Bennett's international problems were not only economic. In 1931 the Japanese military attacked the Chinese province of Manchuria and quickly turned it into a Japanese satellite. China immediately appealed to the League of Nations for assistance. Japan, however, was a well-respected world power while many wondered if China could even be called a nation. League members worried about their own interests in the Far East and pondered an indifferent public at home. It soon became clear that neither Canada nor any of the great powers, including the United States, would risk the displeasure of Japan. The cause of peace was discredited. Over the next years, the Japanese nibbled off successive bits of China before resorting to open warfare in 1937. The Japanese march of conquest brought them into conflict with other powers with interests in China, particularly Britain, France, the United States and the U.S.S.R. In this cartoon, the British cartoonist David Low of the London Daily Express depicts the onward career of the Japanese army in China and its effects on the western powers as well as the Chinese.
