League of Nations History

League of Nations History

The founding of the League of Nations in 1919 marked a radical departure from previous methods of diplomacy. Prior to August 1914, traditional diplomacy, or, as it was often called after the First World War, “Old Diplomacy,” was a system of intercourse between the governments of sovereign states. This system relied exclusively on the exchange of ambassadors or ministers charged by their respective governments with the twin tasks of acting as both informants and intermediaries. As an informant, the ambassador or minister acted as the “man on the spot,” keeping his government apprised of the internal conditions of the country in which he was stationed. As an intermediary, the ambassador or minister acted to present the views and interests of his own government to that of his hosts, as well as to encourage amicable relations between the host government and his own. A good ambassador or minister was one who, aided by his embassy staff, discharged both of these tasks with a high degree of success.

The old diplomatic system had both its merits and its failings. For each state, it was clearly advantageous to have diplomatic representatives in as many foreign capitals as possible in order to have as broad an understanding of the countries with which one interacted. The old system, because it was based, in part, on decentralization, fostered that broad understanding. Diplomats of the traditional school were also well springs of useful information, borne of first-hand experience and a mastery of the subtle art of negotiation.

The failings of the old system were manifestations of its conservative nature. In the prewar period, governments still drew diplomats from the aristocratic elite, despite the rather dramatic changes in the form of many governments over the course of the nineteenth century, i.e., the development of modern democracy. If the task at hand was to foster understanding between different peoples, then the continued reliance on diplomats selected not on the basis of merit, but rather on status at birth, tended to skew that understanding and produce undesirable results. Even as the issues confronting diplomats became increasingly complex and specialized, their training, either formal, or, as was more often the case, informal, did not keep pace. Most diplomats were probably well-read, but they were probably also unlikely to have a firm understanding of the complexities of international economics or other global issues of a multifarious character. Another drawback of traditional diplomacy’s conservative nature was that it made the pursuit of a country’s short-term national interests paramount over global interests, even when concern for the global community could be of demonstrable benefit for the individual nation, but perhaps only in the long-term. Finally, two other elements of traditional diplomacy made its conduct hazardous: its secrecy, which often left countries not privy to those secrets dangerously unclear as to the intentions of their neighbors, and the use of war as a form of Clausewitzian persuasion, an option realistically available only to the most powerful countries, i.e., the great powers.[1]

The horror of the Great War led some to reevaluate, and, indeed, openly criticize, the conduct of the Old Diplomacy, especially its secrecy, the threat and use of war for national gain, and its ineffectiveness in dealing with issues of more than a bilateral nature. The First World War became, in essence, the matrix of a “New Diplomacy.” As a system, the New Diplomacy promoted arbitration and collective security as the surest means of avoiding future armed conflict. It emphasized open cooperation between nations to resolve global political, economic, social, humanitarian, and technical problems. Above all, the foundation of the New Diplomacy rested upon the need for greater international organization, a need epitomized by the creation of the League of Nations.[2]

Despite their perceived novelty, the concepts which underpinned the New Diplomacy were not new. The element of collective security, for example, can be seen in the Quadruple Alliance, or “Concert of Europe,” formed by Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia after the final defeat of France in 1815. Although it later collapsed, the Alliance was intended to preserve the peace and status quo in Europe through the collective action of its members, and did initiate the use of conferences convened to deal with important international political issues. These conferences met periodically throughout the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth.[3]

Although smaller powers often attended these conferences, they soon found that they had little capacity to persuade their more powerful neighbors; the conference system was dominated by the great powers of Europe. In 1899 and 1907, however, two international conferences were held at the Hague which dramatically changed the course of international diplomacy. Critics charged that the Hague conferences were a failure because they did not accomplish all that was promised. These criticisms, while valid, nevertheless overlooked the fact that the conferences did achieve a level of universality hitherto unknown (representatives of forty-four countries attended the 1907 conference, including most of the Latin American republics), and paved the way not only for increased international cooperation to maintain peace and security, but for a general reorganization of the international state system.[4]

Implementation of the “Hague System” was prevented by the war, but some of its elements can be seen in the League of Nations.

