ges occurring in society.
Another weakness was the failure of the US to come into the League. Smith attributes this to the combination of Woodrow Wilson's single-minded determination to be at the center of the League and Versailles, his failure to include any domestic political adversaries in the American delegation, and his failure to compromise on any feature of the League provisions during the American debate on ratification, which failed (194-6). Deprived of American participation in the League, the League itself lost prestige and failed the test of effectiveness as the world moved toward World War II.
Nevertheless, the League Covenant must be interpreted as a precursor of the United Nations Charter. The UN Charter was meant to provided for an international representative organization in the General Assembly and a smaller, executive body in the form of the Security Council, comprising permanent great powers and temporary and rotating smaller powers. The UN was aimed at assuring peaceful settlement of international differences, territorial integrity, and collective security, within the context of peaceful change. Hayes, et al., cite a series of speeches marking the UN's tenth-year anniversary in 1955, to the effect that "the United Nations had not fulfilled all of the hopes of the year 1945; the world situation had thwarted it in its major role as a peace-maker; but it had accomplished much; there was new hope for the future of man; and in any case this organization was a continuing symbol of man's aspirations for a world at peace" (787).
But the UN charter could not overcome nationalism, hence in Morgenthau's view does not function as a world authority because it cannot supervise the minds and actions of men. Article 51 of the charter itself also straddles between nationalist and internationalist views. The Article at once prohibits international "entangling alliances" typical of the World War II Axis (Germany, Japan, Italy...