By Meg Harney

A living thing is born.”¹ With these words, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson laid out the first draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations before the Paris Peace Conference. At the end of the first World War in 1919, the entire globe was war weary and in need of relief system that could keep the peace, and Wilson’s ambitious idea to set up a League of Nations seemed almost too good to be true: it was to be an association of states designed to replace traditional power politics in an organization that would use peaceful negotiation to maintain international peace and security. The unifying principle of the League was the shared belief that acts of aggression and war were crimes against humanity and that it is the interest and the duty of every Member State to join in preventing it.²

While an excellent idea in theory, the League met with repeated problems in keeping its Member States in line with this one principle, the central point of League’s Covenant, simply because the nations had not adapted their foreign policy to change from a standpoint that they only had themselves to look after, instead of looking after the interests of the League as a whole working unit. Following several years of successful, though rough, interventions, including the aversion of war in the Greco-Bulgar Crisis in 1925 and several disarmament agreements, the whole world soon began to watch as Woodrow Wilson’s “living thing” slowly began to die.  Japan invaded Manchuria and left the League, Germany, too, resigned from the League and proceded to rearm itslef, and the League’s advice at the World Economic Conference in 1927 was blatantly ignored, proving that harldy anyone gave the League any mind as true force of global power. However, the event that truly marked the demise of the League of Nations as a successful keeper of international peace and security was its failure to take proper action upon Italy’s invasion of its fellow League member, Ethiopia.

The origins of Italian aggression in Ethiopia stem back to Italy’s humiliating defeat by the Ethiopians at the Battle of Adowa in 1896, when the Ethiopian army was able to successfully thwart the attempts of the Italians to take over their country.³ In the decades following WWI, fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini wanted to expand Italy’s influence in Africa and in the Mediterranean, and, because Italy had not yet forgotten their defeat, they sought to expand by connecting their two colonies of Eritrea and Somalia by taking Ethiopia.⁴ Mussolini’s own brilliant military skill manifested clearly in the way he prepared and timed this invasion. First, in 1923, Italy championed Ethiopia’s membership in the League of Nations once he saw that he could not block it. Secondly, he timed his invasion to take place at a time when Europe was noticing the rise of Hitler in Germany, and when he knew that other foreign powers would not want to risk antagonizing Italy for fear of losing it as an ally against the Nazi power.⁵ It was during this precarious time in Europe that Italy began preparations for a full-scale military invasion--one which would use phosgene and mustard gas, both of which had been outlawed by the decree of the League.⁶ Mussolini had planned his military invasion early, and planned to put it into execution in the autumn of 1935. He assumed the support of Britain and France due to their own colonies in the area, and because he noted that the League had not imposed sanctions on the Japanese following their war in Manchuria, he had little fear that his campaign in Ethiopia would not be successful.⁷

On December 5, 1934, a clash broke out between Italian and Ethiopian soldiers at Wal-Wal, a spot near the border of Italian Somaliland, which was the spark that Mussolini was waiting for to launch his full scale military take over.⁸ The Italians then brought forth claims to Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie to claim a protectorate of Wal-Wal, claims which were promptly reject. It was at this point that Selassie brought his case before the League. Although it was unclear which side had begun the fighting, it was clear that the incident could not reasonable be taken as a justification for war; however, though the Italians made no formal declaration of war, they did begin flying planes over the area and dropped numerous bombs. Selassie, much distressed by the gravity of the situation, greatly urged prompt intervention by the Executive Council to take measures to safeguard the territory. The question before the League was one of great significance: would they uphold rights of the weaker state which was clearly within her right as a Member, or would they yield to Italy so as not to lose or antagonize an ally against Hitler?⁹

Uncertain as to what action to take, the members of the Council looked to Britain and France for leadership.¹⁰ This greatly pleased Mussolini, because Italy, France, and Britain had grown closer together to work as allies since Italy’s intervention against a German invasion of Austria, and he knew that these two countries would not be eager to take action against him, even if that meant forgetting the laws of the Covenant and the interests of the League.¹¹ The British, alarmed at the ever increasing number of Italian troops in Ethiopia, sent an ambassador to Mussolini to beg for a solution to the African dispute that would help save the prestige of the League, but the Duce swiftly replied that Italy had chosen it’s course of action and would not be deterred from it.¹²

After many months of inaction and delays in the League Assembly and Italy’s refusal to negotiate with various proposals made by Britain, on May 20, 1935, Emperor Selassie once again urged the hastening of Council action to put an end to Italy’s ever increasing military preparations.¹³ Outside of the main great powers of France and Britain, the smaller countries of Europe and America began to see that if action was not taken that they would witness the failure of the Covenant to take effective international action.¹⁴ Yet when the matter did arise for discussion, not a single ambassador spoke on the part of Ethiopia; each country realized the possible threat to their own national security of a combined German-Italian force and did not wish to risk the chance that they would ruin French and British attempts to turn Italy away from her course.¹⁵ As the Ethiopians saw the mounting Italian munitions, Selassie saw that he could no longer wait for League intervention and began to seek to import arms, for the Ethiopian army had little more than rifles and machine guns with which to fight Italian aircraft and mustard gas. Yet, the results were meager because Italy had issued a decree that stated that any sale of armaments to Ethiopia would be regarded as an unfriendly act to Italy.¹⁶ In response, the British issued that they would enforce an arms embargo on both Ethiopia and Italy, yet this only succeeded in preventing Ethiopia from attaining much needed arms; it did nothing to cease Italy’s own production and transport of arms to Africa.¹⁷ So because Ethiopia had trusted in the League to make intervention for the aversion of war, they had in fact waited too long to prepare themselves for a war that now seemed completely inescapable.

