The Structure of the League of Nations

A parliament of the world, missing its author

The League of Nations was the fourteenth of the Fourteen Points, the idea of the American president Woodrow Wilson, and its Covenant was written into the first 26 articles of every peace treaty of 1919. It opened at Geneva on 15 November 1920 with 42 member states, a permanent secretariat, an annual Assembly in which every member had one vote, and a Council of the great powers to act between Assemblies. It was the first organisation in history built to stop wars before they started. The United States never joined. The Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, and the League with it, on 19 November 1919 and again on 19 March 1920, because Article 10 of the Covenant seemed to commit America to defend every border in Europe. Germany was excluded until 1926 and Soviet Russia until 1934. So the Council in 1920 was Britain, France, Italy and Japan, two of whom would leave it in the 1930s to make war, and the League depended on the two that remained. AQA asks how the League was organised, how its membership changed, what powers it had and what its agencies did, and it asks you to connect the design to the record: which part of the machine failed when Corfu, Manchuria and Abyssinia tested it. This module gives you the structure with dates and numbers, and the source and judgement shapes it is examined through.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing in a source answer.

Building and changing the League, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• Wilson proposes a general association of nations as the last of his Fourteen Points
• The United States Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles and the League with it
• The first Assembly meets at Geneva with 42 member states
• The Permanent Court of International Justice opens at The Hague
• Germany is admitted with a permanent seat on the Council
• Japan leaves the League over Manchuria, and Germany follows within the year

Why was the League weaker than its Covenant?

On paper the Covenant bound every member to act against an aggressor. Which explanation best accounts for the gap between the document and the machine?

• The League had no army and depended on members lending theirs, which Britain and France, exhausted by 1918, would not do; the United States never joined, so economic sanctions had a hole in them from the start and Germany and Russia were outside for years, leaving a club of victors; every decision in Assembly and Council needed unanimity, so one member could block action and a great power could veto action against itself; and the Council met only a few times a year while the Assembly met once, so that a crisis made by force in days met a body that answered in months.
• The League had no money and could not pay its staff.
• Geneva was too far from the capitals for decisions to reach it.
• Wilson designed it badly because he did not understand Europe.

On paper and in practice

The judgement question connects the design to the record. One row per part of the machine: what the Covenant said, and what happened when it was used.

Label the League, part by part

Tap a part of the League, then tap the box it belongs in. Two of the labels belong to neither the League nor this chart.

Question 1: how do you know?

Source A: a description of a cartoon by Bernard Partridge published in Punch in 1920 under the title Moral Suasion. A rabbit labelled League of Nations sits upright in the grass, facing a large snake coiled and rearing above it, labelled International Strife. The rabbit is saying: My offensive equipment being practically nil, it remains for me to fascinate him with the power of my eye. AQA Question 1 says: Source A is critical of the League of Nations. How do you know? Tap the TWO details that show the criticism most directly.

• The League is drawn as a rabbit facing a snake, an animal that cannot fight facing one that kills, which presents the League as helpless against real conflict.
• The rabbit is sitting in the grass.
• The rabbit admits that its offensive equipment is practically nil and that it can only stare, which mocks the League for having no force and relying on moral condemnation.
• The title is in two words.
• Punch was a British magazine.

Membership changes

Select the THREE statements that correctly describe how the membership of the League changed between 1920 and 1939.

• The United States never joined: the Senate rejected the treaty on 19 November 1919 and again on 19 March 1920 over Article 10, and the country that had designed the League watched it from outside for twenty years.
• Germany was excluded in 1919 as a defeated power, admitted in September 1926 with a permanent Council seat after Locarno, and walked out in October 1933 within a year of Hitler taking power.
• Japan left in March 1933 after the Lytton Report on Manchuria, the Soviet Union was admitted in September 1934 and expelled in December 1939 for attacking Finland, and Italy left in December 1937 after sanctions over Abyssinia, so that by 1939 three of the four original permanent members had gone.
• Every state in the world was a member by 1930.
• Soviet Russia was a founding member in 1920.
• Germany was expelled from the League in 1933 for rearming.

Question 2: how useful are two sources?

AQA Question 2 gives you two sources and asks how useful they are to a historian studying one thing, for 12 marks. The two below are described for this module; the exam prints the real text. Enquiry: why the United States did not join the League. Source B. From Article 10 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, 1919, which states that members undertake to respect and preserve against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members, and that in case of such aggression the Council shall advise on the means by which the obligation shall be fulfilled. Source C. From the speech of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to the United States Senate on 12 August 1919, in which he argued that Article 10 would oblige American soldiers to fight in every quarrel in Europe and Asia at the call of foreign nations, that the Senate must not surrender the right of Congress to decide on war, and that America should keep its independence of action. The method is the same for both: content (what it says about the enquiry), provenance (who, when, why, and what that does to its value), and own knowledge to test it. Source B is useful because it is the clause the argument was about, and a historian can see for themselves that it promises to preserve every border in the world while leaving the Council only to advise, which is exactly the ambiguity both sides exploited. Source C is useful for the case against, from the man who led it, three months before the first Senate vote; its purpose was to defeat the treaty, so it states the fears at their strongest and says nothing of the reservations Lodge offered and Wilson refused. This meant that B is useful for what was feared and C for who feared it and why, and own knowledge of the votes of November 1919 and March 1920, lost partly because Wilson would not compromise with Lodge, is what tests both.

