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The Evolution of the League of Nations1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

William E. Rappard
William E. Rappard
Affiliation:
University of Geneva
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Extract

All living organisms, no matter how minute or insignificant, when examined through the microscope, appear enormous, intricate, and extraordinarily active. Similarly, the world at large, when considered through the microscope of contemporary analysis, has no doubt, at all historical periods, struck its immediate witnesses as being infinitely complex and eventful. Is it, then, a mere delusion if the flow of recent and current happenings impresses us as being exceptionally uneven and rapid in its course, as resembling indeed a swollen Alpine torrent at the melting of the snow in the spring?

I believe not. I believe that, even viewed in the perspective of centuries, the last ten years will be characterized by the future historian as an epoch of extraordinarily numerous and radical changes.

To consider the world in its political aspects only, what previous decade has witnessed as many momentous events as the last? The final, decisive struggle and the end of the greatest war that has ever taken place. In Europe alone, the crumbling of four of the most powerful monarchies. The setting up or resurrection of seven or eight new or reborn sovereign entities.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , November 1927 , pp. 792 - 826
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1927

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References

2 See my paper published under this title in The Problems of Peace (London, 1927), pp. 18–49Google Scholar, and reprinted in the June, 1927, number of International Conciliation.

3 See Hudson, Manley O., “Membership in the League of Nations”, American Journal of International Law, XVIII, 436–458 (July, 1924)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Miller, David Hunter, Wilson's Place in History (an address delivered at Albany, New York), p. 15Google Scholar.

5 Baker, Ray Stannard, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement (London, 1923), I, 226Google Scholar; Baker, Philip, “The Making of the Covenant from the British Point of View”, in Les Origines el l'Oeuvre de la Société des Nations (Copenhagen, 1924), II, 37Google Scholar.

6 Wehberg, Schücking und, Die Satzung des Völkerbundes, 2. Auflage (Berlin, 1924), p. 297Google Scholar.

7 Some such system was urged from various quarters last spring. See, for instance, my article in the Revue de Genève entitled “La réforme du Conseil.”

8 The present Council of fourteen comprises, for instance, four out of the five Continental allies of France, a circumstance which may well, to a certain degree, explain the disaffection of her rival, Italy.

9 Prior, of course, to that of 1927.

10 See Baker, P., in Les Origines el l'Oeuvre de la Soeiété des Nations, quoted above, vol. II, pp. 21Google Scholar, 40 et seq.

11 Bulgaria, Denmark, Haiti, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay.

12 Austria, China, Finland, Lithuania.

13 Esthonia.

14 Abyssinia, Belgium.

15 See La Politique de la Suisse dans la Société des Nations, translated into German as Die Politik der Schweiz im Völkerbund (Coire and Leipzig, 1925)Google Scholar, and International Relations as Viewed from Geneva (New Haven and Oxford, 1925)Google Scholar.

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