Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The League of Nations consisted of three parts: (i) the Assembly of all members of the League, meeting generally in September of each year; (2) the Council, consisting of the Great Powers with permanent seats and a number of Lesser Powers holding elective seats for three-year terms; and (3) the Secretariat, consisting of an international bureaucracy devoted to all kinds of international cooperation and having its headquarters in Geneva. The Assembly, in spite of its large numbers and its infrequent meetings, proved to be a lively and valuable institution, full of hard-working and ingenious members, especially from the secondary Powers, like Spain, Greece, and Czechoslovakia. The Council was less effective, was dominated by the Great Powers, and spent much of its time trying to prevent action without being too obvious about it. Originally, it consisted of four permanent and four nonpermanent members, the former including Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. Germany was added in 1926; Japan and Germany withdrew in 1933; the Soviet Union was admitted in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after its attack on Finland. Since the number of nonpermanent members was increased during this period, the Council ended up in 1940 with two permanent and eleven nonpermanent members.

The Secretariat was slowly built up and, by 1938, consisted of more than eight hundred persons from fifty-two countries. Most of these were idealistically devoted to the principles of international cooperation, and displayed considerable ability and amazing loyalty during the brief existence of the League. They were concerned with every type of international activity, including disarmament, child welfare, education, the drug traffic, slavery, refugees, minorities, the codification of international law, the protection of wild life and natural resources, cultural cooperation, and many others.

Attached to the League were a number of dependent organizations. Two, the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labor Office, were semiautonomous. Others included the Economic and Financial Organization, the Organization for Communications and Transit, the International Health Organization with offices in Paris, and the Intellectual Cooperation Organization with branches in Paris, Geneva, and Rome.

Many efforts were made, chiefly by France and Czechoslovakia, to “plug the gaps in the Covenant.” The chief of these were the Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance (1923), the Geneva Protocol (1924), and the Locarno Pacts (1925). The Draft Treaty bound its signers to renounce aggressive war as an international crime and to bring military assistance to any signer the Council of the League designated to be the victim of an aggression. This project was destroyed in 1924 by the veto of the British Labour government on the grounds that the agreement would increase the burden on the British Empire without increasing its security. The Assembly at once formulated a better agreement known as the Geneva Protocol. This sought to plug all the gaps in the Covenant. It bound its signers to settle international disputes by methods provided in the treaty, defined as aggressor any state which refused to use these peaceful procedures, bound its members to use military sanctions against such aggressors, and ended the “veto” power in the Council by providing that the necessary unanimity for Council decisions could be achieved without counting the votes of the parties to the dispute. This agreement was destroyed by the objections of a newly installed Conservative government in London. The chief British opposition to the Protocol came from the Dominions, especially from Canada, which feared that the agreement might force them, at some time, to apply sanctions against the United States. This was a very remote possibility in view of the fact that the British Commonwealth generally had two seats on the Council and one at least could use its vote to prevent action even if the vote of the other was nullified by being a party to the dispute.

The fact that both the Draft Treaty and the Geneva Protocol had been destroyed by Britain led to an adverse public opinion throughout the world. To counteract this, the British devised a complicated alternative known as the Locarno Pacts. Conceived in the same London circles which had been opposing France, supporting Germany, and sabotaging the League, the Locarno Pacts were the result of a complex international intrigue in which General Smuts played a chief role. On the face of it, these agreements appeared to guarantee the Rhine frontiers, to provide peaceful procedures for all disputes between Germany and her neighbors, and to admit Germany to the League of Nations on a basis of equality with the Great Powers. The Pacts consisted of nine documents of which four were arbitration treaties between Germany and her neighbors (Belgium, France, Poland and Czechoslovakia); two were treaties between France and her eastern allies (Poland and Czechoslovakia); the seventh was a note releasing Germany from any need to apply the sanctions clause of the Covenant against any aggressor nation on the grounds that Germany, being disarmed by the Treaty of Versailles, could not be expected to assume the same obligations as other members of the League; the eighth document was a general introduction to the Pacts; and the ninth document was the “Rhine Pact,” the real heart of the agreement. This “Rhine Pact” guaranteed the frontier between Germany and Belgium-France against attack from either side. The guarantee was signed by Britain and Italy, as well as by the three states directly concerned, and covered the demilitarized condition of the Rhineland as established in 1919. This meant that if any one of the three frontier Powers violated the frontier or the demilitarized zone, this violation would bring the four other Powers into action against the violator.

The Locarno Pacts were designed by Britain to give France the security against Germany on the Rhine which France so urgently desired and at the same time (since the guarantee worked both ways) to prevent France from ever occupying the Ruhr or any other part of Germany, as had been done over the violent objections of Britain in 1923-1924. Moreover, by refusing to guarantee Germany’s eastern frontier with Poland and Czechoslovakia, Britain established in law the distinction between peace in the east and peace in the west, on which she had been insisting since 1919, and greatly weakened the French alliances with Poland and Czechoslovakia by making it almost impossible for France to honor her alliances with these two countries or to put pressure on Germany in the west if Germany began to put pressure on these French allies in the east, unless Britain consented. Thus, the Locarno Pacts, which were presented at the time throughout the English-speaking world as a sensational contribution to the peace and stability of Europe, really formed the background for the events of 1938 when Czechoslovakia was destroyed at Munich. The only reason why France accepted the Locarno Pacts was that they guaranteed explicitly the demilitarized condition of the Rhineland. So long as this condition continued, France held a complete veto over any movement of Germany either east or west because Germany’s chief industrial districts in the Ruhr were unprotected. Unfortunately, as we have indicated, when the guarantee of Locarno became due in March 1936 Britain dishonored its agreement, the Rhine was remilitarized, and the way was opened for Germany to move eastward.

The Locarno Pacts caused considerable alarm in eastern Europe, especially in Poland and Russia. Poland protested violently, issued a long legal justification of her own frontiers, sent her foreign minister to take up residence in Paris, and signed three agreements with Czechoslovakia (ending the dispute over Teschen, as well as a commercial treaty and an arbitration convention). Poland was alarmed by the refusal to guarantee her frontiers, the weakening of her alliance with France, and the special status given to Germany within the League of Nations and on the Council of the League (where Germany could prevent sanctions against Russia, if Russia ever attacked Poland). To assuage this alarm a deal was made with Poland by which this country also received a seat on the Council of the League for the next twelve years (1926-1938).