ABSTRACT
The collective security system of the League of Nations was put to a number of tests and finally failed after the attack by Mussolini’s Italy against Ethiopia in 1935. The Council and the Assembly of the League declared that Italy had resorted to war in violation of the Covenant and set up a special coordination committee to work out proposals on sanctions. Neutrality—especially in its permanent form—is a comparatively recent element in European and world politics. It took the community of powers many centuries—practically until the revolutionary turn in international affairs that began with the American War of Independence at the end of the eighteenth century—to discover its beneficial effects. While the effort to establish the neutrality of Belgium on the model of Switzerland failed, another European practice of neutrality, as ancient and well-tried as that of Switzerland, also originated in the aftermath of the Congress of Vienna: the neutrality of Sweden.
