The League of Nations and the Organization of Peace

Martyn Housden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317862215
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The League of Nations - pre-cursor to the United Nations - was founded in 1919 as a response to the First World War to ensure collective security and prevent the outbreak of future wars. It was set up to facilitate diplomacy in the face of future international conflict, but also to work towards eradicating the very causes of war by promoting social and economic justice. The philosophy behind much of the League's fascinating and varied roles was to help create satisfied populations who would reject future threats to the peace of their world.

In this new volume for Seminar Studies, Martyn Housden sets out to balance the League's work in settling disputes, international security and disarmament with an analysis of its achievements in social and economic fields. He explores the individual contributions of founding members of the League, such as Fridtjof Nansen, Ludwik Rajchman, Rachel Crowdy, Robert Cecil and Jan Smuts, whose humanitarian work laid the foundations for the later successes of the United Nations in such areas as:

• the welfare of vulnerable people, especially prisoners of war and refugees
• dealing with epidemic diseases and promoting good health
• anti-drugs campaigns

Supported by previously unpublished documents and photographs, this book illustrates how an understanding of the League of Nations, its achievements and its ultimate failure to stop the Second World War, is central to our understanding of diplomacy and international relations in the Inter-War period.

Part 1

ANALYSIS

Introduction

Organising the Peace of the World

Despite only ever having a limited budget, the League of Nations became a massive, complicated organisation. Amongst other things, it sought to facilitate intellectual co-operation around the world, promoted good health globally, did its best to ensure freedom of transport wherever you wanted to go, helped provide the basis of international law, and (drawing on immense international expertise) tried to orchestrate a response to the Great Depression. In the first instance, however, it was a security organisation supposed to prevent anything like 1914 happening again.

One of the best-known phrases applied to the League of Nations is ‘collective security’. The words, apparently, were first used in 1924 by Czech statesman Eduard Bene#x0161; (1884–1948) while he was working on the Geneva Protocol (see Chapter 6). In particular Beneš was building on Article 8 of the Covenant of the League of Nations which committed the League’s members to ‘the enforcement by common action of international obligations’ (Archive 0.1). Other articles, from 10 to 18, explained the mechanisms by which this would be achieved, that is to say, by discussion, arbitration, economic persuasion and perhaps even military intervention. But one idea stood out in collective security: that the peacefully inclined members of the League of Nations would work together to stop war wherever it looked likely to occur.

Collective security: The idea is founded in the Covenant of the League of Nations, particularly the Articles between 8 and 18. It implies that the peaceful states of the world will combine their forces to counteract aggression wherever it might occur. Ways to do this include moral pressure, economic sanctions and even military intervention.

Covenant of the League of Nations: This was the blueprint of the League of Nations. It was part of the Treaty of Versailles, but was included in the other treaties ending the First World War.

Arbitration: The method of settling a dispute by negotiation, investigation and compromise rather than force. When faced with a quarrel between states, for instance, the Council of the League of Nations would set up committees to look at the situation in detail, would discuss the issues with representatives from the states involved and would make recommendations on how to proceed without recourse to war.

When conceived narrowly, therefore, ‘collective security’ included the following elements:

• public debate in the Council and the Assembly of actions carried out by statesmen;

• arbitration of disputes organised by the Council of the League;

• economic sanctions against an aggressor state;

• the possible supply of military units by members to stop war.

In truth, however, there was far more to the League of Nations’ security agenda than this. Other strategies it used to try to prevent war included:

• referring an international legal dispute to the Permanent Court of International Justice;

• the pursuit of disarmament;

• guaranteeing the rights of national minorities in new and enlarged states;

• the independent international administration of territories which posed particular security problems;

• removing the causes of instability and war through humanitarian action, for instance managing refugees;

• removing the causes of instability and war through international social and economic initiatives;

• promoting international harmony by fostering a spirit of co-operation and fellow feeling among states.

