Introduction

Abstract

We are currently, and have been for some time, much concerned with the problem of peace. The modern state of weaponry, a sword of Damocles hanging over the very life of mankind, is not however the sole or even the main reason for our present endeavors, for all that it gives them added point. It is well to realize that the United Nations, and the largely similar League of Nations, between them represent a search that has been going on for nearly half a century. The League formally came into existence in 1920. The attempt that these institutions have embodied must be seen in the main as a response to the breakdown in the international order that was the first World War—a breakdown which, in the present context, the second World War merely continued.