Question: Why was the League of Nations a failure?.
"The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory, or of racial and national allegiance." .
If only it could have been that simple. Collective security depends on principles that proved difficult to uphold during the League of Nations lifetime. In order to make it work, the balance of power needs to be diffused, there needs to be an acceptance of the status quo, and there needs to be an acceptance of political unity and international security. Unfortunately, the League of Nations embodied none of these principles which meant that it was doomed to fail from the onset. However to understand exactly why the League failed to embody these principles, one needs to look further into the failures of the League to understand why it failed, and where, if anywhere, it succeeded.
There are many reasons why the League failed. Professor Northedge argues that it was a "fundamental flaw in the system itself ` that caused the league to fail. However, one can argue the contrary. Mostly, and ironically, it seems the failures of the League came from the countries that were involved in the League. .
" it was not the League which failed. It was not its principles which were found wanting. It was the nations which neglected it. It was the Governments which abandoned it." .
There was no sense of an International community as Wilson had seen in his vision when he created the League. Nor was there a sense of the countries involved being willing to put themselves into a position to protect one another. Most were either in the League to protect themselves or to aid them in returning to their financial and economical positions they were in before the war. A perfect example of this was Britain and France.
The League of Nations depended largely on the support of Britain and France, but these countries were too nationalistic.