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Everything about The League Of Nations totally explainedThe League of Nations was an international organization founded as a result of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919–1920. At its greatest extent from from the 28 September 1934 to the 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. The League's goals included disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation, diplomacy and improving global quality of life. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and so depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to economic sanctions which the League ordered, or provide an army, when needed, for the League to use. However, they were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could also hurt the League members imposing the sanctions and given the pacifist attitude following World War I, countries were reluctant to do so. Benito Mussolini stated that "The League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out."
After a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis Powers in the 1930s. The onset of the Second World War suggested that the League had failed in its primary purpose, which was to avoid any future world war. The United Nations replaced it after the end of the war and inherited a number of agencies and organizations founded by the League.
Origins
The concept of a peaceful community of nations had been outlined as far back as 1795, in Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. One attempt to put such a concept into practice were the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The "Hague Confederation of States", as the Neo-Kantian pacifist Walther Schücking called this initiative, was to have been a universal alliance aiming at disarmament and the peaceful settlement of disputes through arbitration. Following the failure of the Hague Peace Conferences, a third conference had been planned for 1915.
The idea for the League of Nations itself appears to have originated with the British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey, and it was enthusiastically adopted by the United States President Woodrow Wilson and his advisor Colonel Edward M. House as a means of avoiding any repetition of the bloodshed seen in World War I. The League's creation was a centerpiece of Wilson's Fourteen Points for Peace, specifically the final point: "A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."
The Paris Peace Conference accepted the proposal to create the League of Nations ( French: Société des Nations, German: Völkerbund) on January 25, 1919. The Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed on June 28 1919. Initially, the Charter was signed by 44 states, including 31 states which had taken part in the war on the side of the Triple Entente or joined it during the conflict. Despite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, the United States neither ratified the Charter nor joined the League due to opposition in the U.S. Senate, especially influential Republicans Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and William E. Borah of Idaho, together with Wilson's refusal to compromise.
The League held its first council meeting in Paris on January 16, 1920 six days after the Versailles Treaty came into force. In November, the headquarters of the League moved to Geneva, where the first general assembly of the League was held on November 15, 1920 with representatives from 41 nations in attendance.
David Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School, examined the League through the scholarly texts surrounding it, the establishing treaties, and voting sessions of the plenary. Kennedy suggests the League is a unique moment when international affairs was "institutionalized" as opposed to the pre-World War I methods of law and politics.
Symbols
The League of Nations had neither an official flag nor logo. Proposals for adopting an official symbol were made during the League's beginning in 1920, but the member states never reached agreement. However, League of Nations organization used varying logos and flags (or none at all) in their own operations. An international contest was held in 1929 to find a design, which again failed to produce a symbol. One of the reasons for this failure may have been the fear by the member states that the power of the supranational organization might supersede them.
Finally, in 1939, a semi-official emblem emerged: two five-pointed stars within a blue pentagon. The pentagon and the five-pointed stars were supposed to symbolize the five continents and the five races of mankind. In a bow on top and at the bottom, the flag had the names in English ( League of Nations) and French ( Société des Nations). This flag was used on the building of the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940. and Spanish (from 1920). The League seriously considered adopting Esperanto as their working language and actively encouraging its use but neither option was ever adopted. In 1921, there was a proposal by Lord Robert Cecil to introduce Esperanto into state schools of member nations and a report was commissioned to investigate this. When the report was presented two years later it recommended the teaching of Esperanto in schools, a proposal that 11 delegates accepted. The opposition meant the report was accepted apart from the part that approved Esperanto in schools.
Principal organssecretariat (headed by the General Secretary and based in Geneva), a Council, an Assembly and a Permanent Court of International Justice. The League also had numerous Agencies and Commissions. Authorization for any action required both a unanimous vote by the Council and a majority vote in the Assembly.
Secretariat and Assembly
The staff of the League's secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the civil service for the League. The League of Nations' Assembly was a meeting of all the Member States, with each state allowed up to three representatives and one vote. The Assembly met in Geneva and, after its initial sessions in 1920, sessions were held once a year in September. The Council began with four permanent members (the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Japan) and four non-permanent members, which were elected by the Assembly for a three year period. The first four non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece and Spain. The United States was meant to be the fifth permanent member, but the United States Senate voted on March 19, 1920 against the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, thus preventing American participation in the League. This prompted the United States to go back to policies of isolationism.