On balance, the League’s work which related to its wider security mission is discussed much less in history books than the high politics revolving around the classic events of ‘collective security’. Of course there are good reasons for this. The Manchurian and Abyssinian (Ethiopian) crises were critically important world events, and the way collective security was applied to them (deficiently in both cases) is part of the established narrative of the confrontation between democracy and dictatorship in the inter-war period. One of the purposes of this book, however, is to look beyond these certainties and to propose a wider appreciation of the humanitarian, social and economic initiatives which the League sponsored – including an explanation of how these constituted security work in their own right. By the late 1930s, in fact, within the League itself this wider security agenda was regarded as centrally important for the future (see Chapter 6).

Unsurprisingly, therefore, in the 1920s and 1930s some voices preferred not to speak of ‘collective security’ as the main focus of the League of Nations. The phrase was too narrow and failed to suggest the ultimate aim of eradicating violence completely from international politics (Bourquin, 1936: 10). Instead, some people preferred to talk of ‘the organisation of peace’ (League of Nations, 1930: 49; Rappard, 1931: 69). This highlighted the idea that the League would not just address international disputes as they arose, rather it would manage the world in such a way that disputes became unlikely at all. Humanitarian ventures, as well as progressive social and economic initiatives, were interpreted as ways to achieve this end. Hence the title this book is The League of Nations and the Organisation of Peace.

The League of Nations was a reaction against the suffering and waste of the First World War. As such, it was both building on foundations established by figures from previous periods and laying the basis for something we take for granted today: a rough sense of global community based on the idea that no state can exist in isolation. Given the complexity of the League’s work, obviously a short introductory study cannot cover every aspect of what it did. Unfortunately here we will not be able to touch on, say, disputes which the League mediated in Latin America or the detail of its administration in the Saar and Danzig (today Gdańsk). Despite such gaps, this book will show why the history of an organisation that disbanded in 1946 is still of vital interest.

Its efforts to create international stability in ways that were more creative than military force or the balance of power are still relevant to the twenty-first century. It had to grapple with globalisation – another topic relevant today. And the text will highlight a number of names which deserve to be better known by students of the inter-war period. Lord Robert Cecil (1864–1958) helped draft the Covenant of the League of Nations and was active in Geneva as a representative of both South Africa and Great Britain. Time and again he spoke out for moral behaviour in international politics. Dame Rachel Crowdy (1884–1964) was the senior woman in the League during the 1920s and took a special interest in both health affairs and illegal traffic in drugs. Ludwik Rajchman (1881–1965) did sterling work in pursuit of a global health system. And we cannot overlook Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), the former polar explorer who worked tirelessly on behalf of refugees. The lives of these people begin to open up an alternative way of looking at the inter-war period: as an era of optimism that believed in the human potential to make the world a better place.

Balance of power: A traditional technique for trying to keep the peace in the international arena. States arm themselves and create alliances such that the force of weapons and manpower at their disposal at least balances that of their potential enemies. The balance is assumed sufficient to dissuade a potential aggressor from starting a war, particularly for trivial reasons.

This book begins by describing the key characteristics of the League and its most notable historiographical controversy: was it a success or failure? It moves on in the second chapter to look at the organisation’s roots and how it grew out of the First World War. The third chapter deals with the international disputes the League mediated during the 1920s, supplemented by its protection of national minorities in central and eastern Europe – which was a major security concern of the time. Next we discuss the League’s more general security work, first by looking at its humanitarian projects involving refugees and then in terms of its social and economic projects. Finally we examine the marginalisation of the League during the 1930s as a result of the collapse of its disarmament conference and its deficient responses to the crises in Manchuria and Abyssinia. In the conclusion we ask: ‘Where does this story leave our assessment of the League of Nations now?’

1

What was the League of Nations?

WHAT WAS THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND WHY STUDY IT TODAY?