After the outbreak of war in 1914, there was some public support in many countries, but particularly in the United States and in Great Britain, for the creation of some type of international machinery that would prevent future wars. In the United States, a group of prominent public leaders, including William Howard Taft, founded the League to Enforce Peace in 1915. The League to Enforce Peace pressed for the submission of future international disputes to arbitration, and for sanctions to be applied against those countries who refused to submit their disputes to pacific settlement.[5] Concerned citizens established similar organizations in Great Britain, like the League of Nations Society, and the League interest group of the Fabians. With the notable exception of the Fabians, most pro-League groups did not propose a large, formal, and continuously-functioning international organization as the League of Nations would later become, but rather only sufficient institutional machinery to settle international crises before the parties in conflict resorted to war. For these groups, arbitration was the most important function of any League scheme, and its implementation, they argued, should be based on the models proposed during the Hague Conferences. Their approach was almost wholly legalistic and focused on “justiciable,” i.e., court-triable, issues, patently overlooking—or perhaps simply ignoring—the fact that many disputes between countries did not lend themselves to a courtroom settlement.

The Fabians, on the other hand, proposed an entirely different kind of institution. What they advocated was a new world order. While much of what they advanced proved unworkable, two elements of the Fabian scheme were of lasting significance. First, the Fabians argued that “non-justiciable” disputes should be settled by a “Council” of states, which, because of their inherent influence, would be dominated by the great powers. They, in turn, would share the greatest responsibility for maintaining the peace. Second, Fabians advocated the establishment of a permanent international secretariat, modeled on that of the International Postal Union, which would be charged with coordinating international activities.[6]

While the various pro-League groups debated their unofficial schemes, the British government took it upon itself to inject into the debate the first official scheme for a League of Nations.[7] In early 1918, Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary, acting on the earlier advice of Lord Robert Cecil[8], appointed a “Committee on the League of Nations” to study the feasibility of creating such an institution and to make appropriate recommendations. Better known as the Phillimore Commission, after its chairman, Sir (later, Lord) Walter Phillimore, a distinguished jurist, its members issued a report in March 1918. The Phillimore Plan suggested the establishment of a “Conference of Allied States” whose members agreed not to go to war with one another without first submitting the dispute in question to arbitration. Once the arbiter, either the Conference or some other body, agreed on a recommended settlement, the party or parties to the dispute were to agree not to attack any state which complied with those recommendations. Any state which resorted to war, seeking further satisfaction beyond that provided in the final recommendation, would automatically be at war with the other Conference members. They, in turn, would respond by imposing sanctions—economic or military—on the offending state to compel compliance.[9]

Although much of the Phillimore Plan was later incorporated into Articles 12-17 of the League of Nations Covenant (see Appendix 1), the Plan contained two major defects. One defect lay in the fact that it did not provide for a means of resolving a dispute where the arbiter or Conference came to no agreement on recommendations. The other defect was that the Plan did not contain provisions for collectively punishing a state which, if found to be the party at fault, refused to abide by a settlement recommendation. In the latter case, the Commission “felt a doubt whether States would contract to do this, and still greater doubt whether, when the time came, they would fulfill their contract.”[10] The British cabinet approved the Phillimore Report, but at Wilson’s request, declined to formally endorse it.[11]

In early June 1918, the French government submitted a draft proposal on the League of Nations. The French advocated the establishment of an “International Council” consisting of representatives from member states. The Council was to meet annually and settle non-justiciable disputes, aided in its tasks by a permanent administrative committee. Justiciable disputes were to be heard by an “International Tribunal.” Enforcement of settlements, if required, was to be the responsibility of an international army directed by the League. Clearly, the French championed a much stronger League of Nations than that proposed earlier by the British. In a note to Lord Balfour, dated 9 August 1918, the Phillimore Commission, in reviewing the French proposals, commented that they went “beyond what we have been prepared to recommend.”[12]

After Woodrow Wilson received the draft Phillimore Plan, he instructed his close advisor and friend, Col. Edward House[13], to draft a U.S. plan which incorporated Wilson’s views on the subject of the League as well as those expressed by the Phillimore Commission. Some portions of House’s draft even today seem idealistic. He suggested, for example, that relations between states be strictly on honorable terms: dishonesty, espionage, and other forms of unethical behavior were all to be shunned.[14]

