Name __________________________
Date: ________________
Section: 11.1
11.2
(circle one)
U. S. History II
HW 4.13: The Treaty of Versailles
and the League of Nations
Directions
1. Carefully read and annotate the following text.
2. Add an identification (date, definition, significance) for League of Nations to the
key terms section of your binder.
3. On a separate sheet of paper, answer the following questions in complete sentences.
a. What was the League of Nations? What was its major goal?
b. How was the Treaty of Versailles related to the League of Nations?
c. Why were many Europeans willing to support the League of Nations after
World War I?
d. How was the League of Nations set up?
e. How did the League of Nations promise to stop another world war from
happening?
f. Predict: Why might some Americans support joining the League of Nations?
g. Predict: Why might some Americans oppose joining the League of Nations?
The League of Nations, 1920
Source: Adapted from U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. “Milestones, 19141920: The League of Nations, 1920.” Retrieved from
http://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/league.
The League of Nations was an international organization, headquartered in Geneva,
Switzerland, created after the First World War to provide a forum for resolving
international disputes. It was first proposed by President Woodrow Wilson as part of his
Fourteen Points plan for an equitable peace in Europe, but the United States was never a
member.
In front of the U.S. Congress on January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson enumerated
the last of his Fourteen Points, calling for a “general association of nations… formed on the
basis of covenants designed to create mutual guarantees of the political independence and
territorial integrity of States, large and small equally.” Many of Wilson’s previous points
would require regulation or enforcement, and thus he distilled the wartime thinking of
many diplomats and intellectuals, on both sides of the Atlantic, into a call for a new type of
standing international organization dedicated to fostering international cooperation,
providing security for its members, and ensuring a lasting peace. With Europe’s population
exhausted by four years of total war, and with many in the United States supportive of the
idea that a new organization would be able to solve the international disputes that had led
to war in 1914, Wilson’s articulation of a League of Nations was wildly popular. However, it
proved exceptionally difficult to create, and Wilson left office never having convinced the
United States to join it.
The idea of the League was grounded in the broad, international revulsion [disgust]
against the unprecedented destruction of the First World War and the contemporary
understanding of its origins. This was reflected in all of Wilson’s Fourteen Points… Wilson
took up the cause with evangelical fervor, whipping up mass enthusiasm for the
organization as he traveled to the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919, the first
President to travel abroad in an official capacity.
Wilson used his tremendous influence to attach the Covenant of the League, its charter, to
the Treaty of Versailles. An effective League, he believed, would mitigate [reduce] any
inequities in the peace terms. He and the other members of the “Big Three,” Georges
Clemenceau of France and David Lloyd George of Britain, drafted the Covenant as Part I of
the Treaty of Versailles. [Note: The Big Four eventually became known as the Big Three
after Vittorio Orlando, prime minister of Italy, dropped out of the Paris Peace Conference in
April 1919.] The League’s main organs [components] were an Assembly of all members
and a Council, made up of five permanent members and four rotating members, along with
an International Court of Justice. Most importantly, for Wilson, the League would guarantee
the territorial integrity [protection against invasion] and political independence of
member states, authorize the League to take “any action…to safeguard the peace,” establish
procedures for arbitration [peaceful resolution of disagreements] and create the
mechanisms for economic and military sanctions [punishments for member countries].
The struggle to ratify [approve] the Treaty of
Versailles and the Covenant in the U.S. Congress
helped define the most important political
division over the role of the United States in the
world for a generation. A triumphant Wilson
returned to the United States in February 1919
to submit the Treaty and Covenant to Congress
for its consent and ratification. Unfortunately
for the President, while popular support for the
League was still strong, opposition within
Congress and the press had begun building
even before he had left for Paris… The United
States never joined the League.