S.S.

JAIN SUBODH LAW COLLEGE

YEAR 2019-2020

Failure of league of nations

Submission To: Submitted By:

Ms. Palak Vashisht YASHVARDHAN TOLANI

ASISTANT PROFESSOR Semester- 7th (B)

Roll no. - 57
 CETIFICATE

This is to Certify that Mr. Yashvardhan tolani, student of B.A.LL.B. 7 th Sem. of

S.S. Jain Subodh Law College, Mansarovar, Jaipur has completed his project on
“Failure of league of nations” under the guidance of Ms. Palak Vashisht, Faculty of
Public International Law at S.S. Jain Subodh Law College.

This project is an original, independent work to the best of my knowledge and has
not been published anywhere and has been pursued solely for academic interest.

(Ms. Palak Vashisht)

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I take this opportunity to express our humble gratitude and personal regards to
Ms. Palak Vashisht for inspiring me and guiding me during the course of this
project work and also for her cooperation and guidance from time to time during
the course of this project work on the topic.

Jaipur

10th November, 2019 (YashvardhanTolani)

 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Aims and Objectives:

The aim of the project is to present a detailed study of the topic “Failure of league
of nations” forming a concrete informative capsule of the same with an insight into
its relevance in the International Legal system.

Research Plan
The researchers have followed Doctrinal method.

Scope and Limitations:

In this project the researcher has tried to include different aspects pertaining to the
concept of Public International Law, Its origin and development in the world.

Sources of Data:
The following secondary sources of data have been used in the project-

 Websites
 Books
 Case laws
Background
The League of Nations came into being after the end of World War One. The
League of Nation's task was simple - to ensure that war never broke out again.
After the turmoil caused by the Versailles Treaty, many looked to the League to
bring stability to the world.

The League's primary goals as stated in its Covenant included preventing war
through collective security, disarmament, and settling international disputes
through negotiation and arbitration. Other goals in this and related treaties included
labor conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, trafficking in persons and
drugs, arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in
Europe.

The League of Nations was to be based in Geneva, Switzerland. This choice was
natural as Switzerland was a neutral country and had not fought in World War
One. No one could dispute this choice especially as an international organization
such as the Red Cross was already based in Switzerland.

Wilson wanted the league to be like a world’s parliament. Many saw it as an

international police force. It was expected that major nations would disarm and
League of Nations would take collective actions.

The weaknesses
The country, whose president, Woodrow Wilson, had dreamt up the idea of the
League - America - refused to join it. As America was the world’s most powerful
nation, this was a serious blow to the prestige of the League. However, America’s
refusal to join the League, fitted in with her desire to have an isolationist policy
throughout the world.
Germany was not allowed to join the League in 1919. As Germany had started the
war, according to the Treaty of Versailles, one of her punishments was that it was
not considered to be a member of the international community and, therefore, she
was not invited to join. This was a great blow to Germany but it also meant that the
League could not use whatever strength Germany had to support its campaign
against aggressor nations.
Russia was also not allowed to join as in 1917, it had a communist government
that generated fear in Western Europe and in 1918, and the Russian royal family -
the Romanovs - was murdered. Such a country could not be allowed to take its
place in the League.

Therefore, three of the world’s most powerful nations (potentially for Russia and
Germany) played no part in supporting the League. The two most powerful
members were Britain and France - both had suffered financially and militarily
during the war - and neither was enthusiastic to get involved in disputes that did
not affect Western Europe.

Covenant:
Stated the aims of League of Nations to:
1. Discourage aggression by any state
2. To preserve against external aggression to territory of all members through
collective action
3. To encourage nations to disarm
4. To improve working conditions of all
5. To encourage co-operation in trade etc
6. To Uphold and enforce the Treaty of Versailles
Organs of League of Nations
The Council:
The League Council acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly's
business. The Council began with four permanent members (Great Britain, France,
Italy, and Japan) and four non-permanent members which were elected by the
Assembly for a three year period. The first four non-permanent members were
Belgium, Brazil, Greece and Spain. The United States was meant to be the fifth
permanent member, but the US Senate voted on 19 March 1920 against the
ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, thus preventing American participation in
the League.
The Assembly:
The Assembly consisted of representatives of all Members of the League. Each
state was allowed up to three representatives and one vote. The Assembly met in
Geneva and, after its initial sessions in 1920, sessions were held once a year in
September. A special session of the Assembly might be summoned at the request
of a Member, provided a majority of the Members concurred. The special
functions of the Assembly included the admission of new Members, the periodical
election on non-permanent Members of the Council, the election with the Council
of the judges of the Permanent Court, and the control of the budget. In practice the
Assembly had become the general directing force of League activities.
The Secretariat:
The Permanent Secretariat, established at the seat of the League at Geneva,
comprised a body of experts in various spheres under the direction of the General
Secretary. The principle Sections of the Secretariat were: Political; Financial and
Economics; Transit; Minorities and Administration (Saar and Danzig); Mandates;
Disarmament; Health; Social (Opium and Traffic in Women and Children);
Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureau; Legal; and Information. Each
Section was responsible for all official secretarial work related to its particular
subject and prepared and organized all meetings and conferences held in that
connection.
Other Organs of The League of Nations were:
 International Labor Organization
 Permanent Court of International Justice
 Mandate Commission (to administer former German colonies)

