The
League of Nations (LoN) was an
inter-governmental organization founded as a result of the
Treaty of Versailles in 1919–1920. At
its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it
had 58 members. The League's goals included upholding the new found
Rights of Man such as right of non
whites, rights of women, rights of soldiers,
disarmament, preventing
war
through
collective security,
settling disputes between
countries through
negotiation,
diplomacy and improving global
quality of life. The diplomatic philosophy
behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from
the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force
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 reluctant to do so. Sanctions could
also hurt the League members, so they were reluctant to comply with
them. When, during the
Second Italo-Abyssinian War, the
League accused
Benito Mussolini's
soldiers of targeting Red Cross medical tents, Mussolini responded
that Ethiopians were not fully human, therefore the human rights
laws did not apply. 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. In May 1933 the League was powerless to convince
Adolf Hitler that Franz Bernheim, a Jew, was
protected under the minority clauses established by the League in
1919 (that all minorities were fully human and held equal rights
among all men). Hitler claimed these clauses violated Germany's
sovereignty. Germany withdrew from the
League soon to be followed by many other totalitarian and
militaristic nations. The onset of
World
War II showed that the League had failed its primary purpose,
which was to avoid any future world war. The
United Nations replaced it after the end of
the war and inherited a number of agencies and organizations
founded by the League.
Origins of the League
The concept of a peaceful community of
nations had been outlined as far back as 1795, when
Immanuel Kant’s
Perpetual Peace: A
Philosophical Sketch outlined the idea of a league of nations
that would control conflict and promote peace between states.
There, Kant argues for establishment of a peaceful world community
not in a sense that there be a global government but in the hope
that each state would declare itself as a free state that respects
its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational
beings. It is in this rationalization that a union of free states
would promote peaceful society worldwide, therefore there can be a
perpetual peace bound by the international community. International
co-operation to promote
collective
security originated in the
Concert
of Europe that developed after the
Napoleonic Wars in the nineteenth century in
an attempt to maintain the status quo between European states and
so avoid war. This period also saw the development of international
law with the first
Geneva
conventions establishing laws about humanitarian relief during
war and the international
Hague Conventions of 1899
and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of
international disputes. The forerunner of the League of Nations,
the
Inter-Parliamentary
Union (IPU), was formed by peace activists
William Randal Cremer and
Frederic Passy in 1889. The organization was
international in scope with a third of the members of
parliament, in the 24 countries with parliaments,
serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its aims were to encourage
governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means and
arbitration and annual conferences were held to help governments
refine the process of international arbitration. The IPU's
structure consisted of a Council headed by a President which would
later be reflected in the structure of the League.
At the start of the twentieth century two power blocs emerged
through alliances between the European
Great Powers. It was these alliances that came
into effect at the
start of the
First World War in 1914, drawing all the major European powers
into the war. This was the first major war in Europe between
industrialized countries and the
first time in Western Europe the results of
industrialization (for example
mass production) had been dedicated to war.
The result of this
industrial
warfare was an unprecedented casualty level with eight and a
half million members of
armed
services dead, an estimated 21 million wounded, and
approximately 10 million
civilian deaths.
By the time the fighting ended in November 1918, the war had had a
profound impact, affecting the social, political and economic
systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical damage
on the continent. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the
First World War was described as "the war to end all wars", and its
possible causes were vigorously investigated. The causes identified
included
arms races, alliances, secret
diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war
for their own benefit. The perceived remedies to these were seen as
the creation of an international organisation whose aim was to
prevent future war through
disarmament,
open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the
right to wage wars, and penalties that made war unattractive to
nations.
While the
First World War was still
underway, a number of governments and groups had already started
developing plans to change the way international relations were
carried out in order to prevent a repetition of the war. United
States
President
Woodrow Wilson and his advisor
Colonel Edward
M. House enthusiastically
promoted the idea of the League as a means of avoiding any
repetition of the bloodshed seen in World War I, and the creation
of the League was a centerpiece of Wilson's
Fourteen Points for Peace. Specifically the
final point provided: "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."
Before drafting the specific terms of his peace deal, Wilson
recruited a team led by Colonel House to compile whatever
information deemed pertinent in assessing Europe’s geo-political
situation. In early January, 1918, Wilson summoned House to
Washington and the two began hammering out, in complete secrecy,
the President’s first address on the League of Nations which was
delivered to an unsuspecting Congress on January 8, 1918.
Wilson's final plans for the League were strongly influenced by the
South African Prime Minister,
Jan
Christiaan Smuts. In 1918 Smuts had published a treatise
entitled
The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion.
According to F.S. Crafford's biography on Smuts, Wilson adopted
"both the ideas and the style" of Smuts.
On July 8, 1919, Woodrow Wilson returned to the United States and
embarked on a nation-wide campaign to secure the support of the
American people for their country’s entry into the League. On July
10, Wilson addressed the Senate declaring that “a new role and a
new responsibility have come to this great nation that we honour
and which we would all wish to lift to yet higher levels of service
and achievement.” Positive reception, particularly from
Republicans, was scarce at best.
