The League of Nations: Objectives, Organs and Record

1An emperor at the rostrum

On 30 June 1936 Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia (then often called Abyssinia), stood before the Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva. Italian armies had invaded his country in October 1935 and taken its capital in May 1936. He had come to remind the League of its promise: that its members would act together against any aggressor. Look at the photograph and ask what the scene suggests about who held power in that hall.

2Objectives

• Keep peace through collective security and the peaceful settlement of disputes.
• Encourage disarmament.
• Improve living and working conditions, health and the welfare of refugees.
• Supervise the mandates, the former German and Ottoman territories such as Ruanda-Urundi.

3Organs

Figure 1. How the League was organised and what it could do. The dashed box shows its great weakness: force depended on members lending their own armies.

4The record: successes and failures

Away from great-power crises the League did lasting work. Its refugee office under Fridtjof Nansen issued "Nansen passports" to stateless refugees, its Health Organisation fought epidemics, and its Slavery Commission led to the Slavery Convention of 1926. Many of these agencies passed to the United Nations after 1945.

5Why it failed to keep the peace

• Missing members: the United States never joined; Germany joined only in 1926 and the USSR only in 1934; Japan, Germany and Italy left in the 1930s.
• Weak tools: no army; sanctions needed members willing to lose trade.
• Unanimity: decisions needed the agreement of all, so action was slow or blocked.
• Self-interest of Britain and France: the two leading members put their own interests first, as when they offered Italy much of Ethiopia in the Hoare–Laval plan of December 1935.
• The Depression: hard times made states turn inward and aggressive regimes stronger.