Cablegram unnumbered LONDON, 7 July 1938, 7.17 p.m.
PERSONAL SECRET
We have interviewed the Foreign Secretary [1] reference your telegram regarding Anglo-Italian relations. [2] Foreign Secretary appreciates your views but informs us that the Government is completely bound by the Prime Minister’s [3] undertaking to the House of Commons that the Agreement will not come into effect until settlement in Spain. [4] In his opinion the Prime Minister could not either honourably or successfully escape this undertaking. At the same time he feels that with patience Mussolini can be prevented from taking any unfortunate step.
Reference Sudeten information is that progress not at all unsatisfactory and that atmosphere in Berlin much easier.
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1 Viscount Halifax.
2 Document 227.
3 Neville Chamberlain.
4 House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates, fifth series, vol. 336, col. 1222.
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[ANL : PAGE 742]