The
Paris Peace
Conference, convened to build a lasting peace after World War
I, approved the proposal to create the League of Nations ( , ) on
25 January 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. On 28 June 1919, 44 states signed the Covenant,
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 October 1919, the
United States did not join the League. Opposition in the
U.S. Senate, particularly from
Republican politicians
Henry Cabot Lodge and
William E. Borah, together with Wilson's refusal to
compromise, ensured that the United States would not
ratify the Covenant.
The League
held its first council meeting in Paris
on 16
January 1920, six days after the Versailles Treaty came into
force. In November, the headquarters of the League
moved to Geneva
, where the
first General Assembly was held on 15 November 1920 with
representatives from 41 nations in attendance.
Languages and symbols
The official languages of the League of Nations were
French,
English and
Spanish (from 1920). The League considered
adopting
Esperanto as their working
language and actively encouraging its use but neither option was
ever adopted. In 1921, there was a proposal by
Lord Robert
Cecil to introduce Esperanto into state schools of member
nations and a report was commissioned to investigate this. When the
report was presented two years later it recommended the teaching of
Esperanto in schools, a proposal that 11 delegates accepted. The
strongest opposition came from the French delegate,
Gabriel Hanotaux, partially in order to
protect the French Language which he argued was already the
international language. This opposition meant the report was
accepted apart from the section that approved Esperanto in
schools.
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 1920, 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 their own. Finally, in 1939, a
semi-official emblem emerged: two five-pointed
star 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.
The League did have a very active postal department. Large numbers
of mailings were made from headquarters, the specialized agencies,
and at international conferences. In many cases special envelopes
or
overprinted postage stamps were used.
Principal organs
The League
had four principal organs, a secretariat
(headed by the General Secretary
and based in Geneva
), a Council,
an Assembly and a Permanent Court of
International Justice. 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. The
secretariat was often considered to be too small to handle all of
the league administrative affairs. The League of Nations' Assembly
was a meeting of all the member states, with each state allowed up
to three representatives and one vote. The Assembly met in Geneva
and, after its initial sessions in 1920, sessions were held once a
year in September.
Council
The League Council acted as a type of
executive body directing the
Assembly's business.
The Council began with four permanent members
(Great
Britain
, 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
US Senate voted on 19 March
1920 against the
ratification of the
Treaty of Versailles, thus
preventing American participation in the League.
The composition of the Council was subsequently changed a number of
times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to
six on 22 September 1922, and then to nine on 8 September 1926.
Werner Dankwort of Germany
pushed for his home country to join the league
which they eventually did in 1926. Germany became the fifth
permanent member of the Council, giving the Council a total of
fifteen members. Later, after Germany and Japan both left the
League, the number of non-permanent seats was 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 included the Disarmament Commission, the Health Organization, the International Labour
Organization, the Mandates Commission, the International
Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (precursor to UNESCO
), the
Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission
for Refugees, and the Slavery Commission. Several of these
institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War; the International Labour
Organization, the Permanent Court of International Justice (as the
International Court of Justice
), and the Health Organization (restructured as the
World Health Organization)
all became UN institutions.
Health Organization
The League's health organization had three bodies, a Health Bureau,
containing permanent officials of the League, an
executive section the General
Advisory Council or Conference consisting of medical experts, and a
Health Committee. The Committee's purpose was to conduct inquiries,
oversee the operation of the League's health work, and get work
ready to be presented to the Council. 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 worked
successfully with the government of the Soviet Union
to prevent typhus epidemics
including organising a large education campaign about the
disease.
International Labour Organization
In 1919, the International Labour Organization (ILO) was created as
part of the Versailles Treaty and became part of the League's
operations. Its first director was
Albert Thomas. The ILO successfully
restricted 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.
The organization continued to exist after the end of the League,
becoming an agency of the
United
Nations in 1946.
Permanent Central Opium Board
The League wanted to regulate the
drug
trade and established the Permanent Central Opium Board 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.

A sample Nansen passport
Slavery Commission
The Slavery Commission sought to eradicate
slavery and
slave trading
across the world, and fought forced
prostitution. Its main success was through
pressing the governments who administered mandated countries to end
slavery in those countries.
The League secured a commitment from
Ethiopia
to end slavery as a condition of membership in
1926, and worked with Liberia
to abolish forced
labour and inter-tribal slavery. 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%. Records
were kept to control slavery, prostitution, and the trafficking of
women and children.
Commission for Refugees
Led by
Fridtjof Nansen, the
Commission for Refugees looked after the interests of refugees
including overseeing their repatriation and, when necessary
resettlement. At the end of the First World War there were two to
three million ex-
prisoners of war
dispersed throughout Russia, within two years of the commission's
foundation, in 1920, it had helped 425,000 of them return home.
