Carol was reluctant to strengthen the Romanian alliance with Poland. When Tilea told Lloyd that Britain but not France was hesitant to guarantee Romania, Lloyd went to the French embassy. Lloyd was regarded as such an important personality that he barged in as French Ambassador Charles Corbin was on the telephone with Prime Minister Edouard Daladier. Lloyd, who was fluent in French, talked to Daladier and told him that if France held firm in ensuring the guarantees to Romania and Greece, Britain would have to follow suit. As the British government did not wish to be seen operating out of sync with the French, the news that Daladier would go ahead with the guarantee forced London's hand. Atherton wrote about Lloyd's actions in April 1939, "The beneficiary was Romania, who received a guarantee unconditional on a closer defensive alliance with Poland, and which helped her to balance between the western powers, Germany, and Russia. In this instance, Lloyd had been working on behalf of Romania rather than Great Britain". However, Lloyd's attempts to lobby Halifax to issue a guarantee for Yugoslavia fell flat. Reflecting his special case in the Balkans, when Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, Lloyd had the pamphlet The British Case to explain why Britain had declared war translated into Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene and ensured that it was widely distributed all over the Balkans. A recurring theme of Lloyd's letters to Halifax during the Phoney War was that the Treasury was not providing enough money for the British Council's work in the Balkans. In September 1939, Tilea began to promote the idea of a "Balkan bloc", consisting of all the Balkan state, that would be committed to upholding neutrality in the Second World War with the understanding that the Allies would come to their aid if their neutrality was violated. Lloyd, who was in close contact with Churchill who was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty on 3 September 1939, called together with Churchill for a "Balkan league", which would form a line to block any German expansion into the Balkans. On 27 September 1939, Tilea asked Sir Alexander Cadogan, the Foreign Office's Permanent Undersecretary, "whether it would not be a good plan to send someone out to Bucharest, and he quoted as an example Lord Lloyd, who had the ear of the King and might be able to give good