himself there arose a howl of indignation from the people of Great Britain. During my experience of politics I have never witnessed so devastating a wave of public opinion. Even the easy-going constituents of the St. George's division were profoundly moved. The post-bag was full and the letters I received were not written by ignorant or emotional people but by responsible citizens who had given sober thought to the matter. The Conservative Chief Whip told Baldwin: "Our men won't stand for it". Sir Austen Chamberlain in a speech to the Conservative Foreign Affairs Committee condemned the Pact and said: "Gentlemen do not behave in such a way". Harold Nicolson later wrote that he had had sleepless nights worrying whether he could keep his seat. France When the Chamber of Deputies debated the Pact on 27 and 28 December, the Popular Front condemned it, with Léon Blum telling Laval: "You have tried to give and to keep. You wanted to have your cake and eat it. You cancelled your words by your deeds and your deeds by your words. You have debased everything by fixing, intrigue and slickness.... Not sensitive enough to the importance of great moral issues, you have reduced everything to the level of your petty methods". Yvon Delbos declared: "Your plan is dead and buried. From its failure, which is as total as possible, you could have – but you have not – drawn a personal conclusion. Two lessons emerge. The first is that you were in a dead end because you upset everyone without satisfying Italy. The second is that we must return to the spirit of the Covenant [of the League of Nations] by preserving agreement with the nations gathered at Geneva". Paul Reynaud attacked the government for aiding Hitler by ruining the Anglo-French alliance. On the motion of censure, the French government had a majority of 296 votes to 276, with 37 Radicals voting for the government. Outcome The British government withdrew the plan, and Hoare resigned. In early 1936 Italy began a new, larger advance using poison gas, and entered Addis Ababa on 5 May 1936. Historiography A. J. P. Taylor argued that it was the event that "killed the League [of Nations]" and that the pact "was a perfectly sensible plan, in line with the League's previous acts of conciliation from Corfu to Manchuria" which would have "ended the war; satisfied Italy; and