ABSTRACT
Speaking in the House of Commons on 18 June 1936, Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Sir Samuel Hoare as Foreign Secretary in December 1935, after foreshadowing the government's intention to vote at the forthcoming League Assembly meeting for the lifting of sanctions against Italy, went on to say that ‘the Government have determined that it is necessary to maintain permanently in the Mediterranean a defensive position stronger than that which existed before this dispute began’. On the previous day, to a more specific question about Malta, Hoare, recently restored to the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty, denied rumours that Malta was to be abandoned. The island would continue to be the navy's principal base in the Mediterranean, and ‘we shall certainly take every practicable means to make its defences secure against any possible attack’. 1