It
established camps in Turkey
in 1922 to
aid the country with a refugee crisis it was dealing with, helping
to prevent disease and hunger. It also established the
Nansen passport as a means of
identification for
stateless
peoples.
Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women
The Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women sought to
make an inquiry into the status of women all over the world. It was
formed in April 1938, and dissolved in early 1939. Committee
members included Mme. P. Bastid (France), M. de Ruelle (Belgium),
Mme. Anka Godjevac (Yugoslavia), Mr. H. C. Gutteridge (Great
Britain), Mlle. Kerstin Hesselgren (Sweden), Ms.
Dorothy Kenyon (United States), M. Paul
Sebastyen (Hungary) and Secretariat Mr. Hugh McKinnon Wood (Great
Britain).
Members

A map of the world in the years
1920-1945, which shows the League of Nations members during its
history
Of the League's 42 founding members, 23 (or 24, counting
Free France) remained members until it was
dissolved in 1946. In the founding year, six other states joined,
only two of which remained members throughout the League's
existence. An additional 15 countries joined in later years.
The
largest number of member states was 58, between 28 September 1934
(when Ecuador
joined) and 23 February 1935 (when Paraguay
withdrew). At this time, only Costa Rica
(22 January 1925), Brazil
(14 June
1926), the Empire of
Japan
(27 March 1933), and Germany (19 September 1933) had withdrawn
citing a diplomatic disadvantage due to inferior
powers.
The
Soviet
Union
only became a member on 18 September 1934, when it
joined to antagonise Germany (which had left the year before), and
was expelled from the League on 14 December 1939 for aggression against Finland. In expelling the
Soviet Union, the League broke its own norms; only 7 of 15 members
of the Council voted for the expulsion (Great Britain, France,
Belgium, Bolivia, Egypt, South
Africa, and the Dominican Republic
), which was not the majority of votes required by
the Covenant to do so. Three of these members were chosen as
members of the Council the day before the voting (South Africa,
Bolivia, and Egypt). This was one of the League's final acts before
it practically ceased functioning due to the Second World
War.
Egypt
was the last
state to join the League (26 May 1937). The first member to
withdraw from the League after its founding was Costa Rica
on 22 January 1925; having joined on 16 December
1920, this also makes it the member to have most quickly withdrawn
from the League after joining. The last member to
withdraw from the League before its dissolution was Luxembourg
on 30 August 1942. Brazil
was the
first founding member to leave (14 June 1926) and Haiti
was the last
(April 1942).
Iraq
, which
joined in 1932, was the first member of the league that had
previously been a League of
Nations Mandate.
Mandates
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. The
Permanent Mandates Commission supervised League of Nations
mandates, and also organised
plebiscites
in disputed territories so that residents could decide which
country they would join. There were three Mandate
classifications.
"A" Mandates
The "A" Mandates (applied to parts of the old Ottoman Empire) were
'certain communities' that had
"B" Mandates
The "B" Mandates were applied to the former
German Colonies that the League took
responsibility for after the First World War. These were described
as 'peoples' that the League said were
"C" Mandates
South-West Africa and certain of
the
South Pacific Islands were administrated
by League members under a C Mandate. These were classified as
'territories'
Mandatory Powers
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. With the exception of the
Kingdom of Iraq, which joined the
League on 3 October 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.
Resolving territorial disputes
The aftermath of
World War I left many
issues to be settled between nations, including the exact position
of national boundaries and which country particular regions would
join. Most of these questions were handled by the victorious
Allied Powers in bodies such
as the Allied Supreme Council. The Allies tended to refer only
particularly difficult matters to the League. This meant that,
during the first three years of the 1920s, the League played little
part in resolving the turmoil that resulted from the war. The
questions the League considered in its early years included those
designated by the Paris Peace treaties.
As the League developed, its role expanded, and by the middle of
the 1920s, it became the centre of international activity. This
change can be seen in the relationship between the League and
non-members. The United States and Russia, for example,
increasingly worked with the League. During the second half of the
1920s, France, Britain and Germany were all using the League of
Nations as the focus of their diplomatic activity and each of their
foreign secretaries attended League meetings at Geneva during this
period. They also used the League's machinery to try to improve
relations and settle their differences.
Upper Silesia

Polish poster from the plebiscite in
Upper Silesia in 1921.
Says: "Mother remember me.
The Allied Powers referred the problem of
Upper Silesia to the League after they had
been unable to resolve the territorial dispute.