The League of Nations was an ambitious venture aiming to capitalise on some of the best possibilities of mankind. According to Sir Eric Drummond, the first Secretary General, it involved ‘the creation of permanent institutions and the building up of a system of international co-operation, permanently to maintain the peace of the world’ (Barros, 1965: 312). Lord Robert Cecil, an early champion of the League and Nobel Prize winner in 1937, believed (sometimes at least) the goal could be achieved by ‘moral force’ alone (New York Times, 15.1.1919). For individuals such as these, the League of Nations was the first institution which would have a truly global membership and which would organise global peace comprehensively for the long term.

A book published by the Secretariat of the League of Nations in 1930 talked explicitly about ‘the organisation of peace’ (League of Nations, 1930: ch. 2). As such, it reflected a widespread belief that international disorganisation, including chaotic competition among nations, had been a major cause of war in 1914 (Sweetser, 1943a: 149). The League was supposed to replace hostile competition for individual power with constructive and friendly co-operation. To this end, the League was not just an organisation supposed to fight the fires of conflict as they broke out, or threatened to do so; it was supposed to promote peaceful international conditions so advantageous to people that their governments would be unwilling to throw them away. And if any given statesman did seem ready to provoke war, he would face a phalanx of politicians and peoples prepared to make sacrifices to stop him.

Secretariat of the League of Nations: Established by Article 6 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, this was the civil service which supported especially the work of the Council. It had an international staff and was permanently active.

The League of Nations attempted to address the traditional security areas of military competition between states, diplomatic relations, alliance-building and the peaceful settlement of international disputes by negotiation; but it also aimed to remove the very causes of war by promoting social and economic justice among its members, and by addressing the needs of vulnerable people. This latter approach corresponds to a very modern idea of security, one which in some respects anticipated the UN’s ‘Human Security’ agenda of 2003 [Doc. 1, p. 116]. In a sense, therefore, the League of Nations was eighty years ahead of its time. It presupposed that the harder nations worked together to address humanitarian, social and economic issues, the more likely they were to establish mutual interests and habits of partnership which would provide a bulwark against future conflict (Jones and Sherman, 1927: 140). In his memoirs, Robert Cecil maintained that although the League of Nations ultimately failed to keep the peace in Europe, its social and economic work was ‘extensive and successful’ (Cecil, 1941: 321).

As it examines how the League of Nations went about its work, this book will show that exciting stories and charismatic individuals are not (as the history of the twentieth century too often seems to suggest) the sole preserve of dictatorships and the battlefield. During its life, the League of Nations witnessed moments of high drama – such as Haile Selassie arriving to give a speech in Geneva as Abyssinia (Ethiopia) was being annexed by Italy – and dealt with issues of life-and-death importance to ordinary people. Obviously crises relating to war are an important part of the picture, but the League also dealt with fascinating, purposeful and life-affirming issues such as the management of refugees, the fight against infectious diseases, the abolition of slavery and people trafficking, and the campaign to stop opium abuse. The study will highlight some of the adventures that went along with the League’s humanitarian enterprise. For instance, we will see how Fridtjof Nansen and his staff saved lives through dramatic actions in the Baltic and Black Sea regions, how medical institutions responded to the infection of millions with typhus, and how some women were ‘salvaged’ from virtual incarceration in Turkey.

This book will also attempt to show that although the central and eastern parts of Europe were sites of war, revolution and genocide, they were also – from the perspective of the League – laboratories for important humanitarian experiments. Nansen, for example, was the first High Commissioner for Refugees – and his efforts are still commemorated by the annual award of Nansen awards by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to individuals responsible for outstanding work with vulnerable people. By telling stories such as Nansen’s, this introduction to the League of Nations may motivate readers to look more closely at the organisation’s good work. There are thousands of boxes of documents barely touched in the Geneva archive, all supplemented by similarly relevant and massive holdings in national archives around the world. In other words, the League of Nations is a fascinating but neglected topic of research. Perhaps for a handful of students at least, this will be a starting point for deeper learning about the League, and ultimately for studies of their own.

