League of Nations

The League of Nations was the first permanent organisation of states meant to settle disputes between them and to keep peace throughout the world. It was created by the Paris Peace Conference, and its Covenant opened the Treaty of Versailles. It existed from 1920 to 1946, and its seat was Geneva.

An idea of the war years

The idea of a new, permanent organisation of states to guard the peace grew during the war among diplomats and intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic. In London in the autumn of 1916 Robert Cecil, the Minister of Blockade, circulated to the Cabinet a memorandum on preventing future wars. States were to submit their disputes to a conference before taking up arms, and those who refused were to face blockade and financial sanctions. Lord Phillimore’s committee, set up on his initiative, prepared a British draft which in May 1918 reached President Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson had spoken of a league for peace as early as January 1917, when he called for peace without victory. The last of his Fourteen Points, announced on 8 January 1918, called for a “general association of nations” to provide mutual guarantees of independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. A league of nations, with an international court and joint action against any state that rejected arbitration, was also demanded in February 1918 by the socialists and trade unionists of the Entente at the London conference.

The Covenant

Wilson crossed to Europe in December that year convinced that without a league the peace would not last. On 25 January 1919 the conference accepted the principle of creating it, and the Covenant was drafted by a commission chaired by the President. Its members included Cecil, Colonel Edward House and Jan Smuts, from whom came the idea of a permanent council of the great powers with smaller states taking part, and of the mandate system.

The Covenant had 26 articles. The League’s organs were an Assembly of all members, a Council and a permanent Secretariat. In Article 10 the members undertook to respect one another’s territorial integrity and independence and to preserve them against external aggression. They were to submit disputes to arbitration, judicial settlement or inquiry by the Council. A state that went to war regardless was deemed an aggressor against all, and the other members were to sever all trade and financial relations with it.

The League was given oversight of the mandates, the former German colonies and Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire which the victorious powers administered on its behalf. The Free City of Danzig was placed under its protection, it administered the Saar Basin, and it watched over the minority treaties, including the Polish one.

Without the United States

The League began its work on 10 January 1920, when the Treaty of Versailles came into force. On 15 November 1920 representatives of 41 states gathered in Geneva for the first Assembly. The United States was missing. Republicans in the Senate feared that Article 10 would bind the country to defend other states without the consent of Congress, and in March 1920 the Senate rejected the treaty together with the Covenant. According to most historians the League worked much less effectively without the Americans than it might have.

In its early years the League dealt with disputes left by the war; among other things it prepared the partition of Upper Silesia in 1921. It did not prevent the next war. In April 1946 it ceased operating, and many of its agencies were taken over by the United Nations.