Europe. On 30 November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland, leading to calls to expel the Soviet Union from the League of Nations. At the session of the League Assembly when a vote was taken to expel the Soviet Union, Koo as the chief of the Chinese delegation chose to abstain from the vote, which ended with the Soviet Union become the first and only member to be expelled from the League. On 18 June 1940, the Japanese submitted an ultimatum threatening to invade Indochina if the French did immediately end all arms sales to China at once. On 20 June 1940, the government of Philippe Pétain submitted to the ultimatum and ended all arms sales to China. On 21 June 1940, an armistice was signed, taking France out of the war. Koo briefly served as the Chinese ambassador in Vichy, where he was forced to live under reduced conditions. Under the armistice signed on 21 June 1940, Germany imposed harsh reparations on France while the franc was artificially devalued in regard to the Reichsmark, which essentially allowed the occupiers to loot France. Owing to the shortage of food in occupied France, Koo's wife observed that he was forced to eat canned food for the first time in his entire life. Koo spent the rest of the summer of 1940, trying to persuade Vichy officials to resume arms shipments. Koo reported to Chongqing that France was "powerless" in Asia as he stated that he had information on good authority that the Germans had ordered that the French should not "provoke" the Japanese. In July 1940, the British submitted to a Japanese ultimatum and closed the Burma Road, through the road was reopened again in October 1940. In September 1940, the Japanese occupied the northern half of French Indochina. For Koo, the only hopeful news that the United States reacted sharply to the Japanese advance into Indochina, warning Tokyo that this was regarded in Washington as an extremely unfriendly act, and that the Japanese should not occupy the southern half of French Indochina under any conditions. Ambassador in London Afterwards, he was the Chinese Ambassador to the Court of St James's until 1946. Koo decided that wartime London was too dangerous for his family to live, and sent his wife and children to New York. Madame Koo had wanted to go to London and went to New York most unwillingly. In