Introduction

The League was established under the Treaty of Versailles concluded between the Allied and
Associated Powers and Germany on 28 June 1919. The main objects of the league of nations
were to promote international cooperation and to achieve International peace and security, settle
disputes amicably without resort to war, reduction of national armaments to the lowest point
consistent with national safety. Maintain International Relations between members States, To
preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political
independence of all Members of the League of Nations etc. But there were some defects and
weaknesses of the league some of them are as follows

Why League of Nations suffered aslow death?

There had to be unanimity for decisions that were taken. Unanimity made it really hard for the
League to do anything. The League suffered big time from the absence of major powers
Germany, Japan, Italy ultimately left and the lack of U.S. participation.

Henry Cabot Lodge, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was worried
involvement in the League would hamstring the U.S. from determining its own fate and
demanded all these reservations to U.S. membership. The biggest issue was Article X, which
said League members are committed to protecting the independence and territorial integrity of
other countries around the world, and Lodge interpreted that as an automatic decision that if a
country was invaded or faced aggression, the U.S. would have to come to [its] aid. The reality
was it was more moral than an iron-clad legal commitment. And as a result the Senate rejected
U.S. membership in the League of Nations.

While the League of Nations could celebrate its successes, the League had every reason to
examine its failures and where it went wrong. These failures, especially in the 1930’s, cruelly
exposed the weaknesses of the League of Nations and played a part in the outbreak of World
War Two in 1939. During the 1920’s the failures of the League of Nations were essentially
small-scale and did not threaten world peace. However they did set a marker – which the League
of Nations could not solve, problems if the protagonists did not ‘play the game

In addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between
and within nations. Among its successes were their fights against the international trade in opium
and sexual slavery and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the
period up to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the
Nansen passport, the first internationally recognized identity card for stateless refugees.

Therefore, any conflict between nations, which ended in war and the victory of one state over
another, had to be viewed as a failure by the League.
The main strength of the league of nation

The League quickly proved its value by settling the Swedish-Finnish dispute over the Åland
Islands (1920–21), guaranteeing the security of Albania (1921), rescuing Austria from economic
disaster, settling the division of Upper Silesia (1922), and preventing the outbreak of war in the
Balkans between Greece and Bulgaria (1925). In addition, the League extended considerable aid
to refugees; it helped to suppress white slave and opium traffic; it did pioneering work in surveys
of health; it extended financial aid to needy states; and it furthered international cooperation in
labor relations and many other fields.

The problem of bringing its political influence to bear, especially on the great powers, soon made
itself felt. Poland refused to abide by the League decision in the Vilnius dispute, and the League
was forced to stand by powerlessly in the face of the French occupation of the Ruhr (1923) and
Italy's occupation of Kérkira (1923). Failure to take action over the Japanese invasion of
Manchuria (1931) was a blow to the League's prestige, especially when followed by Japan's
withdrawal from the League (1933). Another serious failure was the inability of the League to
stop the Chaco War (1932–35; see under Gran Chaco) between Bolivia and Paraguay.

1935 the League completed its successful 15-year administration of the Saar territory
(see Saarland) by conducting a plebiscite under the supervision of an international military force.
But even this success was not sufficient to offset the failure of the Disarmament Conference,
Germany's withdrawal from the League (1933), and Italy's successful attack on Ethiopia in
defiance of the League's economic sanctions (1935). In 1936, Adolf Hitler remilitarized the
Rhineland and denounced the Treaty of Versailles; in 1938 he seized Austria.

Faced by threats to international peace from all sides—the Spanish civil war, Japan's resumption
of war against China (1937), and finally the appeasement of Hitler at Munich (1938)—the
League collapsed. German claims on Danzig (see Gdaısk), where the League commissioner had
been reduced to impotence, led to the outbreak of World War II. The last important act of the
League came in Dec., 1939, when it expelled the USSR for its attack on Finland.

In 1940 the League secretariat in Geneva was reduced to a skeleton staff; some of the technical
services were removed to the United States and Canada. The allied International Labor
Organization continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the United Nations. In
1946 the League dissolved itself, and its services and real estate (notably the Palais des Nations
in Geneva) were transferred to the United Nations. The League's chief success lay in providing
the first pattern of permanent international organization, a pattern on which much of the United
Nations was modeled. Its failures were due as much to the indifference of the great powers,
which preferred to reserve important matters for their own decisions, as to weaknesses of
organization.

 The main defects and weaknesses of the league were as follows -

 One of the main defects of the covenant of the league was that all decision of the council was to
be taken with unanimity. As the states were divided among groups, it was not possible to deicide
matters unanimously. The unanimity principal incorporated with the covenant proved to be
detrimental to the working of the league of nations

Yet another important defect of the league was that is could not completely prohibit war. The
covenant of the league of nations permitted League-Members to resort to war under certain
situations. The covenant provided that the Member-States were firstly under the obligation to
settle their disputes through arbitration, judicial settlement or inquiry by the council. The
covenant provided that if the problem was not solved through these methods, the Members could
resort to war after the lapse of three months. It meant that war was not completely prohibited
under the covenant of the league of nations.

Non-participation of united states of America to the league of nations was another important
weakness of the organization. Hence, league of nations remained an organization limited to
European countries only.

Another important defect of the league was with regard to the constitutional amendment of the
covenant. It provided that if any amendment of the covenant was not acceptable to a Member-
State, it would cease to be its member. This provision was fatal to the organization, as many
member-state ceased to be members of the league of nations.

There was provision under the covenant of the league for the withdrawal of membership. They
could withdraw from the league after two years notice. This provision provides fatal to the
league. In the beginning, there were sixty-two members, but in due course of time, the
membership of the league was reduced to thirty-two only.

