a firm stand. Schleicher's non-policy on tariffs hurt his government very badly when on 11 January 1933 the leaders of the Agricultural League launched a blistering attack on Schleicher in front of Hindenburg. The Agricultural League leaders attacked Schleicher for his failure to keep his promise to raise tariffs on food imports, and for allowing to lapse a law from the Papen government that gave farmers a grace period from foreclosure if they defaulted on their debts. Hindenburg forced Schleicher to accede to all of the League's demands. In foreign policy, Schleicher's main interest was in winning Gleichberechtigung ("equality of status") at the World Disarmament Conference, which would do away with Part V of the Treaty of Versailles that had disarmed Germany. Schleicher made a point of cultivating the French ambassador André François-Poncet and stressing his concern with improving Franco-German relations. This was in part because Schleicher wanted to ensure French acceptance of Gleichberechtigung in order to allow Germany to rearm without fear of a French "preventative war." He also believed that improving Berlin-Paris relations would lead the French to abrogate the Franco-Polish alliance of 1921, which would allow Germany to partition Poland with the Soviet Union without having to go to war with France. In a speech before a group of German journalists on 13 January 1933, Schleicher proclaimed that based on the acceptance "in principle" of Gleichberechtigung by the other powers at the World Disarmament Conference in December 1932, he planned to have by no later than the spring of 1934 a return to conscription and for Germany to have all the weapons forbidden by Versailles. Political misstep On 20 January 1933, Schleicher missed one of his best chances to save his government. Wilhelm Frick—who was in charge of the Nazi Reichstag delegation when Hermann Göring was not present—suggested to the Reichstag's agenda committee that the Reichstag go into recess until the next budget could be presented, which would have been some time in the spring. Had this happened, by the time the recess ended, Schleicher would have been reaping the benefits of the public works projects that his government had begun in January, and in-fighting within the NSDAP would have worsened. Schleicher had his Chief of Staff, Erwin Planck, tell the Reichstag that the government wanted the recess to be as short as possible, which led to the recess being extended only to 31 January as Schleicher