League of Nations (1920): The First Attempt at World Government

The League of Nations was the first permanent international organisation set up to keep the peace between states. It came into being on 10 January 1920, when the Treaty of Versailles entered into force, and soon made its home in Geneva, Switzerland. Born from the slaughter of the First World War, it solved several smaller disputes in the 1920s, but its failure to stop aggression by Japan and Italy in the 1930s made it a byword for the limits of international cooperation.

Background

Ideas for a society of nations had circulated for centuries, and in the decades before 1914 peace movements, international law and the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 had made them more concrete. The First World War, which killed an estimated 9–10 million soldiers, convinced many politicians and ordinary citizens that the old system of secret alliances and the balance of power had failed.

In Britain, groups such as the League of Nations Society and statesmen like Lord Robert Cecil and Jan Smuts drew up schemes for a new organisation. In France, Léon Bourgeois had long argued for an international body with real enforcement powers. The most influential advocate was US President Woodrow Wilson, whose Fourteen Points of January 1918 ended with a call for “a general association of nations” to guarantee the independence and territory of large and small states alike.

Writing the Covenant

At the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson insisted that the League be created first and built into the peace treaties. A commission chaired by Wilson drafted the Covenant, a founding charter of 26 articles, which the conference adopted on 28 April 1919. It became Part I of the Treaty of Versailles and of the other peace treaties.

The Covenant set up three main organs. The Assembly included every member state, each with one vote. The Council had permanent members (Britain, France, Italy and Japan, with a seat reserved for the United States) and a number of elected members. A permanent Secretariat in Geneva served both. Most important decisions required unanimity.

The key articles dealt with security. Under Article 10 members promised to respect and preserve each other’s territory and independence against external aggression. Members agreed to submit serious disputes to arbitration, judicial settlement or inquiry by the Council, and not to go to war until three months after a ruling. Article 16 declared that any member resorting to war in breach of the Covenant would face economic sanctions and, possibly, joint military action. Article 22 created the mandates system, under which former German colonies and Ottoman territories were administered by Allied powers on the League’s behalf.

The League begins work

The Council held its first meeting in Paris on 16 January 1920. The British diplomat Sir Eric Drummond became the first Secretary-General and built an international civil service whose staff owed loyalty to the League rather than to their own governments. The First Assembly opened in Geneva on 15 November 1920 in the Salle de la Réformation, with delegates from 41 states.

The greatest blow came from Washington. The US Senate twice refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, in November 1919 and March 1920, mainly because senators led by Henry Cabot Lodge feared that Article 10 would drag the country into foreign wars. Wilson, weakened by a stroke in October 1919, refused to accept reservations, and the United States never joined. Germany was admitted only in 1926 and the Soviet Union in 1934.

Successes in the 1920s

In its first decade the League handled a number of disputes between smaller states with some success. In 1921 it awarded the Åland Islands to Finland while guaranteeing the Swedish-speaking islanders’ autonomy. It recommended the division of Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland after a plebiscite. In 1925, when Greek troops crossed into Bulgaria after a border incident, the Council ordered a ceasefire and withdrawal, and Greece complied and paid compensation.

Much of the League’s lasting work was humanitarian and technical. The Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, as High Commissioner, organised the return of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war and created the “Nansen passport” in 1922, an identity document for stateless refugees. The League’s Health Organisation fought epidemics such as typhus, and other committees worked against the trafficking of women and children, slavery and the drug trade. The International Labour Organization, founded alongside it in 1919, still exists today.

There were warning signs. In 1923 Italy under Mussolini bombarded and occupied the Greek island of Corfu after an Italian general was murdered on Greek soil. The dispute was settled largely by the Conference of Ambassadors on terms favourable to Italy, showing that a great power could sidestep the League.

Failures in the 1930s

The decisive tests came in the 1930s. After the Mukden Incident of September 1931, Japanese forces occupied Manchuria and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. The League sent a commission under Lord Lytton, whose report condemned Japan’s actions. When the Assembly adopted the report in February 1933, Japan’s delegation walked out and Japan announced its withdrawal from the League. No sanctions were imposed.

Germany under Hitler left in October 1933. Then, in October 1935, Italy began the invasion of Ethiopia, a fellow League member. For the first time the League declared a state the aggressor and imposed economic sanctions, but they excluded oil, and Britain and France kept the Suez Canal open to Italian shipping. In December 1935 the Hoare-Laval plan, which proposed giving Italy much of Ethiopia, leaked and caused an outcry. Emperor Haile Selassie appealed in person to the Assembly in June 1936, but sanctions were lifted the following month. Italy left the League in 1937.

The League could do nothing to stop the Spanish Civil War, the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 or German expansion in 1938–1939. Its last significant act was to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 for attacking Finland.

Myths and facts

A common belief is that the League achieved nothing. In fact it resolved several territorial disputes, supervised plebiscites, administered the Saar and the Free City of Danzig, and built up international work on health, refugees and labour that the United Nations later inherited. Its failures were concentrated in cases where a great power was the aggressor.

Another misconception is that the United States played no part. Although it never joined, American citizens served on League committees, and from the late 1920s US officials took part in League conferences on disarmament and economic questions as observers or participants.

Key people

• Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), US president, the League’s chief champion, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1919.
• Lord Robert Cecil (1864–1958), British statesman who helped draft the Covenant and campaigned for the League for decades.
• Léon Bourgeois (1851–1925), French statesman and early advocate, first president of the Council.
• Sir Eric Drummond (1876–1951), first Secretary-General, 1920–1933.
• Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), explorer and High Commissioner for Refugees.

Timeline

• 1918, 8 January: Wilson’s Fourteen Points call for an association of nations.
• 1919, 28 April: The Paris Peace Conference adopts the Covenant.
• 1920, 10 January: The Treaty of Versailles enters into force and the League comes into being.
• 1920, 16 January: The Council holds its first meeting in Paris.
• 1920, 15 November: The First Assembly opens in Geneva.
• 1926, September: Germany joins the League.
• 1933, March: Japan announces its withdrawal over Manchuria.
• 1935, October: Sanctions are imposed on Italy after its invasion of Ethiopia.
• 1946, April: The final Assembly votes to dissolve the League.

Why it matters

The League of Nations was the first serious attempt to replace power politics with collective security and permanent international cooperation. Its failures taught the founders of the United Nations in 1945 to give great powers a central role and a veto, and many League bodies, records and ideas passed directly to the UN and its agencies.