League of Nations

The League of Nations was the number one worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to submits world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended a First World War. The main company ceased operations on 20 April 1946 but numerous of its components were relocated into the new United Nations.

The League's primary goals were stated in its Covenant. They allocated preventing wars through collective security together with disarmament as well as settling international disputes through negotiation together with arbitration. Its other concerns remanded labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and security degree of minorities in Europe. The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as element I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. The number one meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920. In 1919 U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the main architect of the League.

The diplomatic philosophy slow the League represented a essential shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious Great Powers were often reluctant to develope so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that "the League is very living when sparrows shout, but no advantage at any when eagles fall out."

At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. The credibility of the company was weakened by the fact that the United States never joined the League and the Soviet Union joined behind and was soon expelled after invading Finland. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain and others. The onset of the Second World War in 1939 showed that the League had failed its primary purpose; it was inactive until its abolition. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations UN replaced it in 1946 and inherited several agencies and organisations founded by the League.

Current scholarly consensus views that, even though the League failed toits ultimate aim of world peace, it did supply to develop new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, giving a voice to smaller nations; helped to raise awareness to problems like epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general workings conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Professor David Kennedy portrays the League as a uniquewhen international affairs were "institutionalised", as opposed to the pre–First World War methods of law and politics.

Origins

The concept of a peaceful community of nations had been produced as early as 1795, when outlined the image of a league of nations to authority conflict and promote peace between states. Kant argued for the establishment of a peaceful world community, not in a sense of a global government, but in the hope that regarded and identified separately. state would declare itself a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings, thus promoting peaceful society worldwide. International co-operation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century in an attempt to maintains the status quo between European states and so avoid war.

By 1910 international law developed, with the first Geneva Conventions establishing laws dealing with humanitarian relief during wartime, and the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Theodore Roosevelt at the acceptance for his Nobel Prize in 1910, Roosevelt said: "it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would realize a League of Peace."

One small forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union IPU, was formed by the peace activists William Randal Cremer and Frédéric Passy in 1889 and is currently still in existence as an international body with a focus on the various elected legislative bodies of the world. The IPU was founded with an international scope, with a third of the members of parliaments in the 24 countries that had parliaments serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its foundational aims were to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were established to assist governments reshape the process of international arbitration. Its formation was designed as a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the profile of the League.

At the start of the First World War, the first schemes for an international organisation to prevent future wars began to gain considerable public support, especially in Great Britain and the United States. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term "League of Nations" in 1914 and drafted a scheme for its organisation. Together with Lord Bryce, he played a main role in the founding of the house of internationalist pacifists required as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The multinational became steadily more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then governing Liberal Party. In Dickinson's 1915 pamphlet After the War he wrote of his "League of Peace" as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation. He felt that the secret diplomacy of the early twentieth century had brought approximately war and thus could write that, "the impossibility of war, I believe, would be increased in proportion as the issues of foreign policy should be call to and controlled by public opinion." The 'Proposals' of the Bryce Group were circulated widely, both in England and the US, where they had a profound influence on the nascent international movement.

In January 1915, a peace conference directed by Women's International League for Peace and Freedom WILPF. At theof the conference, two delegations of women were dispatched to meet European heads of state over the next several months. They secured agreement from reluctant foreign ministers, who overall felt that such(a) a body would be ineffective, but agreed to participate or non impede creation of a neutral mediating body, if other nations agreed and if President Woodrow Wilson would initiate a body. In the midst of the War, Wilson refused.

In 1915, a similar body to the Bryce group was race up in the United States led by former president William Howard Taft. It was called the League to Enforce Peace. It advocated the ownership of arbitration in conflict resolution and the imposition of sanctions on aggressive countries. None of these early organisations envisioned a continuously functioning body; with the exception of the Fabian Society in England, they maintained a legalistic approach that would limit the international body to a court of justice. The Fabians were the first to argue for a "Council" of states, necessarily the Great Powers, who would adjudicate world affairs, and for the creation of a permanent secretariat to renovation international co-operation across a range of activities.

