Attitudes to the League are the main weaknesses of the LON. Do you agree?

Attitudes to the league were one of the weaknesses of the LON. It did not change drastically despite signing the peace treaties after the war. Those treaties were unfavourable, thus affecting the League being unpopular too. Countries within the league were not serious in being the member of the league. One example was Britain and France, who seize the opportunity by seeing the league as a place to conduct business between them. Most importantly, USA who was the one who came up with the idea of a League was not a member. Thus, many did not take the league seriously. As such, The LON did not have countries participate in it actively, which defeats the purpose of every country being united to promote peace and stability. Thus, it did not do a good job in maintaining relationships, which was the weakness of the League. The other weakness is mandates, which is the legal right to govern under the control of the league. One example is Germany colonies were governed under mandates by different member nations when the League of Nations took over Germans colonies. The governing countries were to lead the country to self government as soon as possible instead of treating the colonies as theirs. However, the areas governed under mandates were unsuccessful as countries were not self governing. Countries that had been in favour of the League were unhappy and felt that it had let them down. Therefore, the league, being unpopular initially, became worse and loses all the support they once have. They were being looked down upon as useless which could not even govern a country well, thus the LON was soon perceived as weak. It became one of the weaknesses of the LON too. Another factor is the Leagues weak membership. USA did not agree to join, this caused a great lack of support, and furthermore, defeated countries like Germany, Austria and Hungary were not allowed to. Thus, its main goal of achieving peace could not be reached as defeated nations in WW1 were excluded from the LON. Germany also resented the fact that the LON was put in charge of running Germanys former colonies. Membership was not fixed; members could leave as and when they liked. For example, when the LON was not benefiting them or when it objected to their actions. Therefore, the LON did not have much authority and control over them, causing it to loose support and fail in its task of maintaining peace. The last factor is the difficulties faced in resolving disputes. Cooperation was important and nations were expected to accept the

Leagues decision in disputes. League members were given the authority to punish other members by applying sanctions and ask members to contribute troops to an international fighting force to go to war and keep peace. However, no one was willing to do so, thus there was no one to fight the authoritarian regimes that wanted to expand their land by conquest. As the League would not resort to force, they did not pose a threat, therefore orders by the LON were not obeyed. This lack of authority of the LON was a great factor in reducing its effectiveness in resolving disputes. The LON would then be insignificant if nations would not obey its orders, causing many other issues.