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1 William E. Rappard, League of Nations: The League of Nations as an Historical Fact 279 (1927)

handle is hein.hoil/lonhf0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 279 THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AS AN HISTORICAL FACT BY WILLIAM E. RAPPARD Recteur de I'Universit6 de Gen&ve Before analyzing the League of Nations in its manifold activities, in its achievements, and in its failures, in its prescribed tasks and in its applied methods, it may be well to consider it synthetically, as a great historical phenomenon. That it is an historical phenomenon of the first magnitude, com- parable in importance with, say, the establishment of national States in Europe at the close of the Middle Ages, or the spread of parliamentary government in the nineteenth century, no one can deny. Whether we ask its friends or its foes, whether we question the statesmen of Europe or large bodies of the governed throughout the whole world, whether we consult the political historian or the student of international law, the reply will be the same: for good or for evil, the League of Nations, as an ideal and as an insti- tution, has in the course of the last decade, become a factor of prime significance in human affairs. It has everywhere become a subject of political controversy, in the countries which have joined it, hardly less than in those which remain aloof. It has everywhere influenced the politics of parties and the policies of governments. It has settled some international disputes which might, without its intervention, have remained unsettled, and it has given rise to other international disputes which would, without its creation, never have arisen. Like motor-cars, wireless telephony, aviation, prohibition, fluctuating exchanges, Russian bolshevism, Italian fascism, American opulence, and European impecuniosity, but more far-reaching in its consequences than at least some of these, the League of Nations faces the student of contemporary affairs as a fact which may be hailed as a triumph and a blessing, deprecated as a nuisance or a curse, ridiculed as a sham or a fad, but which cannot be ignored. I shall not, on this occasion, seek as a moralist to estimate its value for mankind, but merely as an historian to understand it and 191

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