I am compelled for a few moments, if the House will allow me, to review the past, for this situation has a background. We have made—while I was privileged to be Foreign Secretary—several attempts in the past eighteen' months to better our relations with Italy. They have all failed in the main, though not wholly, because of the Spanish problem. In January of last year, after difficult negotiation, we signed the Anglo-Italian Agreement.
2 Within a very few days, indeed almost simultaneously, the first considerable consignment of Italians left for Spain (cheers). It may be held that this was not a breach of the letter of our understanding, but no one, I think, surely will contend that it did not run counter to its spirit (cheers).
That same agreement contained a specific clause dealing with the cessation of propaganda, yet propaganda, was scarcely dimmed for an instant. Again, last summer, the Prime Minister and Signor Mussolini exchanged letters, and after that in a few days the relations between our two countries took a marked turn for the better. Of that there can be I may be told that by insisting that positive progress must be made with the Spanish question before iormal conversations are opened between his Majesty's Government and the Italian Government in Rome, I am asking one party to the negotiations to yield in advance certain advantages that that party now enjoys. I shall not for one moment seek to argue whether those advantages, if indeed they be advantages, are legitimate ones (cheers).
But is has never entered into my conception to suggest that the Italian why I stand here—that my right hon. friend the Prime Minister and my colleagues take another view. They believe in their policy, and they believe in their method, and they may be right. But if they are right their chances of success will certainly be enhanced if their policy is pursued by another Foreign Secretary, one whd has complete conviction in the methods which he is being asked to employ (cheers). It may even be that my resignation will facilitate the course of those negotiations. If so, nobody will be more pleased than I.
T have spoken to the House of the immediate difference that has divided me from my colleagues, but I should not be frank with the House if I were to pretend that it is an isolated issue as between my right hon. friend the Prime Minister and myself (cheers). It is not. Within the last few weeks upon one most important decision of foreign policy, which did not concern Italy at all, the difference was fundamental. My right hon. friend is, I know, conscious of this. Moreover, it has recently become clear to me, and I think to him, that there is between us a real difference of outlook and method (cheers).
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.