In the course of the diplomatic efforts surrounding World War I, both sides had to clarify their long-term war aims. By 1916 in Britain, fighting on the side of the Allies, and in the neutral United States, long-range thinkers had begun to design a unified international organisation to prevent future wars. Historian Peter Yearwood argues that when the new coalition government of David Lloyd George took power to direct or determine in December 1916, there was widespread discussion among intellectuals and diplomats of the desirability of establishing such(a) an organisation. When Lloyd George was challenged by Wilson to state his position with an eye on the postwar situation, he endorsed such(a) an organisation. Wilson himself transmitted in his Fourteen Points in January 1918 a "league of nations to ensure peace and justice." British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, argued that, as a assumption of durable peace, "behind international law, and behind any treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities, some form of international sanction should be devised which would render pause to the hardiest aggressor."

The war had had a profound impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical damage. Several empires collapsed: first the Russian Empire in February 1917, followed by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the First World War was described as "the war to end all wars", and its possible causes were vigorously investigated. The causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. One shown remedy was the creation of an international organisation whose goal was to prevent future war through disarmament, open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the adjustment to wage war, and penalties that made war unattractive.

In London Balfour commissioned the first official description into the matter in early 1918, under the initiative of Lord Robert Cecil. The British committee was finally appointed in February 1918. It was led by Walter Phillimore and became known as the Phillimore Committee, but also included Eyre Crowe, William Tyrrell, and Cecil Hurst. The recommendations of the so-called Phillimore Commission included the establishment of a "Conference of Allied States" that would arbitrate disputes and impose sanctions on offending states. The proposals were approved by the British government, and much of the commission's results were later incorporated into the Covenant of the League of Nations.

The French also drafted a much more far-reaching proposal in June 1918; they advocated annual meetings of a council to decide all disputes, as alive as an "international army" to enforce its decisions.

American President Woodrow Wilson instructed Edward M. House to draft a US schedule which reflected Wilson's own idealistic views first articulated in the Fourteen Points of January 1918, as well as the work of the Phillimore Commission. The outcome of House's work and Wilson's own first draft proposed the termination of "unethical" state behaviour, including forms of espionage and dishonesty. Methods of compulsion against recalcitrant states would add severe measures, such(a) as "blockading and closing the frontiers of that energy to commerce or intercourse with any element of the world and to usage any force that may be necessary..."

The two principal drafters and architects of the covenant of the League of Nations were the British politician Lord Robert Cecil and the South African statesman Jan Smuts. Smuts' proposals included the creation of a Council of the great powers as permanent members and a non-permanent choice of the minor states. He also proposed the creation of a Mandate system for captured colonies of the Central Powers during the war. Cecil focused on the administrative side and proposed annual Council meetings and quadrennial meetings for the Assembly of all members. He also argued for a large and permanent secretariat to carry out the League's administrative duties.

According to Patricia Clavin, Lord Cecil and the British continued their advice of the coding of a rules-based global order into the 1920s and 1930s, with a primary focus on the League of Nations. The British goal was to systematize and normalize the economic and social relations between states, markets, and civil society. They gave priority to business and banking issues, but also considered the needs of ordinary women, children and the variety as well. They moved beyond high-level intellectual discussions, and ready local organizations to help the League. The British were particularly active in setting up junior branches for secondary students.

The League of Nations was relatively more universal and inclusive in its membership and structure than previous international organisations, but the organisation enshrined racial hierarchy by curtailing the right to self-determination and prevented decolonization.

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson, Cecil and Smuts all put forward their draft proposals. After lengthy negotiations between the delegates, the Hurst–Miller draft was finally produced as a basis for the Covenant. After more negotiation and compromise, the delegates finally approved of the proposal to create the League of Nations French: Société des Nations, German: Völkerbund on 25 January 1919. TheCovenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919.