League A Success example essay topic

Was the League of Nations a success in the 1920's?' The League of Nations, for it's time and even for today, had extremely idealistic aims. As President Woodrow Wilson said in 1918, "Merely to win the war was not enough. It must be won in such a way as to ensure the future peace of the world". Hence, the reality of the matter was that the League could never have been a success because its goals were out of reach. However, this is not enough to deem the League as a failure. The League had a crippled beginning, for mainly two reasons.

Firstly, the USA did not join and secondly, it's connection with the treaties that ended World War I and, arguably were the basis for World War II. The USA's refusal to join weakened the League. The USA was the leading major power after World War I. Without the USA as a member, the League could not pose any real threat to any member who disagreed with it's resolutions, neither economically nor militarily. The treaties drawn up at the end of the Great War were much hated and neither side was satisfied with them. This created much tension between countries. Therefore, the League became a sort of 'European Club' directed by Britain and France who had to police the treaties, as well as finance and support most of the League's operations.

War-torn and with crippled economies, neither of these countries were about to sacrifice their self-sovereignty for the goals of the League. This created a great deal of hypocrisy and corruption. A prime example being the invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935. The League had previously used geographical excuse to explain why it did not assist the Manchurian crisis, which occurred in September 1931. Moreover, Viscount Cecil stated: "I do not think there is the slightest prospect of any war"; people were not expecting war. In the case of Abyssinia, the League's leaders, France and Britain were weary of Mussolini's military power and did not want to 'upset' him.

Hence, the League did little to hinder Mussolini's invasion or aid Haile Selassie's pleads for International help as this statement made in 1946 by British statesman Philip Noel Baker proves: "Yes, we know that World War began in Manchuria fifteen years ago. We know that four years later we could have easily stopped Mussolini if we had taken the sanctions against Mussolini that were obviously required, if we had closed the Suez Canal to the aggressor and stopped his oil". Disarmament was a goal the League did try to reach through conferences (the Washington conference - 1921), treaties (Treaty of Mutual Assistance - 1923) and pacts (Kellogg-Briand pact - 1928) but to no avail. Simply because member nations were not de-arming. Instead, they were re-arming. The only country that was disarmed was Germany, which was due to the Versailles treaty.

When Germany was allowed to join the League, on the topic of disarmament, it suggested that all member nations should either: disarm to Germany's level or Germany should be allowed to re-arm. Both proposals were rejected. This showed the levels of inequality among member nations of the League. The League did settle several border disputes during the 1920's. Notably Vilna, Aaland Islands, Upper Silesia, Bulgaria and Corfu. Both Aaland Islands and Upper Silesia were considered to be successes, whereas Vilna and Corfu were failures.

There are many variables that affected the outcome of these disputes. Prominently, the rise of Mussolini in Italy and his aggressive policies lead the Corfu crisis to get out of hand. Whereas, both the Swedish and Finnish governments had been co-operative, hence, the question over the Aaland Islands was quickly cleared. The decision the League gave in 1921 about the islands is still intact today. I do not think it is possible to call the League a success or a failure. After all, the world had never had such an ambitious organisation working for the benefit of all countries.

One could argue that the idea of the League was ahead of its time and even the fact that the League was created, attempted to function was a success within itself. Bearing in mind how the world must have appeared to the common man in the 1920's, the League must have seemed as if it was functioning. Yet, I believe the greatest fault of the League lies within its greatest aim: world peace. To promote world peace, member nations had to be willing to go to war, which is a contradiction in itself. Perhaps, it would be easier to admit that mankind cannot survive without conflict..