The League of Nations was a intergovernmental organization founded in 1919 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War with 3 main members; America, Britain and France, also known as the ‘Big three’. Their 4 main aims were to prevent aggression, improve business and trade, improve living and working conditions and get rid of country’s weapons by disarming.
The League of Nations was successful in some areas such as with refugees; The League did tremendous work in getting refugees and former prisoners of war back to their home lands. It was estimated in the first few years of the war about 400,000 prisoners were returned to their homes by the League’s agencies. This made the League successful because it meant that when a refugee crisis hit Turkey in 1922 hundreds of thousands of people had to be housed in refugee camps. The League acted quickly to stamp out cholera, smallpox and dysentery in the camps. This made the League seem strong and like they were working hard.
Another successful point of the League was the International labour organisation were successful in banning poisonous white lead from paint and in limiting the hours which small children were allowed to work. It also campaigned strongly for the employers to improve working conditions generally. It also introduced a resolution for a maximum 48-hour week and 8-hour day, but only a minority of members adopted it because they thought it would raise costs in their own home industries. This made the League strong because they were managing to complete one of their four aims; improve living and working conditions.
The Health committee, which later became the world health organisation, was successful because they worked hard to defeat the dreaded disease, leprosy. It started the global campaign to exterminate mosquitoes, which greatly reduced cases of malaria and yellow fever in later decades. Even Russia, which was otherwise