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The Prime Minister returned across the Channel to bathe in and imbibe the waters of Aix. It was announced that His Majesty's Government, which has been aiding Italy by refusing to sell arms either to Italy, which has plenty, or to Ethiopia, which is short, would probably not lift this embargo at least until after the League Council meets on Sept. 4. After all the dominion representatives in London had been discreetly contacted, Premier Forbes of New Zealand excitedly declared, 11,682 miles away in Wellington: "If Great Britain is involved in war New Zealand will be also!"
Few days later London learned that the Cabinet, before dispersing, had left ab solute discretion to the Imperial Defense Committee, nicely deployed between its pacifist chairman Scot MacDonald and a bristling array of Admiralty, Air Force and Army chiefs. In papers close to the Admiralty a, great uproar was made about Britain's Mediterranean base at Malta being now so weak as to be vulnerable to Italian air attack. Amid that utter fog which British statesmen so often find useful in masking their intentions, the Government created a sensation by announcing that several units of the Mediterranean fleet which went home for King George's Jubilee Review were preparing to steam back to their stations ominously led, "a week early," by the aircraft carrier Furious.