Hoare–Laval Pact

Italy wanted to incorporate the independent nation of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) into its Italian Empire and also avenge the 1896 Battle of Adwa, a humiliating defeat.

The government hoped that strong sanctions against Italy might discourage Nazi Germany from similar actions, and won the November general election with a pro-League platform.

[1] On 10 December the Opposition Labour Party claimed if the reports in the press of the contents of the Pact were true, the government had contradicted the pro-League policy on which it had just won the 1935 election.

[3] In an editorial titled ‘A Corridor for Camels’, The Times on 16 December denounced the Pact and said there never was "the slightest doubt that British public opinion would recommend them for approval by the League as a fair and reasonable basis of negotiations".

[4] The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, condemned the Pact in a letter to The Times, and many other bishops wrote directly to Stanley Baldwin to oppose it.

[5] Duff Cooper, the Secretary of State for War, later wrote: But before the Duce had time to declare himself there arose a howl of indignation from the people of Great Britain.

[1] A. J. P. Taylor argued that it was the event that "killed the League [of Nations]" and that the pact "was a perfectly sensible plan, in line with the League's previous acts of conciliation from Corfu to Manchuria" which would have "ended the war; satisfied Italy; and left Abyssinia with a more workable, national territory" but that the "common sense of the plan was, in the circumstances of the time, its vital defect".

Therefore, in Barnett's view, it was "highly dangerous nonsense to provoke Italy" due to Britain's military and naval weakness and that therefore the pact was a sensible option.