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The terrible losses of World War I produced an ever-growing public demand that some method be found to prevent the renewal of the suffering and destruction which were now seen to be an inescapable part of modern war. So great was the force of this demand that, within a few weeks after the opening of the peace conference in Paris in 1919, unanimous agreements had been reached on the text of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Although the League was never able to fulfill the hopes of its founders, its creation was an event of decisive importance in the history of international relations, and led directly to the creation of the modern United Nations.
	In 1919, the Big 4 met in Paris to negotiate the Treaty. Pictured are Lloyd George of Britain, Orlando of Italy, Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the U.S.
The central basic idea of the movement was that aggressive war is a crime not only against the immediate victim but against the whole human community; and that accordingly it is the right and duty of all states to join in preventing it. The Covenant of the League of Nations covered all the main proposals made at the Paris Peace Conference: disarmament, open diplomacy, international cooperation, arbitration and judicial settlement of disputes, collective security through economic sanctions, and the creation of an international court. The League itself consisted of four main structures: the Assembly, the Council, the Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice. The Council consisted of five permanent members of the five Great Powers and later at the end of World War I--and nine temporary elected members, the Council was to supervise the workings of the League between meetings of the Assembly, and to convene both regular and special sessions of the Assembly. The Assembly was used as a world-wide conference meeting to discuss any and all questions of international relations. It gave equal rights and opportunities to be heard to all nations and sought deliberately to use the open and direct methods of a parliament rather than the secretive formalities of a diplomatic gathering.
	The League of Nations in 1936 in Geneva Switzerland. (ID #20920 Credit: National Archives of Canada / C-26029)
From 1923 on, the Assembly met in month-long sessions four times a year - March, June, September, and December, along with occasional special sessions convened to discuss pressing matters of international importance. The main business of the Assembly was political, it dealt not only with countless small problems arising out of peace treaties or frontier adjustments brought before the Council by the parties involved, but also with major disputes which might endanger international peace. Although Assembly decisions technically required unanimity among those who voted, it became customary for those who disagreed with the proposals of the majority to vote against the proposed solution in committees, and then to abstain from voting in the Assembly. Actual cases of veto or deadlock were very few; but as a result of the unanimity requirement, most resolutions passed by the Assembly tended toward compromise or delay rather than clear-cut decisions.
	The League of Nations Building, with a circular turret which stood for unity and a pentagonal base which represented "the five continents and the five races of mankind." (P.Y. de Reviers de Mauny, J.W.T. Van Erp, and George B. Post & Sons, architects)
The twenty years of the League’s existence falls into four periods: 1919-1923, a period of growth immediately following World War I; 1924-1931, a period of relative stability; 1931.1936, a period of conflict in which the League was the main center of international affairs; and 1937-1939, a period in which the League, and the ideals of the Covenant, were virtually abandoned. This simulation will concentrate on the third period in the Leagues history and will focus on the events of 1936. After successfully using international diplomacy and economic sanctions to settle disputes between Bolivia and Paraguay, Colombia and Peru, and Yugoslavia and Greece, the League was forced in quick succession to deal with the problems presented by the German reoccupation of the Rhineland, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Spanish Civil War, and the Japanese invasion of China.