen, the Yugoslav forces invaded farther. The League sent a commission of representatives from various powers to the region. The commission found in favour of Albania, and the Yugoslav forces withdrew in 1921, albeit under protest. War was again prevented.
Austria and Hungary
Following the
First World War,
Austria and
Hungary were facing bankruptcy due to all the reparations they had to pay. The League arranged loans for the two nations and sent commissioners to oversee the spending of this money. These actions started Austria and Hungary on the road to economic recovery.
Upper Silesia
The Treaty of Versailles had ordered a
plebiscite in
Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should be part of
Germany or
Poland. In the background, strong-arm tactics and discrimination against Poles led to
rioting and eventually to the first two
Silesian Uprisings (1919 and 1920). In the plebiscite, roughly 59.6% (around 500,000) of the votes were cast for joining Germany, and this result led to the
Third Silesian Uprising in 1921. The League was asked to settle the matter. In 1922, a six-week investigation found that the land should be split; the decision was accepted by both countries and by the majority of Upper Silesians.
Memel
The port city of
Memel (now
Klaipėda) and
the surrounding area was placed under League control after the end of the World War I and was governed by a French general for three years. Although the population was mostly
German, the Lithuanian government placed a claim to the territory, with Lithuanian forces invading in 1923. The League chose to cede the land around Memel to Lithuania, but declared the port should remain an international zone; Lithuania agreed. While the decision could be seen as a failure (in that the League reacted passively to the use of force), the settlement of the issue without significant bloodshed was a point in the League's favour.
Greece and Bulgaria
Main articles: War of the Stray Dog
After an incident between sentries on the border between
Greece and
Bulgaria in 1925, Greek troops invaded their neighbour. Bulgaria ordered its troops to provide only token resistance, trusting the League to settle the dispute. The League did indeed condemn the Greek invasion, and called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation to Bulgaria. Greece complied, but complained about the disparity between their treatment and that of
Italy (see
Corfu, below).
Saar
Saar was a province formed from parts of
Prussia and the
Rhenish Palatinate that was established and placed under League control after the
Treaty of Versailles. A plebiscite was to be held after fifteen years of League rule, to determine whether the region should belong to Germany or France. 90.3% of votes cast were in favour of becoming part of Germany in that 1935 referendum, and it became part of Germany again.
Mosul
The League resolved a dispute between
Iraq and
Turkey over the control of the former Ottoman province of
Mosul in 1926. According to the UK, which was awarded a League of Nations
A-mandate over Iraq in 1920 and therefore represented Iraq in its foreign affairs, Mosul belonged to Iraq; on the other hand, the new Turkish republic claimed the province as part of its historic heartland. A three person League of Nations committee was sent to the region in 1924 to study the case and in 1925 recommended the region to be connected to Iraq, under the condition that the UK would hold the mandate over Iraq for another 25 years, to assure the autonomous rights of the
Kurdish population. The League Council adopted the recommendation and it decided on
16 December 1925 to award Mosul to Iraq. Although Turkey had accepted the League of Nations arbitration in the
Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, it rejected the League's decision. Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq and Turkey made a treaty on
5 June 1926, that mostly followed the decision of the League Council and also assigned Mosul to Iraq.
Liberia
Following rumours of
forced labor in the independent African country of
Liberia, the League launched an investigation into the matter, particularly the alleged use of forced labor on the massive ''
Firestone'' rubber plantation in that country. In
1930, a report by the League implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labor, leading to the resignation of President
Charles D.B. King, his vice-president and numerous other government officials. The League followed with a threat to establish a trusteeship over Liberia unless reforms were carried out, which became the central focus of President
Edwin Barclay.
Other successes
The League also worked to combat the international trade in
opium and
sexual slavery and helped alleviate the plight of
refugees, particularly in Turkey in the period to 1926. One of its innovations in this area was its 1922 introduction of the
Nansen passport, which was the first internationally recognised identity card for stateless refugees. Many of the League's successes were accomplished by its various Agencies and Commissions.
'Moral Suasion.'
''The Rabbit''. "My offensive equipment being practically nil, it remains for me to fascinate him with the power of my eye."
----
Cartoon from Punch magazine, July 28 1920, satirising the perceived weakness of the League.General weaknesses
The League did not, in the long term, succeed. The outbreak of World War II was the immediate cause of the League's demise, but there was also a variety of other, more fundamental, flaws.
The League, like the modern United Nations, lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the
Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very reluctant to do.
