Thousands of curious spectators had gathered along the Rue du Rhône in Geneva at 11am, watching in earnest as the Swiss Federal Council and the State Council of the Canton of Geneva marched in slow procession, escorted by a small military contingent.  At their forefront, Swiss President Giuseppe Motta basked in the adoration of the crowd as the parade of Swiss dignitaries entered the giant Salle de la Réformation event center.

Inside, a collection of 241 delegates from 41 member nations (minus Honduras, whose delegation was still traveling), waited for Motta to take his seat as a honorary chairman at the dais.  The Acting President of the Assembly, Belgian politician Paul Hymans, rang a bell at 11:16am and declared the meeting open – the first official meeting of the League of Nations had begun on November 15th, 1920.

It had been a long and circuitous path to get to this day and the League’s first moments in formal existence (technically, the body had been organized in January of 1920 and had met in it’s proto form), exposed the flaws in it’s creation.  As League drafted a message of thanks to American President Woodrow Wilson, stating that they had gathered on this day at the American’s request, the United States was absent from the proceedings, as well as the Soviet Union, Germany and roughly another 44 sovereign nations that had either been excluded or had chosen to bypass the organization.  And the debates of the first day proved how fragile the newfound League could be, as France threatened to withdraw within hours when the subject of Germany’s admission was discussed.

In the air of the combative and disorganized proceedings, the ultimately prophetic words of Woodrow Wilson to the assembly could be heard:  “I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it.”

The first meeting of the League of Nations – deep divides on policy could be seen from the literal first minutes of the organization

Depending upon one’s historical perspective, the events of November 15th, 1920 in Geneva either represented the end of a nearly 150 year path of diplomatic and small ‘r’ republican political progress or a revolutionary jump from nation states, to competing alliances, to finally a burgeoning sense of global, collective action.  The difference in historical narrative would eventually define those who chose to participate versus those who didn’t, and color the very notion of the purpose and powers of the League of Nations. 

The American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars had forced a radical reorientation of the geopolitical outlook of the European powers.  Since the decline of the Ottoman Empire starting in the mid-16th century, Europe had essentially held control of global finance, without significant economic challenge.  Nor had the survival of any of these European nation states been fundamentally threatened, either by internal or external forces.  The European nations would consistently fight amongst themselves for territory and economic influence, both in Europe and increasingly abroad, but it was always in pursuit of regional control and competing spheres of influence.  The independence of the American colonies had created a global economic competitor, albeit one that aligned with Western Enlightenment ideals, while the Napoleonic Wars showed that it was possible for one strong nation state to exert dominance over European affairs, and thus the world.  In the span of roughly a quarter century, European heads of state went from only worrying about their own nations and perhaps their direct neighbors, to having to consider global affairs.

The immediate European reaction to these changes was a series of conferences or Congresses to mediate some sense of global (read: European) order.  From the Congress of Vienna in 1815, to the Berlin Conference of 1884, or the Algeciras Conference of 1906, the various powers of Europe would meet to resolve what were almost exclusively territorial disputes.  These conferences often did little beyond codify regional control for the colonial powers of Europe, at best engaging in military or economic brinksmanship to horse-trade for colonial control somewhere else on the planet.  Any concern over “lesser” independent powers was nowhere to be found, with negotiations such as the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907 dividing up Persia into zones of influence without any input from the Persian government.  And none of these conferences were deemed as requiring any permanence, particularly in an era of unilateral negotiations and trade.  With so few major economic and military powers, the very concept of a standing body to debate and resolve differences felt as a diplomatic luxury at best.   