Wilson’s first draft borrowed heavily from House’s draft, although he proposed much more explicit use of force than did House to compel states to abide by the League’s decisions. This compulsion included “blockading and closing the frontiers of that power to commerce or intercourse with any part of the world and to use any force that may be necessary…”[15]

Meanwhile, Jan Smuts[16] and Lord Robert Cecil had both made several formal, yet practical, suggestions regarding the structure of the League. Smuts, for example, proposed that the League’s Council should consist of the great powers (the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and, later, Germany) as permanent members, while other powers and minor states would be represented on a non-permanent basis. Smuts also elaborated on the disposition of Mandates—former territories of the Central Powers administered under the League’s auspices. For his part, Lord Cecil’s proposals were concerned primarily with the organization of the League. He proposed that the Council meet annually, while the other members would meet only quadrennially. He argued that a permanent secretariat was necessary for the efficient functioning of the League and that the new organization should have a permanent meeting place.[17]

After his arrival in Paris in January 1919, Woodrow Wilson prepared a second draft plan for the League of Nations. Lord Cecil also prepared a revised version of his earlier draft. By the time the Paris Peace Conference officially convened on 18 January, therefore, the proposals for the League of Nations had undergone several significant revisions from those originally put forth by the Phillimore Commission. The necessary task of integrating the various League proposals had yet to be completed. U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, assigned that responsibility to David Hunter Miller, a legal adviser attached to the U.S. peace delegation. Miller carried on lengthy discussions with the many parties involved, most especially with Lord Cecil, in anticipation of the first meeting of the League of Nations Commission at the peace conference. After several additional drafts and alterations, Miller, in collaboration with Cecil Hurst, his counterpart on the British delegation, produced a version of the Covenant of the League of Nations known as Hurst-Miller Draft. This draft formed the basis of discussion at the first meeting of the League Commission, held on 3 February.

The League of Nations Commission’s first draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations took only ten days to complete, but those ten days bore witness to much spirited discussion among the Commission’s members—discussion which occasionally flared into acrimonious debate. The final Covenant, which the Peace Conference adopted on 28 April 1919, reflected the compromises made between the Commission’s members. Many of those compromises crippled the organization from the very beginning. Chief among those was the discrepancy between Articles 5 and 10 of the Covenant. Article 10 provided the pledge—at Wilson’s insistence—that the League would collectively preserve “the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members” and that the Council would make recommendations on how that pledge would be fulfilled. Article 5, which dealt with voting procedure, provided that decisions by the Council required unanimity among the members in attendance. While under ordinary circumstances it seemed appropriate that Council members should unanimously agree on punitive action against aggressors, what the Commission members failed to foresee in 1919 was that if one of the Council members themselves committed an aggression, it could successfully veto any League action against it.[18]

This issue became all the more important not only because this particular flaw in the Covenant prevented change in territorial boundaries from occurring peacefully, but also because some members of the League, e.g., France and Poland, who had benefitted from the new status quo imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, were determined to prevent any subsequent changes to it.

&On 10 January 1920, the Treaty of Versailles became a legally-binding international settlement and the League Covenant began operating. Sir Eric Drummond, a former official with the British Foreign Office, became the League’s first secretary-general as provided for in the Covenant. In addition to his own position, the Secretariat consisted of two deputy secretaries-general, three under secretaries-general—each a national of a different country. Below the under secretaries in rank was the legal advisor, and thirteen section directors, each of whom headed up an office responsible for one of the many different tasks as outlined by the Covenant.[19] What Drummond established and cultivated over his fourteen years as secretary-general (1919-1933)[20], was an efficient international civil service of some 675 men and women, designed to serve the needs of the League’s two other main organs, the Council and the Assembly.

