Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1939, Side 138
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LE NORD
Nations. The League was set up with the program of guaranteeing
a peaceful solution of all international disputes, and she intended
as the last resort to unite all the nations of the world against a
wilful aggressor so as to isolate him and combat him. Towards
an aggressive nation, then, there could be no neutrality; all nations
standing for peace would ally against him.
Unfortunately, the ideal work of the League was from the
very start vitiated by her unilateral composition. Of the five
Great Powers subsisting in Europe after the War, only the three
allied powers, which dictated the Peace, were members, and the
one Great Power who might be thought of as standing outside
European rivalries, the United States of America, which, in fact,
had been the driving force in the establishment of the League
of Nations in connection with the Peace, failed to adhere to her
own work. Then came the Locarno treaties of 1925, the im-
portant consequence of which was the entering of Germany into
the League; and the following years seemed really to inaugurate
a new epoch in European politics, making the League a strong
power for peaceful adjustment of international conflicts. But this
period of hope and happiness lasted scarcely more than about
five years, and as a matter of fact the power of the League was
not made effective except in the case of small nations.
When in 1931 Japan assisted in detaching Manchuria from
China by arms, the League proved herself unable to put up any
kind of active resistance, and her formal protests only led to
Japan’s withdrawing her membership in the spring of 1933. At
the same time an attempt was made to unite the Locarno Powers
in a common action in Europe by a Four-Power-Pact. This might
have meant something for European Peace, although in itself it
was rather an expression of Power policies than of League ideals,
but it was frustrated by the political revolution in Germany. The
revolution made Germany an absolute opponent to the whole
idea of collective security, and half a year later Germany with-
drew her membership from the League. When, the next year
(1934), the Soviet Union entered the League, this event might
seem to confirm the conception of the League as a political
alliance, at least it did not help to temper the antagonisms in
Europe. Before the end of the year the Disarmament Conference,
which had been prepared since 1925 and had met in 1932, proved
to be a failure and deferred her activities ad Calendas Graecas.
Finally, when the Ethiopean war came in 1935, the action taken