The initial composition of the Council was subsequently changed a number of times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on September 22 1922, and then to nine on September 8 1926. Germany also joined the League and became a fifth permanent member of the Council on the latter date, taking the Council to a total of fifteen members. When Germany and Japan later both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was eventually increased from nine to eleven.
The Council met on average five times a year, and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 public sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.
Other bodies
The League oversaw the Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems.These were the Disarmament Commission, the Health Organization, the International Labour Organization, the Mandates Commission, the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (ancestor of the UNESCO), the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission for Refugees, and the Slavery Commission. Several of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War. In addition to the International Labour Organization, the Permanent Court of International Justice became a UN institution as the International Court of Justice, and the Health Organization was restructured as the World Health Organization.
The League's health organization had three bodies, a Health Bureau, containing permanent officials of the League, an executive section the General Advisory Council or Conference consisting of medical experts, and a Health Committee. The Committee's purpose was to conduct inquiries, oversee the operation of the League's health work, and get work ready to be presented to the Council. This body focused on ending leprosy, malaria and yellow fever, the latter two by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health Organization also worked successfully with the government of the Soviet Union to prevent typhus epidemics including organising a large education campaign about the disease.
In 1919 the International Labour Organization was created as part of the Versailles Treaty and became part of the League's operations. This body's first director was Albert Thomas. It successfully restricted the addition of lead to paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight hour working week. It also worked to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen.
The League wanted to regulate the drugs trade and established the Permanent Central Opium Board to supervise the statistical control system introduced by the second International Opium Convention that mediated the production, manufacture, trade and retail of opium and its by-products. The Board also established a system of import certificates and export authorizations for the legal international trade in narcotics.
The Slavery Commission sought to eradicate slavery and slave trading across the world, and fought forced prostitution. Its main success was through pressing the countries who administered mandated countries to end tackle slavery in those countries. The League also secured a commitment from Ethiopia, as a condition of joining the League in 1926, to end slavery and worked with Liberia to abolish forced labour and inter-tribal slavery. Led by Fridtjof Nansen the Commission for Refugees looked after the interests of refugees including overseeing their repatriation and, when necessary resettlement. At the end of the First World War there were two to three million ex- prisoners of war dispersed throughout Russia It established camps in Turkey in 1922 to deal with a refugee crisis in that country and to help prevent disease and hunger. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless peoples.
The Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women sought to make an inquiry into the status of women all over the world. Formed in April 1938, dissolved in early 1939. Committee members included Mme. P. Bastid (France), M. de Ruelle (Belgium), Mme. Anka Godjevac (Yugoslavia), Mr. HC Gutteridge (United Kingdom), Mlle. Kerstin Hesselgren (Sweden), Ms. Dorothy Kenyon (United States), M. Paul Sebastyen (Hungary) and Secretariat Mr. McKinnon Wood (Great Britain).
Members
Of the 42 founder members, 23 (or 24, counting Free France) remained members until the League of Nations was dissolved in 1946. In the founding year six other states joined, only two of which remained members throughout its existence. An additional 15 countries joined in later years.
The League’s greatest extent was from the 28 September 1934 (when Ecuador joined) to the 23 February 1935 (when Paraguay withdrew) with 58 members. At this time, only Costa Rica ( 22 January 1925), Brazil ( 14 June 1926), the Empire of Japan ( 27 March 1933) and Germany ( 19 September 1933) had withdrawn and only Egypt was left to join (on the 26 May 1937). The members (listed from earliest joining and alphabetically if they joined on the same day) at this time were Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, the British Empire, Canada, Chile, the Republic of China, Colombia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, El Salvador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Italy, Liberia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Persia/ Iran, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Siam, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Union of South Africa, the United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Luxembourg, Albania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Ireland, Ethiopia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Turkey, Iraq, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Afghanistan and Ecuador.
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the only (founding) member to leave the league but return to it later.
The Soviet Union, only became a member on September 18, 1934, when it joined to antagonise Germany (which had left the year before), This was one of the League's final acts before it practically ceased functioning due to the Second World War.
