Quotes & Sayings About League Of Nations

Let the League of Nations say whatever it pleases, let America offer whatever interference, let China decry Japan's action at the top of her voice, but Japan must adhere to her course unswervingly. — Sadao Araki

Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson, that great liberal president of the United States who sought to found the League of Nations, put it this way in a lecture he delivered at Columbia University in 1907: Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused. — David Harvey

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization. — Vladimir Putin

I am certain that a solution of the general problem of peace must rest on broad and basic understanding on the part of its peoples. Great single endeavors like a League of Nations, a United Nations, and undertakings of that character, are of great importance and in fact absolutely necessary, but they must be treated as steps toward the desired end. — George C. Marshall

In 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, Japan had put forward a proposal to guarantee racial equality at the League of Nations, but Woodrow Wilson overturned it in the face of majority support. — Pankaj Mishra

It is a commonplace that the League of Nations is not yet-what its most enthusiastic protagonists intended it to be. — Hjalmar Branting

We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world ... We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind isinevitably our affair as well as the nations of Europe and Asia. — Woodrow Wilson

As long as the problem of world reconstruction remains the center of interest for all nations, blocs having similar attitudes will form and operate even within the League itself. — Hjalmar Branting

[Lloyd George] said that Harding 's speech on American naval aspirations made him feel that he would pawn his shirt rather than allow America to dominate the seas. If this was to be the outcome of the League of Nations propaganda, he was sorry for the world and in particular for America. — David Lloyd George

Everyone knows that England are a far better team than their World Cup performance suggests. It's vital that we play with confidence and take the strength and competition of the engage Super League in to the Four Nations. — Paul Sculthorpe

It must be thoroughly understood that the lost land will never be won back by solemn appeals to the God, nor by hopes in any League of Nations, but only by the force of arms. — Adolf Hitler

The Covenant of the League of Nations had envisaged sponsoring only the protection of certain categories of men: national minorities and populations of territories controlled by other countries. — Rene Cassin

I am for such a League [of Nations] provided we don't expect too much from it. . . . I am not willing to play the pan which even Aesop held up to derision when he wrote of how the wolves and the sheep agreed to disarm, and how the sheep as a guarantee of good faith sent away the watchdogs, and were then forthwith eaten by the wolves. — Theodore Roosevelt

As well as the [League of Nations] delegates themselves and their suites, there were innumerable campaigners of one sort and another, male and female, clerical and lay, young and old; all with some notion to publicise, some pet solution to offer, some organisation to promote. They gathered in droves, fanning out through the city, and settling in hotels and pensions, from the Lakeside ones down to tiny obscure back-street establishments. Ferocious ladies with moustaches, clergymen with black leather patches on the elbows of their jackets or cassocks and smelling of tobacco smoke, mad admirals who knew where to find the lost tribes of Israel, and scarcely saner generals who deduced prophetic warnings from the measurement of the pyramids; but one and all believers in the League's historic role to deliver mankind painlessly and inexpensively from the curse of war to the great advantage of all concerned. — Malcolm Muggeridge

The League of Nations is the greatest humbug in history. They cannot even protect a little nation like Armenia. They do nothing but pass useless resolutions. — David Lloyd George

There is no reason why agreement on particular points should not be both possible and advantageous to the so-called neutrals and to one or more of the blocs, either existing or in the process of formation, within the League of Nations. — Hjalmar Branting

I hate dainty minds,' answered Marjorie. 'But a girl has to be dainty in person. If she looks like a million dollars she can talk about Russia, ping-pong, or the League of Nations and get away with it. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The first condition of success for the League of Nations is, therefore, a firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States of America and France and Italy that there will be no competitive building up of fleets or armies between them. — Arthur Henderson

