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Delegate Joseph Paul-Boncour, white-haired veteran of many a League session, did not let the occasion slip by without reminding the world that there were other aggressions and other aggressors. M. Paul-Boncour said that France and Britain were today fighting to "defend the very principle on which the League was founded," that they were indeed at war with the chief "author of European aggression"—Adolf Hitler. The Finns welcomed the moral support, but pressed for greater assurances of more material aid. In Moscow the British and French League speeches were described in the Soviet press as having "exceeded all previous limits of cynicism and hypocrisy."
Why the League finally got its back up could be partially explained by the fact that the expulsion was proposed and engineered primarily by those Latin American, Catholic nations to which everything that the Soviet Union stands for has long been anathema. World-wide sympathy for Finland was important, but not more so than the deep-seated hatred harbored by capitalist countries for the land of Communism. Moreover, with Germany, Italy and Japan out, the League has become more & more a unilateral organization headed by France and Britain and composed of neutrals dependent upon British and French good will. A many-sided League never did agree on any forceful action: a one-sided League last week did.