Re: League of Nations first meeting (10-1-1920)

On 2024-01-14, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
 

This was a very preliminary meeting, held in London. The first General
Assembly was later that year, in Geneva, with 41 nations represented.
>
French and English were designated "official" [working] languages.

Makes sense.  French was still the international (well, Western)
lingua franca, but English was rising rapidly, what with the British
Empire and the ascent of the USA.
 

Spanish was added later the same year.

            Now that's more surprising.
 

There was a formal motion to include Esperanto, but that was vetoed by
the French. (The league did recommend, in 1922, that Esperanto be
included in the educational curriculum of member countries.)

 Esperanto was never attached to any population/culture/etc. that
would have allowed it to achieve critical mass.