advice on the subject of Balkan reconciliation and consolidation". It is possible that Lloyd and Tilea had been working together on the same day that Tilea had asked for Lloyd to go to the Balkans. Lloyd had told Lord Halifax of his desire to go the Balkans saying "the urgency of which at the present moment obviously cannot be exaggerated". Balkan tour By October 1939, it was agreed that Lloyd would visit Romania but all of the Balkan states to work for a "Balkan pact". Sir Reginald Hoare, the British minister in Bucharest, was opposed to the plan to send Lloyd to the Balkans, but George William Rendel, the minister in Sofia, and Sir Michael Palairet, the minister in Athens, were supportive. In the interval, Lloyd had visited Spain to ask the Spanish dictator, General Francisco Franco, if he was willing to guarantee the proposed "Balkan pact", an aspect of his visit to Madrid about which he neglected to tell the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office first learned of the plan from the Yugoslav Regent, Prince Paul, in November 1939. On 3 November 1939, Lord Halifax called a meeting to discuss the merits and demerits of the Balkan League plan, which Lloyd was allowed to attend by special permission of Halifax over the objections of Cadogan, who argued that an outsider like Lord Lloyd should be attending a Foreign Office meeting. On 14 November 1939, Lloyd's Balkan tour began with a visit to Bucharest. Gafencu suggested a "machinery for common action", but negotiations broken down when King Carol learned that the British guarantee of Romania applied only against Germany, not the Soviet Union, as he wanted. As Carol had not seen Hoare for some time, the extended talks that Lord Lloyd had with the king was felt to provide "useful information and impressions". In Belgrade and Sofia, Lloyd's visit was hampered by inability of Britain to supply weapons on the scale that both Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and King Boris III of Bulgaria wanted. Moreover, the unwillingness of Boris to renounce Bulgarian territorial claims over Yugoslavia, Greece and Romania rendered the idea of a neutralist Balkan league impractical. After finishing his Balkan tour, Lloyd went to Syria to see Maxime Weygand, whose Armée de la Syrie had been intended by the French General Staff before the war to go to Thessaloniki. Upon his return to Britain in December 1939, Lloyd