The Covenant of the League of Nations had envisaged sponsoring only the protection of certain categories of men: national minorities and populations of territories controlled by other countries.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It is a commonplace that the League of Nations is not yet-what its most enthusiastic protagonists intended it to be.
All in all, the League of Nations is not inevitably bound, as some maintain from time to time, to degenerate into an impotent appendage of first one, then another of the competing great powers.
As in Athens, the right to participate was restricted to men, just as it was also in all later democracies and republics until the twentieth century.
Who belongs to the community of the commonly protected?
The purpose of the United Nations should be to protect the essential sovereignty of nations, large and small.
The first condition of success for the League of Nations is, therefore, a firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States of America and France and Italy that there will be no competitive building up of fleets or armies between them.
Keeping small nations enslaved because of the deals between the great nations or because of any pragmatic considerations that might have been there are totally unacceptable.
The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.
The European organisation contemplated could not oppose any ethnic group, on other continents or in Europe itself, outside of the League of Nations, any more than it could oppose the League of Nations.
A covenant made with God should be regarded not as restrictive but as protective.