In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

 2 The Idea of a League I shrank from the faces and forms by which I was surrounded. They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but of impossibilities. —C. S. Lewis The League of Nations movement in the West was spawned by the dream of lasting peace and the realization that international law was unenforceable by any mechanism then in existence. The League idea entered Anglo-American diplomatic correspondence as early as September 1914. Within a year the term “League of Nations” was in general use by the newly founded League to Enforce Peace (LEP) in the United States and the League of Nations Society in Britain. Lesser League movements were organized in France and Scandinavia. The British foreign secretary , Viscount Edward Grey, pressed the issue with presidential aide Colonel Edward M. House throughout 1915 and received the private endorsement of House and President Wilson on 11 November.1 Woodrow Wilson was a latecomer to the League movement and was never one of its leading theorists. His first public endorsement came in a May 1916 speech at an LEP banquet. By the time of his 1916 presidential campaign the concept had distinctly become his. In 1917 the issue served as one of the idealistic causes that helped generate a consensus favoring belligerency in an America traditionally wary of European wars. The president delegated peace planning to Colonel House and his staff of experts while he assumed the more compatible role of persuading his countrymen, and the world, of the League’s virtues. Wilson included the League proposal as Point Fourteen in his congressional address of 8 January 1918—later to become the formula for the armistice. By the time of his Five Particulars speech in September, it was clear that the League would form the core of Wilson’s peace program: “The constitution of that League of Nations and the clear definition of its objects must be part, is in a sense the most essential part, of the peace settlement itself.”2 In preliminary deliberations before the opening of the Paris Peace Conference , Wilson insisted that the League Covenant be the first item on the agenda.  Japan and the League of Nations America’s decisive role in the war and the nation’s burgeoning military power made Wilson’s demands difficult to refuse. Most Japanese were taken by surprise at the conclusion of the war when it became clear that the traditional process of dividing the spoils would be tempered by the liberal ideals of the American president. As a belligerent, Japan had pursued a military and diplomatic program directed toward the displacement of German power in East Asia. With de facto control of former German territory and secret pledges by allies and neighbors to confirm those acquisitions, Japan approached the peace conference confident of achieving open recognition of its enhanced international position. The process of preparation for the parlay revealed Japan’s overwhelming assumption that power factors would be the major determinants of the postwar order and that the League idea was window dressing. Peace Preparation Japan’s peace planning began early in the war. While the seizure of Qingdao was in progress, Foreign Minister Katō assigned to the Political Affairs Bureau the task of gathering materials relevant to the postwar settlement. A year later, in September 1915, a formal Peace Preparation Commission (Kōwa Junbi Iinkai) was established, with representatives from the Foreign, War, and Navy Ministries and the cabinet’s Legislative Bureau. Chaired initially by Foreign Vice-Minister Matsui Keishirō and then by Shidehara Kijūrō, the commission made its first formal report on 25 December 1916. Its resolutions pertained almost exclusively to the transfer of former German territories and economic rights to Japan.3 A more concrete formulation of Japan’s conditions of peace was revealed at the time of the Inter-Allied Conference, which opened in Paris on 29 November 1917. Anticipating a discussion of peace terms, Foreign Minister Motono cabled a “general policy” statement to the Japanese delegates. The instructions were sanctioned by the Gaikō Chōsakai and followed the lines established by the Peace Preparation Commission a year earlier: 1. On matters of direct concern to Japan and not the other powers: a. Secure the transfer of the various rights and economic assets held by Germany prior to the war in Shandong Province. b. Secure the cession of German South Pacific islands north of the equator and the transfer of various rights and economic assets related thereto. 2. On matters where...

Share