A COMPLICATED CHARACTER: SUPER-STATE, COMMONWEALTH, UTOPIA?

At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, Woodrow Wilson, president of the USA and a major force behind the League of Nations, announced the creation of the organisation with the words ‘a living thing is born’. By this he meant the League should be vital and energetic, a body that would get things done rather than become bogged down in interminable meetings and bureaucracy; it had to make an impact in the world – but how could it do this and what sources of power could it rely on? Even those actively engaged in setting up the League did not always agree.

Some tried to interpret the League as a ‘super-state’ or federation, that is to say a body with extensive powers and direct jurisdiction over its members. Others saw things differently. Robert Cecil, for instance, felt a super-state was unattainable in the early twentieth century because most states would not surrender their national sovereignty, certainly not to the extent necessary if the organisation was to set up, say, an international army (Cecil, 1923: 21). People like Cecil thought the League should be an instrument of voluntary co-operation: a partnership of states relying on discussion to yield decisions and leaving individual members to implement them (Mowrer, 1931: 398–400). As one commentator put it, the difference in the points of view was the same as asking whether the world should be organised centrally or regionally, universally or autonomously, through coercion or collaboration (Sweetser, 1943a: 153–4).

The League relied on its members for its very existence, so it could not take decisions that were too unpopular or they might leave. But if it was to inspire respect, it had to stand for something to which all members could commit themselves. This was why French politician Léon Bourgeois said the organisation had to be ‘a third way’. So although the League was not supposed to become a super-state which would impinge on the sovereignty of its individual members, nonetheless it had more federalist characteristics than any prior international organisation (Rappard, 1931: 34–5).

The fact that the League could only expect direct orders to be respected by member governments up to a point helps us understand why some League supporters were aware of the importance of public opinion. If the League could convince ordinary people that its vision was correct, a groundswell of popular support might produce pressure on governments to commit more firmly to the organisation. This is why early theorists of the League accepted that innumerable tribunals and conferences often based in Geneva were unlikely to deliver peace on their own: whatever institutions the League set up, they had to reach out from Geneva and influence ordinary people as a means to the realisation of global community and fraternity (Woolf, 1916: 83).

This thinking can be seen in the writings of Robert Cecil and Jan Smuts, both of whom also agreed the League had to concern itself with more than security seen from a strictly military point of view. As Cecil put it, the League had to ensure that the ‘products essential to the welfare and prosperity of mankind … be made available to all’, and that peoples unable to defend themselves would not be exploited or oppressed (New York Times, 28.12.1918). With people living satisfied, peaceful lives on this basis, Cecil felt it unlikely that they would ever knowingly opt for war – and hence it made sense to assume that public opinion would constitute a force for good in the world [Doc. 2, p. 116]. As he once put it: ‘What we rely upon is public opinion … and if we are wrong about it, then the whole thing is wrong’ (Sharp, 1991: 62). Admittedly this emphasis on the feelings of ‘the masses’ was unpopular with some other League proponents, especially those wanting the organisation to be more of a super-state ruled from the centre. To French President Clemenceau, for instance, history showed that the voice of the people could become ‘the voice of the devil’ (Sharp, 1991: 62). Cecil, however, remained more optimistic.

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) had fought against Britain in the Boer War (1899–1902), helped establish the Union of South Africa and served in Lloyd George’s Imperial War Cabinet before joining the Empire delegation to the Paris Peace Conference (Ginneken, 2006: 172). In late 1918 he wrote one of the most famous pamphlets, The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion, outlining what a League of Nations should be. Smuts ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Publisher’s acknowledgements
• Chronology
• Who’s who
• Glossary
• PART ONE ANALYSIS
• PART TWO DOCUMENTS
• FURTHER READING
• REFERENCES
• INDEX