Wilson publicly argued that the agreements made in the aftermath of the war would be a "readjustment of those great injustices which underlie the whole structure of European and Asiatic society", which he attributed to the absence of democratic rule. The new order emerging in the postwar period would, according to Wilson, place governments "in the hands of the people and taken out of the hands of coteries and of sovereigns, who had to right to rule over the people." The League of Nations was established as the symbol of the emerging postwar order; one of its earliest tasks was to legitimize the territorial boundaries of the new nations-states created in the territories of the former Ottoman Empire, Asia, and Africa. The principle of self-determination did not extend so far as to end colonialism; under the reasoning that the local populations were not civilized enough the League of Nations was to assign each of the post-Ottoman, Asian and African states and colonies to a European power by the grant of a League of Nations mandate.