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Provided for by the peace treaty of 1919 – the Treaty of Versailles – which brought the Great War to an end, the League of Nations was the first general international organization to be charged with the maintenance of peace. In this area it represented the breakthrough into the international society of the idea of collective security, suggesting that state practice on the fundamental issues of peace and war would in future proceed on a radically different basis from what had hitherto been orthodox. However, the League\'s Covenant also reflected the realism (sense 1) of its makers in that it did not try to embody a full- blown version of collective security. And the events leading to the Second World War showed that states did not feel able fully to honour even the Covenant\'s limited expression of the idea. Thus so far as its primary purpose is concerned, the League is often said to have failed. But it did not fail in this all the time, nor in respect of all its other purposes. And at the level of ideas the League undoubtedly reflected something in the nature of a revolution which, in the second half of the twentieth century, was to be confirmed and extended – notably by the United Nations.
The League came into being in 1920 with 42 members. Subsequently, 20 other states were admitted; 17 departed (as was their right); and one (the Soviet Union) was deemed to have been expelled. All members were represented (with one vote each) in the League Assembly, which immediately insisted on meeting annually, and gave rise to what later became known as multilateral (or parliamentary) diplomacy. The major victorious powers were permanent members of the League Council (except that the United States could not take its seat, as it failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles), and they were later added to; there were also some non-permanent (and, later, semi-permanent) Council members. The League was based in Geneva, Switzerland, where a truly international secretariat was established for the first time. A splendid building was eventually constructed there as the League\'s headquarters and meeting place, which was ready for occupation in the late 1930s just when the League was fast going downhill. (It is now the UN\'s Geneva Office.) The League was formally wound up in 1946.
The League was responsible for the supervision of the mandate system; was given certain protective tasks in respect of minorities; acted as the governing authority of two territories which were subject to temporary internationalization; engaged in much work of a ‘technical’ kind; sponsored a number of ‘auxiliary’ organizations (some of which were the forerunners of the UN\'s specialized agencies); and had a close relationship with the Permanent Court of International Justice. See also Briand-Kellogg Pact. |
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