Mandates
League of Nations Mandates were established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. These territories were former colonies of the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire that were placed under the supervision of the League following World War I. The Permanent Mandates Commission supervised League of Nations Mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they'd join. There were three Mandate classifications, A Mandates were mainly applied to parts of the old Ottoman Empire territorys which had: reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they're able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory. |
The B Mandates were applied to the former German Colonies that the League took responsibility for after the First World War. This was a territory that the League said was: at such a stage that the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and religion, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, the prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic and the liquor traffic, and the prevention of the establishment of fortifications or military and naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the defence of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other Members of the League.
There were several border conflicts between Colombia and Peru in the early part of the 20th century and in 1922 the countries agreed the Salomón-Lozano Treaty to try and resolve these conflicts. As part of this treaty the border town Leticia and its surrounding area were ceded from Peru to Colombia, giving Columbia access to the Amazon River. An armed Peruvian takeover of Leticia occurred on 1 September 1932. This was organised by business leaders from the Peruvian rubber and sugar industries who had lost land in the area when it was given to Columbia. This resulted in an armed conflict between the two nations. After months of diplomatic wrangling, the two nations accepted mediation by the League of Nations. A provisional peace agreement, signed by both parties in May 1933, provided for the League to assume control of the disputed territory while bilateral negotiations proceeded. In May 1934, a final peace agreement was signed, resulting in the return of Leticia to Colombia, a formal apology from Peru for the 1932 invasion, demilitarization of the area around Leticia, free navigation on the Amazon River and Río Putumayo, and a pledge of non aggression.
Saar
Saar was a province formed from parts of Prussia and the Rhenish Palatinate that was established and placed under League control after the Treaty of Versailles. A plebiscite was to be held after fifteen years of League rule, to determine whether the region should belong to Germany or France. Votes were 90.3% in favour of becoming part of Germany in that 1935 referendum, and it became part of Germany again.
Peace and security
In addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between (and even within) nations. Among its successes were its attempts to combat the international trade in opium and sexual slavery, and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the period to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was its 1922 introduction of the Nansen passport, which was the first internationally recognized identity card for stateless refugees. Many of the League's successes were accomplished by its various agencies and commissions.
Greece and Bulgaria
After an incident between sentries on the border between Greece and Bulgaria in 1925, Greek troops invaded their neighbour. Bulgaria ordered its troops to provide only token resistance, trusting the League to settle the dispute. The League did indeed condemn the Greek invasion, and called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation to Bulgaria. Greece complied, but complained about the disparity between their treatment and that of Italy (see Corfu, above).
Liberia
Following rumours of forced labor in the independent African country of Liberia, the League launched an investigation, particularly into the alleged use of forced labor on the massive Firestone rubber plantation. In 1930, a report by the League implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labor, leading to the resignation of President Charles D.B. King, his vice-president and numerous other government officials. The League followed with a threat to establish a trusteeship over Liberia unless reforms were carried out, which became the central focus of President Edwin Barclay.
Mukden Incident
The Mukden Incident, also known as the "Manchurian Incident" or the "Far Eastern Crisis", was one of the League's major setbacks and acted as the catalyst for Japan's withdrawal from the organization. Under the terms of an agreed lease, Japan had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between the two countries, in the Chinese region of Manchuria. In September, 1931, the Japanese army claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway. (In fact, it's now thought that the sabotage had been contrived by officers of the Japanese Kwantung Army without the knowledge of government in Japan, in order to catalyse a full invasion of Manchuria.) In retaliation, the Japanese army, acting contrary to the civilian government's orders, occupied the entire region of Manchuria, which they renamed Manchukuo, and set up a puppet government. This new country was recognised internationally only by Italy and Germany; the rest of the world still saw Manchuria as legally part of China. In 1932, Japanese air and sea forces bombarded the Chinese city of Shanghai, sparking the short war of the January 28 Incident.
The Chinese government asked the League of Nations for help, but the long voyage by ship for League officials to investigate the matter themselves delayed matters. When they arrived, the officials were confronted with Chinese assertions that the Japanese had invaded unlawfully, while the Japanese claimed they were acting to keep peace in the area. Despite Japan's high standing in the League, the subsequent Lytton Report declared Japan to be in the wrong and demanded Manchuria be returned to the Chinese. However, before the report was voted upon by the Assembly, Japan announced its intention to push further into China. The report passed 42-1 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voted against), and Japan withdrew from the League.