Economic sanctions, which were the most severe measure the League could implement short of military action, were difficult to enforce and had no great impact on the target country, because they could simply trade with those outside the League. The problem is exemplified in the following passage, taken from ''The Essential Facts About the League of Nations'', a handbook published in
Geneva in 1939:
:''"As regards the military sanctions provided for in paragraph 2 of Article 16, there is 'no legal obligation' to apply them… there may be a political and moral duty incumbent on states… but, once again, there is no obligation on them."''
The League's two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League. So soon after World War I, the populations and governments of the two countries were
pacifist. The
British Conservatives were especially tepid on the League and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of the organization. Ultimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of
collective security in favour of
appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under
Adolf Hitler.
Representation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass all nations, many never joined, or their time as part of the League was short. In January 1920 when the League began, Germany was not permitted to join, due to strong dislike to the country after World War I. Soviet Russia was also banned from the League, as their communist views were not welcomed by the victors of World War I. One key weakness of the League was that the United States never joined, which took away much of the League's potential power. Even though US President
Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation, the
United States Senate voted on
November 19,
1919 not to join the League.
The League also further weakened when some of the main powers left in the 1930s.
Japan began as a permanent member of the Council, but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its invasion of the Chinese territory of
Manchuria. Italy also began as a permanent member of the Council but withdrew in 1937. The League had accepted Germany as a member in 1926, deeming it a "peace-loving country," but
Adolf Hitler pulled Germany out when he came to power in 1933.
Another major power, the
Bolshevik Soviet Union, was a member only from 1934, when it joined to antagonise Germany (which had left the year before), to
December 14,
1939, when it was expelled for
aggression against Finland. In expelling the Soviet Union, the League broke its own norms. Only 7 out of 15 members of the Council voted for the expelling (Great Britain, France, Belgium, Bolivia, Egypt, South African Union and the Dominican Republic), which was not a majority of votes as was required by the Charter to do so. Three of these members were chosen as members of the Council the day before the voting (South African Union, Bolivia and Egypt).
[1] The League of Nations practically ceased functioning after that and was formally dismissed in 1946.
[2]
The League's neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. The League required a unanimous vote of its nine (later fifteen) member Council to enact a resolution, so conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions. Some decisions also required unanimous consent of the Assembly; that is, agreement by every member of the League.
Another important weakness of the League was that it tried to represent all nations, but most members protected their own national interests and were not committed to the League or its goals. The reluctance of all League members to use the option of military action showed this to the full. If the League had shown more resolve initially, countries, governments and dictators may have been more wary of risking its wrath in later years. These failings were, in part, among the reasons for the outbreak of World War II.
Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain and France (and other members) whilst at the same time advocating collective security meant that the League was unwittingly depriving itself of the only forceful means by which its authority would be upheld. This was because if the League was to force countries to abide by international law it would primarily be the
Royal Navy and the
French Army which would do the fighting. Furthermore, Britain and France were not powerful enough to enforce international law across the globe, even if they wished to do so. For its members, League obligations meant there was a danger that states would get drawn into international disputes which did not directly affect their respective national interests.
On
23 June 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy's war of conquest against Abyssinia,
British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin told the
House of Commons that
collective security "failed ultimately because of the reluctance of nearly all the nations in Europe to proceed to what I might call military sanctions.... [T]he real reason, or the main reason, was that we discovered in the process of weeks that there was no country except the aggressor country which was ready for war.... [I]f collective action is to be a reality and not merely a thing to be talked about, it means not only that every country is to be ready for war; but must be ready to go to war at once. That is a terrible thing, but it is an essential part of collective security." It was an accurate assessment and a lesson which clearly was applied in the formation of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which stood as the League's successor insofar as its role as guarantor of the security of Western Europe was concerned.
Specific failures
The general weaknesses of the League are illustrated by its specific failures.
Cieszyn
Main articles: History of Cieszyn and Těšín,
Border conflicts between Poland and Czechoslovakia
Cieszyn (
German Teschen,
Czech Těšín) is a region between
Poland and today's
Czech Republic, important for its
coal mines.
Czechoslovakian troops moved to Cieszyn in 1919 to take over control of the region while Poland was defending itself from invasion of Bolshevik Russia. The League intervened, deciding that Poland should take control of most of the town, but that Czechoslovakia should take one of the town's suburbs, which contained the most valuable coal mines and the only railroad connecting Czech lands and Slovakia. The city was divided into Polish Cieszyn and Czech
Český Těšín. Poland refused to accept this decision; although there was no further violence, the diplomatic dispute continued for another 20 years.
Vilna, 1920
Main articles: Polish-Lithuanian War
After World War I, Poland and
Lithuania both regained the independence that they had lost during the
partitions of Poland in 1795. Though both countries shared centuries of common history in the
Polish-Lithuanian Union and
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, rising Lithuanian
nationalism prevented the recreation of the former federated state. The city of
Vilna (
Lithuanian Vilnius,
Polish Wilno) was made the capital of Lithuania, despite being mainly Polish in ethnicity.
