Finally, on August 31, 1940, Joseph Avenol left Geneva and the League of Nations for good. Spurned by the Vichy government, he had to flee back into Switzerland on New Year's Eve 1943 to avoid arrest by the Germans he had praised and hoped to work with.

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The job of salvaging the wreckage Avenol had left behind fell to the new secretary-general, Sean Lester, who was as principled and honorable as Avenol was corrupt. He had endured a frightening tour of duty in Danzig as high commissioner. His phones had been tapped. His butler had spied on him. Nighttime walks had been interrupted by Nazi victims, too scared to be seen at his office, appearing out of the dark to beg for help. Appointed Avenol's deputy in 1936, he had been warned by Anthony Eden that he would probably be the next secretary-general. "If I thought so," Lester had replied, "you wouldn't see my heels for the dust."

Pressured by Avenol to resign, however, Lester dug in his heels. "I began my life politically in one 'lost cause' [Irish independence]," he said, "and it seems likely I shall finish it in another." He gathered the League's remaining 100 employees, counting the guards and janitors, of the original 700 into a few offices and managed to keep the League's technical and humanitarian programs in drug control, economics, labor standards and refugee aid–which Avenol had earlier dispersed to Britain, the United States and Canada–in limited operation for the rest of the war.

Joseph Avenol outlived by six years the organization he subverted and tried to destroy. On April 18, 1946, the Assembly of the League of Nations voted to dissolve and transfer its building, assets, responsibilities and hopes to the new United Nations.

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