After the First World
War, Poland
laid claim to Upper Silesia, which had been part of
Prussia. The Treaty of
Versailles had recommended a plebiscite
in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should be part
of Germany
or
Poland. Complaints about the attitude of the German
authorities led to
rioting and eventually to
the first two
Silesian Uprisings
(1919 and 1920). A plebiscite took place on 20 March 1921 with
59.6% (around 500,000) of the votes cast in favour of joining
Germany, but Poland claimed the conditions surrounding it had been
unfair. This result led to the
Third Silesian Uprising in 1921. On
12 August 1921, the League was asked to settle the matter, and the
Council created a commission with representatives from Belgium,
Brazil, China and Spain to study the situation. The committee
recommended that Upper Silesia should be divided between Poland and
Germany according to the preferences shown in the plebiscite and
that the two sides should decide the details of the interaction
between the two areas. For example, whether goods should pass
freely over the border due to the economic and industrial
interdependency of the two areas. In November 1921 a conference was
held in Geneva to negotiate a convention between Germany and
Poland. A final settlement was reached, after five meetings, in
which most of the area was given to Germany but with the Polish
section containing the majority of the region's
mineral resources and much of its industry. When
this agreement became public in May 1922, bitter resentment was
expressed in Germany, but the treaty was still ratified by both
countries. The settlement produced peace in the area lasting until
the run up to the Second World War.
Albania
The
frontiers of Albania
had not been set during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919,
being left to the League to be decided, but had not yet been
determined by September 1921. This created an
unstable situation with Greek
troops
repeatedly crossing into Albanian territory on military operations
in the south and Yugoslavian forces
engaged, after clashes with Albanian tribesmen, far into the
northern part of the country. The League sent a commission
of representatives from various powers to the region and in
November 1921, the League decided that the frontiers of Albania
should be the same as they had been in 1913 with three minor
changes that favoured Yugoslavia. Yugoslav forces withdrew a few
weeks later, albeit under protest.
The borders of Albania again become the cause of international
conflict when Italian General
Enrico
Tellini and four of his assistants were ambushed and killed on
24 August 1923 while marking out the new newly decided border
between Greece and Albania. Italian leader
Benito Mussolini was incensed, and demanded
that a commission should be set up to investigate the incident and
that its enquires should be completed within five days. Whatever
the results of the enquiry, Mussolini insisted that the Greek
government should pay Italy fifty million
lira reparations. The Greeks said they would
not pay unless it was proved that the crime was committed by
Greeks.
Mussolini
sent a warship to shell the Greek island of
Corfu
and Italian forces occupied Corfu on 31 August 1923. This
contravened the League's covenant so Greece appealed to the League
to deal with the situation. The Allies, however, agreed (under
Mussolini's insistence) that the
Conference of Ambassadors should
be responsible for resolving the dispute because it was the
conference that had appointed General Tellini. The League Council
examined the dispute but then passed their findings to the Council
of Ambassadors to make the final decision. The conference accepted
most of the League's recommendations forcing Greece to pay fifty
million
lira to Italy even though those
who committed the crime were never discovered. Mussolini was able
to leave Corfu in triumph.
Åland Islands
Åland
is a collection of around 6,500 islands midway
between Sweden
and Finland
. The islands are exclusively Swedish speaking, but in 1809, Sweden had
lost both Finland and the Åland Islands to Imperial
Russia
. In December 1917, during the turmoil of the
Russian
October Revolution,
Finland declared independence, and most of the Ålanders wished the
islands to become part of Sweden again; the Finnish government,
however, felt that the islands were part of their new nation, as
the Russians had included Åland in the
Grand Duchy of Finland formed in
1809. By 1920, the dispute had escalated to such a level that there
was a danger of war. The British government referred the problem to
the League's Council, but Finland did not let the League intervene
as they considered it an internal matter. The League created a
small panel to decide if the League should investigate the matter
and, with an affirmative response, a neutral commission was
created. In June 1921, the League announced its decision; the
islands should remain a part of Finland but with guaranteed
protection of the islanders, including demilitarization. With
Sweden's reluctant agreement, this became the first European
international agreement concluded directly through the
League.
Hatay
The
Republic of
Hatay
was a transitional political entity that formally
existed from September 7, 1938 to June 29, 1939 in the territory of
the Sanjak of Alexandretta
of the French
Mandate of Syria. With League of Nations oversight, the state
was annexed by the Republic of Turkey
on June 29, 1939 and transformed into the Turkish
Hatay
Province
(excluding
districts of Erzin
, Dörtyol
, Hassa).
Memel
The port
city of Memel
(now
Klaipėda
) and the
surrounding area, with a predominantly German population, were
under Allied control after the end of the World War I.
The area
had been awarded to Lithuania
by Article 99 of the Treaty of Versailles but the
French and Polish governments favoured turning Memel into an
international city. By 1923, control of the area had still
not been transferred to Lithuania, prompting Lithuanian forces to
invade in January 1923 and seize the port. After the Allies failed
to reach an agreement with Lithuania, they referred the matter to
the League of Nations. In December 1923, the League Council
appointed a Commission of Inquiry to investigate. The Commission
chose to cede Memel to Lithuania and give the area autonomous
rights. This decision was approved by the League Council on 14
March 1924 and then by the Allied Powers and Lithuania.
Mosul
The
League resolved a dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of
Turkey
over the control of the former Ottoman province of
Mosul in 1926.