I am Emir Dynamite!" he shouted, swaying on top of the tall camelback. "If within two days we don't get any decent food, I'll incite the tribes to revolt! I swear! I will appoint myself the Prophet's representative and declare holy war, jihad. On Denmark, for example. Why did the Danes torment their Prince Hamlet? Considering the current political situation, a casus beli like this would satisfy even the League of Nations. No, seriously, I'll buy a million worth of rifles from the British
they love to sell firearms to the tribes
and onward to Denmark. Germany will let us through
in lieu of war reparations. Imagine the tribes invading Copenhagen! I'll lead the charge on a white camel. — Ilya Ilf

Is America becoming decadent? Do we no longer regard our promises and pledges as sacred? ... We promised to make peace with Germany only in conjunction with the Allies; but we brought forward a separate peace, demanding for ourselves all the advantages of the Treaty of Versailles but rejecting all the responsibilities embodied in the Treaty. It was America's President who induced Europe to form a League of Nations; and then America was the first country that refused to joint it ... If these are not the symptoms of national decadency, what are they? — B.C. Forbes

The basic premise of collective security was that all nations would view every threat to security in the same way and be prepared to run the same risks in resisting it. Not only had nothing like it ever actually occurred, nothing like it was destined to occur in the entire history of both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Only when a threat is truly overwhelming and genuinely affects all, or most, societies is such a consensus possible - as it was during the two world wars and, on a regional basis, in the Cold War. But in the vast majority of cases - and in nearly all of the difficult ones - the nations of the world tend to disagree either about the nature of the threat or about the type of sacrifice they are prepared to make to meet it. — Henry Kissinger

I had come to regard the U.S. Senate's rejection of the League of Nations as a tragic mistake. — Elliot Richardson

Hitler scheduled joint plebiscites in Austria and Germany for April 10, 1938. Both populations voted on whether to incorporate the two countries into a single state. The people of Austria cast 99.73 percent of their ballots in favor of Anschluss with Germany. The Germans voted 99.08 percent for unification.
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On March 18. 1938, the German government notified the League of Nations that Austria had cancelled its affiliation. This international body, which had never manifest concern for the plight of the distressed little nation, now debated whether Germany was responsible for paying Austria's delinquent membership dues of 50,000 Swiss francs from January 1 to March 13. This ended the chain of circumstances leading to the unification of Hitler's homeland with the German Reich, an event known to history as "the rape of Austria. — Richard Tedor

It happened, you see, after the war, when I saw people making money while the others were dying in the trenches. You saw it and you couldn't do anything about it. Then later I was at the League of Nations, and there I saw the light. I really saw the world was ruled by the Golden Calf, by Mammon! Oh, no kidding! Implacably. Social consciousness certainly came to me late. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

There is nothing absurd or impracticable in the idea of a league or alliance between independent nations for certain defined purposes precisely stated in a treaty regulating all the details of time, place, circumstance, and quantity; leaving nothing to future discretion; and depending for its execution on the good faith of the parties. — Alexander Hamilton

Let us return, however, to the League of Nations. To create an organization which is in a position to protect peace in this world of conflicting interests and egotistic wills is a frighteningly difficult task. — Hjalmar Branting

The European organisation contemplated could not oppose any ethnic group, on other continents or in Europe itself, outside of the League of Nations, any more than it could oppose the League of Nations. — Aristide Briand

A living thing is born. — Woodrow Wilson

This means that the search for a formula of European cooperation in connection with the League of Nations, far from weakening the authority of this latter must and can only tend to strengthen it, for it is closely connected with its aims. — Aristide Briand

I have loved but one flag and I can not share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented for the League of Nations. — Henry Cabot Lodge

My voice comes from faraway, therefore it is faint and, also, because it is a woman's voice, it is trembling of the emotion imposed by your presence, as much as of the honour of being listen to. My voice comes from faraway, but it hopes when you will listen to it that it will resound in your hearts.
My voice comes from the midst of this nation, which having been placed on the threshold of Europe, will have loved and admired France and like France, and often through it, she would have strived for Freedom, vowed to have accomplished a splendid destiny and face bravely the changing mood of Fortune.

