The Hoare–Laval Pact was an initially secret December 1935 proposal by British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval for ending the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Italy had wanted to seize the independent nation of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) as part of its Italian Empire and also avenge the 1896 Battle of Adwa, a humiliating defeat. The Pact offered to partition Abyssinia and thus partially achieve Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's goal of making the independent nation of Abyssinia into an Italian colony. The proposal ignited a firestorm of hostile reaction in Britain and France and never went into effect. Hoare and Laval were both sacked. Background In 1935 the Abyssinian Crisis and Second Italo-Ethiopian War began. In the United Kingdom many people and the official opposition supported League of Nations sanctions against Fascist Italy, as did the Dominions. The government hoped that strong sanctions against Italy might discourage Nazi Germany from similar actions, and won the November general election with a pro-League platform. On 8 December 1935, British Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare discussed with his French counterpart Pierre Laval (who was both Prime Minister and Foreign Minister) how to end the war. On 9 December British newspapers revealed leaked details of an agreement by the two men to give much of Ethiopia to Italy to end the war. The British Cabinet had not approved the preliminary plan, but decided to support it to not embarrass Hoare. Reaction Britain The Pact was met with a wave of moral indignation in Britain. On 10 December the Opposition Labour Party claimed if the reports in the press of the contents of the Pact were true, the government contradicted the pro-League policy on which it had just won the 1935 election. The Conservatives dominated the government and cared little for opinion on the left. They paid attention, however, when attacks came from the right. In an editorial titled ‘A Corridor for Camels’, The Times on 16 December denounced the Pact and said there never was "the slightest doubt that British public opinion would recommend them for approval by the League as a fair and reasonable basis of negotiations". The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, condemned the Pact in a letter to The Times, and many other bishops wrote directly to Stanley Baldwin to oppose it. Duff Cooper, the Secretary of State for War, later wrote: But before the Duce had time to declare