On October 2, 1935, Mussolini’s forces attacked Ethiopia and started a war in which the Ethiopians were unprepared technologically and without ally support.¹⁸ Dr. John Melly of the British Ambulance Service described the war with these words: “It’s a torture of tens of thousands of defenseless men, women and children with bombs and poison gas...And the world looks on--and passes by on the other side.”¹⁹ Yet, upon the blatant violation of the Covenant, the League did finally take some action against Italy though it later proved to be almost completely ineffective. An ad hoc committee of the League decided on taking the five following modest proposals: 1) that the arms embargo against Ethiopia be lifted and that one be placed upon Italy, 2) that all loans of credit to Italy be prohibited, 3) that an embargo be placed on all goods from Italy, 4) that embargoes should be placed upon certain goods going to Italy, and 5) that economic support would be given to states adversely affected by the sanctions.²⁰ However, these measures failed to be effective in stopping Italy for several key reasons. First of all, several member states, including Austria, Hungary, and Albania, refused to comply with the League ordinances. Secondly, three of Italy’s main trading partners, the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, undermined the League efforts by continuing trade with Italy. Plus, the League had announced that the sanctions would be placed in effect beginning on November 18, 1935, which gave the Italians plenty of foreknowledge and a considerable amount of time to amass goods which were to be sanctioned later. The worst oversight and the main reason why the sanctions failed to be effective in halting Italy’s war movements was the failure of the League to impose sanctions banning the oil supply and no agreement to close the vital Suez Canal to military traffic.²¹ As the journal The Economist had predicted, the sanctions imposed by the League were “highly inconvenient but not crippling.”²² Thus, the only action the League of Nations ever managed to take proved ineffective due largely to the lack of commitment to carry through with sanctions that would have truly crippled Italy and put an end to her war in Ethiopia.

By early May in 1936, Italy had defeated Ethiopia in just a few months. It was only after the conquest of this small African country was complete that people began to truly see the crisis that the League of Nations was now in. Emperor Haile Selassie put it best himself in these words, spoken before the League in June 1936:

“I was defending the cause of many small peoples who are threatened with aggression... On many occasions, I have asked for financial assistance for the purchase of arms. That assistance has been constantly refused me. I assert that the problem submitted to the Assembly today is much wider than that of the situation created by Italy’s aggression... It is the very existence of the League of Nations... In a word, it is international morality at stake.”²³

Selassie’s words proved to be all too true; in the Spanish Civil War as well as in the deal at Munich in 1938, the League and the idea of collective security were no longer included. Following this Italio-Ethiopian conflict, the League was only revived once more to expel the Soviet Union for their invasion of Finland in 1939-40 before it was finally dissolved completely in 1946.

Woodrow Wilson’s dream had been to create a body and union of states and countries that would work together for mutual benefit for lasting peace and security. However, the basic elements of trust, honesty, and courage, all of which are crucial elements for such a union to operate, never truly grew strong among the member states of the League of Nations.²⁴ The crisis in Ethiopia effectively displayed the fears of the members that resulted in the failure and dissolvement of the League: the smaller states felt that they were not being given equal and fair treatment by the larger powers out to protect their own interests, Britain and France both mistrusted each other and could not be looked to for the guidance the League required, and the fear of Germany by practically everyone left everyone fearing secret treaties and harmful alliances. In this brutal take over, the European people saw that collective security was still a dream yet to be attained and that international law was not respected by any country; aggressive states such as Italy, Germany and Japan had learned that the old law of might equaling right was still quite capable of overcoming and defeating “international law.” When the smaller member states of the League saw that not even Britain and France, the leaders of the idea of international security, possessed the courage to uphold the laws set forth in the covenant, they lost faith in the system of mutual respect of national integrity and safety.²⁵ Thus, when the League of Nations failed to effectively support and defend Ethiopia against the attack of Italy, they showed how fallen and impossible the concept and execution of international law for the purpose of maintaining peace and security truly was at that point in history.

Endnotes

2. Ibid., 2.

3. Ibid., 623.

4. “Collective Security in the 1930’s--a luxury nobody could afford?” [Online]     Available http://stud-www.uni-marburg.de/~Bode/colsec.html. Nov. 8, 1996.

5. Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini (New York, 1982), 98.

6. Ibid., 98.

7. Ibid., 174.

8. Richard B. Lyttle, Il Duce: The Rise and Fall of Benito Mussolini (New York, 1987), 107.

9. Walters, 627.

10. Ibid., 628.

11. Ivone Kirkpatrick, Mussolini: A Study in Power (New York, 1964), 298.

12. Ibid., 312.

13. Walters, 633.

14. Ibid., 635.

15. Ibid., 638.

16. Ibid., 641.

17. Leonard Mosley, Haile Selassie: The Conquering Lion (New Jersey, 1964), 180.

18. Ibid., 183.

19. Ibid., 202.

20. Kirkpatrick, 324.

21. Smith, 198.

22. Jean Prévost, “Policy Staff Paper--No. 93/04.” [Online] Available http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/english/foreignp/dfait/policy~1/93_04_e/s6.html, March 1993.

23. “Collective Security in the 1930’s” [Online].

24. Ibid., [Online].

25. Ibid., [Online].

Email the author at megxyz@aol.com