You may well recognise in these qualities Romania, land of suffering, land of enlightenment and of valour placed across the promontory against the dredge of Asian invasions and like a beacon being mightily conscious of defending the civilization, which gave it its people and its laws. - Paris, 27th April 1925; addressing the League of Nations (translated Constantin Roman — Elena Vacarescu

After forty years of selling wholesale industrial deodorizing supplies, one establishment is forced to open its doors to the public.
In the lingo of the trade, a salesman explains why their large institution buyers have gone elsewhere.
Who wants to stand downwind of the League o' Nations every time some freshman with a bladder infection pulls a Nebuchadnezzar? — Ben Katchor

Podkolyosin asked tragically, Why are you keeping quiet, like the League of Nations? — Ilya Ilf

Just think of what Woodrow Wilson stood for: he stood for world government. He wanted an early United Nations, League of Nations. But it was the conservatives, Republicans, that stood up against him. — Ron Paul

By 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt was so angry at FDR's policies, she writes a book called This Troubled World. And it is actually a point-by-point rebuttal of her husband's foreign policy. We need collective security. We need a World Court. We need something like the League of Nations. We need to work together to fight fascism. We need embargoes against aggressor nations, and we need to name aggressor nations. All of which is a direct contradiction of FDR's policies. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

No nation is so great as to be able to afford, in the long run, to remain outside an increasingly universal League of Nations. — Hjalmar Branting

The nations of Europe constitute a federative league, a commonwealth of nations which, though it has no central head, is so intimate and elaborate as to subject the action, and sometimes even the internal affairs, of each to surveillance and intervention on the part of all the others. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

Woodrow Wilson, for example, shortly before his death, buffeted by the Senate in his efforts on behalf of the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty, rejected the suggestion that he seek a seat in the Senate from New Jersey, stating: "Outside of the United States, the Senate does not amount to a damn. And inside the United States the Senate is mostly despised; they haven't had a thought down there in fifty years." There are many who agreed with Wilson in 1920, and some who might agree with those sentiments today. But — John F. Kennedy

It's my greatest success. Women did not vote in Italy until 1946. A good friend and I put together a group of women to protest this. I was very young, just a girl. We went to the Viminale [home of the Ministry of the Interior] and spoke to the chair of the ministry board. Thanks to our initiative, we got the bureaucracy rolling on giving women the right to vote. I have to thank my father for this. He was in Geneva at the League of Nations, and women voted there. He thought it was absurd that women didn't vote in his country yet. — Giovanna Cau

The tribunal here and your American newspapers talk so much about our sharp Nazi methods, but do you realize that within the past year, since the defeat of Germany, 1 million Germans have been evicted from what was originally German territory and which has now been given to Poland? No League of Nations or other body intervened. — Alfred Rosenberg

In order to confer their lost Nationality upon exiled Jews , the British with the help of the League of Nations began to rehabilitate the old Hebrew country, Palestine, with its long lost children. The Jews had maintained their race, religion, culture and language; and all they wanted was their natural territory to complete their Nationality. The reconstruction of the Hebrew Nation on Palestine is just an affirmation of the fact that Country, Race, Religion, Culture and Language must exist unequivocally together to form the Nation idea. — M. S. Golwalkar

The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism. — Christopher Dawson

Last year, the Assembly of the League, as a result of the initiative taken by the Scandinavian nations, further limited and clarified all the provisions of the clause prescribing the duty of states to participate in sanctions. — Hjalmar Branting

All in all, the League of Nations is not inevitably bound, as some maintain from time to time, to degenerate into an impotent appendage of first one, then another of the competing great powers. — Hjalmar Branting

What's the use of a lague of nations if it's to be dominated by Great Britain and her colonies?" said Mr. Rasmussen sourly. "But don't you think any kind of a league's better than nothing?" said Eveline. "It's not the name you give things, it's who's getting theirs underneath that counts," said Robbins.
"That's a very cynical remark," said the California woman. "This isn't any time to be cynical."
"This is a time," said Robbins, "when if we weren't cynical we'd shoot ourselves. — John Dos Passos