First Lecture
THE AIMS OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
SYNOPSIS
I. The purpose of the three Lectures is to draw attention to the links which connect the proposed League of Nations with the past, to the difficulties involved in the proposal, and to the way in which they can be overcome.
II. The conception of a League of Nations is not new, but is as old as International Law, because any kind of International Law and some kind of a League of Nations are interdependent and correlative.
III. During antiquity no International Law in the modern sense of the term was possible, because the common interests which could force a number of independent States into a community of States were lacking.
IV. But during the second part of the Middle Ages matters began to change. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries an International Law, and with it a kind of League of Nations, became a necessity and therefore grew by custom. At the same time arose the first schemes for a League of Nations guaranteeing permanent peace, namely those of Pierre Dubois (1305), Antoine Marini (1461), Sully (1603), and Emeric Crucée (1623). Hugo Grotius' immortal work on 'The Law of War and Peace' (1625).
V. The League of Nations thus evolved by custom could not undertake to prevent wars; the conditions prevailing up to the outbreak of the French Revolution made it impossible; it was only during the nineteenth century that the principle of nationality made growth.