Collapse of the Stresa Front

Like the Japanese, the Soviets were offering little tangible support to Ethiopia beyond verbal forays. George Padmore starkly denounced the effort: ‘The Soviet Union failed to send a ruble, a bandage roll, or a ton of wheat to Ethiopia.’

The last thing that Foreign Commissar Litvinov wanted was a confrontation between Britain and Italy, as this would would paralyze all efforts to form a united front against Germany and Japan. During the summer of 1935, he had worked hard to delay discussions at Geneva on Ethiopia, and he told Anthony Eden how earnestly he hoped to avoid in Ethiopia the example of Manchuria, where the League had proved impotent. Blending a Marxist outlook on colonial problems with the dictates of Soviet expediency necessitating peace, litvinov repeated this theme many times over the next year in the League's public forum, where he showed remarkable ambivalence toward Italy's aggression in Ethiopia. Ethiopia's fate merely threatened the League's ability to deal with aggression elsewhere, and for that reason alone was the Italo–Ethiopian conflict worth the energies of the League's representatives. If collective security in or out of the league – it is hard to imagine that Stalin truly cared where – caved in to a weak aggressor, what would happen when the aggressor was strong?

It was London that sucked Paris and Moscow into the vortex of anti-Italian League action.