During the
Polish-Soviet War in 1920, a Polish army took control of the city. Despite the Poles' claim to the city, the League chose to ask Poland to withdraw: the Poles did not. The city and its surroundings were proclaimed a separate state of
Central Lithuania and on
20 February 1922 the local parliament passed the Unification Act and the city was incorporated into Poland as the capital of the
Wilno Voivodship. Theoretically, British and French troops could have been asked to enforce the League's decision; however, France did not wish to antagonise Poland, which was seen as a possible ally in a future war against Germany or the Soviet Union, while Britain was not prepared to act alone. Both Britain and France also wished to have Poland as a 'buffer zone' between Europe and the possible threat from Communist Russia. Eventually, the League accepted Wilno as a Polish town on
March 15 1923. Thus the Poles were able to keep it until
Soviet invasion in 1939.
Lithuanian authorities declined to accept the Polish authority over Vilna and treated it as a constitutional capital. It was not until the
1938 ultimatum, when Lithuania resolved diplomatic relations with Poland and thus de facto accepted the borders of its neighbour.
Invasion of the Ruhr Valley, 1923
Main articles: Occupation of the Ruhr
Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to pay reparations. They could pay in money or in goods at a set value; however, in 1922 Germany was not able to make its payment. The next year, France and
Belgium chose to act upon this, and invaded the industrial heartland of Germany, the
Ruhr, despite this being in direct violation of the League's rules. With France being a major League member, and Britain hesitant to oppose its close ally, nothing was done in the League. This set a significant precedent – the League rarely acted against major powers, and occasionally broke its own rules.
Corfu, 1923
Main articles: Corfu incident
One major boundary settlement that remained to be made after World War I was that between
Greece and
Albania. The
Conference of Ambassadors, a ''
de facto'' body of the League, was asked to settle the issue. The Council appointed
Italian general
Enrico Tellini to oversee this. On
27 August 1923, while examining the Greek side of the border, Tellini and his staff were murdered. Italian leader
Benito Mussolini was incensed, and demanded the Greeks pay reparations and execute the murderers. The Greeks, however, did not actually know who the murderers were.
On
31 August, Italian forces occupied the island of
Corfu, part of Greece, with fifteen people being killed. Initially, the League condemned Mussolini's invasion, but also recommended Greece pay compensation, to be held by the League until Tellini's killers were found. Mussolini, though he initially agreed to the League's terms, set about trying to change them. By working with the Council of Ambassadors, he managed to make the League change its decision. Greece was forced to apologize and compensation was to be paid directly and immediately. Mussolini was able to leave Corfu in triumph. By bowing to the pressure of a large country, the League again set a dangerous and damaging example. This was one of the League's major failures.
Mukden Incident, 1931–1933
Main articles: Mukden Incident
The
Mukden Incident was one of the League's major setbacks and acted as the catalyst for
Japan's withdrawal from the organization. In the Mukden Incident, also known as the "Manchurian Incident", the
Japanese held control of the
South Manchurian Railway in the
Chinese region of
Manchuria. They claimed that Chinese soldiers had
sabotaged the railway, which was a major trade route between the two countries, on
September 18,
1931. In fact, it is thought that the sabotage had been contrived by officers of the Japanese
Kwantung Army without the knowledge of government in Japan, in order to catalyse a full invasion of Manchuria. In retaliation, the Japanese army, acting contrary to the civilian government's orders, occupied the entire region of Manchuria, which they renamed
Manchukuo. This new country was recognised internationally by only Italy and Germany - the rest of the world still saw Manchuria as legally a region of China. In 1932, Japanese air and sea forces bombarded the Chinese city of
Shanghai and the short war of
January 28 Incident broke out.
The Chinese government asked the League of Nations for help, but the long voyage around the world by sailing ship for League officials to investigate the matter themselves delayed matters. When they arrived, the officials were confronted with Chinese assertions that the Japanese had invaded unlawfully, while the Japanese claimed they were acting to keep peace in the area. Despite Japan's high standing in the League, the
Lytton Report declared Japan to be in the wrong and demanded Manchuria be returned to the Chinese. However, before the report was voted upon by the Assembly, Japan announced intentions to invade more of China. When the report passed 42-1 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voted against), Japan withdrew from the League.
