The League of Nations

International Relations

Submitted to: Sir Shahid M. Amin Submitted By:

Muhammad Mohsin Javed

ID: 9408

The League of Nations

Background
The League of Nations came into being after the end of World War One. The League of Nation's task was simple - to ensure that war never broke out again. After the turmoil caused by the Versailles Treaty, many looked to the League to bring stability to the world. The League's primary goals as stated in its Covenant included preventing war through collective security, disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Other goals in this and related treaties included labor conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, trafficking in persons and drugs, arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. The League of Nations was to be based in Geneva, Switzerland. This choice was natural as Switzerland was a neutral country and had not fought in World War One. No one could dispute this choice especially as an international organization such as the Red Cross was already based in Switzerland. Wilson wanted the league to be like a worlds parliament. Many saw it as an international police force. It was expected that major nations would disarm and League of Nations would take collective actions.

The League had weaknesses

The country, whose president, Woodrow Wilson, had dreamt up the idea of the League - America refused to join it. As America was the worlds most powerful nation, this was a serious blow to the prestige of the League. However, Americas refusal to join the League, fitted in with her desire to have an isolationist policy throughout the world. Germany was not allowed to join the League in 1919. As Germany had started the war, according to the Treaty of Versailles, one of her punishments was that it was not considered to be a member of the international community and, therefore, she was not invited to join. This was a great blow to Germany but it also meant that the League could not use whatever strength Germany had to support its campaign against aggressor nations. Russia was also not allowed to join as in 1917, it had a communist government that generated fear in Western Europe and in 1918, and the Russian royal family - the Romanovs - was murdered. Such a country could not be allowed to take its place in the League. Therefore, three of the worlds most powerful nations (potentially for Russia and Germany) played no part in supporting the League. The two most powerful members were Britain and France - both had suffered financially and militarily during the war - and neither was enthusiastic to get involved in disputes that did not affect Western Europe.

Covenant:
Stated the aims of League of Nations to: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Discourage aggression by any state To preserve against external aggression to territory of all members through collective action To encourage nations to disarm To improve working conditions of all To encourage co-operation in trade etc To Uphold and enforce the Treaty of Versailles

Organs of League of Nations

The 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, and 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 Assembly: The Assembly consisted of representatives of all Members of the League. Each state was 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. A special session of the Assembly might be summoned at the request of a Member, provided a majority of the Members concurred. The special functions of the Assembly included the admission of new Members, the periodical election on non-permanent Members of the Council, the election with the Council of the judges of the Permanent Court, and the control of the budget. In practice the Assembly had become the general directing force of League activities. The Secretariat: The Permanent Secretariat, established at the seat of the League at Geneva, comprised a body of experts in various spheres under the direction of the General Secretary. The principle Sections of the Secretariat were: Political; Financial and Economics; Transit; Minorities and Administration (Saar and Danzig); Mandates; Disarmament; Health; Social (Opium and Traffic in Women and Children); Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureau; Legal; and Information. Each Section was responsible for all official secretarial work related to its particular subject and prepared and organized all meetings and conferences held in that connection. Other Organs of The League of Nations were: International Labor Organization Permanent Court of International Justice Mandate Commission (to administer former German colonies)

The successes of the League of Nations

In view of the Leagues desire to end war, the only criteria that can be used to classify a success, was whether war was avoided and a peaceful settlement formulated after a crisis between two nations.

The League experienced success in:

The Aaland Islands (1921)

These islands are near enough equal distant between Finland and Sweden. They had traditionally belonged to Finland but most of the islanders wanted to be governed by Sweden. Neither Sweden nor Finland could come to a decision as to who owned the islands and in 1921 they asked the League to adjudicate. The Leagues decision was that they should remain with Finland but that no weapons should ever be kept there. Both countries accepted the decision and it remains in force to this day. Upper Silesia (1921)

The Treaty of Versailles had given the people of Upper Silesia the right to have a referendum on whether they wanted to be part of Germany or part of Poland. In this referendum, 700,000 voted for Germany and 500,000 for Poland. This close result resulted in rioting between those who expected Silesia to be made part of Germany and those who wanted to be part of Poland. The League was asked to settle this dispute. After a six-week inquiry, the League decided to split Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland. The Leagues decision was accepted y both countries and by the people in Upper Silesia. Turkey (1923)

The League failed to stop a bloody war in Turkey (see League failures) but it did respond to the humanitarian crisis caused by this war. 1,400,000 refugees had been created by this war with 80% of them being women and children. Typhoid and cholera were rampant. The League sent doctors from the Health Organization to check the spread of disease and it spent 10 million on building farms, homes etc for the refugees. Money was also invested in seeds, wells and digging tools and by 1926, work was found for 600,000 people. A member of the League called this work "the greatest work of mercy which mankind has undertaken." Greece and Bulgaria (1925)

Both these nations have a common border. In 1925, sentries patrolling this border fired on one another and a Greek soldier was killed. The Greek army invaded Bulgaria as a result. The Bulgarians asked the League for help and the League ordered both armies to stop fighting and that the Greeks should pull out of Bulgaria. The League then sent experts to the area and decided that Greece was to blame and fined her 45,000. Both nations accepted the decision.

