“League of Nations Summer Session” (June 5, 1930)
by John Tinney McCutcheon (1870-1949)
14 x 17 in., ink on drawing board

On the Purdue campus, where he was a student, McCutcheon (class of 1889) is memorialized in a coeducational dormitory, John T. McCutcheon Hall. The lobby displays an original of one of his drawings, a nearly life-size drawing of a young man.

After college, McCutcheon moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked at the Chicago Morning News (later: Chicago Record) and then at the Chicago Tribune from 1903 until his retirement in 1946. McCutcheon received the Pulitzer Prize for Cartoons in 1932.

“A debate that promises to enliven the summer session with a lot of fierce shoulder-shrugging”

The League of Nations was an international diplomatic group developed after World War I as a way to solve disputes between countries before they erupted into open warfare. The League achieved some victories but had a mixed record of success, sometimes putting self-interest before becoming involved with conflict resolution, while also contending with governments that did not recognize its authority.

Thanks to the strength of the post-War isolationists, the US did not join the League, and the utter lack of European cooperation meant a lot on infighting and long, drawn-out conferences at which not much happened.

Longtime French Premiere Aristide Briand revitalized the concept of creating a “European Union” as a way to prevent another World War. He proposed to use the League of Nations as his platform.

During the 1929 Assembly, Briand promised the 27 invited European Member States that he would submit a more detailed plan that they could then discuss, including the need for European stamps, a European Customs Union, and a European coinage.

By the time Briand’s proposal was ready for discussion in May of 1930, Europe was in the process of undergoing some drastic changes, resulting from the economic depression, in the form of growing levels of unemployment and nationalism, and, as we now know, the rise of fascism.

The League effectively ceased operations during World War II, but created the foundation for the United Nations in 1945.