The League of Nations

Notes

By Karl J. Schmidt

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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).
25. The Senate ratified a separate peace treaty officially ending the war with Germany in July 1921. For a discussion of the nature of Senate opposition to the League, see Ralph Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973).
26. See Peter Yearwood, "�On the Safe and Right Lines�: The Lloyd George Government and the Origins of the League of Nations, 1916-1918," The Historical Journal 32, no. 1 (1989), 131-55.
27. Stanley Baldwin, First Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, 1867-1947; parliamentary private secretary to Bonar Law, 1916-17; joint financial secretary to Treasury, 1917-21; president of the Board of Trade, 1921-22; chancellor of the Exchequer, 1922-23; prime minister, May 1923-Jan. 1924, Nov. 1924-June 1929, and again, 1935-37.
28. George Nathaniel Curzon, Marquess Curzon of Keddleston, 1859-1925; MP, 1886-92; under-secretary, India Office, 1891; parliamentary under-secretary for foreign affairs, 1895-98; viceroy of India, 1899-1905; lord privy seal, 1915; war cabinet member, 1916-18; foreign secretary, 1919-24.
29. See Arnold Wolfers, Britain and France between Two Wars: Conflicting Strategies of Peace from Versailles to World War II (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 321-30.
30. Ibid., 29-32.
31. In fact, the Japanese delegation each year was quite large, often much larger than that of many of the European countries represented. As Walters recounts, "the Japanese delegation was so numerous that a ship had to be specifically chartered to bring it to Europe." See F. P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 116. For a contemporary analysis of Japan's involvement in the League to 1929, see Masatoshi Matsushita, Japan in the League of Nations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929).
32. See James Barros, The Aaland Islands Question: Its Settlement by the League of Nations (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1968).
33. See James Barros, The League of Nations and the Great Powers: The Greek-Bulgarian Incident of 1925 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970).
34. The Corfu Crisis is a prime early example of the Council's unwillingness to coerce one of the great powers. In 1923, Mussolini precipitated the crisis after he ordered the bombing of the Greek Island of Corfu in retaliation for the murder of General Tellini. Tellini was an Italian member of the Delimitation Commission which was attempting to delimit the boundary between Albania and Greece. Rather than deal with the crisis itself, the League Council opted to allow the Conference of Ambassadors, an organization established by the allies in 1919 to deal with problems arising out of the peace treaties, to settle the dispute. Even though Greek responsibility for the murder was never established and despite the fact that Italy had designs on Greek territory and used Corfu as a mere pretext, the Conference settled the dispute to Mussolini's satisfaction. The way in which the League Council dealt with Corfu, and future problems involving great power confrontation, became its leitmotif. See James Barros, The Corfu Incident of 1923: Mussolini and the League of Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965).
35. Scholarly literature on the Manchurian Crisis is large, but the best and most comprehensive analysis of the crisis remains Christopher Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931-1933 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972). I have drawn on this work for the following discussion.
36. The long delay in constituting the commission was compounded by the time-consuming route it took to Manchuria. Rather than take the most expeditious�but probably least comfortable�route, via the Trans-Siberian Railway, as the Chinese had hoped it would, the commission instead traveled westward from Europe by ship. After arriving in East Asia, the commission first spent time in Japan and then in Shanghai and Nanking, before finally visiting Manchuria. Walters, History of the League of Nations, 483.
37. The task facing the commission was difficult and the environment strenuous. In a letter to his wife one week after he arrived in Mukden, Lord Lytton described the conditions there: "The behaviour of the Japanese military here is really absolutely incredible. I shall be very glad to get out of the country." If Lytton was disturbed by what he saw, he was also frustrated. Two months later, he told his wife that he had "no hope of persuading the Japs to give up wanting to dominate Manchuria" and prophetically feared that "if they take Manchuria away...it will prove the frame of their empire in the long run." See Lord Lytton to Lady Lytton, 28 April and 23 June 1932, File Box "Manchuria," Lytton Papers, Collection of Lady Hermione Cobbold, Lake House, Knebworth, United Kingdom.
38. See U.S. Department of State, Manchuria: Report of the Commission of Inquiry appointed by the League of Nations (Washington, DC: G.P.O., 1932). The complete text of the report, including notes by the secretariat, and maps, is in League document C.663.M.320.1932.VII.
39. Italian designs on Abyssinia predated Mussolini's dictatorship. Abyssinian troops had successfully defended against an earlier Italian invasion in 1896. Two good works on the history of the Abyssinian affair are: Frank Hardie, The Abyssinian Crisis (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1974) and Anthony Mockler, Haile Selassie's War (London: Oxford University Press, 1984).
40. Indeed, recent events proved that Mussolini was still opposed to Hitler. After Austrian Nazis assassinated their country's chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, in July 1934, Mussolini despatched four divisions of troops to the Austrian border to forestall a Nazi takeover of the country.
41. For an analysis of the British government's views of the crisis, see George W. Baer, The Coming of the Italian-Ethiopian War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 172-210; the French government's views and policies can be found in Franklin D. Laurens, France and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, 1935-1936 (The Hague: Mouton, 1967).
42. Laval later served as premier of the Vichy government (1942-44). His institution of forced labor and other repressive measures in France led to his trial for treason and subsequent execution.
43. In the early summer of 1935, a "Peace Ballot," sponsored by the British League of Nations Union and organized by Lord Cecil, was distributed to voters throughout Great Britain soliciting their opinions regarding British membership of the League, including the use of economic and military sanctions against aggressor nations. Seventy percent of the nearly ten million people polled voted in favor of combined economic and, if necessary, military sanctions, to restrain an aggressor.
44. Walters, History of the League of Nations, 642-45.
45. Quoted in Henig, League of Nations, 128.