ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the Nobel Prize,

00:06

a reward for the invention of the silent clock tower.

00:12

All right, here's the picture.

00:15

All right, what does the image suggest about the United States' role

00:18

in the League of Nations?

00:19

And here are your potential answers.

00:21

[ mumbles ]

00:26

All right. Well, President Wilson went into post-World War I

00:29

peace negotiations with plans

00:31

so noble that they earned him a Nobel Peace Prize.

00:35

Well, let's see how Wilson's plans for the League of Nations

00:38

became a little, uh...

00:39

disconnected from reality.

00:41

Does the image suggest that B -

00:43

the United States supported the positions of its allies

00:47

in the League of Nations?

00:48

Well, unfortunately, Wilson failed to gain sufficient Senate

00:52

support for joining the League,

00:54

so the U.S. became the missing piece

00:56

in a now incomplete bridge. How embarrassing.

00:59

That busts up B.

01:00

Does the image suggest that C -

01:03

the League needed the United States to separate

01:05

opposing nations?

01:07

Hmm. Well, all nations in the cartoon were on the same side

01:10

in World War I, so that throws a wrench in C.

01:13

Does the image imply that D -

01:15

the United States was the most powerful country

01:18

in the organization?

01:19

Well, actually, the U.S. is the smallest stone in the image,

01:22

which doesn't really suggest it'd have been the group's

01:25

most powerful nation.

01:26

Which means the image suggests that A -

01:29

the League of Nations was weakened by the United States'

01:31

refusal to join.

01:33

After the Senate failed to ratify the agreement,

01:35

all that remained of the League of Nations was a faulty

01:39

bridge desperately in need of its missing American-made piece.

01:42

So the answer is A.

01:44

Without the United States, the League of Nations remained

01:46

a largely ineffective organization,

01:48

leaving its engineers scrambling in search of

01:51

a sturdy plan for the future.

01:53

[ scraping ]

Full Transcript