The successes of the League of Nations

In view of the League’s desire to end war, the only criteria that can be used to
classify a success, was whether war was avoided and a peaceful settlement
formulated after a crisis between two nations.

The League experienced success in:

 The Aaland Islands (1921)

These islands are near enough equal distant between Finland and Sweden. They
had traditionally belonged to Finland but most of the islanders wanted to be
governed by Sweden. Neither Sweden nor Finland could come to a decision as to
who owned the islands and in 1921 they asked the League to adjudicate. The
League’s decision was that they should remain with Finland but that no weapons
should ever be kept there. Both countries accepted the decision and it remains in
force to this day.

 Upper Silesia (1921)

The Treaty of Versailles had given the people of Upper Silesia the right to have
a referendum on whether they wanted to be part of Germany or part of Poland. In
this referendum, 700,000 voted for Germany and 500,000 for Poland. This close
result resulted in rioting between those who expected Silesia to be made part of
Germany and those who wanted to be part of Poland. The League was asked to
settle this dispute. After a six-week inquiry, the League decided to split Upper
Silesia between Germany and Poland. The League’s decision was accepted y both
countries and by the people in Upper Silesia.

 Turkey (1923)

The League failed to stop a bloody war in Turkey (see League failures) but it
did respond to the humanitarian crisis caused by this war. 1,400,000 refugees had
been created by this war with 80% of them being women and children. Typhoid
and cholera were rampant. The League sent doctors from the Health Organization
to check the spread of disease and it spent £10 million on building farms, homes
etc for the refugees. Money was also invested in seeds, wells and digging tools and
by 1926, work was found for 600,000 people.

A member of the League called this work "the greatest work of mercy which
mankind has undertaken."

 Greece and Bulgaria (1925)

Both these nations have a common border. In 1925, sentries patrolling this
border fired on one another and a Greek soldier was killed. The Greek army
invaded Bulgaria as a result. The Bulgarians asked the League for help and the
League ordered both armies to stop fighting and that the Greeks should pull out of
Bulgaria. The League then sent experts to the area and decided that Greece was to
blame and fined her £45,000. Both nations accepted the decision.
The failures of the League of Nations

The international disturbances of the troubled 1930s began with the Japanese
extension of military control over Manchuria in 1931. This was followed by the
Italian campaign in Ethiopia in 1935 and Adolf Hitler's demands that the "fetters of
Versailles" be smashed and that the German nation be allowed lebensraum (living
space) for expansion. In 1936, Germany reoccupied the Rhineland (where, by the
terms of the Versailles Treaty, it was not supposed to have armed forces) and in
1938 annexed Austria. Czechoslovakia followed in 1939. Faced with this
determined assault on the post–World War I boundaries, diplomats in western
Europe and in the Soviet Union, which joined the league in 1934, sought to make
the machinery of the league an effective tool of war prevention by means of
collective action against "aggression."

The attempt was not successful. Although Japan received a verbal rebuke from the
league in 1933 for its behavior in Manchuria, it simply resigned from the league
and did not end its forward policies in China, which may even have been
stimulated by what was construed in Japan as a hypocritical insult. Following the
eloquent appeal of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie for aid, the league, under
British leadership, tried to organize economic sanctions against Italy in 1935, but
that did not prevent the Italian conquest of Ethiopia and probably helped move
Benito Mussolini closer to Hitler's side. The embargo was not sufficiently
enforceable to be effective. This fiasco, which ended in a British-French retreat
from high principles to offer Italy a compromise deal (the Hoare-Laval proposals),
did much to diminish enthusiasm for collective security through the League of
Nations. Direct negotiations between the major European powers during the tense
crises of 1938 and 1939 bypassed the machinery of the league.