The narrative was that the U.S. weakened the League by it’s lack of involvement – the League would be weakened by it’s lack of resolve when challenged

Even as Europe slowly found itself divided into the competing hostile camps of the Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy & Austria-Hungary) and the Entente (Britain, France & Russia), the idea that a platform to debate and ensure any sense of global collective security felt unnecessary.  The alliance and conference systems existed to meet that very need.  Not unlike the Cold War system of Mutual Assured Destruction, the alliance system seemingly assured that no singularly power could send Europe into a large scale conflict as they’d be either constrained by their allies or by the sheer destructiveness of the ramifications of war since doing so would start a chain reaction of alliances leading to global conflict.  And if those bulwarks failed, the conference system would provide the forum for diplomacy that would likely lead to some sort of colonial compromise, trading money or lands in exchange for the crisis du jour.  For all the natural criticisms of this process, it’s also telling that Europe didn’t follow it’s script when the “July Crisis” of 1914 occurred.  Kaiser Wilhelm II had suggested using the funeral of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as an opportunity to mediate peace; when Ferdinand’s funeral was kept private as an internal rebuke by Franz’s former rival Alfred, 2nd Prince of Montenuovo, the natural forum to bring together Europe’s leaders fell through.

A consistent forum for diplomacy also felt unnecessary as, much like today, the increasingly intertwined nature of global economics convinced many leaders that a global war was all but impossible.  European imperial expansion and thus, expanded trade, launched European economies into a historical boom following the so-called “Long Depression” of 1873 to as late as 1896 in some parts of the world.  The “Long Depression” had been the tail-end of the Industrial Revolution, which had sparked massive financial growth (and social upheaval) as growth slowed and changing monetary policies exacerbated the problems.  The “solution” had been the expansion of new markets and increased global trade, with European exports more than doubling from 1870 to 1900, and European collective GDP more than doubling between 1870 and 1910.  Peace had made Europe rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams – who could possibly risk such prosperity when the alternative would be a world war?

While the origin of the League of Nations would be cemented by it’s inclusion in Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” in January of 1918, both the name and the concept had been batted around Europe and America for years.

The prevailing divide over the League of Nations – that the “covenant” of the League would overrule American independence

President Theodore Roosevelt twice referenced the concept of forming a “League of Peace” following his role in the negotiated settlement of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 while British liberals called for a “League of Nations Union” in the immediate response to the outbreak of war in 1914 and later, like Roosevelt, a “League of Peace.”  Yet neither was a direct call to specific action and certainly neither Roosevelt nor the number of British politicians calling for peace had any firm outline of what such a league would accomplish beyond hazy ideas of arbitration and economic sanctions for non-compliance.  Even more concrete actions still didn’t envision the need for a permanent standing body.  Roosevelt, along with former President William Howard Taft and political allies like Elihu Root, formed the “League to Enforce Peace” in 1915 as a diplomatic companion organization to the “Preparedness Movement” that sought to organize the United States for war.  One could argue Wilson’s call for a “League of Nations” was in itself a domestic political maneuver to steal momentum from his partisan adversaries, much as he did with the introduction and passage of the National Defense Act of 1916.  By default, Wilson’s Fourteen Points and creation of a League of Nations became the Allies’ rationale for the war – and the only non-violent, coherent agenda coming from any of the war’s participants.  The Central Powers never articulated a vision of a post-war world beyond enlarging their share of it and the Bolsheviks’ call for peace was only after a bloody class struggle following the carnage of the world war.   

Calling for a “League of Nations” wasn’t the same as forming one – and the gulf between the principles the League supposedly stood for, and the practical matter of it’s organization and execution, lay the foundation of the League’s eventual failure.  

Wilson had prominently called for the formation of the League and aggressively toured Europe and eventually the U.S. to build public support.  But the version of the League that Wilson proclaimed and the version that was being built in Britain by politician Lord Robert Cecil and South African statesman Jan Smuts were vastly different organizations.  Wilson saw a League that could supersede the nationalism of the era, allowing for collective member action in terms of diplomacy, trade, colonialism, and even war.  The alliance system would be broken and the right of self-determination would allow for the creation of more and more independent states out of the hides of Europe’s empires.  In London, Cecil and Smuts were doing very much the opposite in many (but not all) cases.  Their League of Nations would have “permanent” and “non-permanent” members; essentially major and minor members with the major members as a proto-United Nations Security Council (the “Executive Council”).  Self-determination would be tempered with the “mandate” system for many territories of the defeated Central Powers – a system that looked very much like colonialism with international authority.   In all, the British version of the League of Nations looked to enshrine the triumph of the Entente with, at best, lip service to the goals of collective action or the needs of secondary powers and minor nations.