In the shoes of the founders

Four decisions between 1919 and 1926 about what the League would be. Choose what was actually decided, and notice what each choice cost later.

• Paris, spring 1919. You are drafting the Covenant. France wants the League to have its own army and general staff so that a decision can be enforced. Britain and America refuse to put troops under an international command. What do you write?
• 1919. How will the Assembly and Council decide? Majority voting would let the League act quickly; unanimity would protect every member from being outvoted, and the great powers will not join without it. What do you write?
• 1919. Who may join? Germany has just been defeated, Russia is communist and in civil war, and the small new states of Europe want protection. What do you decide?
• 1926. Germany has signed Locarno and applied to join. Brazil and Spain demand permanent Council seats too or they will leave. What do you decide?

From cause to consequence

Because Britain and America would not put troops under an international command, the Covenant gave the League no _____ and left enforcement to its members. Because the Senate feared that Article _____ would send American soldiers to every quarrel in Europe, the United States never joined, and the economic sanctions of Article 16 had a hole in them from the start. Because every decision needed _____, one member could block action and a great power could protect itself. Because the Council met only a few times a year, a crisis made by force in days met a body that answered in _____. And because Germany and Russia were kept out for years while Japan and Italy later walked out, the League never had all the great powers inside at once, and by 1939 only _____ of the four original permanent members remained.

The size of the Council

In 1920 the Council of the League had 4 permanent members and 4 elected members. By 1926, after Germany joined, it had 5 permanent members and 9 elected members. How many members did the Council have in 1926?

Question 1: how do you know, marked

AQA Question 1 asks: Source A (the Punch cartoon Moral Suasion) is critical of the League of Nations. How do you know? It is marked for 4 on identifying the message and supporting it from the source with own knowledge. Which answer scores all four?

• I know because the cartoonist draws the League as a rabbit that admits it has no offensive equipment and can only stare at the snake of international strife, which presents the League as unable to do anything about a real war except disapprove of it. That fits the League of 1920: the Covenant gave it no army, the United States had just refused to join, and it would rely on moral condemnation and sanctions that members had to choose to apply.
• The cartoon shows a rabbit talking to a snake.
• Punch always made fun of politicians.
• The cartoon supports the League because the rabbit is brave.

Question 3: an account, marked

Question 3: Write an account of how the membership of the League of Nations changed in the years 1919 to 1939. The League was designed as a universal body and never became one. It began without its author, because the United States Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles on 19 November 1919 and again on 19 March 1920, fearing that Article 10 would commit American troops to every border in Europe, so that the 42 states at the first Assembly in November 1920 did not include the largest economy in the world. Germany and Soviet Russia were excluded as a defeated power and a revolutionary one, which meant that the League of the early 1920s was a club of the victors and the neutrals, with Britain, France, Italy and Japan on the Council. Locarno changed this: Germany was admitted in September 1926 with a permanent Council seat, and for seven years the League contained every great power except the United States and Russia. The 1930s reversed it. Because the Lytton Report condemned the Japanese conquest of Manchuria, Japan walked out in March 1933, and because Hitler wanted freedom to rearm, Germany left in October 1933. The Soviet Union joined in September 1934 as the balance of Europe shifted, but Italy left in December 1937 after the sanctions over Abyssinia, and in December 1939 the League expelled the Soviet Union for attacking Finland. The account shows a membership that grew to 58 states in 1934 and lost, one by one, exactly the powers that would fight the Second World War. What earned the marks: a sequence of changes with dates; each explained by because and which meant, so that the account gives reasons rather than a list; and a closing sentence that says what the pattern shows. That structure, sustained across the whole period, is what reaches the top level of the 8-mark account.

Question 4: the 16-mark judgement

"The main weakness of the League of Nations was the absence of the United States." How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

• One paragraph on the absence of the United States: the Senate votes of 1919 and 1920, why it mattered for sanctions and for the standing of the League, and what it did not explain
• At least two paragraphs on other weaknesses with evidence: the lack of an army and the reliance on Britain and France, unanimity, the slowness of the Council, the exclusion of Germany and Russia, and the League as a club of victors

Question 4: the judgement, tested

A student has argued that the absence of the United States was the main weakness of the League. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST that judgement, in the way the top level of Question 4 requires?

• The United States was absent from the League but present in the world, and it did nothing over Manchuria in 1931 or Abyssinia in 1935 either, so membership would have added a vote and a market to sanctions without adding a will to use them; the weakness that every failure actually exposed was that the League had no force of its own and depended on Britain and France, who chose the Conference of Ambassadors over the Covenant at Corfu in 1923 and chose Hoare-Laval over sanctions in 1935; the absence of America explains why sanctions were incomplete, and the absence of an army and of will explains why they were never seriously tried, which is the larger weakness.
• Wilson designed the League, so America must have been essential.
• The League was doomed anyway, so no weakness was the main one.
• Without America the League could not impose sanctions, so America was the main weakness.