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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, said Augur, "are now agreed that nothing done at Geneva can prevent Premier Mussolini's war machine from being launched at the heart of Ethiopia. When this happens the League of Nations' procedure must take a predestined course . . . culminating eventually in a decision to apply sanctions to the aggressor state. . . . The pressure to be applied shall be economic."
Back again to Geneva hurried France's Laval, conferred first with Italy's Aloisi, then closeted himself with Britain's Anthony Eden.
Meanwhile, in London, keeping its statistical eye on the vanishing chance of Peace, Lloyd's announced that it would cancel the war risk clause now included in all open contracts, giving the ten-day notice required.
*His name is Vladimir Poliakoff.