There Were Several Main Aims Of The League Of Nations When It Was Set Up In 1920 Essay

Submitted By Bethbuddy123C
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A) There were several main aims of the League of Nations when it was set up in 1920. One example was to eventually introduce disarmament to all members of the league. They wanted above all to prevent another major war like “The Great War” Also they wanted to stop aggression from countries such as Japan and Italy. They wanted to do this through Collective security. Furthermore, they wanted to maintain peace and settle disputes between countries in a calm and rational way so that no unnecessary action was taken settle disputes. Finally they wanted to do more humanitarian work to help improve health, living and working conditions around the world. They wanted to help refugees return to their own countries and help work conditions poor people especially in sweatshops etc.
B) The league failed over for many reasons. Firstly, The League wanted to introduce economic sanctions against so that Japan would be forced to back down from aggression. However, despite what they wanted to do, they would not be effective as the USA was Japans main trade partner and sanctions would be useless. Another reason was that the Lytton Committee took far too long over its report. The League took a very long time issuing the very useless report and by the time it reported Japan in their view felt they had already gotten away with so much that thought they could just carry on invading Manchuria. Also, Japan was also a long way away from the rest of the members and at it did not seem vital to the countries in Europe and so they did not want to commit to something that if they didn’t want to did not have to concern them. Another point is that most members were unwilling to take part in economic sanctions as the depression had already impacted on most countries quite dramatically and with them already struggling it would have a large economic impact on them as well. Sanctions would impact Britain specifically harshly because it could possibly have angered Japan and caused them to invade some of Britain’s colonies nearby such as Singapore. This would have been bead because it would have also affected Britain’s economy of trade.
C) There were both successes and failures of the league. Firstly, disarmament was one of the key aims of the League when it started it was never put into action. The disarmament of Germany meant to be the first step towards a more general one which would have been a great opportunity to introduce the idea to all countries, but it never happened due to France refusing to disarm or let Germany rearm partially. Also, the Corfu incident of 1923 was a huge failure for the League because it demonstrated how the League had no authority and also planted a seed in potential aggressors that being aggressive is ok because the League cannot tell anyone what to do. In the Vilna incident of 1920, Poland seized Vilna which belonged to Lithuania because the majority of people who lived there were polish and they thought they had the right to it ,however, the League took no action, so was seen as weak and ineffective when dealing with countries that were not very small and easy to control. Another point is that the policy of appeasement adopted by France and Britain of not wanting to antagonize Germany and Italy encouraged aggressive behaviour in these countries and so they defied the League. Britain and France were not ready to help the League take decisive economic measures or war. Finally, the league failed because it seemed to be an organization created for the benefit