According to the British, who were 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 League of Nations' Commission of
Inquiry with Belgian, Hungarian and Swedish members was sent to the
region in 1924 to study the case and found that the people of Mosul
did not want to be part of Turkey or Iraq but if they had to choose
would pick Iraq. In 1925, the commission recommended that the
region stay part of Iraq, under the condition that the British
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 questioning the Council's authority. The
matter was referred to the
Permanent Court of
International Justice which ruled that when the Council made a
unanimous decision it must be accepted. Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq
and Turkey ratified a separate treaty on 5 June 1926, that mostly
followed the decision of the League Council and also assigned Mosul
to Iraq. It was agreed, however, that Iraq could still apply for
League membership within 25 years and that the mandate would end
upon its admittance.
Vilnius
After
World War I, Poland and Lithuania
both regained their independence but there was
disagreement about the frontiers between the countries.
During the
Polish-Soviet War,
Lithuania signed a peace treaty with the Soviet Union that laid out
Lithuania's frontiers.
This agreement gave control of the city of
Vilnius
( , ), the old Lithuanian capital, to Lithuania
which became the country's seat of government. This
heightened tension between Lithuania and Poland led to fears that
they would go to war, and on 7 October 1920 the League negotiated a
short-lived armistice The majority of the population of the city of
Vilnius during the inter-war era were Polish and on 9 October 1920
General
Zeligowski with a Polish military
force took the city and claimed that the Government of Central
Lithuania was now under their protection.
Lithuania requested the League's assistance and in response, the
League Council called for Poland's withdrawal from the area. The
Polish Government indicated they would comply with the League, but
rather than leaving, it reinforced the city with more Polish
troops. This prompted the League to decide that the future of
Vilnius should be determined by its residents in a plebiscite and
that the Polish forces should withdraw and be replaced by an
international force organised by the League. Several League
nations, included France and Britain, started preparing troops to
be sent to the area as part of the international force. At the end
of 1920,
hostilities between
Poland and Lithuania increased again but early in 1921, the
Polish government began to seek a peaceful settlement. It agreed to
support the League's plan for the area, withdraw Polish troops and
co-operate with the plebiscite. The League, however, now faced
opposition from Lithuania and the Soviet Union, who opposed any
international force in Lithuania. In March 1921, the League
abandoned plans for the plebiscite and the international force, and
returned to attempting to facilitate a negotiated settlement
between the two sides. Vilnius and the surrounding area were
formally annexed by Poland in March 1922, and on 14 March 1923, the
Allied Conference set the frontier between Lithuania and Poland
leaving Vilnius within Poland. Lithuanian authorities refused to
accept the decision, and officially remained in a state of war with
Poland until 1927. It was not until the
1938 Polish ultimatum
that Lithuania restored diplomatic relations with Poland, ending
the war, and thus
de facto accepted the borders of its
neighbour.
Colombia and Peru

The Colombian Army countering a
Peruvian attack
There
were several border conflicts between Colombia
and Peru
in the
early part of the 20th century, and in 1922, their governments
signed the Salomón-Lozano
Treaty to try and resolve these conflicts. As part of this
treaty, the border town Leticia
and its surrounding area were ceded from Peru to
Colombia, giving Colombia access to the Amazon River. On 1 September 1932,
business leaders from the Peruvian rubber and sugar industries who
had lost land when the area was given to Colombia organised an
armed takeover of Leticia. At first, the Peruvian government did
not recognise the military takeover but Peru's President
Luis Sánchez Cerro decided to
resist a Colombian re-occupation. The Peruvian army occupied
Leticia, resulting in an armed conflict between the two nations.
After months of diplomatic wrangling, the governments accepted
mediation by the League of Nations, and their representatives
presented their cases before the League's Council. A provisional
peace agreement, signed by both parties in May 1933, provided for
the League to assume control of the disputed territory while
bilateral negotiations proceeded. In May 1934, a final peace
agreement was signed, resulting in the return of Leticia to
Colombia, a formal apology from Peru for the 1932 invasion,
demilitarization of the area around Leticia, free navigation on the
Amazon and
Putumayo Rivers, and a pledge of
non-aggression.
Saar
Saar was a province, formed
from parts of
Prussia and the
Rhenish Palatinate, that was established
and placed under League control by 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. When the referendum
was held in 1935, 90.3% of votes supported becoming part of Germany
On 17 January 1935, the territory's re-integration with Germany was
approved by the League Council.
Peace and security
In addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to
intervene in other conflicts between (and even within) nations.
Among its successes were its attempts to combat the international
trade in
opium and
sexual slavery, and its work to alleviate the
plight of
refugees, particularly in Turkey
in the period to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area
was the 1922 introduction of the
Nansen
passport, which was the first internationally recognized
identity card for stateless refugees. Many of the League's
successes were accomplished by its various agencies and
commissions.
