when the relative strengths and weakness of each of the Great powers are viewed in their entirety,and also integrated into the economic and technological-military dynamics of the age,the course of international diplomacy during the 1930s becomes more comprehensible.this is not to imply that the local root of the various crises whether in mukden, Ethopia,or the sudetenland -were completely irrelevant,or that there would have been no international problems if the Great power had been in harmony.but it is clear that when a regional crisis arose,the statesmen in each of the leading capitals were compelled to view such events in the light both of the larger diplomatic scene and,perhaps especially,of their pressing domestic problems.the British prime minister,macDonald,put this nicely to his colleague Baldwin,after the 1931 Manchurian affair had interacted with the sterling crisis and the collapse of the second labor government