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LEAGUE OF NATIONS
The League of Nations was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal
mission was to maintain world peace and to provide a forum for resolving international
disputes. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First
World War. The main organization ceased operations on 20 April 1946 when many of its
components were relocated into the new United Nations. As the template for modern global
governance, the League profoundly shaped the modern world.

The concept of a peaceful community of nations had been proposed as early as 1795,
when Immanuel Kant sketched the idea of world body in his work Perpetual Peace: A
Philosophical Sketch. The purpose of the world body was to control conflict and promote peace
between states. Kant propounded the establishment of a peaceful world community, not in a
sense of a global government, but in the hope that each state would declare itself a free state
that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings, thus promoting
peaceful society worldwide.

CAUSES

The First World War had just come to a close. After the war, countries faced many economic,
political and social issues. Tensions were high due to the economic crisis placed on nations from
the governmental expenditures to fuel the war effort. Countries entered into depressions where
there was extreme poverty, employment rates that skyrocketed and, trade reduced from mistrust
held between countries. There was a dire need for assistance in order to re-stabilize countries
that were facing such adversities, thus the League of Nations was created. The League of Nations
was an organization designed to handle international disputes and conflicts in a diplomatic way
rather than resorting to violence in order to promote global cooperation while maintaining peace.

WOODROW WILSON’S 'FOURTEEN POINTS’

The League of Nations was the vision of American President Woodrow Wilson. He wanted to
create a peacemaking body that would prevent the use of the ‘Alliance’ system in Europe and
encourage countries to use diplomacy to resolve conflict. In January 1918 United States
President Woodrow Wilson outlined his blueprint for lasting peace in Europe. His 'Fourteen
Points’ formed the basis for the terms of the German surrender, as negotiated at the Paris
Peace Conference in 1919 and documented in the Treaty of Versailles. In the end, though, only
four of these points were adopted completely. Wilson’s 14th point called for ‘A general
association of nations’ to be formed ‘for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of
political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike’.

With this in mind, the League of Nations had four core aims: 1. To stop war breaking out 2. To
encourage disarmament (the reduction of the size of army and weapons per country) 3.
Humanitarian work, such as the improvement of working and living conditions 4. Public Health
work, such as tackling global epidemics and deadly diseases.
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THE LEAGUE'S GOALS

The founders of the League of Nations were desperate to avoid a repetition of the horrors of
the Great War. The League had four core aims:

To encourage disarmament (the reduction of the size of army and weapons per country),

Preventing war through collective security,

Settling disputes between countries through negotiation and diplomacy, and

Humanitarian and Public Health work, such as the improvement of working and living
conditions and tackling global epidemics and deadly diseases.

ORGANISATION OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

The Organization of the League of Nations was headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The
league had two essential wings: Permanent Court of International Justice and International
Labor Organization:

The league consisted of three bodies. The first one was The Secretariat. This permanent body
was the administrative branch of the League, which was responsible, first, for the
administration of League policies and programs; secondly, putting any decisions into action,
and, finally, preparing the agenda and publishing reports of meetings. It was a body was
experts, such as lawyers and finance managers and was to be housed in Geneva. The first
secretary was Sir Eric Drummond. : This was

The second body was The Council. The Council was composed of nine member nations as
follows: Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and United States. The others remaining four positions
were chosen by the assembly on rotational basis. The Council had the power to veto the
decisions made by the Assembly, which meant that powerful countries could still have
dominance, even if the Assembly was unanimous against them.

The third body was The Assembly. In Assembly all member nations were to be represented in
the assembly and each of them had a single vote. All members met in an international
parliament once a year; however, a decision had to be unanimous to pass, otherwise it’d be
referred to the Council. The Assembly decided on new members, the election of judges to the
Court of International Justice and how money should be spent.

FOUR PLEDGES

The members pledged,first, to protect the territorial integrity of the member state, secondly, to
submit to the league disputes that threatened the war, thirdly, they were expected to
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participate in arms reduction programs, and finally each one of them was expected to assist in
the establishment of a permanent international court of justice.

The procedure which was adopted by the League of Nations in solving a crisis had three stages.
The first stage involved the acknowledgement of a crisis in between two nations or among
nations and thus subsequently creating a platform for negotiation between or among the
nations involved in a dispute.

Such a platform would be through the League Parliament. Such negotiations were expected to
lead to a solution whereby the nation found on the offensive would be warned and asked to
immediately stop any aggressive movements towards the other nation.

SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF THE LEAGUE

The aftermath of the First World War left many issues to be settled, 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 early interwar period, the League played little part in resolving the turmoil
resulting 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 had become the
center 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 improve relations and settle their differences.

In addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between
and within nations. Among its successes were its fight against the international trade in opium
and sexual slavery and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the
period up to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the
Nansen passport, the first internationally recognized identity card for stateless refugees.

The League failed to intervene in many conflicts leading up to World War II, including the Italian
invasion of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary
purpose, the prevention of another world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure,
many connected to general weaknesses within the organization, such as voting structure that
made ratifying resolutions difficult and incomplete representation among world nations.
Additionally, the power of the League was limited by the United States’ refusal to join.
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