Greece and Bulgaria
After an
incident between sentries on the border between Greece
and Bulgaria
in October 1925, fighting began between the two
countries. Three days after the initial incident, Greek
troops invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government ordered its
troops to provide only token resistance, and evacuated between ten
thousand and fifteen thousand people from the border region,
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 after the
Corfu incident.
Liberia
Following
accusations of forced labor on the
massive American-owned Firestone rubber
plantation and American accusations of slave
trading, the Liberian
government asked the League to launch an
investigation.Miers 2003, pp. 140-141 The commission
created to investigate was jointly appointed by the League, the
United
States of America
, and Liberia. In 1930, a report by the
League confirmed
slavery and forced labor
was taking place. The report implicated many government officials
in the selling of contract labor and recommended that they be
replaced by Europeans or Americans. The Liberian government
outlawed forced labor and slavery and asked for American help, this
created anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of
President
Charles D.B. King and his vice-president. The League
then threatened to establish a trusteeship over Liberia unless
reforms were carried out, enacting these reforms then became the
central focus of President
Edwin
Barclay.
Mukden Incident
The
Mukden Incident, also known as
the "Manchurian Incident" or the "Far Eastern Crisis", was one of
the League's major setbacks and acted as the catalyst for Japan's
withdrawal from the organization. Under the terms of an agreed
lease, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops
in the area around the
South
Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between the two
countries, in the Chinese region of
Manchuria. In September 1931, a section of the
railway was lightly damaged by officers and troops of the Japanese
Kwantung Army as a pretext for an
invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese army, however, claimed that
Chinese soldiers had
sabotaged the railway
and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to the civilian
government's orders) occupied the entire region of Manchuria. They
renamed the area
Manchukuo, and on 9 March
1932 set up a puppet government with
Pu Yi,
the former emperor of China, as its executive head.
Internationally, this new country was recognised only by the
governments of
Italy and
Germany; the rest of the world still considered
Manchuria legally part of China. In 1932, Japanese air and sea
forces bombarded the Chinese city of
Shanghai, sparking the
January 28 Incident.
The League of Nations agreed to a request for help from the Chinese
government, but the long voyage by ship delayed League officials
from investigating the matter. 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 subsequent
Lytton Report
declared Japan to be the aggressor and demanded Manchuria be
returned to the Chinese. Before the report could be voted on by the
Assembly, Japan announced its intention to push further into China.
The report passed 42-1 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voted
against), but instead of withdrawing its troops from China, Japan
withdrew its membership from the League.
According to the Covenant, the League should have responded by
placing economic sanctions on Japan, or gathered an army and
declared war. Neither of these actions was undertaken, however. The
threat of economic sanctions would have been almost useless because
the United States was not a League member. Any economic sanctions
the League had placed on its member states would have been
ineffective, as a country barred from trading with other member
states could simply turn and trade with the United States. The
League could have assembled an army, but major powers like Britain
and France were too preoccupied with their own affairs, such as
keeping control of their extensive colonies, especially after the
turmoil of
World War I.
Japan was therefore
left in control of Manchuria, until the Soviet Union
's Red Army took over the
area and returned it to China at the end of World War II.
Chaco War
The
League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia
and Paraguay
over the arid Gran Chaco
region of South America. Although the region was sparsely populated,
it contained 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 attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio López at
Lake Pitiantuta. 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 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around
three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was
approximately one million. It also brought 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

Italian soldiers recruited on 1935 to
fight the Second Italo-Abyssinian War
In
October 1935, Italian dictator Benito
Mussolini sent 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia
). Marshal
Pietro
Badoglio led the campaign from November 1935, ordering bombing,
the use of
chemical weapons like
mustard gas, and the poisoning of water
supplies, against targets which included undefended villages and
medical facilities.
The modern Italian
Army defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians, and captured
Addis
Ababa
in May 1936, forcing Emperor Haile Selassie to flee.
The
League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic
sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely
ineffective since they did not ban the sale of oil or close the
Suez
Canal
(controlled by Britain). 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. In October 1935,
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked the recently-passed
Neutrality Act and placed an embargo
on arms and ammunition with both sides, but extended a further
"moral embargo" to the belligerent Italians, including other trade
items. On 5 October and later on 29 February 1936 the United States
endeavoured, with uncertain success, to limit its exports of oil
and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League
sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point Italy had
already gained control of the urban areas of Abyssinia.
In December 1935, the
Hoare-Laval
Pact was an attempt by
British
Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and
French Prime Minister
Pierre Laval to end the conflict in
Abyssinia by drawing up a plan to partition the country into two
parts, an Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was
prepared to agree to the Pact, but news of the deal was leaked and
both the British and French public venomously protested against it,
describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval were
forced to resign their positions, and both the British and French
governments dissociated themselves from their respective men. In
June 1936, although there was no precedent for a head of state
addressing the Assembly of the League of Nations in person, the
Emperor of Ethiopia
Haile
Selassie I spoke to the Assembly to appeal for its help in
protecting his country.
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.
