Letter from Michael MacWhite to Joseph P. Walshe (Dublin)
(Confidential) (108/51/35)

After¹ the publication of the Hoare-Laval proposals for the settlement of the Italo-Ethiopian dispute, the Administration as a whole felt they had once again got mixed up in a European mess from which those who urged them into it had carefully retreated to the side-lines. Newspaper men who were present at the White House when the news came say that President Roosevelt gave expression to his anger in an outburst of unparliamentary language in regard to England. The Secretary of State and his Aides were not less indignant. The manner in which they were 'let down' has done more to injure the cause of the League of Nations in Administration circles than almost anything that has happened since the death of Woodrow Wilson.² To say the State Department officials are 'sore' is to put it mildly. They believe the British Government has blundered out of the greatest opportunity of a generation to restore the predominant prestige of the Empire in world affairs. It might have meant war, they admit, but they consider war inevitable anyhow within the next two years.

The whole Laval plan is held by some to bring war nearer by strengthening Mussolini's prestige, weakening that of the League of Nations and restoring the old theories upon which the pre-war secret agreement for the partitioning of Ethiopia amongst themselves was negotiated by Britain, France and Italy. Apologists for Mr. Baldwin say he agreed to it because he feared the consequences of an Italian air attack on the British Fleet in the Mediterranean.

As things have turned out, the State Department has had an 'eye-opener' and is most likely to consider the consequences before they follow the blind lead of the British Foreign Office again. The United States Ambassador in London3, who was to some extent responsible for this, was to return here for the Xmas Holidays, but has now abandoned the idea as the welcome he would be likely to receive here at the moment would be anything but enthusiastic. On the day of the publication of the peace proposals, he did not even cable an explanation of them here because, as a State Department official said, he was unable to understand what they were all about.