Contents page 1 — Wilson’s dream page 2 — The resistance against the League of Nations To a page
In the first days of August 1914 died in Europe, the Believe in an uninterrupted progress of the international community to read. The world had grown up to the outbreak of the war, becoming closer and closer together. The global trade and transport flows since the late 19th century. Century constantly and new forms of cooperation between the Nations, including intergovernmental organizations such as the world postal Union of 1874, or the tele-graph increased Union from 1913. On the Hague conferences of 1899 and 1907 had even been an attempt, war and peace subject to a common set of rules. But now, with the beginning of the First world war, seemed to be devalued, this burgeoning internationalism abruptly.
It remained an outsider to the car in the face of the thunderous guns a new start-up of a merger of the States of the world. In may 1916, when the United States was not yet involved in the war, the American President Woodrow Wilson publicly for the first time the establishment of a League of Nations. Even if he finished first, only a non-binding commitment to the community of peaceful and law-abiding Nations Association, was registered with the foray into Europe. However, while in France and the United Kingdom soon government made commissions on the work that began the debate on a new organization of this kind in Berlin, in the shadow of the defeat in autumn of 1918.
Wilson, any vote of the allies fought with each other, because he wanted advise on a General peace Congress on the establishment of an international Confederation. Nevertheless, he was under the impression that the European plans are already in August, 1918, a proposal for the American Position.
On pressure from Washington, the League of Nations was at the beginning of the deliberations at the Paris peace conference. When Wilson arrived in December, 1918, in Europe, he explained that he wanted to conduct all the negotiations in this matter personally. The European partners were unprepared. It had been expected to advise in connection with the territorial, military or economic decisions on the League of Nations, possibly even together with the war opponents. Therefore the other Nations had entrusted initially only honorable professionals with this question, but hardly political heavy-weights.
Wilson’s rush had good reasons: For one, he saw in the League of Nations, the best recipe, all Miss correct the festivities of the Peace that began to surface during the negotiations, subsequently to. On the other hand his democratic party had lost in the American mid-term elections of November 1918, the majority in the Senate, and his government had to rely on a cooperation with the Republicans. The saw his project, however, skeptical. The President wanted to write to the League of Nations, therefore, already the target of a preliminary peace festival, and his embodiment of the intra-American debate escape. In this way, the war is a loser with a finished design would face, appeared to him to be justified. Finally, they had to prove their newfound peace: The League of Nations should be according to the will of Wilson’s not any club, but a community of values.
This Text comes from the magazine of history, No. 1/2019. The current issue you can buy on newsstands or here.
3. February, 1919, the Commission met for the League of Nations under the presidency of Wilson’s for the first time, significantly, not like other conference committees in the French Ministry, but in the domicile of the American Delegation, the Hôtel de Crillon. Among the 15 members, two members of the allied powers, France, great Britain, Italy, Japan and the United States; a delegate from Belgium, Brazil, China, Portugal and Serbia. The squares of the smaller Nations were hard fought and only a few days previously, the final have been distributed.
The negotiations in spite of all the diplomatic Courtesy tedious. The French representative, Léon Bourgeois and Ferdinand Larnaude felt the pace of the Americans to run over and responded unruly, especially as your own proposal had been wiped from the war almost without comment from the table. That instead, Wilson’s own design served as a starting point, the negotiations were conducted in English, and the British were looking for the shoulder-to-shoulder with the US representatives, has improved the Situation.
