Account for the successes and failures of the League of Nations.
In order to ascertain what the successes and failures of the League of Nations were, and account for them, I intend both to look at the structure of the League of Nations and to look toward the involvement of the League of Nations in World events and discuss what the successes and failures were.
On the eighth of January 1918, the President of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson, in his message on the Conditions of Peace given at a joint session of the two houses of the American Congress, identified the "fourteen points" intended to serve as the basis for World peace. He stated in his fourteenth point that "a general association of nations should be formed on the basis of covenants designed to create mutual guarantees of the political independence and territorial integrity of States, large and small equally."1
English: Photograph of the Big Four at the Paris p...
The League of Nations: A Pictorial Summary, Geneva...
English: Reading the Draft Covenant for the League...As a consequence, the Paris Peace Conference (January 18th 1919 - January 16th 1920) accepted the proposals for the creation of a League of Nations. On January the 27th, a committee was elected to draught a Covenant. By April the 18th, the Peace Conference unanimously adopted the draft Covenant on the motion of President Wilson. The Covenant consisted of 26 articles which the "contracting parties"2 agreed to, in "order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security"3. These articles became operating rules for the League, and the covenant also became part of the Treaty of Versailles which ended the First World War in 1919. As the end of the First World War, known at the time as "the Great War"4, was thought to be "the war to end all wars"5. With a total of 8,538,315 6 deaths as a direct result of...