The League of Nations was a great force for peace in the 1920’s. Discuss

One of the major failures of the League of Nations was the Corfu incident in 1923. This incident began when Tellini, an Italian general who was sent to assess the border between Greece and Albania, and his team were ambushed and killed by Greek bandits. Mussolini, the Italian leader, was furious and blamed the Greek government for the murder. On 29 August he demanded compensation from Greece and execute the murderers however the Greek government had no idea who they were. 2 days later Mussolini bombed then occupied the Greek island of Corfu. Greece appealed to the League for help. These events seemed like the events of 1914, which triggered the First World War so the League had to act quickly. Luckily the council was already in session so the League acted swiftly. It condemned Mussolini’s actions but suggested that Greece pay compensation but be held by the league then paid to Italy when the murderers were found. Officially Mussolini accepted the decision. However, behind the scenes he got to work on the conference of ambassadors and managed to persuade them to change the ruling. The Greeks were made to pay compensation directly to Italy and apologise. Mussolini withdrew from Corfu boasting of his triumph. This incident undermined the leagues powers and suggested that it couldn’t control it’s own members and was ineffective at keeping the peace. Like the Vilna incident they did not use military force and it was starting to seem that this sanction was meaningless as it was never going to be used.  

One of the League of Nations successes of the 1920’s was the conflict in 1925 between Greece and Bulgaria. The situation arose when some Greek soldiers were killed after a border incident involving Bulgarians. Greece saw this as a chance to attack Bulgaria and invaded. Bulgaria appealed to the League to help them. The League condemned the Greek action and ordered Greece to pull out and pay compensation to Bulgaria. The Greeks obeyed the League and pulled out, though they did spark up some controversy by saying that there appeared to be one rule for larger states (i.e. Italy) and another for smaller states like themselves, though it was still a success and went to prove the league could keep the peace. This was very similar to the Corfu incident of 1923 but in the end Italy were seen as being in the right and Greece in the wrong. This showed inconsistence in the leagues decisions.

In the 1920’s the board did settle some disputes well but when it came to major disputes they messed up. This inconsistency signalled that they weren’t very good at settling disputes in the 20’s and they were not a very good peace keeping force, one of the main reasons being that they had no military force of their own and never used the members armies.