Word: laval
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...convinced that when Benito Mussolini has answered he has answered, British Minister for League of Nations Affairs Captain Anthony Eden, and French Premier Pierre Laval spent an exasperating week in Paris trying to find out officially from Italian League Delegate Baron Pompeo Aloisi what Italy really wants of Ethiopia...
Since British statesmen are well known to doubt almost everything they read in the papers,* Captain Eden's curiosity would have been natural, had he not recently popped the question to Il Duce in Rome and been officially answered (TIME, July 1 & 8). Previously in Rome, Premier Laval had gone even farther, making with Premier Mussolini a pact in which France gave Italy a "free hand" against Ethiopia (TIME, Jan. 14 & 21) in return for Italian support at the subsequent Stresa Conference on German rearmament. Thus last week Mr. Eden and Premier Laval knew they were asking Baron Aloisi...
Doggedly Eden & Laval kept on asking if Mussolini would not retreat from his position of demanding Ethiopia for Italy, agree to formation of a joint Italo-Anglo-Franco Exploitation Company "for opening up Ethiopia," and promise to keep out of that part of Ethiopia in which Britain has keenest interest, Lake Tana which feeds the Blue Nile. This proposition they made conditional on the unlikely fluke that it would be accepted by both the Emperor of Ethiopia and the League of Nations. It must also be accompanied, stipulated Captain Eden and Premier Laval, by a declaration that "the independence...
Aloisi was put on the wire. Il Duce heard him out. "Laval clearly agreed to Italian predominance in Ethiopia," the Dictator finally said. "If Laval now says that I have gone too far, I am ready and willing to meet Laval again and talk it over once more...
...this was capped by a reversal of French economic foreign policy which has sought of recent years to protect home industry by rigid quotas limiting imports. Since other nations have retaliated in kind against French exports, Premier Laval decreed a general procedure of scrapping quotas and replacing them with reciprocal tariff agreements, hoping to induce other nations by friendly negotiation to admit more French wares as France admits more foreign goods...