How effective was the League of Nations in

maintaining peace?

After the First World War, Woodrow Wilson

supported the establishment of a peace-keeping
organization. Under his influence, the League of Nations
was founded in 1920. However, it failed to keep peace
efficiently.
The League of Nations could only solve the
disputes amongst small nations. In 1920, it settled a
dispute between Finland and Sweden over the Aaland
Islands. It also settled the boundary problems between
Poland and Germany. It stopped Greece from attacking
Bulgaria. By sending a commission of representatives
from various powers to the Albanian region, the league
successfully settled the dispute between Yugoslavia
and Albania.
In the first decade after the First World War, the
League of Nations did work well in keeping peace.
However, after the Great Depression, the League of
Nations did nothing to stop the aggression from
ambitious powers. In the 1930s, it could not stopped
the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the Italian
expansion in Abyssinia (1936) and Albania (1938), the
German expansion in Austria, and the Sudetenland
(1938), Czechoslovakia and Poland (1939), the Soviet
expansion in Poland, Baltic states, and Finland (1939).
The League of Nations could do nothing to prevent
Hitlers violation of the Versailles Treaty, like the
remilitarization of Rhineland in 1936, and the League
also could not cease the intervention of Italy, Germany
and the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. Hence,
the League of Nations did very little to maintain peace
in this period.

There are some reasons to explain why the League

of Nations failed to maintain peace. The lack of support
from the great powers was one of the main reasons.
The U.S. adopted isolationism and refused to join the
League after its establishment. The Soviet Union did
not join until 1934 because it was a communist state
which was not welcomed by non-communist states.
Germany joined it in 1926 but withdrew in 1933 when
Hitler started its expansion. Amongst the four
permanent members, Japan and Italy withdrew in the
1930s because they wanted to practice their
expansionist policy. In other words, Britain and France
were the only two powers leading the League of
Nations, but they had different views on how to
maintain peace and they were under economic
difficulties after the war. Hence, they could not
wholeheartedly support the League of Nations.
Therefore, the aggressors could start their expansion
without restriction and it led to the outbreak of the
Second World War.
In addition, there are some weaknesses on the
internal system of the League of Nations. For example,
a unanimous agreement of every issue had to be made
before taking any action. However, the members of the
League were not wholehearted in maintaining peace.
They strived for their own interests in the League and
hence made a unanimous agreement impossible. The
League also had no military force and economic
resources to implement the decision made. It could
only condemn the aggressive actions of ambitious
powers or imposed economic sanction. For example,
when Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1935, France continued
the trading relations with Italy even though it was a
leading member in the organization. Finally, the League
could do nothing to the withdrawal of members. The
League of Nations had no real power to maintain
collective peace. Most of the nations used their own
way to settle their disputes.

In conclusion, as the first international organization

to maintain collective peace, the League of Nations
made the first step to achieve the goal of building up
an international organ to solve problems among
countries. However, the lack of real authority and the
lack of support from powerful nations undermined its
effectiveness in maintaining peace.