League of Nations

League of Nations. This international organization came to life in 1919 when President Woodrow Wilson secured the inclusion of its charter in the Treaty of Versailles. The League “Covenant,” the work of many internationalists on both sides of the Atlantic, contained provisions for the arbitration of international disputes, armaments reduction, and the imposition of collective military and economic sanctions against any nation that violated the political independence and territorial integrity of another. The last obligation (embodied in the controversial Article 10), in tandem with the arbitration requirement, also implied a restriction against unilateral coercive action by a league member.

The Covenant, like all constitutions, was subject to interpretation. Thus, upon Wilson's return from the Paris Peace Conference, one senator observed, “Internationalism has come, and we must choose what form the internationalism is to take.” This apt remark referred to two divergent tendencies within the American internationalist movement that had arisen during the impassioned debate over American military preparedness that had raged in 1915–1916, when the United States was still officially neutral. “Progressive internationalists” considered peace essential to domestic reform. Like Wilson, they saw European imperialism, militarism, and balance‐of‐power politics as the root causes of the war; in place of these evils, they envisioned a “community of nations” sustained by disarmament, self‐determination for subject peoples, and a multinational world organization.

“Conservative internationalists,” led by the former president William Howard Taft and the League to Enforce Peace, also advocated a world parliament. But while tentatively endorsing the principle of collective security, most conservative internationalists believed as well that the United States should expand its army and navy and reserve the right to exercise force independently whenever the national interest so warranted. Disarmament and self‐determination were not among their concerns. Progressive internationalists viewed their conservative rivals as enemies of reform and as advocates of militarism and imperialism. For their part, most conservative internationalists regarded as socialistic the social welfare legislation (progressive taxation, the eight‐hour day, restrictions on child labor, and so forth) that Wilson, aided by progressive internationalists, had shepherded through Congress in his first term. Thus, disagreements over domestic politics and foreign policy alike complicated the impending League debate.

Had a national referendum been held in July 1919, the United States almost certainly would have joined the league. Two main factors, however, compounded the larger problem of ratifying the treaty. First, the Republicans, having captured control of Congress in the 1918 midterm elections, launched a fierce, ultraconsevative attack on Wilson's overall program. Second, many progressive internationalists had begun to distance themselves from Wilson because the peace settlement had fallen short of the promise of the Fourteen Points; Wilson's acquiescence in the wartime suppression of civil liberties further eroded his support among progressives.

In the Senate, opposition was grounded in both partisanship and principle; only a few of the league's critics, however, were irreconcilable isolationists. Most Republicans were conservative internationalists; they believed Wilson had consigned too many vital national interests to the will of an international authority. In part to preserve America's freedom of action, the Republicans, led by Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) of Massachusetts, drew up fourteen reservations as conditions for ratification. Some of these reservations were intended to curtail the league's ability to arbitrate disputes, to supervise a reduction of armaments, and to impose sanctions under Article 10, and to restrict independent unilateral military interventions, as those actions might affect U.S. sovereignty. Wilson was unable to persuade the Republicans to accept the treaty as it was written. In September 1919, Wilson embarked upon a strenuous 10,000‐mile speaking tour across the nation to build public support for unqualified American membership. His exertions brought on a nearly fatal paralytic stroke that rendered him an invalid for the remainder of his term, resulting in political gridlock.

The Senate voted on the treaty three times, in November 1919 and March 1920, but failed to muster a two‐thirds majority either on motions to ratify unconditionally or with the Lodge reservations. In November 1920, the Republican presidential nominee Warren G. Harding won a landslide victory over Democrat James M. Cox. Alluding to Wilson's earlier wish that the election should become a “solemn referendum” on the issue, Lodge declared, “that League is dead.”

In assessing the debacle, some historians have argued that Wilson's stroke prevented him from finding a middle ground on the Lodge reservations. Other scholars maintain that even a healthy Wilson would have refused to compromise, given his sometimes rigid personality. Still others have contended that the ideological gulf that separated the two forms of American internationalism, along with the president's failure to rally his own progressive coalition as the congressional struggle began, sealed the fate of a Wilsonian league.

In part because of America's absence, the fledgling organization recorded few achievements in the interwar period. Republican administrations assiduously avoided all formal association with the league throughout the 1920s. In promulgating the 1924 Dawes Plan to alleviate Europe's reparations‐war debt tangle, in the Washington Naval Arms Conference of 1921–1922, and even in the innocuous Kellogg‐Briand Pact of 1928, Washington conspicuously ignored the League. Perhaps the nadir came during the Manchurian incident of 1931–1932. While condemning Japanese aggression and Japan's puppet state, Manchukuo, the League undertook no meaningful sanctions. The League receded further into impotence as the 1930s wore on, and mounting crises heightened international tensions.

By 1944–1945, many Americans had come to believe that World War II might have been averted had the nation followed Wilson's counsel and joined the League. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt championed a new international organization, the United Nations (UN), but he and his advisers incorporated in its Charter most of the reservations prescribed by the Republicans in 1919. With the creation of the UN in 1945, the League of Nations ceased to exist. Although the UN was largely their conception and design, American foreign‐policy‐makers within two years of its creation deemed it an inadequate instrument of international security. Instead, the United States adopted the Lodgian strategy of unilateralism in world affairs in pursuit of the doctrine of containment throughout the Cold War.
See also Isolationism; International Law; Progressive Era; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Thomas A. Bailey , Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal, 1945.
Alexander L. George and and Juliette L. George , Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, 1956.
Arthur S. Link , Woodrow Wilson, Revolution, War and Peace, 1979.
William C. Widenor , Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy, 1980.
Lloyd E. Ambrosius , Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective, 1987.
Thomas J. Knock , To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order, 1992.

Thomas J. Knock