16 J.-A. PEMBERTON
‘super-state’ and as its members had not abandoned their sovereignty, the
LON depended for its success on the ‘will and the power’ of its members
to fulfil in combination their obligations and that ‘[i]f risks for peace are to
be run, they must be run by all.’^48 As Birchall stated, Laval and the coun-
try he served knew well what was the main bridge between the United
Kingdom and the Continent and doubtless they well understood what
Hoare meant in employing the description effective body.^49
The New York Times’ Geneva correspondent further suggested that
Hoare’s putative warning may have caused Laval to reflect on ‘certain
commitments he somewhat unwittingly incurred in Rome long ago.’^50
Here presumably, Birchall was referring to conversations held in Rome at
the beginning of 1935 between Mussolini and Laval against a background
in which it seemed expedient for France to forge a friendship with Italy
given a resurgent Germany and given Italy’s recent flirtation with this
peril to France. What was later described in the House of Commons as
‘the secret Rome accord’ between France and Italy, that is, the Franco-
Italian Agreement, was not registered with the LON, however, its formal
terms had been known to the British government since January 1935.^51
According to G. M. Gathorne-Hardy, in the course of the conversations
in Rome, the Duce ‘obtained at least an assurance that the direct interests
of France would not stand in the way of the establishment by Italy of a
predominant economic influence in Abyssinia’ and perhaps even, despite
Laval’s assertion to the contrary in a speech to the French Senate on
March 26, some indication that French ‘interests were no bar to his [more
ambitious] plans’ in respect to that country.^52 In view of the commitments
he incurred in Rome and the reasons why these were incurred, and in view
of the supposed warning to France issued by Hoare in his speech at the
Sixteenth Assembly, the questions playing on Laval’s mind at the assembly
on September 11 were very likely as follows: ‘Should he throw over the
Italian friendship he acquired at great pains and abandon Premier Benito
Mussolini; will the British replace Italian aid in Austria and the Balkans
(^48) LON, special supplement, OJ, no. 138 (1935), 44.
(^49) Birchall, ‘Britain Demands League Act Against Aggression and Pledges Her Support,’ 1.
(^50) Ibid.
(^51) 309 Parl. Deb., H. C. (5th series), February 24, 1936, 10–1, and Gathorne-Hardy, A
Short History of International Affairs, 392–3.
(^52) Gathorne-Hardy, A Short History of International Affairs, 393–4.