League of Nations

The League of Nations was an international organization founded after the First World War at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The League's goals included disarmament; preventing war through collective security; settling disputes between countries through negotiation and diplomacy; and improving global welfare. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from the preceding hundred years. The old philosophy, growing out of the Congress of Vienna (1815), saw Europe as a shifting map of alliances among nation-states, creating an equilibrium of power maintained by strong armies and secret agreements. Under the new philosophy, the League was a government of governments, with the role of settling disputes between individual nations in an open and legalist forum. The impetus for the founding of the League came from Democratic U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, but, along with many other countries, the United States never joined the League of Nations.

Structure

The League had three principal organs: a secretariat (headed by the General Secretary and based in Geneva), a Council and an Assembly, and many Agencies and Commissions. Authorisation for any action required both a unanimous vote by the Council and a majority vote in the Assembly.

Related Topics:
Secretariat - General Secretary - Geneva

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Secretariat

The staff of the League's secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the civil service for the League.

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Over the life of the League from 1920–1946, the three Secretaries General were:

Related Topics:
1920 - 1946

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• Sir James Eric Drummond (U.K.) (1920–1933)
• Joseph Avenol (France) (1933–1940)
• Seán Lester (Ireland) (1940–1946)

The General Secretary wrote annual reports on the work of the League.

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Council

The League Council had the authority to deal with any matter affecting world peace. The Council began with four permanent members (the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Japan), and four non-permanent members elected by the Assembly every three years. Subsequently, the composition and the number of members of the Council were changed as Germany was added as a permanent member and the number of non-permanent members was increased to nine for a total of fifteen members. The United States was originally to be the fifth permanent member; however, it never joined the League, as a result of the Republican Party's Congressional election gains in 1918.

Related Topics:
World peace - United Kingdom - France - Italy - Japan - Germany - United States - Republican Party's

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The Council met in ordinary sessions four times a year, and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 public sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.

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Assembly

Each member was represented and had one vote in the League Assembly. Individual member states did not always have representatives in Geneva. The Assembly held its sessions once a year in September.

Related Topics:
Geneva - September

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Eamon de Valera was the President of the Council of the League of Nations at its 68th and Special Sessions in September and October 1932, and President of the Assembly of the League of Nations in 1938. C.J. Hambro was President in 1939 and 1946.

Related Topics:
Eamon de Valera - 1932 - 1938 - C.J. Hambro - 1939 - 1946

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Other bodies

The League oversaw the Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems. These were the Disarmament Commission, the Health Organisation, the International Labour Organization, the Mandates Commission, the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission for Refugees, and the Slavery Commission. While the League itself is generally branded a failure, several of its Agencies and Commissions had successes within their respective mandates.

Related Topics:
Permanent Court of International Justice - Disarmament - Health Organisation - International Labour Organization - Mandates - Opium - Refugee - Slavery

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; Disarmament Commission : The Commission obtained initial agreement by France, Britain, Japan and Italy to limit the size of their navies. However, Britain refused to sign a 1923 disarmament treaty, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, facilitated by the commission in 1928, failed in its objective of outlawing war. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military buildup during the 1930s by Italy, Germany and Japan.

Related Topics:
Navies - 1923 - Kellogg-Briand Pact - 1928 - 1930s

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; Health Organisation : This body focused on ending leprosy and malaria, the latter by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health Organisation also succeeded in preventing an epidemic of typhus from spreading throughout Europe due to its early intervention in the Soviet Union.

Related Topics:
Leprosy - Malaria - Mosquito - Typhus - Soviet Union

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; Mandates Commission : The Commission supervised League of Nations Mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they would join, most notably the plebiscite in Saarland in 1935.

Related Topics:
Mandates - Plebiscite - Saarland - 1935

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; International Labour Organization : This body was led by Albert Thomas. It successfully banned the addition of lead to paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight-hour working week. It also worked to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liabile for accidents involving seamen.

Related Topics:
Albert Thomas - Lead - Paint - Eight-hour work day - Child labour - Rights of women - Shipowners

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; Permanent Central Opium Board : The Board was established to supervise the statistical control system introduced by the second International Opium Convention that mediated the production, manufacture, trade and retail of opium and its by-products. The Board also established a system of import certificates and export authorizations for the legal international trade in narcotics.

Related Topics:
International Opium Convention - Opium - International trade - Narcotic

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; Commission for Refugees : Led by Fridtjof Nansen, the Commission oversaw the repatriation and, when necessary the resettlement, of 400,000 refugees and ex-prisoners of war, most of whom were stranded in Russia at the end of World War I. It established camps in Turkey in 1922 to deal with a refugee crisis in that country and to help prevent disease and hunger. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless peoples.

Related Topics:
Fridtjof Nansen - Prisoners of war - Russia - Turkey - 1922 - Nansen passport - Stateless

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; Slavery Commission : The Commission sought to eradicate slavery from the world, and fought forced prostitution and drug trafficking, particularly in opium. It succeeded in gaining the emancipation of 200,000 slaves in Sierra Leone and organised raids against slave traders in its efforts to stop the practice of forced labour in Africa. It also succeeded in reducing the death rate of workers in Tanganyika from 55% to 4%. In other parts of the world, the Commission kept records on slavery, prostitution and drug trafficking in an attempt to monitor those issues.

Related Topics:
Prostitution - Drug trafficking - Sierra Leone - Africa - Tanganyika

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Several of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War. In addition to the International Labour Organisation, the Permanent Court of International Justice became a UN institution as the International Court of Justice, and the Health Organisation was restructured as the World Health Organisation.

Related Topics:
Second World War - International Court of Justice - World Health Organisation

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