The League of Nations

The League of Nations was set up in 1919 directly after the First World War. It was set up by American President Woodrow Wilson and established in the neutral country of Switzerland. The intention was to prevent large scale conflicts from happening again. The allied forces of World War One, namely Britain and France met in Paris to discuss the terms which they would impose upon a defeated Germany . This meeting would be known as the Treaty of Versailles.

The league had 4 main aims; to encourage co-operation, to disarm the world's country of weapons, to improve social conditions; control diseases and living standards and most importantly to create conditions for world peace. It can be seen that the League of Nations fundamentally failed in its aims because of a lack of military strength, failure of two strongest powers America and Russia to join, the internal disorganisation and the rise of dictatorships in Europe. The League was successful however in solving the problems of smaller nations such as Bulgaria, Greece and Finland. This essay will look at the successes of the league and the failures.

The most important factor that can be seen to limit the success of the League of Nations was the lack of military enforcement .The League of Nations did not have its own army to enforce its authority so it had to depend on the two leading members of the League which were Britain and France. Britain had suffered a lot from The First World War. Britain was in an economic crisis. It had spent 15-25% of its accumulated wealth fighting the War so it borrowed very heavily from the United States of America. The end of The First World War lumbered Britain with massive debts. France had also suffered a lot from the war, apart from the number of young soldiers who died, France lost most of its fertile farming land in the north. It had to borrow money very heavily from Germany. This ultimately led to The Second World War because Germany grew resentful of France.

The internal disorganization the League made it difficult to carry out its aims successfully and lead it to being a failure. The leagues had four permanent members Britain, France, Italy and Japan. It had a variety of different agencies that dealt with the slave trade, drug dealing etc. and a assembly in which countries met once a year This was a major issue because countries would have to come to an agreement in that one meeting, "The assembly shall meet at stated intervals, and from time to time as occasion may require at the seat of the League or at such other place as may be decided upon" This meant that it took a long time to get everything done, decisions had to be made unanimously and this slowed down the entire process. As a result, it could not effectively deal with certain issues that arose way before or way after the meeting.

In 1932 Japan invaded Manchuria, this was clearly an example of a strong country invading a weaker one.