The failures of the League of Nations

The international disturbances of the troubled 1930s began with the Japanese extension of military control over Manchuria in 1931. This was followed by the Italian campaign in Ethiopia in 1935 and Adolf Hitler's demands that the "fetters of Versailles" be smashed and that the German nation be allowed lebensraum (living space) for expansion. In 1936, Germany reoccupied the Rhineland (where, by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, it was not supposed to have armed forces) and in 1938 annexed Austria. Czechoslovakia followed in 1939. Faced with this determined assault on the postWorld War I boundaries, diplomats in western Europe and in the Soviet Union, which joined the league in 1934, sought to make the machinery of the league an effective tool of war prevention by means of collective action against "aggression." The attempt was not successful. Although Japan received a verbal rebuke from the league in 1933 for its behavior in Manchuria, it simply resigned from the league and did not end its forward policies in China, which may even have been stimulated by what was construed in Japan as a hypocritical insult. Following the eloquent appeal of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie for aid, the league, under British leadership, tried to organize economic sanctions against Italy in 1935, but that did not prevent the Italian conquest of Ethiopia and probably helped move Benito Mussolini closer to Hitler's side. The embargo was not sufficiently enforceable to be effective. This fiasco, which ended in a British-French retreat from high principles to offer Italy a compromise deal (the Hoare-Laval proposals), did much to diminish enthusiasm for collective security through the League of Nations. Direct negotiations between the major European powers during the tense crises of 1938 and 1939 bypassed the machinery of the league. But many came to believe that a more vigorous and less selfish support of the league might have checked the aggressions of Japan, Italy, and Germany and prevented World War II. In much of the literature on the origins of the war, collective security appeared as the opposite of "appeasement," which had gambled on winning the goodwill of Germany by yielding to its demands. The lesson that one should never appease (yield to) the demands of an aggressive "criminal" nation became deeply engraved in the public mind during the grim years when Hitler's appetite only grew with eating. And the dishonor of the 1938 Munich "appeasement" did not prevent war the following year. Popular, too, was a similar thesis applied to Japan's expansion in the Pacific. Between 1938 and 1941, American opinion shifted dramatically toward the view that isolationism, or the avoidance of American responsibility to keep the world secure from aggression, had been a fearful blunder. To this was added the widespread belief that the United States should have followed Wilson's vision, joined the League of Nations, upheld collective security, and thus prevented World War II. Critics were to cast doubt on this interpretation insofar as it involved the assumption that the league represented anything more than the sum of its parts. The league obviously commanded no military power of its own. If Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States could not see their way to thwarting Hitler's goals at the risk of war, as a matter of national interest, the league could not help them. If they would not help the league, it was impotent. The league might at most supply convenient machinery or a meeting place, but what really mattered was the will to resist, which was

notably lacking in the democracies in these years. Some argued that the idea of collective security was even an obstacle to a firm policy, because public opinion at times, as in England in the mid-1930s, tended to look upon collective security and the league as a substitute for national power. Evidently, some people thought that if only the problem of stopping the dictators could be turned over to Geneva, nothing need be done by the separate nations. This clearly was a dangerous illusion.

The social successes of the League of Nations

At a social level the League did have success and most of this is easily forgotten with its failure at a political level. Many of the groups that work for the United Nations now grew out of what was established by the League. Teams were sent to the Third World to dig fresh water wells, the Health Organization started a campaign to wipe out leprosy. This idea - of wiping out from the world a disease was taken up by the United Nations with its smallpox campaign. Work was done in the Third World to improve the status of women there and child slave labor was also targeted. Drug addiction and drug smuggling were also attacked. These problems are still with us in the C21st - so it would be wrong to criticize the League for failing to eradicate them. If we cannot do this now, the League had a far more difficult task then with more limited resources. The greatest success the League had involving these social issues, was simply informing the world at large that these problems did exist and that they should be tackled. No organization had done this before the League. These social problems may have continued but the fact that they were now being actively investigated by the League and were then taken onboard by the United Nations must be viewed as a success.

Conclusion
In my opinion The League of Nation was the beginning to the peace settlement in the world and to prevent and another devastating war, but due to the weaknesses of the League of Nations they were failed to do so and the events such as Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Japanese Aggression: Manchuria and Spanish Civil War lead to World War II. The main reasons were that Germany was not allowed to join the League of Nations in the start, and Great Powers such as USA didnt join it. Russia was also not allowed to join as in 1917, it had a communist government. The League of Nations was dominated by France and Britain. Factors such as disarmament and severe punishment to Germany lead the rise of leaders such as Hitler, who was against the League of Nations and wanted revenge from Britain and France. Only Germany was disarmed, and its colonies were taken away, reduced the number of army and artillery. If act of reducing or depriving of arms was accepted by every country then maybe The League of Nations may have succeeded. Its a fact that in the Mukhdan incident League of Nations did nothing, China appealed to League of Nations, but the commission arrived in China after 1yr. This shows that League of Nations was only concerned with Germany, and wanted to Italy to be by there side against Germany. On the other hand, being optimistic League of Nations did things to help the world, for example, the incident in Turkey, it spent 10 million on building farms, homes etc for the refugees. The League of Nations solved the Greece and Bulgaria border issues. At a social level the League did have success and most of this is easily forgotten with its failure at a political level. Many of the groups that work for the United Nations now grew out of what was established by the League. Teams were sent to the Third World to dig fresh water wells, the Health Organization started a campaign to wipe out leprosy. The greatest success the League had involving these social issues, was simply informing the world at large that these problems did exist and that they should be tackled. No organization had done this before the League. These social problems may have continued but the fact that they were now being actively investigated by the League and were then taken onboard by the United Nations must be viewed as a success. In my opinion, if balance of power would have kept, aggression against Germany was not shown by the two major powers France and Britain, Germany was not treated harshly, and lust of power was not kept in mind, but the main fact was kept that to keep peace in the world and avoid war, and if USA would have joined the League, then maybe the League of Nations must have succeeded.