5 - No Peace without Victory

Summary

Chapter 5 demonstrates how the league of nations became an important political issue in 1917–1918. While the pro-league movement succeeded in attracting public attention for the post-war plan, pro-leaguers came to promote a conception of the league that they had opposed in 1914–1915: a league of victorious powers aligned against Germany. Begun as a reaction against anti-German jingoism and the balance-of-power politics, the movement initially aspired to change the norms of international relations by creating a new institution comprised of all the great powers. Yet by 1918, the activists had come to promote the league as a continuation of the war-time alliance, backed by a powerful argument both to defeat Germany and to form the league as a coalition of democratic states. An extension of the war-time politics, not the yearning for peace as scholars have supposed, led to the creation of the League of Nations.