Balch dreamed of an international organization committed to peace and cooperation between nations. The League of Nations was the first committee to strive towards this idea of a world at peace. Balch's contributions to the League included urging cooperation between nations to internationalize major waterways and trade routes, easing tensions between nations by calling for an end to weapons and appealing to the greater powers to treat their citizens with respect and dignity.
She reported personally to Woodrow Wilson after a successful Women's Conference at The Hague all the policies that the ladies at the conference had conferred upon to stop violent aggression into developing into war and steps to achieving world peace. The Women's Conference would ultimately morph into the present Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
President Woodrow Wilson reportedly studied the policies feverishly and incorporated much of its policies for peace and internationalization into his famous Fourteen Points, the last point being "A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."
However, the League of Nations ultimately failed in its mission to globalize powerful and developing nations.
First, it lacked the support of the United States, a super nation that decided to not join even though President Woodrow Wilson was the one who championed for its formation. Another incapacitating obstacle was the disinterest of participating nations. Nations looked after their own interests first, and then never looked to working together with nations that had no relation to their own. This failure, the non-cooperation of nations, most pained Balch.
However, from this arose the now functional United Nations that has managed to overcome the difficulties that the previous League of Nations had faced. The United Nations was, to Balch, a true descendant of a necessary pilot test to ensure true international ties. The United Nations Balch envisioned it as was put forth in a speech at the Seventh Annual Nobel Peace Prize Dinner at New York City on December 10, 1947. She believed it to be not only as a body that prevents war, but also as a body that promotes peace by understanding the economic and social issues that draw different nations into war.
Today, the WILPF, the organization that Balch co-found with Jane Addams, has strong ties with the UN. They send representatives to meetings and put forth resolutions to improve the lives of every nation's citizens. They are committed to the total disarmament of all nations so that the threat of war will disappear from the face of the earth. Keeping true to Jane Addam's and Balch's goal of world peace, the WILPF creates pragmatic solutions that continue to have an effect on relationships between nations to strive towards harmony.