Furthermore, opinion from nongovernmental organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, and other governments, particularly those with experience in the League of Nations, were considered. Their views are also included in this historical examination of the UNO’s emergence. The chapter explores the discussions on international organization that

preceded the world organization’s creation, not only at San Francisco in April 1945, but also before the 1 January 1942 Declaration by United Nations. It begins by looking at the genealogy of international organization through the Progressive era and World War I, and into the interwar period, providing a critical reading of the interwar legacy of the League of Nations to the United Nations itself. Central is the influence of the Woodrow Wilson administration, the Versailles conference, and the birth of the League of Nations. Particularly, they shaped the educational and professional experiences of a generation of diplomats who would find themselves deliberating about a postwar world by 1939. Then this chapter looks at the period between 1937 and 1943 as the

world accelerated into global war. This period was critical in illustrating the importance of preparing for the postwar world in political and economic dimensions while the war was being fought by an increasing number of protagonists. The failings of the League to prevent conflict were laid bare, before the Declaration by United Nations would emphasize the Alliance’s dual war aims. Before then, the challenge was how to reconcile the future parameters of an international organization against immediate security threats: a dilemma that has confronted the call for reform at the United Nations ever since. The chapter concludes that the legacy bequeathed to the United

Nations by statesmen and diplomats before Pearl Harbor has been overlooked and requires repositioning in our understanding of the UNO that resulted from San Francisco. Only by understanding the breadth and depth of the debate of this previous era can the eventual shape of the United Nations as it unfolded be fully understood, and hence its position in the twenty-first century. A parallel story can be told of the creation of the Allied Supreme War Council in the closing stages of the Great War on the Allied military interest in formalized cooperation after 1939. The debates about an international organization during the latter part of World War II are well documented, but to understand the link between them and the implications for the immediate postwar world and beyond, it is salient to consider the words of one of the League’s architects, Robert Cecil, at that institution’s final meeting in 1946: “The League is dead. Long live the United Nations.”4