The League was formed in the aftermath of the 1914-18 war. President Woodrow Wilson of the US was one of its midwives. He wanted to protect minority rights, to give peoples independence. His "14 points" were an inspiration to all the would-be nations of the world. He demanded a new international order – shades of George Bush Snr – and an equality of nations. "Europe is being liquidated," General Smuts announced in 1918, "and the League of Nations must be the heir to this great estate."
And so came into being a new Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, a reshaped Europe and, of course, a new Middle East. The modern state of Iraq (President Bush, please note) owes its creation to the League, whose British and French mandates gave us for better or worse – probably worse – Palestine and Syria and Lebanon. Others wanted states, too. The Kurds wanted a state. The Armenians wanted to reverse their genocide by the Turks and return to homes in Turkey.
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