According to the Covenant of the League of Nations, the League should now have placed economic sanctions against Japan, or gathered an army and declared war. However, neither event took place. Economic sanctions had been rendered almost useless due to the United States Congress voting against joining the League, despite Woodrow Wilson's keen involvement in drawing up the Treaty of Versailles and his wish for America to join the League. Any economic sanctions the League now placed on its member states would be ineffective, as a state barred from trading with other member states could simply turn and trade with America. On the other hand, the reason why the League didn't assemble and army was because the self-interest of many of its member states: countries such as Britain and France were too preoccupied with their own affairs, such as keeping control of their extensive colonies, especially after the turmoil of World War I. Japan was therefore left to keep control of Manchuria, until the Soviet Union's Red Army took over the area and returned it to China at the end of World War II.
Chaco War
The League failed to prevent the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay in 1932 over the arid Gran Chaco region of South America. Although the region was sparsely populated, it gave control of the Paraguay River which would have given one of the two landlocked countries access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum. Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932, when the Bolivian army, following the orders of President Daniel Salamanca Urey, attacked a Paraguayan garrison at Vanguardia. Paraguay appealed to the League of Nations, but the League didn't take action when the Pan-American conference offered to mediate instead. The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 100,000 casualties and bringing both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control over most of the region. This was recognized in a 1938 truce by which Paraguay was awarded three-quarters of the Chaco Boreal.
Italian invasion of Abyssinia, 1935–1936
In October 1935, Italian leader Benito Mussolini sent 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia). General Pietro Badoglio led the campaign from November 1935, ordering the bombing and use of chemical weapons, for example, (mustard gas) and poisoning of water supplies, against targets including undefended villages and medical facilities.
The League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective since they didn't ban oil or close the Suez Canal which was owned by Britain and France. As Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one had the military forces on hand to withstand an Italian attack. On 9 October 1935, the United States (a non-League member) refused to cooperate with any League action. It had embargoed exports of arms and war material to neither combatant (in accordance with its new Neutrality Act) on 5 October and later (29 February 1936) endeavoured (with uncertain success) to limit exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point they were a dead letter in any event.
In December 1935, the Hoare-Laval Pact was an attempt by the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Hoare and the French Prime Minister Laval to end the conflict in Abyssinia by drawing up a plan to partition Abyssinia into two parts, an Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was prepared to agree to the Pact; however, news of the Pact was leaked and both the British and French public venomously protested against the Pact, describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval were forced to resign their positions, and both the British and French government disassociated with them respectively.
As was the case with Japan, the vigour of the major powers in responding to the crisis in Abyssinia was tempered by their perception that the fate of this poor and far-off country, inhabited by non-Europeans, wasn't a central interest of theirs. In addition, it showed how the League could be influenced by the self-interest of its members. One of the reasons why the sanctions were not very harsh was that both Britain and France feared the prospect of driving Mussolini and Hitler into an alliance.
Spanish Civil War
On 17 July 1936, armed conflict broke out between Spanish Republicans (the left-wing government of Spain) and Nationalists (the right-wing rebels, including most officers of the Spanish Army). Alvarez del Vayo, the Spanish minister of foreign affairs, appealed to the League in September 1936 for arms to defend its territorial integrity and political independence. However, the League couldn't itself intervene in the Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Hitler and Mussolini continued to aid General Franco’s Nationalist insurrectionists, and the Soviet Union aided the Spanish loyalists. The League did attempt to ban the intervention of foreign national volunteers.
Disarmament and failures en route to World War II
A significant amount of the League's time and energy was devoted to disarmament. Article eight of the League's covenant gave the League the task of reducing "armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations"
The Disarmament Commission obtained initial agreement from France, Italy, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies. However, Britain refused to sign a 1923 disarmament treaty. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, facilitated by the commission in 1928, failed in its objective of outlawing war. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military buildup during the 1930s by Germany, Italy and Japan. The League was powerless and mostly silent in the face of major events leading to World War II such as Hitler's remilitarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and Anschluss of Austria, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, League members themselves rearmed. As with Japan, both Germany in 1933 – using the failure of the World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext – and Italy, in 1937, simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgment. The League commissioner in Danzig was unable to deal with German claims on the city, a significant contributing factor in the outbreak of World War II in 1939. The final significant act of the League was to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 after it invaded Finland.
