Read the passage given and answer the following questions: In an effort to secure resources for its expanding industries, Japan invaded the northern Chinese province of Manchuria. Although many Western nations protested the Japanese action, most members of the League of Nations, including Canada, opposed any form of military intervention to defend Chinese sovereignty. A League of Nations commission, headed by the British diplomat Lord Lytton, was dispatched to Manchuria to investigate. — Loyal Edmonton Regiment Museum
How did the incident being described above become a cause for the Second World War?
Topic: Failure of collective security
Answer
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 exposed the helplessness of the League of Nations. The League condemned Japan and sent the Lytton Commission, but when Japan simply walked out of the League in 1933 and kept Manchuria, no member was willing to use force against her.
This failure showed the world that aggression could be committed without punishment. It encouraged Mussolini to attack Abyssinia in 1935 and Hitler to violate the Treaty of Versailles openly, each confident that the League would do nothing — and that chain of unchecked aggression led directly to the Second World War.
The link the examiner wants is not "Japan was aggressive" but that the League FAILED TO ACT, and that the failure emboldened others. Build the answer in that order: what happened, what the League did (and did not) do, and what other dictators concluded from it. Naming the later examples — Abyssinia 1935, Hitler’s breaches of Versailles — is what converts a description into a cause, which is precisely what the question asks for.