Editing League of Nations (section)

====Mission====
The covenant had ambiguities, as Carole Fink points out. There was not a good fit between Wilson's "revolutionary conception of the League as a solid replacement for a corrupt alliance system, a guardian of international order, and protector of small states," versus Lloyd George's desire for a "cheap, self-enforcing, peace, such as had been maintained by the old and more fluid Concert of Europe."<ref>Carole Fink, "The great powers in the new international system, 1919–1923," in Paul Kennedy and William I. Hitchcock, eds, ''From War to Peace'' (Yale University Press, 2000) pp  17 – 35 at page 24</ref>
Furthermore, the League, according to Carole Fink, was, "deliberately excluded from such great-power prerogatives as freedom of the seas and naval disarmament, the [[Monroe Doctrine]] and the internal affairs of the French and British empires, and inter-Allied debts and German reparations, not to mention the Allied intervention and the settlement of borders with Soviet Russia."<ref>Fink, p. 24</ref>

Although the United States never joined, unofficial observers became more and more involved, especially in the 1930s. American philanthropies became heavily involved, especially the [[Rockefeller Foundation]]. It made major grants designed to build up the technical expertise of the League staff. Ludovic Tournès argues that by the 1930s the foundations had changed the League from a "Parliament of Nations" to a modern think tank that used specialised expertise to provide an in-depth impartial analysis of international issues.<ref>{{Cite journal |doi=10.1057/s41311-017-0110-4|title=American membership of the League of Nations: US philanthropy and the transformation of an intergovernmental organisation into a think tank |year=2018 |last1=Tournès |first1=Ludovic |journal=International Politics |volume=55 |issue=6 |pages=852–869 |s2cid=149155486 }}</ref>