its existing alliances, and brought a definitive end to the French effort to strengthen the Little Entente. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg summarized the effects of the Italo-Yugoslav treaty: "Having signed with Italy, he [Stojadinović] could hardly be expected to sign an agreement with France that was designed to protect Yugoslavia against her new associate. Conversely, he could not promise to assist Czechoslovakia against Germany, Italy's Axis partner. Stojadinović could, therefore, now safely assure the Germans that there would be no Yugoslav assistance pact with France". The attempted Concordat with the Holy See caused severe protests from the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1937 and thus never came into effect. When the Concordat came up for ratification by the skupshtina on the night of 23–24 June 1937, protests broke out in Belgrade by Orthodox priests who called the concordat a sell-out to the Roman Catholic Church. The very night that the parliament was holding the vote to ratify the Concordat, the Patriarch Varnava of the Serbian Orthodox Church died, which for the Orthodox faithful was a sign that God disapproved of the Concordat. The fact that the Patriarch died the same night caused an immense backlash against the Concordat amongst the Serbs, and the Orthodox Church announced that all Orthodox deputies in the skupshtina who voted for the Concordat were now penalised. Stojadinović withdrew the Concordat in a bid to save his popularity with the Serbs, which damaged his reputation as a fair-minded negotiator with the Croats, with Maček accusing him of dealing in bad faith. The consequence of the failed Concordat was that Stojadinović lost popular support in both Croatia and Serbia. In October 1937, Maček signed an accord called the Bloc of National Agreement which brought together his own Croatian Peasant Party with the anti-Stojadinović faction of the Serb Radicals, the Democrats, the Agrarian Party and the Independent Democrats. By this time, despite the economic upturn, Stojadinović was widely unpopular owing to the rampant corruption within his government. The British novelist Rebecca West who went to Yugoslavia in 1937 to research her book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon reported that ordinary people had told her that Stojadinović was "a tyrant and enemy of freedom" who was "hated throughout the length and breadth of the land" as persistent rumors had it that Stojadinović and company were looting the public treasury. In December 1937, Stojadinović visited Rome to meet Benito Mussolini