In another successful action during the 1920’s. the League helped with the economic reconstruction of Austria/Hungary, showing its ability to be fair. Austria/Hungary faced bankruptcy as its economy hadn’t recovered from the First World War, and was burdened with reparations payments. The League arranged international loans for the countries, and sent Commissioners to supervise how the money was spent, temporarily taking over the economic management of the two countries. Austria/Hungary were able to begin economic recovery.
The League of Nation’s successes weren’t just of a political or economic nature. The League dealt very effectively in commissions to sort out health, housing and slavery problems. The League did a tremendous amount of work in getting refugees and former prisoners of war back to their homelands after the war. returning about 400,000 prisoners in the first few years after the war.
In the refugee crisis in Turkey, 1922, the League acted quickly to stamp out cholera, smallpox and dysentery in refugee camps that housed thousands of people. The Health Committee also worked to defeat an outbreak of the dreaded illness, leprosy, as well as starting a global campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The League’s actions greatly reduced cases of malaria and yellow fever in later decades. Even the USSR, which opposed the League, took its Health Committee’s advice on preventing plague in Siberia.
The League’s International Labour Organisation was successful in banning poisonous white lead from paint and in limiting the hours that children were allowed to work, campaigning strongly for employers to improve working conditions generally, which lead to the introduction of a maximum 48 hour week, and a maximum 8 hour day. However, only a minority of members adopted these hours and rules because they thought they would raise industrial costs. The League also blacklisted four large German, Dutch, French and Swiss companies involved in the illegal drug trade. It freed 200,000 slaves in British owned Sierra Leone and organised raids against slave owners and traders in Burma. It also challenged the use of forced labour to build the Tanganyika railway in Africa, where the death rate in African workers was 50%, and worked hard to bring it down to 4%. The League also made recommendations on marking shipping lanes and produced an international highway code for road users
In areas where it could not directly act to remove social injustice the League kept careful records of what was going on and provided information on problems such as drug trafficking, prostitution and slavery.
However, the League also had a lot of failures during the 1920’s. In particular it failed to deal with larger countries, especially when they were threatening to use force, as was shown in the Corfu crisis. In August 1923, five Italian surveyors working for the League of Nations were shot and killed on the Greek side of the border. Mussolini, the leader of Italy, demanded compensation from the Greek government. This did not happen, so he bombarded Corfu, an action in defiance of the principles of the League of Nations, of which Italy was a prominent member. The Council wanted to condemn Italy, however the great powers would not permit it as they saw actions that involved their own interests in a different light from those than involved smaller nations. They put pressure on the Greeks to accept Italy’s demands, which, eventually, they did.
It was not only the recognised major powers that showed they could defy the League. Turkey was probably the first country to successfully challenge the League. Turkey believed the Treaty of Sevres (1920) was unfair in 1920, Kemal Attaturk, the Turkish leader, tore up the treaty and chased the Greeks out of Anatolia. The League did little and the Turks gained a more favourable treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne.
In the 1920’s the League also largely failed in bringing about disarmament. At the Washington conference in 1921, USA, Japan, Britain and France agreed to limit their navies, but that was as close to disarmament as they ever got. The League first tried to gain disarmament in 1923, but this was rejected by Britain because it would tie it to defending other countries. In 1926 plans were made for a disarmament conference, but it took five years to agree “a draft convention” and in 1933 this was rejected by Germany. The failure of disarmament was particularly damaging to the League’s reputation in Germany, which, after World War I, had been forced to disarm, and now found that no other countries were willing to do so to the same extent. The members were not prepared to give up their own armies and they were certainly not prepared to be the first to disarm. However, in the late 1920’s, the League’s failure over disarmament seemed less serious as a series of international agreements had begun to be drawn up that seemed to promise a more peaceful world, such the Locarno treaties and the Kellog-Briand pact, so the League’s failures in this area may not have seemed so serious then,
On balance, the League’s failures outweighed its successes in the 1920’s. Its successes tended to be in areas that involved smaller countries or to do with largely non-contentious issues such as health whereas its failures tended to involve the bigger issues, such as disarmament and the interests of the major powers.
