Word: laval
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This new policy was to give Italy a part interest in the strategic French railway penetrating the heart of Ethiopia. Signor Mussolini also received from M. Laval a "free hand" with respect to the dusky Empire (TIME, Jan. 21). In Paris the great passage in Premier Laval's speech last week was considered that in which he adroitly inferred that Sir Samuel Hoare had, by implication, promised British support to France should Germany attack her or attempt to seize Austria. Cried the Frenchman with enthusiasm while the Briton looked faintly uncomfortable: "In an address elevated in its thought, where...
...Total Forces!" At Rome the Cabinet in which Benito Mussolini holds eight portfolios met in frowning Palazzo Viminale and a communiqué was issued which was in fact the Dictator's answer to Geneva. "The Hoare and Laval speeches," declared Premier Mussolini's communiqué, "could not be different from what they were because of the English and French positions with regard to the League Covenant. For this reason they have been received with the greatest calm by responsible Italian circles and by the masses of the people." (Actually Italians who anxiously snatched up newspapers last week were visibly perturbed...
Continuing, the Dictator's communiqué stressed M. Laval's "cordial" reference to the Rome agreement, then harshly announced: "The [Italian] Cabinet examined in what circumstances Italy's continued membership in the League would be rendered impossible. The Cabinet, after having learned that around the Italo-Ethiopian controversy are gathering all the forces of foreign antiFascism, feels it is its duty to reconfirm in the most explicit manner that the Italo-Ethiopian problem does not admit of compromise solution after the huge efforts and sacrifices made by Italy. . . . From a military viewpoint our preparations in East Africa proceed with greater intensity...
This week the unusually well-informed London Correspondent Augur* insisted that at Geneva last week Sir Samuel Hoare told Premier Laval that "the British Government was ready to admit that the [Anglo-German] naval pact, or rather the method of its conclusion, had been regrettable and would prefer that it had not happened." This extraordinary statement, though entirely undercut in British fashion by its qualifying clause, seemed to mark the first admission by His Majesty's Government that in countersigning Adolf Hitler they may have historically blundered. The air having been cleared by this revelation, the British and French Governments...
Back again to Geneva hurried France's Laval, conferred first with Italy's Aloisi, then closeted himself with Britain's Anthony Eden...