The council of the league was not so competent as to settle amicably the disputes among the
members.

The League of nations could not check big powers from attacking and exploiting small states.

The league failed miserably and could not perform its primary functions of maintaining
international peace and security which one of the foremost functions and objects of the league of
nations.

Origins and structure The origins of the League as an organization created by the Allied powers
as part of the peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed as a "League of
Victors". The League's neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. It required a unanimous
vote of nine, later fifteen, Council members to enact a resolution; hence, conclusive and effective
action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions, as certain ones
required the unanimous consent of the entire Assembly. This problem mainly stemmed from the
fact that the primary members of the League of Nations were not willing to accept the possibility
of their fate being decided by other countries, and by enforcing unanimous voting had effectively
given themselves veto power.

Global representation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass
all nations, many never joined, or their period of membership was short. The most conspicuous
absentee was the United States. President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the
League's formation and strongly influenced the form it took, but the US Senate voted not to join
on 19 November 1919.  Henig has suggested that, had the United States become a member, it
would have also provided support to France and Britain, possibly making France feel more
secure, and so encouraging France and Britain to co-operate more fully regarding Germany, thus
making the rise to power of the Nazi Party less likely. Conversely, Henig acknowledges that if
the US had been a member, its reluctance to engage in war with European states or to enact
economic sanctions might have hampered the ability of the League to deal with international
incidents. The structure of the US federal government might also have made its membership
problematic, as its representatives at the League could not have made decisions on behalf of
the executive branch without having the prior approval of the legislative branch.

In January 1920, when the League was born, Germany was not permitted to join because it was
seen as having been the aggressor in the First World War. Soviet Russia was also initially
excluded because Communist regimes were not welcomed and membership would have been
initially dubious due to the Russian Civil War in which both sides claimed to be the legitimate
government of the country. The League was further weakened when major powers left in the
1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council since the country was an Allied
Power in the First World War, but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its
occupation of Manchuria. Italy began as a permanent member of the Council but withdrew in
1937 after roughly a year following the end of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Spain also began
as a permanent member of the Council, but withdrew in 1939 after the Spanish Civil War ended
in a victory for the Nationalists. The League had accepted Germany, also as a permanent
member of the Council, in 1926, deeming it a "peace-loving country", but Adolf Hitler pulled
Germany out when he came to power in 1933.

Another important weakness grew from the contradiction between the idea of collective
security that formed the basis of the League and international relations between individual states.
The League's collective security system required nations to act, if necessary, against states they
considered friendly, and in a way that might endanger their national interests, to support states
for which they had no normal affinity. This weakness was exposed during the Abyssinia Crisis,
when Britain and France had to balance maintaining the security they had attempted to create for
themselves…

Ultimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favor
of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under Hitler. In this context, the
League of Nations was also the institution where the first international debate on terrorism took
place following the 1934 assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseille, France,
showing its conspiratorial features, many of which are detectable in the discourse of terrorism
among states after American diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis originally supported the
League, but after two decades changed his mind:

The League of Nations has been a disappointing failure.... It has been a failure, not because the
United States did not join it; but because the great powers have been unwilling to apply sanctions
except where it suited their individual national interests to do so, and because Democracy, on
which the original concepts of the League rested for support, has collapsed over half the world.

Pacifism and disarmament The League of Nations lacked an armed force of its own and
depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very unwilling to do.
Its two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even
more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League. Immediately after the First
World War, pacifism became a strong force among both the people and governments of the two
countries. The British Conservatives were especially tepid to the League and preferred, when in
government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of that organization. Moreover, the
League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain, France, and its other members, while at the same
time advocating collective security, meant that the League was depriving itself of the only
forceful means by which it could uphold its authority.

When the British cabinet discussed the concept of the League during the First World
War, Maurice Hanke the Cabinet Secretary, circulated a memorandum on the subject. He started
by saying, "Generally it appears to me that any such scheme is dangerous to us because it will
create a sense of security which is wholly fictitious". He attacked the British pre-war faith in the
sanctity of treaties as delusional and concluded by claiming:

: The Foreign Office civil servant Sir Eyre Crowe also wrote a memorandum to the British
cabinet claiming that "a solemn league and covenant" would just be "a treaty, like other treaties".
"What is there to ensure that it will not, like other treaties, be broken?" Crowe went on to express
skepticism of the planned "pledge of common action" against aggressors because he believed the
actions of individual states would still be determined by national interests and the balance of
power. He also criticized the proposal for League economic sanctions because it would be
ineffectual and that "It is all a question of real military preponderance". Universal disarmament
was a practical impossibility, Crowe warned.
Conclusion

In some ways, the League of Nations was strong.   By the 1930s about 60 countries had signed
the Covenant.   The League’s main strength came from the fact that it was set up by the Treaty of
Versailles.   Also, the League had ‘means of influence’:

the League could agree to military force, although it had no army.  However, the League also had
three great weaknesses.   The USA, Russia and Germany were not members; without these
powers, the League was too weak to make a big country do as it wished (for instance, Italy over
Corfu in 1923).   Also, the League’s organisation was a muddle, so when there was a crisis, no-
one could agree.

The League failed to intervene in many conflicts leading up to World War II, including the
Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary
purpose, the prevention of another world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure,
many connected to general weaknesses within the organization, such as voting structure that
made ratifying resolutions difficult and incomplete representation among world nations.
Additionally, the power of the League was limited by the United States’ refusal to join.

Finally, the League’s greatest weakness was that it was set up by the Treaty of Versailles.   The
Treaty was hated, especially by the Germans and Americans, so the League was hated too.