HW 4

1. The League of Nations helped to improve international relations in some cases, resolving various issues between countries. For example, the results of territorial disputes such as the argument between Finland and Sweden over the Aaland Islands and the one between Germany and Poland about Upper Silesia were decided by the League of Nations, which gave the Aaland Islands to Finland and divided Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland. These decisions were effective, and were accepted internationally.
In addition to this, the League was able to prevent certain incidents from becoming violent conflicts. A Greek invasion of Bulgaria was ended quickly by the League of Nations, which demanded for Greece to withdraw its forces and pay reparations for Bulgaria. However, the League was not entirely successful in all its efforts. It had no real power with which to enforce its decisions, meaning that some of its efforts, such as the Disarmament Commission were ineffective, as the League seemed to have very little actual authority over the amount of weapons nations could keep.

2. The League of Nations was successful in some ways, but it could have been a much more effective organization overall. For a number of reasons, it lacked the power it needed to be make authoritative international decisions. The first of these reasons was the fact that some of the most powerful nations at the time were not involved in the League's activities. For example, the United States was never a member of the League, and the USSR was not a member until 1934. If France and Britain, the two countries that seemed to be in charge of the League, had figured out a way to involve these nations, they may have had a better chance of maintaining collective security.
The League of Nations was also largely inactive during the events leading up to World War II. This may have been because France and Britain felt that they had be too strict with its punishments for Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. If the League had taken action against aggression by dictators such as Hitler, it may have been able to prevent or lessen the impact of the Second World War. Specifically, the German remilitarization of the Rhineland could have easily been stopped if France reacted by sending in its troops.