In addition, it showed how the League could be influenced by the
self-interest of its members; one of the reasons why the sanctions
were not very harsh was that both Britain and France feared the
prospect of driving Mussolini and German dictator
Adolf Hitler into an alliance.
Spanish Civil War
On 17 July 1936, the
Spanish Army
launched a
coup d'état, leading to
a prolonged armed conflict between Spanish
Republicans (the leftist government
of Spain) and the Nationalists (conservative, anti-communist rebels
who included 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. The
League members, however, would not intervene in the
Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign
intervention in the conflict.
Hitler and Mussolini continued to aid
General Francisco Franco’s
Nationalist insurrectionists, and the Soviet Union
aided the Spanish Republic. In February
1937, the League did launch a ban on the intervention of foreign
national
volunteers.
Second Sino-Japanese War
Following a long record of instigating localised conflicts
throughout the 1930s, Japan began a full scale
invasion of China on 7 July 1937.
On 12 September, the Chinese representative,
Wellington Koo, appealed to the League for an
international intervention. Western countries were sympathetic to
the Chinese in their struggle against Japan, particularly in their
stubborn
defence of Shanghai, a
city with a substantial number of foreigners. However, the League
was unable to provide any practical measure other than a final
statement that gave China "spiritual support." On 4 October, the
League adjourned and turned the case over to the
Nine Power Treaty Conference.
Disarmament and failures en route to World War II
Article eight of the League's covenant gave the League the task of
reducing "armaments to the lowest point consistent with national
safety and the enforcement by common action of international
obligations" A significant amount of the League's time and energy
was devoted to disarmament even though many member governments were
uncertain that such extensive disarmament could be achieved or was
even desirable. The
Allied
Power were also under obligation from the
Treaty of Versailles to attempt to
disarm and the armament restrictions imposed on the defeated
countries had been described as the first step toward world wide
disarmament. The League Covenant assigned the League the task of
creating a disarmament plan for each state but the Council devolved
this responsibility to a special commission set-up in 1926 to
prepare for the 1932-34
World Disarmament Conference.
Members of the League held different views towards disarmament.
The
French were reluctant to reduce their armaments without a guarantee
of military help if they were attacked, Poland
and Czechoslovakia
felt vulnerable to attack from the west and wanted
the League's response to aggression against its members to be
strengthened before they disarmed. Without this guarantee
they would not reduce armaments because they felt the risk of
attack from Germany was too great. Fear of attack increased as
Germany regained strength after the First World War especially
after
Hitler gained power and became
German
Chancellor in 1933. In particular Germany's attempts to
overturn the Treaty of Versailles and the reconstruction of the
German military made France increasingly unwilling to disarm.
The World
Disarmament Conference was convened by the League of Nations in
Geneva
in 1932 with representatives from 60 states.
A one year truce on the expansion of armaments, later extended by a
few months, was proposed at the start of the conference. The
Disarmament Commission obtained initial agreement from France,
Italy, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies. 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
build-up by Germany, Italy and Japan during the 1930s.
The League was mostly
silent in the face of major events leading to World War II such as
Hitler's re-militarisation of the
Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and Anschluss of Austria
, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of
Versailles. In fact, League members themselves re-armed. In
1933, Japan simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to
its judgement, as did 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.
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.
General weaknesses
[[Image:The Gap in the Bridge.gif|right|thumb|250px|
The Gap
in the Bridge
the sign reads "This League of Nations Bridge was designed by the
President of the U.S.A"
Cartoon from Punch magazine,
10 December 1920, satirising the gap left by the U.S.A when they
did not join the League of Nations.]]The onset of the
Second World War demonstrated that
the League had failed in its primary purpose, which was to avoid
any future world war. There were a variety of reasons for this
failure, many connected to general weaknesses within the
organization.
Origins and structure
The origins of the League as an organization created by the
Allied Powers as part of the
peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed
as a "League of Victors". It also tied the League to the
Treaty of Versailles, so that when the
Treaty became discredited and unpopular, this reflected on the
League of Nations.
The League's supposed neutrality tended to manifest itself as
indecision. It required a unanimous vote of its nine-, later
fifteen-, member Council to enact a resolution; hence, conclusive
and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also
slow in coming to its decisions as certain decisions required the
unanimous consent of the entire Assembly. This problem mainly
stemmed from the fact that the main members of the League of
Nations were not willing to accept the possibility that their fate
would be decided by other countries and had therefore, in effect,
by enforcing unanimous voting given themselves the power of
veto.
Global representation
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.
Most notably missing was the position
that the United
States of America
was supposed to play in the League, not only in
terms of helping to ensure world peace and security but also in
financing the League. The U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force
behind the League's formation and strongly influenced the form it
took but the
United States
Senate voted not to join on 19 November 1919.
