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The Great War

Evidently the interwar years were closely related to international peace and co-operation. Yet it is often forgotten that tentative institutions and exploratory steps were taken towards peace prior to the Great War. Namely through the structured system of international negotiation that was set out during the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907.[1] A third Hague Conference was planned to take place in 1914. These plans, however, were interrupted by the Great War. Inevitably, the programme towards international arbitration prior to the Great War was too slow to provide the momentum for international co-operation and to mediate international disputes. However, the war itself, as the embodiment of violent international relations, ‘gave considerable impetus’ to post-war international administration and played a key role in shaping the organisation of the sovereign states of the post-Versailles world.[2]

The atrocities of the Great War were unprecedented as all the technological innovations of mass production and mechanisation started in the industrial revolution were now put to use to create advanced weaponry.[3] Though international in scope, it was fought in the confined space of Europe. The Allied powers mobilised an impressive 42 million men over the course of the war, 167,000 of them Australian troops, and the Central powers mobilised 23 million men.[4] An unprecedented eight and a half million soldiers lost their lives to the war.[5] In addition to this, the wounded numbered 21 million and another 10 million civilians died in Europe through civil war, disease and hunger.[6] The Great War was so unutterably horrific, that its aftermath brought about the yearning for a new diplomatic world order. United States President Woodrow Wilson understood this and issued his fourteen-points in January 1918 as a basic blueprint for world peace and had a vague idea for a confederation to implement such ideals.[7]



[1] ‘The Covenant of the League of Nations’, in The Aims and Organisation of the League of Nations (Geneva: Secretariat of the League of Nations, 1929), 14.

[2] F.S. Northedge, The League of Nations: Its Life and Times 1920 – 1946 (New York: Leicester University Press, 1986), 11.

[3] F.S. Northedge, The League of Nations: Its Life and Times 1920 – 1946 (New York: Leicester University Press, 1986), 2.

[4] F.S. Northedge, The League of Nations: Its Life and Times 1920 – 1946 (New York: Leicester University Press, 1986), 2 ; W. J. Hudson, Australia and the League of Nations (Paramatta: Sydney University Press, 1980), 96.

[5] F.S. Northedge, The League of Nations: Its Life and Times 1920 – 1946 (New York: Leicester University Press, 1986), 2.

[6] F.S. Northedge, The League of Nations: Its Life and Times 1920 – 1946 (New York: Leicester University Press, 1986), 2.

[7] ‘The Covenant of the League of Nations’, in The Aims and Organisation of the League of Nations (Geneva: Secretariat of the League of Nations, 1929), 14.