After World War one, the founders of the league wished for a New World of peace and an improvement in the quality of peoples live. To what extent did the League of Nations achieve this in the 1920’s.

There were many successes that the League was involved in. These included events such as in 1920-1 in the Aaland Islands. Sweden and Finland wanted control of the islands. The League let the islands remain under Finnish control and the rights of the Swedish minority were respected. In 1920 at Upper Silesia on the border between Germany and Poland the League set a plebiscite (peoples vote). Due to the result one third went to Poland and two to Germany. Both countries accepted the outcome. Then in Austria in 1922 the government was in economic disaster and the League sent a group of financial experts. They reorganized their finances and currency. After this in1925 the League stopped Greece and Bulgaria fighting with success. Later Bulgaria were found to be the provoked and Greece had to pay compensation.

The League of Nations was also involved in a lot of humanitarian successes. These areas of successes came in improving the lives of ordinary people around the world. They included improving working conditions; here they made a minimum 48-hour week, all workers to be able to join a trade union and only over fifteens to have a full time job. The League tackled slavery, gunrunning and drug trafficking. They also wanted to promote the rights of minatory groups. The World Health Organization enjoyed successes in combating diseases. I believe that the greatest success was in its work as an agency, helping people and tackling problems such disease.

The League of Nations also experienced failures. These included in 1919-20 at Vilna the former capital of Lithuania. It contained many Poles and in 1919 was seized by the Polish army; Lithuania appealed to the League. The League condemned Poland's actions but did nothing, France supported Poland's actions for support in the event of Germany attacking. After Vilna in 1923 at Corfu an Italian general called Tellini who was working for the League of Nations boundary commission was murdered in Greece. Mussolini the Italian dictator ordered compensation and the killers to be handed over. The Greek government didn't know who the killers were and appealed to the League. The League's council suggested that Greece pay compensation to the League, which would be handed back when the killers were found. Mussolini went behind the Leagues back and went to the conference of ambassadors (a group outside the League) who went along with him so Greece had to pay compensation.

In this essay I have looked at many factors to the League of Nations. I looked at the aims, successes and failures. The aims, which were set by the League, were much achieved and the successes were reasonable but were all involved small countries. On thee humanitarian front the League did a lot and gained respect through this. The failures were very considerable in that they involved powers, which the League of Nations could not handle. My conclusion to the League of Nations is that it was failure and simply could not handle the large countries, which I believe is essential to any venture of this sort.

Joseph Swainson