According to the ''Covenant'' of the League of Nations, the League should have now placed economic sanctions against Japan, or gathered an army together and declared war against it. However, neither happened. Economic sanctions had been rendered almost useless due to the United States Congress voting against being part of the League, despite
Woodrow Wilson's keen involvement in the drawing up of the
Treaty of Versailles and his wish for America to join the League. Any economic sanctions the League now placed on its member states would be fairly pointless, as the state barred from trading with other member states could simply turn and trade with America. An army was not assembled by the League due to the self-interest of many of its member states. This meant that countries like Britain and France did not want to gather together an army for the League to use as they were too interested and busy with their own affairs - such as keeping control of their extensive colonial lands, especially after the turmoil of
World War I. Japan was therefore left to keep control of Manchuria, until the
Red Army of the
Soviet Union took over the area and returned it to China at the end of
World War II in 1945.
Chaco War, 1932
Main articles: Chaco War
The League failed to prevent the Chaco War between
Bolivia and
Paraguay in 1932 over the arid
Chaco Boreal region of
South America. Although the region was sparsely populated, it gave control of the
Paraguay River which would have given one of the two landlocked countries access to the
Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of
petroleum. Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932, when the Bolivian army, following the orders of President
Daniel Salamanca Urey, attacked a Paraguayan garrison at
Vanguardia. Paraguay appealed to the League of Nations, but the League did not take action when the Pan-American conference offered to mediate instead.
The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 100,000 casualties and bringing both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on
12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control over most of the region. This was recognized in a 1938 truce by which Paraguay was awarded three-quarters of the Chaco Boreal.
Italian invasion of Abyssinia, 1935–1936
Main articles: Abyssinia crisis
Perhaps most famously, in October 1935, Benito Mussolini sent General
Pietro Badoglio and 400,000 troops to invade
Abyssinia (Ethiopia). The modern
Italian Army easily defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians, and captured
Addis Ababa in May 1936, forcing Emperor
Haile Selassie to flee. The Italians used
chemical weapons (
mustard gas) and flame throwers against the Abyssinians.
The League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective. As Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one had the military forces on hand to withstand an Italian attack. On
9 October 1935, the United States (a non-League member) refused to cooperate with any League action. It had embargoed exports of arms and war material to either combatant (in accordance with its new Neutrality Act) on
5 October and later (
29 February 1936) endeavoured (with uncertain success) to limit exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League sanctions were lifted on
4 July 1936, but by that point they were a dead letter in any event.
In December 1935, the
Hoare-Laval Pact was an attempt by the British
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Hoare and the French Prime Minister Laval to end the conflict in Abyssinia by drawing up a plan to partition Abyssinia into two parts - an Italian sector and an Abysinnian sector. Mussolini was prepared to agree to the Pact however news of the Pact was leaked and both the British and French public venomously protested against the Pact describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval were forced to resign their positions and both the British and French government disassociated with them respectively.
As was the case with Japan, the vigour of the major powers in responding to the crisis in Abyssinia was tempered by their perception that the fate of this poor and far-off country, inhabited by non-Europeans, was not a central interest of theirs.
Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939
Main articles: Spanish Civil War
On
17 July 1936, armed conflict broke out between Spanish ''Republicans'' (the left-wing government of Spain) and ''Nationalists'' (the right-wing rebels, including most officers of the
Spanish Army).
Alvarez del Vayo, the Spanish minister of foreign affairs, appealed to the League in September 1936 for arms to defend its territorial integrity and political independence. However, the League could not itself intervene in the
Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Hitler and Mussolini continued to aid
General Franco’s Nationalist insurrectionists, and the Soviet Union aided the Spanish loyalists. The League did attempt to ban the intervention of foreign national
volunteers.
Axis re-armament
The League was powerless and mostly silent in the face of major events leading to World War II such as Hitler's
remilitarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the
Sudetenland and ''
Anschluss'' of
Austria, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. As with Japan, both Germany in 1933 – using the failure of the
World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext – and Italy in 1937 simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgment. The League commissioner in
Danzig was unable to deal with German claims on the city, a significant contributing factor in the outbreak of World War II in 1939. The final significant act of the League was to expel the
Soviet Union in December 1939 after it
invaded Finland.
Demise and legacy
The final meeting of the League of Nations was held in Geneva on April 18, 1946. Delegates from 34 nations attended, and a motion was made to close the session, with the resolution that "The League of Nations shall cease to exist except for the purpose of the liquidation of its assets." The vote was 33-0 in favor, with Egypt abstaining. At 5:43 pm Geneva time, Secretary Carl J. Hambro of Norway stated, "I declare the twenty-first and last session of the General Assembly of the League of Nations closed."
[3].