The Council, which was obligated to meet at least once a year, but always met more frequently, consisted originally of nine members: the five great powers, who held permanent seats, and four temporary members, Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and Spain. After the United States abandoned the League (see p. 16), the Council consisted of only eight members, the four remaining great powers and the four small powers. In 1922, the Assembly voted to add two additional small powers to the Council, increasing its size to ten. In 1926, the Assembly again voted to increase to the Council, this time to fourteen members, primarily because of the controversy surrounding Germany’s admission.[21]After 1922, the small powers always enjoyed a majority on the Council.

The Council, in many ways the executive body of the League, was broadly empowered by the Covenant to “deal at its meetings with any matter within the sphere of action of the League or affecting the peace of the world” (Article 4). In practice, its main function was to oversee the work of the League, especially as that work related to international peace and security, although as the League grew and took on more tasks, so, too, did the Council. Since it met more frequently than did the Assembly, the Council also supervised the work of the various functional institutions of the League, among them the Economic and Financial organizations, the Health Organization, the Permanent Mandates Commission, the Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, and the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery (see Figure 1.1). The League established these institutions within its first three years in fulfillment of Article 23 of the Covenant. The work they performed represented the League’s unheralded successes.[22]

Of the three main organs of the League, the Assembly was by far the most important. Every member of the League was represented in the Assembly, which met each year for a month beginning on the first Monday in September (except for the first session, which met in November 1920). Member countries were each allowed to send three full representatives or delegates. As the work of the League grew in complexity, the Assembly voted to allow each member to send additional personnel to Geneva to serve as substitute delegates. These individuals helped lighten the workload of the full delegates, thus contributing to greater efficiency among the many delegations.[23] At the opening of each session, the Assembly elected a president and six vice-presidents, and then distributed that year’s work among its six committees according to subject.

The First Committee dealt with legal and constitutional questions, the Second with the technical organizations of the League, the Third with the reduction of armaments, the Fourth with budget and financial questions, the Fifth with social and general questions, and, lastly, the Sixth Committee dealt with political questions. Each of the six committees was chaired by one of the Assembly’s vice-presidents, and each delegation was allowed representation. Although the plenary Assembly received a great deal of attention from the press and the public, the real work of the Assembly was undertaken in the committees, and its attendant subcommittees. At the end of each year’s session, the Assembly passed resolutions on the work that it desired to be done in the coming year, and the Council—aided by the Secretariat—was then given the responsibility of seeing the work to fruition. [24]

(Source: Karl J. Schmidt)

