Charles River Editors - The League of Nations: The Controversial History of the Failed Organization that Preceded the United Nations

By Charles River Editors

A picture of a 1928 meeting of the League of Nations

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Ville Oksanens picture of the Palace of Nations

The League of Nations

The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this: 1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. President Woodrow Wilson

I have loved but one flag and I can not share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented for a league. Henry Cabot Lodge

The League of Nations is the greatest humbug in history. They cannot even protect a little nation like Armenia. They do nothing but pass useless resolutions. David Lloyd George

The United Nations is one of the most famous bodies in the world, and its predecessor, the League of Nations, might be equally notorious. In fact, President Woodrow Wilsons pet project was controversial from nearly the minute it was conceived.

At the end of World War I, Wilson's pleas at the Paris Peace Conference relied on his Fourteen Points, which included the establishment of a League of Nations, but while his points were mostly popular amongst Americans and Europeans alike, leaders at the Peace Conference largely discarded them and favored different approaches. British leaders saw their singular aim as the maintenance of British colonial possessions. France, meanwhile, only wanted to ensure that Germany was weakened and unable to wage war again, and it too had colonial interests abroad that it hoped to maintain. Britain and France thus saw eye-to-eye, with both wanting a weaker Germany and both wanting to maintain their colonies. Wilson, however, wanted both countries to rid themselves of their colonies, and he wanted Germany to maintain its self-determination and right to self-defense. Wilson totally opposed the war guilt clause, which blamed the war on Germany.

Wilson mostly found himself shut out, but Britain and France did not want American contributions to the war to go totally unappreciated, if only out of fear that the U.S. might turn towards improving their relations with Germany in response. Thus, to appease Wilson and the Americans, France and Britain consented to the creation of a League of Nations. However, even though his participation in the crafting of the Treaty of Versailles earned him a Nobel Prize that year, Wilson soon learned to his consternation that diplomacy with Congress would go no better than his diplomacy with European leaders. The only major provision that Wilson achieved in Europe, the League of Nations, was the most controversial in the United States. Both aisles of Congress had qualms with the idea, believing it violated the Constitution by giving power over self-defense to an international body. Other interests in the United States, especially Irish-Americans, had now totally turned against Wilson. The President's interest in national self-determination extended to many European countries, including Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Belgium, but it excluded one critical country: Ireland, a country currently embroiled in a revolution against Great Britain. Worse, Irish-Americans thought the League of Nations would harden Anglo control of global institutions.

Simply put, Wilson returned home to find many Americans weren't buying the League of Nations. While the Senate was able to build a slim majority in favor of ratification, it could not support the necessary two-thirds majority. Too many were skeptical of the Treaty, especially given Europe's inability to adopt the remainder of Wilsons Fourteen Points. As a result, ironically, the United States didnt join the League of Nations, which would last only about 25 years. While it would attempt to resolve some territorial disputes, it simply proved too weak to prevent international aggression, primarily among the Axis Powers in the buildup to World War II. Thus, the Leagues greatest legacy ended up being its dismal failure to prevent World War II and ensure that World War I had truly been the war to end all wars, as originally intended.

Although the League of Nations was short-lived and clearly failed in its primary mission, it did essentially spawn the United Nations at the end of World War II, and many of the UNs structures and organizations came straight from its predecessor, with the concepts of an International Court and a General Assembly coming straight from the League. More importantly, the failures of the League ensured that the UN was given stronger authority and enforcement mechanisms, most notably through the latters Security Council, and while the League dissolved after a generation, the UN has survived the last 70 years.

The League of Nations: The Controversial History of the Failed Organization that Preceded the United Nations looks at the history of the short-lived league. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the League of Nations like never before.

This is an age of unions. Not merely in the economic spherebut law, medicine, science, art, trade, commerce, politics and political economywe might add philanthropystanding institutions, mighty forces in our social and intellectual life, all have helped to swell the number of our nineteenth century Conferences and Congresses. It is an age of Peace Movements and Peace Societies, of peace-loving monarchs and peace-seeking diplomats. Men are working together, there is a newborn solidarity of interest, but rivalries between nation and nation, the bitternesses and hatreds inseparable from competition are not less keen; prejudice and misunderstanding not less frequent; subordinate conflicting interests are not fewer, are perhaps, in view of changing political conditions and an ever-growing international commerce, multiplying with every year. The talisman is, perhaps, self-interest, but, none the less, the spirit of union is there; it is impossible to ignore a clearly marked tendency towards international federation, towards political peace. This slow movement was not born with Peace Societies; its consummation lies perhaps far off in the ages to come. History at best moves slowly. But something of its past progress we shall do well to know. No political idea seems to have so great a future before it as this idea of a federation of the world. It is bound to realise itself some day. - Introduction to the 1917 English translation of Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch by Immanuel Kant