Eighty Years Ago This Week

The League of Nations expelled the USSR for its unprovoked invasion  of  Finland in arguably the last significant act of its increasingly  shadowy  existence. Some observers  were  surprised  that  Stalin  had  not imitated Hitler  and withdrawn before  his country  was  thrown out. The most likely  explanation  is that this allowed him to stick to the  ludicrous  pretence  that the USSR was innocent. This show of  resolution  by the League contrasted  with its more muted  response to German  or Italian  aggression  over  the four  preceding  years.  The British  delegation  was  led by Rab  Butler,  the ultra  appeasing Foreign  Office  minister, who swung Britain  firmly  behind the expulsion, with a concern  for the preservation  of independent  democracies, which  had been notably  absent  from his handling of Nazi expansionism.
The Soviet  invasion  failed  to break through  the Mannerheim line across  the Karelian isthmus despite  its superiority  in numbers of tanks.  A severe…