Resources

Notes

1. Alfred Zimmern, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law, 1918-1935(London: Macmillan, 1936), 13-22.
2. The first synthetic statement of the New Diplomacy came from a London-based peace organization called the Union of Democratic Control, founded in 1914. One of the UDC’s members, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, coined the expression “League of Nations” that same year. See Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 36-7.
3. Among the more important were: the Congress of Paris (1856), which met to end the Crimean War; the Berlin Congress (1878), which convened to settle disputes after the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78); the Berlin Conferences (1884-85), which settled conflicting colonial claims in central Africa; the Algeciras Conference (1906), which assembled to resolve the Moroccan Crisis; and the London Conference of 1912-13, which resulted in a treaty ending the First Balkan War.
4. Delegates of twenty-six countries at the First Hague Conference (May 18-July 29, 1899), called by Russia, did not come to agreement on arms control, but did establish the Hague Tribunal (Permanent Court of Arbitration). It also banned the use of poison gas, expanding (“dumdum”) bullets, and aerial bombardment from balloons. The Second Hague Conference (June 15-October 18, 1907), also convened by Russia, again came to no agreement regarding arms control, but reached accord on neutral shipping rights, and on land and sea warfare conventions. It also banned the use of submarine mines.
5. For a history of wartime thought on a league of nations by one of its most ardent supporters, see Theodore Marburg, Development of the League of Nations Idea (New York: Macmillan, 1932).
6. For a detailed account of Fabian thought on the League of Nations, see Leonard Woolf, International Government (New York: Brentano’s, 1916).
7. Although Woodrow Wilson is often viewed as the sole “father” of the League of Nations, especially by U.S. historians, he was not the first to propose its creation officially, but instead elaborated on, and added to, ideas propounded on the subject by others. Even his famous Fourteen Points—some of which were incorporated into the League Covenant—were only the barest outline of what the League later comprised, and did not represent a functional organizational scheme, even in part. Wilson was, however, the League’s most impassioned official champion.
8. Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, 1864-1958; conservative MP, 1906-10; independent MP, 1911-23; parliamentary under-secretary for foreign affairs, 1915-18; minister of blockade, 1916-18; assistant secretary of state for foreign affairs, 1918-19; delegate for South Africa at League Assemblies, 1920-23; lord privy seal, 1923; chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, 1924-27; president, British League of Nations Union, 1923-45; organized peace ballot, 1934-35; Nobel peace prize, 1937.
9. For the full text of the Phillimore Plan, see David Hunter Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928), vol. 2, document 1, 3-6.
10. Quoted in Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 1, 5.
11. Ruth B. Henig, ed., The League of Nations (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1973), 7. Wilson had not yet formally drafted his own proposals for the League, and therefore did not want the British plan to become the sole basis for discussion.
12. Quoted in Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 1, 12.
13. Edward Mandell House, 1858-1938; active in U.S. Democratic party, but never ran for office; Wilson’s personal representative in Europe, 1914-18; United States peace commissioner, Versailles, 1918-19.
14. For the full text of the House draft, see Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 2, document 2, 7-11.
15. Wilson’s first draft, Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 2, document 3, 14.
16. Jan Christian Smuts, 1870-1950; colonial secretary and minister of education under Louis Botha, Transvaal, 1907-10; minister of defense, Union government, 1910-19; prime minister, South Africa, 1919-24; deputy prime minister, 1933-39; prime minister, 1939-48.
17. For the full texts of the Smuts and Cecil proposals, see Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 2, documents 5 and 6, 23-64.
18. Cecil’s draft of 14 January 1919 provided that voting on any League resolution would exclude the “litigants” in the dispute. Inexplicably, this proviso was later dropped. See Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 2, document 6, 63.
19. The Sections were: Central, Communications and Transit, Disarmament, Economic Relations, Financial and Economic Intelligence, Health, Information, International Bureaus and Intellectual Cooperation, Legal, Mandates, Minorities, Opium Traffic and Social Questions, Political, and Treasury.
20. Drummond was succeeded in 1933 by his French deputy under-secretary, Joseph Avenol, who served until 1940. The last secretary-general of the League of Nations was Sean Lester, who served from 1940 until 1946. For biographies of Sir Eric Drummond and Joseph Avenol, see James Barros’s twin biographies, Office Without Power: Secretary-General Sir Eric Drummond, 1919-1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), and Betrayal from Within: Joseph Avenol, Secretary-General of the League of Nations, 1933-1940 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969).
21. Germany was admitted as a member in 1926, the year after its representatives signed the Locarno Pacts. An “understanding” between Germany, Great Britain, and France, that upon its admission Germany would receive a permanent seat on the Council, caused consternation among some of the temporary members of the Council who sought permanent seats of their own, e.g., Brazil, Poland, and Spain. In the end, Brazil and Spain resigned from the League in protest over having been refused permanent seats. Poland’s government backed away from its demands and Poland was reelected to a temporary seat on the Council. See D. Carlton, “Britain and the League Council Crisis of 1926,” Historical Journal (1968): 37-46.
22. Most historians, and indeed, even those who specialize in the work of the League, ignore the unglamorous, uncontroversial, but highly successful, work of the League’s functional institutions. They prefer to focus only on the League’s failings in the area of collective security, thus keeping alive Sir John Seeley’s myopic view that history is only “past politics.”
23. Delegations came from all over the globe to attend the annual meetings in Geneva. Most arrived in Europe by ship, while some traveled overland. And while in any given year, most of the delegations experienced no mishaps, the journey to Geneva was not without its hazards. In 1920, for example, while on their way to Geneva, the Persian delegate and his party were attacked by bandits. In the process, the delegation’s secretary was killed. Charles Noble Gregory, “The First Assembly of the League of Nations,” American Journal of International Law 15 (1921): 240-41.
24. For a detailed account of the Assembly and its functions, see Margaret E. Burton, The Assembly of the League of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941; reprinted, New York: Howard Fertig, 1974).


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