It failed because it lacked the spirit of genuine liberalism. It was a convention of governments imbued with the spirit of economic nationalism and entirely committed to the principles of economic warfare. While the delegates indulged in mere academic talk about good will among the nations, the governments whom they represented inflicted a good deal of evil upon all other nations. The two decades of the League's functioning were marked by each nation's adamant economic warfare against all other nations. The prospects for the United Nations are not much better, but rather worse.
Every nation looks upon imports, especially upon imports of manufactured goods, as upon a disaster.
Almost all nations are fighting against the specter of an unfavorable balance of trade. 366-368, and below, pp. For an appraisal of the abortive attempts of the League to do away with economic warfare, cf. Database Programming, Site Design and Hosting IWDC, Inc.