if Britain did not support the Greek appeal to the League of Nations then "that institution may as well shut its doors".Harold Nicolson and Sir William Tyrrell at the Foreign Office wrote a memo calling for "concentrating our efforts to protect Greece through the agency of the League of Nations against an unfair exploitation by Italy". Lord Curzon's initial attempt to end the crisis by referring it to the League of Nations was dropped after Mussolini threatened to leave the League. More importantly, sanctions against Italy would require the approval of the League Council and it was believed that France would veto any sanctions against Italy if the Corfu incident was referred to the League. Within Whitehall, the Treasury objected to sanctions against Italy under the grounds that the United States was not a member of the League and any League sanctions if adopted would be ineffective as the United States would continue to trade with Italy while the Admiralty demanded a declaration of war against Italy as the prerequisite of a blockade. Howard William Kennard, in charge of the British embassy in Rome as the ambassador Sir Ronald Graham was on vacation, wrote in a dispatch to Lord Curzon that Mussolini was possibly insane, a man suffering from a "mixture of megalomania and extreme patriotism". Kennard drew the conclusion that Mussolini was perhaps rash enough to turn the crisis into an all-out war between Italy and Greece as he kept demanding sums of money in compensation that were well beyond Greece's ability to pay. However, Kennard believed that the Fascist regime was the only thing saving Italy from communism, and if Mussolini were defeated in a war, then the Fascist regime would collapse and the Italian Communist Party would take over. As Kennard much preferred Fascism in power in Italy to Communism, this led him to advocate appeasement, saying that Britain must pressure Greece to submit to the Italian terms while trying to persuade Mussolini to lower the compensation amounts as the best way of avoiding a war. Farther afield, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were more supportive of Greece with both governments condemning Italy's actions. Resolution On September 1, Greece appealed to the League of Nations, but Antonio Salandra, the Italian representative to the League, informed the Council that he had no permission to discuss the crisis. Mussolini refused to co-operate with the League and demanded that the Conference of