General weaknesses
The League did not, in the long term, succeed in its aim to prevent another world war. The outbreak of World War II was the immediate cause of the League's demise, but there was also a variety of other, more fundamental, flaws.
The League, like the modern United Nations, lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very reluctant to do. Economic sanctions, which were the most severe measure the League could implement short of military action, were difficult to enforce and had no great impact on the target country, because they could simply trade with those outside the League. The problem is exemplified in the following passage from one of the League's own publication, The Essential Facts About the League of Nations:
As regards the military sanctions provided for in paragraph 2 of Article 16, there's no legal obligation to apply them ... there may be a political and moral duty incumbent on states ... but, once again, there's no obligation on them.
The League's two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League. Immediately after World War I, pacifism was a strong force both in the populations and the governments of the two countries. The British Conservatives were especially tepid on the League and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of the organization. Ultimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favour of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under Adolf Hitler.
Representation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass all nations, many never joined, or their time as part of the League was short. In January 1920, when the League began, Germany wasn't permitted to join, due to strong dislike of the country after World War I. Soviet Russia was also banned from the League, as their communist views were not welcomed by the victors of World War I. One key weakness of the League was that the United States never joined, which took away much of the League's potential power. Although U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation, the United States Senate voted not to join on November 19, 1919.
The League was further weakened when critical powers left in the 1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council, but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its invasion of the Chinese territory of Manchuria. Italy also began as a permanent member of the Council but withdrew in 1937. The League had accepted Germany as a member in 1926, deeming it a "peace-loving country", but Adolf Hitler pulled Germany out when he came to power in 1933.
The League's supposed neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. The League required a unanimous vote of its nine (later fifteen) member Council to enact a resolution; conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions. Certain decisions required unanimous consent of the entire Assembly.
Another important weakness was that, although the League was intended to represent all nations, most members protected their own national interests and were not committed to the League or its goals. The reluctance of League members to use the military option showed this to the full. If the League had shown more resolve initially, countries, governments and dictators may have been more wary of risking its wrath in later years. These failings have been mentioned among the reasons for the outbreak of World War II.
When the British Cabinet discussed the concept of the League during the Great War, Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretary, circulated a memorandum on the subject. He started by saying: "Generally it appears to me that any such scheme is dangerous to us, because it'll create a sense of security which is wholly fictitious". He attacked the British pre-war faith in the sanctity of treaties as delusional and concluded by claiming:
"It [aLeague of Nations] will only result in failure and the longer that failure is postponed the more certain it's that this country will have been lulled to sleep. It will put a very strong lever into the hands of the well-meaning idealists who are to be found in almost every Government, who deprecate expenditure on armaments, and, in the course of time, it'll almost certainly result in this country being caught at a disadvantage".
Demise and legacy
As the situation in Europe deteriorated into war, the Assembly transferred enough power to the Secretary General on 30 September 1938 and 14 December 1939 to allow the League to continue to legally exist and to carry on reduced operations. Afterwards, the headquarters of the League, the Palace of Peace, remained unoccupied for nearly six years until the Second World War ended. The final meeting of the League of Nations was held in April 1946 in Geneva. Delegates from 43 nations attended the assembly. Their first act was to close the twentieth meeting, adjourned on 14 December 1939, and to open the twenty-first. This session concerned itself with liquidating the League: the Palace of Peace was given to the UN, reserve funds were returned to the nations that had supplied them, and the debts of the League were settled. Robert Cecil is said to have summed up the feeling of the gathering The motion also set the date for the end of the League as the day after the session was closed. On 19 April 1939 the President of the Assembly, Carl J. Hambro of Norway, declared "the twenty-first and last session of the General Assembly of the League of Nations closed." As a result, the League of Nations ceased to exist on 20 April 1946.
With the onset of World War II, it had been clear that the League had failed in its purpose: to avoid any future world war. During the war, neither the League's Assembly nor Council had been able or willing to meet, and its secretariat in Geneva had been reduced to a skeleton staff, with many offices moving to North America. At the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Allied Powers agreed to create a new body to replace the League: the United Nations. Many League bodies, such as the International Labour Organization, continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the UN
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