It isn't the actual effects of the League of Nation, it's the idea of the leaders of the World meeting to make it a better place that's so powerful. Was it actually useful? No, the U.S. refusing to join because of post-war fatigue and ressurected isolationism cripplied it from it's infancy. However, the concept behind the LoN led to the current U.N. which, at least as a theatre for all nations to meet in concert, has proven to be quite affective. Added to that, Wilson actually held back England and France at the Treaty of Varsailles, without him in office things could have easily been much worse, and you can't tell me that would've turned out well.
Turned out worse than OTL? How exactly?
Offhand, I don't see why you even need a Hughes, never mind a Wilson. Supposing that someone like Bryan, or even Harding, had represented the US in 1919, is there any real reason to suppose that the course of the next twenty years would have been changed, for better
or worse, in any major way? Germany might have lost a bit more land in East Prussia and/or Silesia, and the reparations bill might have been larger on paper, before the Dawes and Young Plans revised it as OTL, but nothing of long tem significance.
Note that the only World War One peace treaty which can be called a success, the 1923 Lausanne treaty with Turkey, was drawn up without Wilson, or indeed any American, being present. Nor did the League of Nations figure in it much. This didn't matter a jot.
The whole thing recalls a story about Ferdinand, the feeble-minded Austrian Emperor deposed in 1848. Eighteen years on, watching the triumphant Prussians march into the heart of the empire, he plaintively asked "Why was I got rid of. I could have achieved this just as well as my nephew." You don't need a visionary just to draw up a botched peace. Any fool can do that. QUOTE]