The League of Nations

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The League of Nations

The League of Nations, a former international organization, was formed

after World War I to promote international peace and security. The

basis of the League, also called the Covenant, was written into the

Treaty of Versailles and other peace treaties and provided for an

assembly, a council, and a secretariat. Because the peace treaties had

created the League of Nations, the League was bound to uphold their

principles. but however, it became apparent that some of the terms of

the treaties were harsh and unjust and needed amending. This

undermined the league. Woodrow Wilson hoped however, by including it

in the treaties that this would ensure that the League was accepted by

all nations. However, from the start, the League shared many of the

weaknesses of the treaties themselves. The defeated powers were not

consulted about the league and were not invited to join. The

victorious powers did not really agree among themselves about the

League.

A system of colonial commands was also set up. Based in Geneva, the

League proved useful in settling minor international disputes, such as

the Aaland Islands dispute between Finland and Sweden, they also

prevented an all out war between Peru and Columbia over Letica, and

there aid and humanitarian work was constantly good in fields such and

refugees and prisoners of war. However the league had a hard time

stopping aggression involving major powers such as, Japan's occupation

of Manchuria in 1931, Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36, and

Germany's seizure of Austria in 1938. It collapsed early in World War

II and ended in 1946.[IMAGE]

Countries like Japan and Italy were able to just walk over the League

of Nations because it had no armed forces of its own and it relied

upon the co-operation of its members. This problem was inter-linked

with the fact that the League was very slow at making decisions. With

no armed forces this made it difficult to impose decisions. Therefore

when a crisis occurred the league was supposed to act fast with

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