Ruth Henig has suggested that,
had the United States been a member of the League, it would have
also provided backup to France and Britain, possibly making France
feel more secure and so encouraging France and Britain to
co-operate more regarding Germany and so made the rise to power of
the
Nazi party less likely. On the contrary,
Henig acknowledges that if America had been a member of the League,
its reluctance to engage in war with European states and to enact
economic sanctions may have hampered the ability of the League to
deal with
international
incidents. The structure of
government in
America may also have made its membership problematic as its
representatives at the League could not have made decisions on
behalf of the
United States executive
branch without this having already been approved by the
legislative branches.
In January 1920, when the League began, Germany was not permitted
to join because it was seen as the aggressor in World War I.
Soviet Russia was also initially
excluded from the League, as communist views were not welcomed by
the victors of World War I. The League was further weakened when
critical 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.
Collective security
Another important weakness grew from the contradiction between the
idea of
collective security,
that formed the basis of the League, and
international relations between
individual states. The collective security system the League used
meant that nations were required to act against states they
considered friends, and in a way that might endanger their
national interests, to support states that
they had no normal affinity with. This weakness was exposed during
the
Abyssinia Crisis when Britain
and France had to balance attempts to maintain the security they
had attempted to create for themselves in Europe "in order to
defend against the enemies of internal order", in which Italy's
support played a pivotal role, with their obligations to Abyssinia
as a member of the League.
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 had
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.
Pacifism and disarmament
[[Image:League of Nations cartoon from Punch - Project Gutenberg
eText 16619.png|thumb|upright|left||
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,
28 July 1920, satirising the perceived weakness of the
League.]]The League of 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. 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. Immediately
after World War I,
pacifism was a strong
force both in the populations and the governments of the two
countries. The
British
Conservatives were especially tepid on the League and
preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the
involvement of the organization.
Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain, France
and its other members while 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. If
the League was to force countries to abide by international law, it
would require the
Royal Navy and the
French Army to do the enforcing.
When the British Cabinet discussed the concept of the League during
the First World War,
Maurice Hankey,
the
Cabinet Secretary, circulated
a memorandum on the subject. He started by saying: "Generally it
appears to me that any such scheme is dangerous to us, because it
will create a sense of security which is wholly fictitious". He
attacked the British pre-war faith in the sanctity of treaties as
delusional and concluded by claiming:
The Foreign Office minister Sir
Eyre
Crowe also wrote a memorandum to the British Cabinet claiming
that "a solemn league and covenant" would just be "a treaty, like
other treaties": "What is there to ensure that it will not, like
other treaties, be broken?". Crowe went on to express scepticism of
the planned "pledge of common action" against aggressors because he
believed the actions of individual states would still be determined
by national interests and the balance of power. He also criticised
the proposal for League economic sanctions because it would
ineffectual and that "It is all a question of real military
preponderance". Universal disarmament was a practical
impossibility, Crowe warned.
Demise and legacy
The League of Nations' Assembly building in Geneva
As the situation in Europe deteriorated into war, the Assembly
transferred enough power to the Secretary General on 30 September
1938 and 14 December 1939 to allow the League to continue to
legally exist and to carry on reduced operations.
The headquarters of
the League, the Palace of
Peace
, remained unoccupied for nearly six years until the
Second World War ended.
At the 1943
Tehran Conference, the
Allied Powers agreed to create a new body to replace the League:
the
United Nations. Many League
bodies, such as the
International Labour
Organization, continued to function and eventually became
affiliated with the UN. The structure of the United Nations was
intended to make it more effective than the League.
The final meeting of the League of Nations was held in April 1946
in Geneva. Delegates from 34 nations attended the assembly. This
session concerned itself with liquidating the League: assets worth
approximately $22,000,000 in 1946, including the Palace of Peace
and the League's archives, were given to the UN, reserve funds were
returned to the nations that had supplied them, and the debts of
the League were settled.
Robert Cecil is
said to have summed up the feeling of the gathering during a speech
to the final assembly when he said:
The motion that dissolved the League passed unanimously: "The
League of Nations shall cease to exist except for the purpose of
the liquidation of its affairs." The motion also set the date for
the end of the League as the day after the session was closed. On
19 April 1946, the President of the Assembly, Carl J. Hambro of
Norway, declared "the twenty-first and last session of the General
Assembly of the League of Nations closed." As a result, the League
of Nations ceased to exist on 20 April 1946.
Professor
David Kennedy
has suggested that the League is a unique moment when international
affairs were "institutionalized" as opposed to the pre-World War I
methods of law and politics.
The principal Allies
in World War II (the UK, the USSR
, France, the
U.S., and Republic of
China
) became permanent members of the UN Security Council; these new "Great
Powers" gained 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 are also 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 during the Korean
War and the peacekeeping mission in
the former Yugoslavia
. 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.
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
- 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, 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
- 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
- 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.
- Woodrow Wilson, compiled with his approval by Hamilton Foley;
Woodrow Wilson's Case for the League of Nations, Princeton
University Press, Princeton 1923 contemporary book review
- Zimmern, Alfred ; The League of Nations and the Rule of
Law, 1918–1935 1936
External links