But many came to believe that a more vigorous and less selfish support of the
league might have checked the aggressions of Japan, Italy, and Germany and
prevented World War II. In much of the literature on the origins of the war,
collective security appeared as the opposite of "appeasement," which had gambled
on winning the goodwill of Germany by yielding to its demands. The lesson that
one should never appease (yield to) the demands of an aggressive "criminal" nation
became deeply engraved in the public mind during the grim years when Hitler's
appetite only grew with eating. And the dishonor of the 1938 Munich
"appeasement" did not prevent war the following year. Popular, too, was a similar
thesis applied to Japan's expansion in the Pacific. Between 1938 and 1941,
American opinion shifted dramatically toward the view that isolationism, or the
avoidance of American responsibility to keep the world secure from aggression,
had been a fearful blunder. To this was added the widespread belief that the United
States should have followed Wilson's vision, joined the League of Nations, upheld
collective security, and thus prevented World War II.

Critics were to cast doubt on this interpretation insofar as it involved the

assumption that the league represented anything more than the sum of its parts.
The league obviously commanded no military power of its own. If Great Britain,
France, the Soviet Union, and the United States could not see their way to
thwarting Hitler's goals at the risk of war, as a matter of national interest, the
league could not help them. If they would not help the league, it was impotent. The
league might at most supply convenient machinery or a meeting place, but what
really mattered was the will to resist, which was notably lacking in the
democracies in these years. Some argued that the idea of collective security was
even an obstacle to a firm policy, because public opinion at times, as in England in
the mid-1930s, tended to look upon collective security and the league as a
substitute for national power. Evidently, some people thought that if only the
problem of stopping the dictators could be turned over to Geneva, nothing need be
done by the separate nations. This clearly was a dangerous illusion.

The social successes of the League of Nations

At a social level the League did have success and most of this is easily forgotten
with its failure at a political level. Many of the groups that work for the United
Nations now grew out of what was established by the League. Teams were sent to
the Third World to dig fresh water wells, the Health Organization started a
campaign to wipe out leprosy. This idea - of wiping out from the world a disease -
was taken up by the United Nations with its smallpox campaign.

Work was done in the Third World to improve the status of women there and child
slave labor was also targeted. Drug addiction and drug smuggling were also
attacked.
These problems are still with us in the C21st - so it would be wrong to criticize the
League for failing to eradicate them. If we cannot do this now, the League had a
far more difficult task then with more limited resources.

The greatest success the League had involving these social issues, was simply
informing the world at large that these problems did exist and that they should be
tackled. No organization had done this before the League. These social problems
may have continued but the fact that they were now being actively investigated by
the League and were then taken onboard by the United Nations must be viewed as
a success.

Conclusion
In my opinion The League of Nation was the beginning to the peace settlement in
the world and to prevent and another devastating war, but due to the weaknesses of
the League of Nations they were failed to do so and the events such as Italian
invasion of Ethiopia, Japanese Aggression: Manchuria and Spanish Civil War lead
to World War II. The main reasons were that Germany was not allowed to join the
League of Nations in the start, and Great Powers such as USA didn’t join it. Russia
was also not allowed to join as in 1917, it had a communist government. The
League of Nations was dominated by France and Britain.

Factors such as disarmament and severe punishment to Germany lead the rise of
leaders such as Hitler, who was against the League of Nations and wanted revenge
from Britain and France. Only Germany was disarmed, and its colonies were taken
away, reduced the number of army and artillery. If act of reducing or depriving of
arms was accepted by every country then maybe The League of Nations may have
succeeded. It’s a fact that in the Mukhdan incident League of Nations did nothing,
China appealed to League of Nations, but the commission arrived in China after
1yr. This shows that League of Nations was only concerned with Germany, and
wanted to Italy to be by there side against Germany.

On the other hand, being optimistic League of Nations did things to help the world,
for example, the incident in Turkey, it spent £10 million on building farms, homes
etc for the refugees. The League of Nations solved the Greece and Bulgaria border
issues. At a social level the League did have success and most of this is easily
forgotten with its failure at a political level. Many of the groups that work for the
United Nations now grew out of what was established by the League. Teams were
sent to the Third World to dig fresh water wells, the Health Organization started a
campaign to wipe out leprosy. The greatest success the League had involving these
social issues, was simply informing the world at large that these problems did exist
and that they should be tackled. No organization had done this before the League.
These social problems may have continued but the fact that they were now being
actively investigated by the League and were then taken onboard by the United
Nations must be viewed as a success.

In my opinion, if balance of power would have kept, aggression against Germany

was not shown by the two major powers France and Britain, Germany was not
treated harshly, and lust of power was not kept in mind, but the main fact was kept
that to keep peace in the world and avoid war, and if USA would have joined the
League, then maybe the League of Nations must have succeeded.
Bibliography
Books-
Brownlie's Principles of Public International Law- Ninth Edition
ISBN: 9780198737445

Articles-

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/league-of-nations