Europe and the United Nations

Abstract

Since the foundation of the League of Nations 40 years ago, there have been fundamental changes in the international community. In the year 1920, in spite of the effects of the First World War, the political centre of the world was to all appearances still in Europe. It would have appeared strange, indeed, to have the headquarters of the organisation outside the old Continent. The European States made up about half the original Members of the League, and, above all, the whole activity of the League was determined and influenced by the European legal tradition. The ideas of President Wilson had made a decisive contribution both as to the structure and the functions of the League, and, though indeed the United States remained aloof from Geneva, we should remember that the statesmen and diplomats of the Latin American States all along made valuable contributions to its work. And these men, after all, by their education, belonged to the selfsame tradition of international law, as it had developed in modern European history. The importance given to European legal systems was expressed in the fact that, out of eleven judges of the Permanent Court of Justice, seven always were members of the European nations.²