There was strong support for the League of Nations politically in the United States, but far from a clear majority backed the League as created.  Far more appeared willing to support it if provisions were changed

As the League of Nations was officially conceived with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, there was tempered support for the concept back in the United States.  Polling was hardly a science at this time, but polls conducted on behalf of various newspapers in 1920 suggesting a fairly stark divide on the issue of whether or not to join the League.  While “yes” support largely eclipsed “no” backers, the largest contingent were those voters who wished to join the League but only after revisions.  Together, the “no” or “conditional” supporters were at even or greater support to the supposed “yes” vote.  

Some of the hesitation was certainly born of the messy process that delivered the organization.  The final terms of Versailles, like the League itself, appeared to have drifted far from the original intent of it’s creators.  Where Woodrow Wilson had been viewed by his European contemporaries as naive (a view shared by plenty of his domestic critics), others saw the overly idealistic American president as compromised or defeated by the ethically dubious realpolitik world of European diplomacy.  America had shed it’s semi-isolationist heritage to help settle the “war to end all wars” only to see a peace treaty that seemingly embodied the worst traits of 19th century European politics.  With 116,516 dead and 320,000 wounded, many Americans felt burned by the decision to join Europe’s war for such an outcome.

Others, like Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, had severe reservations about how the various clauses of the League affected American economic and military autonomy.  If interpreted literally, American trade and military policy could be dictated from Geneva, abrogating Congressional authority when it came to matters of approving trade treaties and declarations of war.  If an action was approved by a majority of the League, and not essentially vetoed by the Executive Council, Washington would find itself subservient to the wishes of foreign powers.  The U.S. had already been drawn into one foreign war; Lodge and others had no interest in seeing America drawn into future conflicts out of legal obligation.  The farewell address of George Washington still rang true for many when the outgoing President said “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.”  

As the League began to operate, it further pushed away American support as the U.S. viewed the League’s solutions as doing little more than fueling future conflicts

Such concerns were hardly voiced in Britain or France, and not just because of those nations vastly different history to America when it came to international relations and diplomacy.  Whereas Americans like Lodge expressed concern over the letter of the law as enshrined by the League of Nations, the major Allied powers were more concerned about intent than obligation.  Or to adopt a modern political phrase, opponents like Lodge took the League of Nations literally, not seriously while the organization’s most powerful proponents took it seriously, not literally.  Britain and France weren’t going to get drawn in to a non-European war unless it directly served their interests and certainly London and Paris weren’t going to allow smaller powers to dictate their foreign trade.  Such was the rationale for having the Executive Council within the League, so that major powers could block the demands of even coalitions of smaller nations.  And if that process failed, as it eventually would on multiple occasions in the brief life of the League of Nations, the group’s largest powers could and would simply ignore any demands.  Other than the United States and Japan, Europe still held the economic and military high-ground of world affairs; a Swiss-based debating club wasn’t going to prevent the resumption of that status quo.    

The United States would never join the League of Nations, nor approve the Treaty of Versailles, rather eventually making a separate peace with the Central Powers in the 1920s.  Henry Cabot Lodge had introduced a modified version of the treaty but neither Lodge’s version nor Wilson’s could gain the necessary 2/3rds majority for approval.  It didn’t help in any senate negotiations that Wilson had suffered a massive stroke in the fall of 1919 that left him incapacitated, with the left side of his body useless, his vision in his right eye all but gone, and his emotions now subject to wild swings.  Despite his severe physical and cognitive decline, no one within his administration was willing to remove him from office.

The League of Nations would be equally enfeebled by the lack of action of it’s own members, unable to muster any sense of collective security in the following decades against the aggressions of the Soviets, Japanese nationalists, Italian fascists or finally, German National Socialists.