An Idea: The Society of Nations (Origin, Organisation, Aims)

The beginning of the 20th century found the states preoccupied to found an international organisation whose main aim should have been the keeping of general peace. This organisation was the Society of Nations. The Pact of the Society of Nations started to be applied beginning with the 20th of January 1920, having as its founding members 26 states, 4 dominions and India as countries who fought against Germany. The main leading institutions of the Society of Nations were: the Assembly and Council assisted by a permanent Secretariat. Besides the Society of Nations two other bodies have worked as separate institutions but closely linked to it: the International Labour Organisation and the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Chinese-Japanese conflict, fascist Italy’s attack against Ethiopia,, the reoccupation of the Rhineland by Germany, the Russian-Finnish war were crises in which the Society of Nations proved helpless. The defining element was the fact that the Society of Nations was lacking a military force by which it could solve the political crises and apply military sanctions to the aggressive states which, by their deeds, challenged the universal peace, the supreme aim for which the Society of Nations had been founded.