The league also arbitrated in the dispute between Sweden and Finland in 1921, over the possession of the Aaland Islands, in which both countries were threatening to fight for the district. Eventually, the league solved the dispute, with its investigations evidencing that the islands were in fact of Finnish origins and thus gave them to Finland with its decision again being accepted.
I believe the Leagues main successes came in the form of the Locarno treaties in 1925 and the Kellogg-Briand pact in 1928. These settlements greatly improved the way in which the league was regarded, as a result of the fact that at the time they were seen as having made a huge advancement towards world peace, with the Locarno treaties mainly settling disputes regarding Germany’s position in the league and the clashes that it had with France over the Rhineland, and the Kellogg-Briand pact (which is now seen as the high point of international relations in the 1920s) making a great advancement towards world peace. (In the pact’s constituency, the league’s members agreed only to keep their armies for ‘self-defence’ purposes). Although this may not seem like much now, at the time this was a huge step for the league and was seen as a turning point in history.
These successes of the league, in its settling of International disagreements however did not go without any failures. In particular, the league was put to fault in 1923 regarding the Corfu crisis. The leagues partiality was shown here when they were found to be making secret agreements ‘behind the scenes’ with Italy’s leader, Mussolini.
Mussolini had ordered a bombardment of the Greek occupied island of Corfu, as a result of some Italian soldiers having been killed there while surveying the borders there between the two countries, killing a further 15 people in the process. Officially, the league declared that as a result of both the countries’ actions, Greece should pay compensation to league itself, which would then pay this sum off to Italy, should they succeed in finding the killers of the Italian men in Corfu. This decision was overturned in secrecy as Mussolini bribed the league, with the actual final agreement being that Greece would have to, as well as pay the predisposed compensation money directly to them, also apologise to Italy, thus illustrating that there was some corruption in the league.
The league also suffered some failure relating to the Vilna, Bulgaria and Geneva Protocol crises in 1920, 1925 and 1924 respectively, as well as being significantly noticed for the lack of progress it made in terms of the disarmament of its member nations, when in fact international disarmament was meant to be one of its major goals.
Although I believe that the league was in some small ways successful in settling disputes and preventing minor wars, I do not think that in the 1920s, the league was greatly successful in achieving its major aims such as disarmament. Even so I do not believe that in all cases of the league’s failure, the league itself was to blame fully. In some incidents, such as the Vilna crisis, the league was not left with much choice in regards as to what it should do, never minding the fact that the league was introduced at a difficult time in the world’s prominence, and so I believe could not have had as much of an influence on its member nations as was initially hoped of it when it was first set up. This I believe is in fact the most significant reason contributing to the leagues failure in the 1920s, and not that the league was in effect incompetent for the task(s) that it was assigned.
