He had never made a speech in the House with more distaste, but he could not believe that it was a sacrifice of principles to expediency. He was not conscious of having made any bargain in his consciences with Mephistopheles.
The Bishop of Durham, who followet the Archbishop, strongly denounced recognition of the Italian conquest.
In the course of his reply Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, said ihe fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Durham took fundamentally different views on the morality of the question showed, to a humble layman like himself, th great difficulty of discovering the objective truth.
He then repeated the main points of his Geneva speech last week, Spain as Chief Issue As regards the proposal to estab li Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, Lord Halifax continued, while there was no objection as far as the British Government was concerned, it was a matter for the Italian Government and Haile Selassie to decide in the light of their interests and responsibilities, "Provided we are satisfied. as we that Italy does not mean to use Spain to alter the status quo when the struggle is over," the Foreign Secretary said, "there is no reason why the fact that a strong Italian view on one side conflicts with the strong view of large British sections on the other should preclude us from improving our relations with them over a wide international field.
By the Anglo-Italian Agreement we have made a beginning towards peace, and we are resolved to'seize every opportunity to develop it. We like to see removed all causes of mistrust between ourselves and Germany, a view shared by the mass of people of both countries.
Lord Halifax argued that talk about the inevitability of war was dangerous: and essentially untrue.
He said he found at Geneva th representatives of France, members of the Little and Balkan Entente Belgium and Poland all warmly testifying to the significance of the Anglo-Italian Agreement.
No voice, the asserted, was raised in criticism, so that the Labour Opposition were almost alone in Europe in condemning what the Gov. ernment tried to do, Were the Opposition in the Government's pi: they would be following a policy that would not greatly differ from that of the Government.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.