The establishment of the League of Nations reflected a move away from Great Power diktat and towards international action mediated through international organizations. The negotiating process that brought the League of Nations into being itself acted as a bridge between the nineteenth century practice, as typified by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), and the contemporary international system. The manner in which the Peace Conference handled concerns now described as human rights issues and considered to be of international concern further reflects this changing outlook.

Of course, these developments were in embryo and did not approach maturity in either the establishment or during the lifetime of the League. Nevertheless, the importance of the Paris Peace Conference is currently underestimated, eclipsed by the establishment of the United Nations at San Francisco in 1945, and the question of which of these conferences best stands comparison with the Treaties of Westphalia as a defining point in the evolution of international affairs is a matter for legitimate debate.

The drafting history of the Covenant of the League reveals that a number of concerted attempts were made to incorporate within the text some reference to guarantees of religious freedom. Although these attempts were ultimately unsuccessful they paved the way for the Minorities Treaties that were to follow. The following sections will look at the evolution of the Covenant, focusing upon the manner in which concerns for religious liberty came to be considered within its framework. The spill-over of this into the minorities treaties and their subsequent development will be looked at in the following chapter.