Millions of people would have been much worse off if not for the work of the League and its commissions.
Europe, in the aftermath of WW1 and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, faced a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale. It was estimated that a million and a half refugees had fled the Bolshevik revolution and in total there were some half a million prisoners of war in 1920 and they wanted to return home. There were also more than a million refugees in the Balkans for different reasons. Consequently refugee camps were a necessity and the League worked to make sure diseases like cholera, smallpox and dysentery didn’t take hold. In 1921 the League set up a Commission of Refugees. It was a major success for the League and, in 1922, Fridtjof Nansen, its first High Commissioner, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The League’s Health Organisation was another major success and was the forerunner of the UNs World Health Organisation. Successful initiatives included its campaign to reduce leprosy and its campaign to eradicate the mosquito and so reduce the spread of malaria and yellow fever. It also worked with non-member states, for example preventing a typhus epidemic in Russian Siberia. And it also helped to set up research institutions which worked on vaccines for diseases like diphtheria and tuberculosis.
The Slavery Commission sought to stamp out slavery. For example, it organised raids against slave owners and traders in Burma, and it worked to end the ‘white slave’ trafficking of women and children into prostitution. Another major success was the freeing of 200,000 slaves in Sierra Leone and a much-reduced death rate – from 50% to 4% on the Tanganyikan railway. It gathered evidence published reports and sort to exert maximum pressure on governments to act. Countries such as Iraq, Jordan and Nepal abolished slavery altogether. However, it couldn’t interfere in the sovereign right of nations to enforce their own laws and it had to rely on raising awareness and moral force
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) covered issues such as working hours, child labour, women’s rights and employers’ liability. Like the Slavery Commission it collected evidence of working conditions around the world and published its findings trying to persuade governments to take action. It called for minimum standards such as a minimum employment age of fifteen, an eight-hour working day, a forty-eight hour working week, annual holidays with pay, and the right to join a trade union. It also called for minimum wage rates, sickness and unemployment insurance. Health and safety in the workplace was another focus. It also lobbied for old-age pensions. It relied on establishing minimum standards and publicising them, hoping to shame reluctant governments to impose them but again, like the Slavery Commission, it couldn’t interfere in the sovereign right of nations to legislate as they saw fit.
There were other commissions, and a fuller account of their work is given in my e-book on the League of Nations, but these four examples will give you something to think about when you are assessing whether the League was a success or not.