With the onset of
World War II, it had been clear that the League had failed in its purpose – to avoid any future world war. During the war, neither the League's Assembly nor Council had been able or willing to meet, and its secretariat in
Geneva had been reduced to a skeleton staff, with many offices moving to North America. At the 1945
Yalta Conference, the Allied Powers agreed to create a new body to supplant the League's role. This body was to be the
United Nations. Many League bodies, such as the
International Labour Organization, continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the UN. The League's assets of $22,000,000 were then assigned to the U.N.
[4].
The structure of the United Nations was intended to make it more effective than the League. The principal
Allies in World War II (
UK,
USSR,
France,
U.S., and
China) became permanent members of the
UN Security Council, giving the new "Great Powers" significant international influence, mirroring the League Council. Decisions of the UN Security Council are binding on all members of the UN; however, unanimous decisions are not required, unlike the League Council. Permanent members of the UN Security Council were given a shield to protect their vital interests, which has prevented the UN acting decisively in many cases. Similarly, the UN does not have its own standing armed forces, but the UN has been more successful than the League in calling for its members to contribute to armed interventions, such as the
Korean War, and
peacekeeping in the
former Yugoslavia. However, the UN has in some cases been forced to rely on economic sanctions. The UN has also been more successful than the League in attracting members from the nations of the world, making it more representative.
Trivia
★ The first woman professional representative was Dr.
Sara Josephine Baker, an American physician. She represented the United States in public health.
★ The
Swedish Communist leader
Fredrik Ström used to refer to the ''League of Nations'' as the ''Imperialist International''.
See also
★
League of Nations members
★
Henry Cabot Lodge,
U.S. Republican Senator who led the opposition to the U.S. joining the League
★ ''
Palais des Nations'', built as the League's headquarters.
★
Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations was, according to U.S.
Republican Senators, one of the most objectionable parts of the League of Nations and a major reason for its rejection in the US
Bibliography
★ ''The Essential Facts About the League of Nations'', published in Geneva, with ten editions between 1933 and 1940
★ Bassett, John Spencer. ''The League of Nations: A Chapter in World Politics'' 1930
★ Egerton, George W. ; ''Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strategy, Politics, and International Organization, 1914–1919'' University of North Carolina Press, 1978
★ Gill, George (1996) ''The League of Nations from 1929 to 1946: From 1929 to 1946 ''. Avery Publishing Group. ISBN 0-89529-637-3
★ Kelly, Nigel and Lacey, Greg (2001) "Modern World History" Heinemann Educational Publishers, Oxford
★ Kennedy, David "The Move to Institutions" 8 Cardozo Law Review, 841 (1987). Reprinted in Klabbers, J. (ed.) ''International Organization'' Ashgate Publishing Limited (2006).
online
★ Kennedy, Paul. ''The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Future of the United Nations'' (2006)
★ Kuehl, Warren F. and Lynne K. Dunn; ''Keeping the Covenant: American Internationalists and the League of Nations, 1920–1939'' 1997
★
League of Nations chronology, Retrieved
21 January 2006.
★ Malin, James C. ''The United States after the World War''
1930. pp 5–82. online
★ Marbeau, M. (2001). "La Société des Nations". Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 2-13-051635-1
★ Northedge, F. S. . ''The League of Nations: Its Life and Times, 1920–1946'' Holmes & Meier. 1986
★ Pfeil, A (1976). "Der Völkerbund".
★ Walters, F. P. , ''A History of the League of Nations'' 2 vol Oxford University Press. 1952
★ Walsh, Ben (1997). ''Modern World History''. John Murray (Publishers) Ltd.. ISBN 0-7195-7231-2.
★ Zimmern, Alfred ; ''The League of Nations and the Rule of Law, 1918–1935'' 1936
External links
★
1920 World Map of the League of Nations hipkiss.org
★
Covenant of the League of Nations, yale.edu
★
League of Nations Photo archive, indiana.edu
★
League of Nations Article from Factmonster/Information Please
★
Proposed flags for the League, atlasgeo.span.ch
★
League of Nations article at Spartacus
★
Background of the League of Nations, revision-notes.co.uk
★
Map of League of Nations members
★
League of Nations timeline, worldatwar.net
★
Table of Assemblies Dates of each annual assembly, links to list of members of each country's delegation
★
Woodrow Wilson's Appeal for Support of the League of Nations 1919 speech, mtholyoke.edu
★
Wilson's Final Address in Support of the League of Nations Speech made
25 September 1919
★
Haile Selassie's 1936 speech to the conference after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia
★
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge speaks out against the League of Nations August 1919 speech
★
leagueofnations (History Learning Site)
★
History (1919–1946) from the
United Nations Office at Geneva
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