Matters such as health, slavery and disease were difficult for any countries to argue against and many countries that otherwise often opposed the League took notice of it on these issues. However, the League was ineffective on nearly all issues that involved the self-interest of major powers such as Great Britain and France.
Both of these countries had big empires, big armies and were seen as imperial nations having just won World War 1, however they were both weakened by the war, and did not want to lose any more power, so they tended to ignore or veto any League directives that might reduce their power. The League did not have enough resources or power, or the voting g structure, to oppose the big nations.
Without the presence of the USA, the League was always unlikely to be able to take much direct action or challenge nations such as Great Britain, France and Italy and the actions of the big actions showed it was possible to undermine the League. Even smaller nations realised they could defy the League.
Perhaps the League was ahead of its time and the 1920’s was not ready for it. The League was based on multinational cooperation when the norm was nation-to-nation agreements and this traditional form of international relations. Countries persisted in creating nation-to-nation, often secret, treaties that went against the League’s aims, though some of these treaties occasionally helped the League. For example, the Washington conference helped to reduce size of navies, which worked towards disarmament. The Young Plan and the Dawes Plan helped the League avert an economic crisis, and enforced its aims of economic peace and prosperity. The USA lent Germany money to reduce its reparation payments, which helped solve some economic problems.
However, there were at least as many non-League agreements that hindered its aims. The Rapallo Treaty re-established diplomatic relations between the USSR and Germany, which made the League of Nations incredibly uncomfortable as they were seen to be aggressive nations. And, despite the Kellogg-Briand pact showing signs of promising a lasting peace in stating that nations had to settle disputes peacefully, without war or force, the 65 nations involved all kept their armies, which didn’t help the League of Nations towards disarmament.
Perhaps one of the major weaknesses of the League that caused it to have more failures than successes in the 1920’s was its membership, which was not truly representative. Despite the League having growing membership, (from 42 nations to 65,) there were some major countries missing including the USA, the USSR and Germany (though Germany joined in 1925).
There were several reasons to why the USA, the League of Nations’ possible ‘missing link’, did not want to join. They thought the League wanted the USA to use its armies all over the world to settle disputes, and it did not like the fact that the League was trying to enforce the Treaty of Versailles, which was hated by Woodrow Wilson. The USA also wanted to see an end to colonies and empires. They could not agree to safeguard the colonial possessions of Britain and France and wanted Britain and France to have less control in the League. The USA was doing fine economically, and thought it would end up paying for many of the League’s actions. Because the USA retreated into isolationism, wanting to stay out of world affairs, it considerably reduced the successes that the League might have had during the 1920’s.
Many of the Leagues failures during this time could be traced right back to the very formation of the League, as it showed inherent weaknesses from the beginning. The Council’s four permanent members, Italy, France, Britain and Japan were all allies, making the League seem like an ‘allied club’, and, ultimately, Eurocentric. The rules also said the League had to decide things together, but its parliament only met once a year, which made the decision making very slow and inefficient. The League had no standing army, which meant it had to rely on the forces of larger countries and could not therefore stand against them on many issues, and had to back down as a result.
The League was aspirational. It tried to achieve new things, but, with hindsight, we may feel it was forced on nations that were not ready for the changes it was aiming for.
On balance, the 1920’s events suggest the League had more significant failures than successes. However, even though this might suggest that it was not a success perhaps it should be judged on the way the idea behind it has continued to grow - that conflict and disagreement can be solved by discussion and cooperation rather than by war, and on the fact that a new ‘League of Nations’ – the United Nations – has taken its place, suggesting that even if the League is thought not to have succeeded it did enough to suggest that the ideas behind it might still work in another time.