League of Nations

League of Nations

League of Nations was established after first world war. World War I was fought between 1914-1918. It was fought between two groups of powers - Allied Powers and Central Powers.

Allied Powers - They mainly consisted of England, France, China, Japan and Italy. Later, United States of America joined the war on 6th April 1917 on the side of Allied Powers. The reason for USA to join WWI by entering the Allied Camp was the sinking of British steamer called Lusitania ; in which total of 1200 passengers died out of which 100 were Americans. Germany was responsible for it.

Central Powers - They mainly included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. The war finally came to an end on 11th Nov 1918 when Kaiser William II ran away Holland.

In 1919, Paris Peace Conference was held and three treaties were signed which formally    ended the war. These three treaties were:

·          Treaty of Versailles (signed by Germany),

·          Treaty of St. Germain (signed by Austria-Hungary)

·          Treaty of Sevres (signed with Turkey)

President Woodrow Wilson of USA played a crucial role in establishment/foundation of League of Nations. The other statesmen who played a crucial role during the Paris Peace Conference were Lloyd George and Clemenceau, the then presidents of UK and France respectively.

The League of Nations was established on 10 Jan 1920. The objectives behind this establishment were as follows:

·         To maintain peace for promoting elective security to impose economic military sanctions by Aggressor.

·         To promote international cooperation for dealing with socio-economic problems.

·         To protect the territorial integrity and freedom of nations from external aggression.

·         To reduce the production of weapons by taking into consideration the security.

·         To thy to solve disputes between among nations in a peaceful manner through the council of League of nations.

·         To create fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women and children.

Most of the countries from different parts of the world joined the League of Nations. In

1920, 41 countries were the members of the League of Nations and the number went on to increase to 60 by 1934.

Structure of League of Nations

The League of Nations functioned/operated through following organs/agencies.

Assembly

The members nation of the assembly were treated equally irrespective of their economic, social or political standings. The meetings of the assembly were used be held at Geneva,

Switzerland annually. The assembly was involved in variety of responsibilities such as admitting new members to the league of Nations, to allow memberships of different committees to the League of Nations, to try and maintain peace in the work. Assembly elected the non-permanent members of the council and at the judges of the Permanent

Court of international Justice PC Assembly also approved the nominations of the Secretary General of the Council.

Council

The permanent members of the Council were England France, Italy and Japan. The United States of America could have been another member of the council but it declined to joined the League of Nations Germany became the permanent member of the council in 1925 be addition to permanent members, there were permanent members in the council.

Secretariat

The headquarters of Secretariat were located at Geneva in Switzerland. It was headed by the Secretary General. There were two under-secretaries for helping the Secretary General in carrying out the work of Secretariat. The Best Secretary General of Secretariat was Sir Eric Drummond He was from England. One of the important works of the Secretariat was to make public the treaties signed by different countries among each other.

 

Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ)

The PCI was located at the Hague, Netherland. The main responsibility of this court was to advise the council of League of Nations and also to hear the inter national matters

International Labour Organization (ILO)

It worked for promoting the welfare of workers and labourers at world level. The functioning of ILO was supervised by a director. The first director of ILO was Albert Thomas. He was a

French socialist. USA became the member of ILO because memberships of ILO was open to all even if the country was not a member of the League of Nations.

 

 

Failure of the League of Nations : The League of Nations tried to solve the international disputes such as the Corfu incident, withdrawal of Serbian troops from Albania, Greece attack on Bulgaria, etc. It also did a fantastic work in social, economic, cultural and legal areas at an international level.

Unfortunately, the League of Nations proved to be unsuccessful because it could not stop the second world war from happening.

Some reasons for failure of the League of Nations were - refusal of super powers (like USA) to join it; exploitative and one sided treaty of Versailles; the League of Nations was not able to stop the race of armaments, the League also could not stop the rise of dictators like Hitler in Germany and Mussolini of Italy who pursued very aggressive foreign policy which ultimately led to the second world war.