THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS BACKGROUND

League of Nations, an organization for international cooperation established on January 10,

1920, at the initiative of the victorious Allied powers at the end of World War I. The terrible

losses of World War I produced, as years went by and peace seemed no nearer, an ever-

growing public demand that some method be found to prevent the renewal of the suffering

and destruction which were now seen to be an inescapable part of modern war. So great was

the force of this demand that within a few weeks after the opening of the Paris Peace

Conference in January 1919, unanimous agreement had been reached on the text of the

Covenant of the League of Nations. Although the League was unable to fulfill the hopes of its

founders, its creation was an event of decisive importance in the history of international

relations. The League was formally disbanded on April 19, 1946; its powers and functions

had been transferred to the nascent United Nations.

The central, basic idea of the movement was that aggressive war is a crime not only against

the immediate victim but against the whole human community. Accordingly, it is the right

and duty of all states to join in preventing it; if it is certain that they will so act, no aggression

is likely to take place. Such affirmations might be found in the writings of philosophers or

moralists but had never before emerged onto the plane of practical politics.