🎯 Aims
To keep peace and prevent war. To settle quarrels by talking, not fighting. To encourage countries to reduce their weapons. To improve people's lives and working conditions.
The Creation and Successes of the League, 1919-29 » Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of the League of Nations
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Edexcel spec: Paper 2 Section B, Breadth study B5, Key topic 1
- How Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the Paris Peace Conference led to the League of Nations
- What the Covenant said, including the aims of the League and Article 10
- Who joined the League, and why the USA, Germany and the USSR were missing at first
“The Changing Role of International Organisations: The League and the UN, 1919-c2011” is one of the eight Paper 2 Section B breadth studies in change. Students study only one of them, so work through this option only if it is one of your chosen options. A breadth study is about change over time, so keep asking: what was new here, and what changed later?
Key terms:
- League of Nations: an organisation of countries, set up in 1919-20, whose main aim was to keep peace.
- Fourteen Points: the plan for a peaceful world that the US President, Woodrow Wilson, set out in January 1918.
- Paris Peace Conference: the meeting in 1919 where the winners of the First World War decided the peace terms.
- Covenant: the League's rule book, setting out its aims and what members promised to do.
- Collective security: the idea that countries keep peace by acting together against any country that attacks another.
- Isolationism: a policy of staying out of other countries' affairs, especially their quarrels and wars.
- Ratify: to approve a treaty formally, so that a country is bound by it.
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Unlock This CourseWilson and the Fourteen Points
The First World War killed millions of people. Many leaders asked how a war on that scale could be stopped from happening again. Woodrow Wilson, the American President, thought he knew. On 8 January 1918 he told the US Congress his Fourteen Points. They included open agreements between countries instead of secret deals, fewer weapons, free trade, and the right of peoples to rule themselves. The last point was the one that mattered most for this lesson:
“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.”
In plain words: countries should join one organisation and promise to protect each other's independence and borders. This was the first plan for the League of Nations.
The Paris Peace Conference, 1919
The Paris Peace Conference opened on 18 January 1919. Wilson went to Paris himself, the first US President to travel to Europe while in office. He met the other leaders of the winning side, mainly David Lloyd George of Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France.
The leaders did not want the same things. Clemenceau wanted France kept safe from Germany, and wanted Germany punished. Lloyd George wanted a peace that Britain could live with. Wilson put the League first. He argued that it must be part of the peace settlement, and he chaired the committee that wrote its rules. The Covenant was approved by the conference on 28 April 1919 and was placed at the start of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, signed on 28 June 1919. The League began its work on 10 January 1920, with its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Covenant
🤝 Collective security
Members promised to work together against an aggressor. If one country was attacked, the others would help to protect it. The League had no army of its own.
The key promise was Article 10. In it, members agreed to respect and protect the borders and independence of every other member against attack from outside. This was the heart of collective security. It was also the most argued-over part of the Covenant, as you will see below. France had hoped for a League with its own army, but Wilson did not agree. So the League depended on its members being willing to act.
How the League was organised, and what powers it had to punish an aggressor, are covered in the lesson How the League Worked: Assembly, Council and Secretariat.
Membership: who was missing?
Around 42 states were members in 1920, including Britain and France. But three of the most powerful countries in the world were not there at the start.
- The USA. The League was Wilson's idea, but the US Senate would not accept it. The Senate had to approve the Treaty of Versailles by a two-thirds majority, and it voted against in November 1919 and again in March 1920. The USA never joined. Wilson's own party did not have enough votes there, and the Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge led the opposition.
- Germany. It was left out in 1920 because it had lost the war and the Allies did not yet trust it. It joined in September 1926, after the Locarno agreements, and was given a permanent seat on the Council.
- The USSR. The new Communist state of Russia was left out because Britain and France feared it and its ideas. It joined only in September 1934, and it also got a permanent Council seat.
Why did the USA stay out?
Many Americans wanted isolationism: after the war they wanted to stay out of Europe's problems. Some feared that Article 10 would force the USA to send soldiers to fight in other people's wars, and that Congress would lose its power to decide when America went to war. Wilson toured the country in September 1919 to win support, but he had a stroke in October. He also refused to accept changes (reservations) that Lodge wanted, so the treaty failed.
The effect was serious. A League that was meant to include all the great powers lacked the USA, the strongest economy in the world. Britain and France were left to lead it, and without a world-wide membership its decisions had less weight.
Common mistakes
Common mistakes
- Saying the USA joined and then left. It never joined, because the Senate refused to ratify the treaty.
- Writing that Wilson was ignored in Paris. He got the League into the treaty, even though he gave way on other issues.
- Saying Germany and the USSR were members from the start. Germany joined in 1926, the USSR in 1934.
- Mixing up the Fourteen Points (1918, a plan) with the Covenant (1919, the League's actual rules).
Exam-style question
Explain TWO causes of the USA's failure to join the League of Nations. [8 marks]
Model answer
One cause was the strong feeling of isolationism in the USA. After the First World War many Americans wanted to keep out of Europe's quarrels. They disliked Article 10 of the Covenant, in which members promised to protect each other's borders. They feared that it could force American soldiers into wars that did not concern them, and take the power to declare war away from Congress. This fear made many senators unwilling to vote for the League.
A second cause was political opposition in the Senate and Wilson's reaction to it. The Republican senators, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, held enough votes to stop the treaty, which needed a two-thirds majority. Lodge wanted reservations added to protect American independence, but Wilson refused to compromise. His stroke in October 1919 also took him out of the fight. As a result, the Senate voted against the treaty in November 1919 and again in March 1920, so the USA never joined.
What lifts this to the top level: two different causes, each with precise knowledge (Article 10, Lodge, the two-thirds rule, the dates) and a clear explanation of how each one led to the USA staying out.
Exam tip
Give two separate causes, one paragraph each. One cause alone cannot score more than half marks, however well it is explained. End each paragraph by saying how the cause led to the outcome.
Recap
- Wilson's Fourteenth Point (January 1918) called for a general association of nations; he pushed for the League at the Paris Peace Conference, which opened in January 1919.
- The Covenant, part of the Treaty of Versailles, aimed to keep peace and rested on collective security, with Article 10 as its key promise.
- The League began in January 1920 with about 42 members, based in Geneva.
- The USA never joined because the Senate refused to ratify the treaty; Germany joined in 1926 and the USSR in 1934.