The International Labour Organisation was an organisation that set out to help the working conditions in the world. They managed to limit the amount of hours small children were allowed to work. It implemented a resolution so that people only work a maximum of 48 hours a week and an eight hour day.
The Health Committee worked hard to tackle leprosy. It started a campaign to exterminate mosquitoes, which reduced the amount of cases of malaria and yellow fever, both caused by mosquitoes.
The LN brought about international highway codes. The LN tackled hard to defeat drug usage in many countries. They also worked to tackle slavery and prostitution.
In my opinion the LN did an amazing amount of work to improve life all around and was very successful in doing this.
To discourage aggression from any nation was another of the LN’s objectives. They had some successes with this and the disputes were mainly caused by border disputes.
- One of the successes was in Upper Silesia in 1921. This was when Germany and Poland both wanted control over it. The League came up with a good plan that split the area in two, a war was avoided.
- Aaland Islands was another success, Finland and Sweden both wanted the Aaland Islands. The League carefully decided that the islands go to Finland. Both countries again agreed.
- Bulgaria and Greece were fighting over land and Greece invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarians were very peaceful and waited for the League to act. The League ordered the Greeks to pull out, they did and a large scale war was avoided.
- One of the failures was Vilna. Vilna was the newly declared capital of Lithuania. Lithuania was mainly inhabited by Poles, so a private Polish army took it over. The League did nothing apart from tell Poland to stop, however they did not and nothing further was done.
The League was fairly successful in preventing aggression but did not maintain success in doing this.
To encourage nations to disarm was a very important aim of the League, they started out well and their intentions were good but failed to actually bring about disarmament.
At the Washington Conference the USA, Japan, Britain and France all agreed to limit the size of their navies, this was a good starting point towards disarmament because even the USA who were not involved in the LN agreed to limit their navies.
In 1923 the first attempt to disarm was accepted by many nations but Britain didn’t agree due to their own interests. In 1926 plans for disarmament conference was set up but it took a long time to come up with these agreements and when they finally did Germany said no because of the new Nazi elected government in Germany.
This was a complete failure and nobody took the big step to wards disarmament.
My conclusion is that the LN was fairly successful in the 1920s. They were very successful in improving the lives of people. They were fairly successful in discouraging aggression but however they had a complete failure in trying to make all countries head towards disarmament
Anthony Tawil 10DR