“The Existence and Effective Use of the League of Nations”

Abstract

Geneva helped to end a potentially dangerous international crisis and made it possible to preserve the peace of Europe in late 1934. The League Council’s resolution adopted during a special midnight session in December made specific and far-reaching proposals for settling the Yugoslav-Hungarian dispute. It was greeted with genuine relief and widespread praise. With firm leadership from France and Britain, the organization proved that it still had some peacekeeping authority. Resolving the dispute between Yugoslavia and Hungary also demonstrated the value of Article 11, perhaps the most effective security provision of the Covenant. As a result, the consequences of the terrorist attack at Marseilles were very different from those of the attack at Sarajevo twenty years before, when no such organization had existed.