ABSTRACT
The idealistic peace strategists of the forties were convinced, and anxious to convince others, that the establishment of the United Nations would inaugurate a new era of human history. The disappointing record of the United Nations hardly justifies any claim of superiority over the peace organization of Geneva, notwithstanding the fact that it has already surpassed the lifespan of the League. The conviction that the collective-security provisions of the Covenant required some strengthening was already held by League members themselves. France and nations close to her wished to strengthen the security provisions of the Covenant because they saw in the League an instrument capable of being used in a grand alliance against defeated Germany. The irony of the reform of 1950 that, to put it mildly, effected a de facto revision of the Charter, was that the security system inaugurated by the Uniting for Peace resolution was essentially a replica of the Geneva system.
