Flaws and Failure

It is common to see the failure of the League of Nations in its inability to stand up to the crises of the inter-war years.

Peter Raffo shows that the League was flawed from the start. Never more than a voluntary association of sovereign states hoping to create ‘an atmosphere capable of promoting the peaceful settlement of disputes', it depended ‘for its very existence and effectiveness on that unity of purpose and international goodwill which it was itself designed to promote'.