Rappard’s chapter examines the League of Nations as an institution founded on sovereign equality yet structured by Great-Power privilege. He defines small states not by size, wealth, population, culture, or neutrality, but by constitutional rank: they are the members excluded from permanent Council seats.
Small States are, as my friend Max Huber called them already before the war, ‘Nichtgrosstaaten’.
This negative definition lets Rappard treat the League as both a break with old diplomacy and a continuation of it. The nineteenth-century Concert had already reconciled nominal equality with rule by principal Powers, who claimed universal responsibility while consulting smaller states only when directly affected. Article 4 of the Covenant carried that hierarchy into the new organization. The League did not simply manage inequality; it legalized it.
Rappard’s account of the Paris negotiations shows how unstable this compromise was. Cecil defended executive control by the Great Powers, Wilson supplied democratic language, Lansing voiced legal objections, and smaller delegations resisted the prospect of an international directorate. Cecil’s candor exposed the principle beneath the formula:
that the Great Powers must run the League, and that it was just as well to recognize it flatly as not
Small states feared a renewed Holy Alliance, but Rappard does not idealize them as pure guardians of equality. Many accepted unequal Council status because they wanted an effective security system. The compromise between permanent and elected seats therefore balanced law against power, and its novelty lay in making privilege an open constitutional fact.
a truly revolutionary innovation
That hierarchy affected the whole League. The Council shaped judicial elections, committees, commissions, Secretariat work, and diplomatic prestige. Budget contributions also complicated any simple division between great and small, since capacity existed on a scale. Intermediate and aspiring states—Spain, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, China, Mexico, Turkey—showed that once privilege was formalized, resentment and claims to promotion were inevitable.
Rappard’s treatment of small-state resistance is correspondingly sober. Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Poland appealed to equality, but their protests often mixed principle with ambition. Most smaller members accepted inferior legal status while using the Assembly, conferences, committees, mediation, arbitration, and technical cooperation to gain visibility and influence unavailable under older diplomacy. The League thus simultaneously emancipated and subordinated them.
He finally asks whether small states share a policy. On reparations, federation, disarmament, blocs, tariffs, and nationalism, they divided as sharply as larger powers. Their common interest was narrower: peace through law, universality, publicity, adjudication, Assembly authority, and an impartial international civil service.
the nations whose only material bond is a common lack of might are spiritually linked together by a common love of right.
This is not sentimental praise. Rappard argues that weakness makes legality both a moral preference and a practical necessity.
If Small States are on the whole internationally less sinful than Great Powers, it is not because they are more saintly, but because they are less apt to be successful sinners.
The chapter makes a double judgment: the League gave small states voice and work, yet codified their dependence on Great-Power responsibility. Its promise required small states to defend law without self-congratulation and great powers to turn privilege into public service.
This work was divided into 7 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 7 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian