ABSTRACT
The crack on Wall Street would put an abrupt end to the “Happy Twenties.” Certainly, the multilateral life span of more than a decade, between the meeting of the first Assembly of the League of Nations (November 1920) and the outbreak of hostilities between China and Japan (September 1931), had very little to do with the second decade of the organization’s existence. A new decade initiated precisely with the laissez-faire of Manchuria, although previously well cemented by the economic earthquake of the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929 and its immediate consequences worldwide. The revisionist claims of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany soon became clear, in comparison to the Franco–British will to maintain the status quo. While the economic catastrophe that plunged a notable part of the world into misery – creating a dangerous breeding ground for drastic or radical solutions – had its epicenter in the United States, the main actor in the deterioration of international society during the thirties was the United Kingdom. There was no degenerative interpretation of the European balance from London, and therefore there was confidence in the eternal appeasement of actors who only understood the language of aggression. The inaugural chapter was represented by tolerance against Japanese aggression against China in Manchuria. It was the first breakdown of the international order stipulated in Versailles.
