machinery to maintain world peace and security. The covenant which brought about the birth of the League was unfortunately attached to all the major peace treaties. Since the peace treaties were one-sided, that was favouring the victorious Allies; the defeated nations always looked upon the world organizations as a partisan body. Moreover, the defeated nations were not admitted into this body for a considerable time confirming their suspicion about the League being a partisan institution.
The absence of the USA from the body caused an irreparable loss of moral influence. The League was no doubt founded on the efforts made by great lover of Peace, President Wilson of the USA. His efforts to make his country an active member of the League failed because the American Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles. The participation of the USA in the League‟s activities could have stemmed the tide of international lawlessness and could have prevented the outbreak of World War II. Germany and Russia joined the League much later.
The weakness of the League lay in the fact that many members were sovereign countries, and therefore they did not like any interference of the League. Italy, Germany and Japan left the League because they incurred its wrath on account of their aggressions.
The League was dominated by the big powers and small nations had no role to play. On many important issues, the big powers could not see eye to eye and thus made the League impotent.
The powers (Britain, France, Italy and Japan) failed to maintain peace.
The League did not have an armed force of its own to deter the aggressor. It had to depend upon member countries to carry out its will to deter the aggressor. Many a time these members failed to give it adequate support. For example, when Italy was branded as aggressor for her invasion of Abyssinia and the League applied economic sanctions against her, Britain and France tried to whittle it down. Despite the sanction, Italy received oil from these countries. More still, the big powers used the League to serve their own ends. Britain looked upon the League as a means to perpetuate her pet theory, the maintenance of balance of power in Europe. Similarly, France wanted the League to ensure her security from a possible German aggression.
The League was composed of representatives of member states and not of their peoples. The ruling governments of those states could hardly appreciate the necessity of maintaining world peace and security vis-à-vis the cravings for the same by their peoples. The rise of the dictators in Europe impeded the chances of the League‟s success. Mussolini of Italy and
81
Adolf Hitler of Germany treated the League with contempt. After committing the aggression, they pulled their nations out of the League. Germany held the League responsible for all her miseries. She blamed the League for not bringing about disarmament; therefore, Germany was not obliged to abide by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles any longer. Japan also left the League after invading Manchuria. The dictators exploited the helplessness of the League and brazenly defied international laws. The law of the jungle prevailed which finally plunged the world into another catastrophe.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE ASSESS
What are the achievements of the League of Nations?
4.0. CONCLUSION
The League of Nations successfully intervened between conflicting states particularly in the first few years of its establishment. Also, the nature of its intervention in Turkey was a landmark achievement as it introduced a humanitarian angle to the quest for world peace and security. Nevertheless, the absence of America, Russia and Germany in the League evidently meant the absence of balance of power in the operations of the League. This incapacitated its operations since it lacked the military might to act against aggression. Again, the implementation of collective security without the commitment of powerful member nations like Britain and France rendered the League weak. Given that it could not stop any powerful nation acting as it pleased, overtime the League became irrelevant in the brokering of world peace and security. In addition, the lack of a realistic consideration of the peculiar interests of individual states also meant the lack of cooperation from states. However, till date, the ultimate reason for the failure of the treaty remains in dispute. Some historians have generally questioned the justice and wisdom of the treaty of Versailles with Germany; a treaty perceived both as a diplomatic and moral failure.
5.0. SUMMARY
In this unit we have been able to understand that the League of Nations was short lived and could be said to have failed in achieving its mandate of securing lasting world peace and security devoid of wars. Nevertheless, one fundamental impact of the covenant of the League was that, its established structures or institutional principles were adopted in some
respects by its successor the United Nations. Again, it also “served as a blueprint for the structure of the international organization in the post-war period”.