His wife coordinated his Presidential responsibilities. The push in the Senate for reservations to the Treaty was strong, but Wilson refused to give in because it would be repudiating what each nation had signed. If the United States demanded changes, then why could not the Germans also? Thus the President asked those who supported the Treaty to vote against ratification with the reservations, and consequently the Treaty was never ratified by the United States. Wilson hoped, perhaps, to be nominated again for President in 1920, but he was a broken man. The Republican Harding declared nebulously that he favored some sort of association of nations, and he was elected for “a return to normalcy.” In Wilson’s last public statement in 1923 he lamented, “I have seen fools resist Providence before.” He still believed that his principles would eventually prevail. He died on February 3, 1924.
On January 16, 1920 President Wilson formally convoked the Council in accordance with the League provision for the summoning of the first Council and Assembly by the President of the United States. It was to be the last official participation by the United States in the entire history of the League of Nations. The League became a dead issue in American politics, and even Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, who both had been early League supporters, could not get the United States involved during their Presidencies. The League, which the United States was expected to lead, lost its universal acceptance and credibility without the American power. Although virtually every other nation in the world joined the League, eventually several of the New World countries withdrew-Costa Rica and Brazil in the mid-twenties and Paraguay, Nicaragua, Honduras, Salvador, Chile, Venezuela, and Peru in the middle-to-late thirties.
Germany was admitted to the League in 1926 but withdrew in 1933. The debts and reparations were reduced and made more bearable for the German economy, and in the early thirties Hitler and the Nazi Party, using strong electioneering tactics, rose to power and began to re-arm. A Disarmament Conference was finally held in 1932-1933; but when Hitler and Germany withdrew after speaking sugar-coated words about peace, the disarmament process became futile. Japan’s excursions in Manchuria during this period were tolerated, because the League did not refer to them as war. Japan also withdrew in 1933. Communist Russia was treated like an atheist pariah by League Members until fear of Germany and the diplomacy of Maxim Litvinov led to an invitation for the Soviet Union to join in 1934. The Saar district was returned to Germany when, with Nazi encouragement 90% of the people voted for German rule. Hitler completely repudiated the Versailles Treaty and sent troops to the Rhineland area, and by 193 Germany could simply annex Austria without a complaint from the League. The most disastrous blow was when Italy under the Fascist leadership of Mussolini invaded and took over Ethiopia in 1936. The exiled Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, made an eloquent appeal to the League for help against the Italians’ mustard gas bombing of his weak nation. However, the most that the League had been able to do was to boycott Italy and Ethiopia; this hindered Italy little since the United States and others were still trading with them. Neither did the League do anything about the Nazi bombing of Spain during its civil war.
Perhaps the League had helped to prevent small wars and through cooperation brought a little more collective consciousness into international affairs, but its failure became overwhelmingly obvious when the aggressions of Japan, Italy, and Germany brought on a second and greater world war that many had feared.