However, this wasn’t an ideal situation. France and Britain had both been damaged badly by the war. Not only that but France and Britain were not on good terms with each other. To make matters even worse both countries had other priorities. France was still petrified of Germany and Britain had to look after their Empire.
Despite America decision to drop out of the League before it even started, it still went ahead. The League’s home was in Geneva, Switzerland. The League was set up and based on a Covenant. The Covenant was a list of twenty-six rules, which each member of the League had to agree to. One of the main priorities of the League was to enforce and maintain the Treaty of Versailles. The League began with forty-two countries and by the 1930’s the League had increased by seventeen to fifty-nine members.
The League had many main aims. It wanted to encourage countries to co-operate with each other, especially in business or in trade. It wanted countries to disarm and to improve the living and working conditions of people in all parts of the world. The League also hoped that all countries would work together, whether large or small to bring world peace. The main objective of the League though, was to discourage aggression from any nation.
The League of Nations is split into a number of different sections. There was an assembly, which was the League’s Parliament. Each country in the League had a representative in the Assembly. The Assembly met only once a year whereas the Council met five times a year. There were many fights in the Council. There was the Secretariat, which similar to a civil service. There was the Permanent Court of International Justice, The International Labour Organisation, The Mandates Commission, The Refugee Committee, The Health Committee and the Slavery Commission. All of these had a huge role to play in the League of Nations.
The League proved to be a success in a number of disputes. The Paris Peace Conference changed lots of borders and create new states which, managed to cause a number of disputes between neighbouring countries.
One good example of the League solving border disputes was in the case of Upper Silesia in 1921. This was an industrial region where both German and Polish people were inhabited. The League decided that the inhabitants should vote whether they want to be a part of Poland or Germany. The industrial area voted for Germany and the rural area for Poland and so the League decided to divide the area up which both sides agreed to.
The Aaland Islands in 1921 is another place where the League succeeded. This Island was situated between the two countries and naturally both of them wanted it and both were willing to fight for it. They decided to appeal to the League. The League looked at this matter closely and decided that the Island should go to Finland. Sweden approved with this decision and therefore war was avoided.
In Bulgaria in 1925 the League had to make yet another tough decision. Greek soldiers invaded Bulgaria after a scene in which some of the Greek soldiers were killed. The League condemned the Greeks outburst and ordered them to retreat and pay compensation. The Greeks did so but not without complaining. They felt there was rules for some and totally different rules for others.
However, the League was not successful in everything. There were many incidents, which the League failed to handle, the first of which was in 1920 involving a place called Vilna. This was placed after the First World War, as the capital of Lithuania except the population of Vilna was largely Polish. A private Polish army invaded Vilna and took control of it. Lithuania was not happy and appealed for help as everyone could see Poland was definitely in the wrong. The League did absolutely nothing and so the Poles kept Vilna.
Their next failure came at Corfu in 1923. This was on the border of Greece and Albania. The Conference of Ambassadors was given this job and appointed an Italian general called Tellini to head it. Unfortunately on the 27th of August 1923, while surveying the Greek frontier area his men were ambushed and killed. The Italian leader, Mussolini, was not too pleased and blamed the Greeks for this and demanded compensation for this act and murder the responsible ones.
However Greece had utterly no idea on who the murderers were. On 31 August, Mussolini attacked and then occupied the Island of Corfu where fifteen Greeks got killed. Greece appealed to the League and condemned Mussolini’s actions and made Greece pay compensation to the League and then be passed across to Italy when Tellini’s killers were found. Officially Mussolini agreed with it but decided to get at Greece behind the scenes. He made the Greeks apologise and pay compensation directly to Italy.
Although the League’s main tasks was waiting for disputes and trying their best to solve them, it was not the only thing which the League did. They set themselves world issues which they hoped to improve. They were aiming to fight poverty, disease and injustice around the world.
The League worked extremely hard in getting refugees and former prisoners of war back to their homelands. In their first few years after the war they returned around 400,000 people back to their homeland and in 1922 they acted quickly to get rid of cholera, smallpox dysentery.
The League managed to ban poisonous white lead and reduced the working hours of workers to an eight hour day. Even though they reduced the hour’s workers only a minority of workers stuck to it. They still thought they had to work long hours and so they worked over-time.
The League worked hard to defeat leprosy and to exterminate mosquitoes, which reduced malaria and yellow fever for later decades. The League also introduced a new Highway Code. The League blacklisted four large German, Dutch, French and Swiss which were involved with illegal drugs.
The League failed miserably in trying to get countries to disarm. At the Washington Conference in 1921 the USA, Japan, Britain and France sat down to discuss about limiting the size of their navy. But the discussions got no further than this. The League was not very popular in Germany as Germany had been forced to and no one else had.
To conclude I think the League of Nations had its good points and its bad points. It might have had more bad than good bad we were definitely not better off without it. Its main plus points must have been sorting out refugees and settling smaller countries border disputes. When it came to bigger countries the League struggled and failed. The League seemed to have the inability to stand up to bigger nations. Nevertheless, Europe would have suffered without the League, as there would not have been any authority in Europe. The fact that America didn’t join proved to be a huge factor on why the League failed.
