Officially Mussolini accepted the Leagues decision but behind the scenes he got to work on the Conference Of Ambassadors and persuaded them to change the ruling. The Greeks had to apologise and pay the compensation directly to Italy. On September the 27th Mussolini left Corfu boasting of his triumph.
The League Of Nations failed to sort out this dispute successfully because of the some of the consequences it could face. Italy could have easily occupied the whole of Greece so military action would have been useless because of the size and powerfulness of the army. It would have meant huge economic problems and the outbreak of another war. It was also a failure in the ruling because of the influence Italy had over the Conference Of Ambassadors to make it change its decision. France was more concerned with its own relations and so blocked any action form the League against Italy.
The next main aim of the League was to encourage nations to disarm. The Treaty Of Versailles was instrumental in the disarmament of Germany and a few of its allies, though they had not been disarmed to the extent of Germany.
There had been many tries to come to a Disarmament Treaty but no country wanted to be the first to disarm. Japan, Britain and France agreed to limit the size of their armies but this was as far as disarmament got. This was very damaging to the L.O.N reputation but its failure to come to an agreement did not seem too serious because of a few international treaties that gave promise of a more peaceful world. The two most important were the Locarno Treaties and The Kellog-Briand Pact.
The Locarno Treaties seemed to resolve some of the problems left over from WW1. On October 1925 representatives of France, Britain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Belgium and Czechoslovakia met in Locarno, Switzerland. After many days of hard negotiation they emerged with some important agreements.
- Germany finally accepted the borders with France and Belgium, which were laid out in the T.O.V. Britain and Italy guaranteed to protect France if Germany violated any of these borders.
- Germany accepted that the Rhineland should remain a demilitarised zone
- France and Germany agreed to settle any future disputes through the League Of Nations.
This agreement made the way for Germany to join the League in 1926. The only major power missing was the Soviet Union.
The Kellog-Briand Pact was agreed in 1928 and signed by 65 nations. Its terms were:
- The parties should condemn war only as a means of solving international disputes and reject it as an instrument of policy
- The settlement or solution of all disputes shall only be sought by peaceful means.
There were a few problems with the Kellog-Briand Pact and the Locarno agreements. In the Kellog-Briand Pact, there was nothing to say what would happen if a state broke the terms in the Kellog-Briand Pact nor did it help the L.O.N with disarmament. The states all agreed that they would keep their armies for ‘self defence’ The Locarno agreements raised a problem with Poland and Czechoslovakia. They felt that if Germany had agreed to accept her borders in the west then she could change the borders in the east.
The L.O.N was set up immediately after the war so many countries still felt unprotected and raw from the effects of the war. Many countries, even those who were members of the League were more concerned with their own affairs than with international ones. This was because many countries were still rebuilding their economies and repairing damage. Also many countries wanted to be armed to defend themselves if another war should occur. The Locarno Treaties and the Kellog-Briand Pact offered an easy way out of disarmament and seemed to solve its problems. They had not gone into enough detail as to what would happen if the terms were broken. Disarmament was unrealistic goal to achieve and it would have been better if they had enforced military limitations than total disarmament.
The third aim of the League Of Nations was to improve living and working conditions. This was the League’s biggest success. It did a tremendous work in fighting diseases such as yellow fever and malaria; it started a global campaign to exterminate mosquitoes and worked hard to defeat leprosy. The L.O.N made recommendations on marking shipping lanes and produced an international highway code for road users. A few years after the war about 400,000 prisoners were returned to their homes by the League Agencies
It freed of 200,000 slaves in British-owned Sierra Leone and organised raids against slave owners and traders in Burma. The League made a crackdown on the illegal drug industry. It blacklisted four large German, Dutch, French and Swiss companies which where involved in the illegal drug trade In Africa at the Tanganika railway, where the death rate was 50 per cent, the League brought this down to 4 per cent. Even in areas where it could not remove social injustice the L.O.N kept
careful records of what was going on and provided information an problems such as drug trafficking, prostitution and slavery.
The League Of Nations was much more successful in this aim because the measures taken posed no threat or risk to any country, and willingness to participate was high because of the need to rebuild following the WW1. Even Russia, who was against the League, sort health advice to prevent the spread of plague in Siberia.
The League’s only failure in this aim was the resolution for a 48-hour week and an 8-hour day. Many businesses did not implement the resolution because they thought it would raise their costs and the L.O.N had no way of enforcing this.
The last aim of the League Of Nations was to encourage nations to cooperate, especially in business and trade. The League made quite a few major mistakes in encouraging nations to cooperate. One of them was the Geneva Protocol. After the Corfu incident, it was seen how its own members could undermine the League. Britain and France created the Geneva Protocol that stated that if two members of the League were in a dispute then they would have to ask the league to sort it out and accept the council’s decision. It was hoped that this would strengthen the league but before it be signed by either Britain or France: there was a general election in Britain and the new government would not sign the Protocol because it was worried that it would agree to something that would not be beneficial to them. In the end the Protocol that had meant to strengthen the League actually weakened it.
This was because Britain, France and other members of the League were only worried about there own interests. This did not encourage nations to cooperate but instead made them become more isolated. However, the L.O.N did succeed to a certain extent in economic recovery. The Dawes Plan had helped to sort out the economic crisis in Germany and helped to recover Britain and Frances failing economies. American loans helped Europe recover after the war. With more money available, they were able to rebuild the industry and increase employment. This increased international trade and therefore led to an increase in profit. Europe was then able to pay the money back to America. Rebuilding trading relationships between countries relived the tension and when countries were trading with each other they were less likely to go to war.
In conclusion, the League Of Nations was both a success and a failure. The League was limited in what it could do to avert war. They could use economic sanctions, moral condemnation and fines. Imposing economic sanctions and fines on a smaller country would have a greater effect because they hadn’t the resources to resist them or cope with them but on a larger country such as Italy, these would have needed military support to back them up. The League did not have its own army and so would have had to rely on member’s armies to provide this military back up. It would have been very unlikely that any nation would be willing give their army to fight. The League was a definite success in its second aim, to improve living and working conditions. It almost eradicated some major diseases and gave valuable advice to countries on health issues. It made some great successes in abolishing slavery and the illegal drug trade and helped many people to return to their countries. They achieved this because it was in the interests of all of Europe to rebuild and repair their countries and it did not create any threat or problems.