Samuel Hoare
British Foreign Secretary, signatory of the Hoare-Laval Pact (1880-1959)
Also known as: Hoare, Samuel Hoare, Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Templewood
Sir Samuel John Gurney Hoare, 1st Viscount Templewood (1880-1959), was a senior Conservative politician of the 1930s and Foreign Secretary in 1935. Quigley treats him as one of the The Milner Group's consequential placements: Fellow of New College, the same college as Milner (AAE 83), and co-author of the secret Hoare-Laval Pact of December 1935 that proposed to partition Ethiopia in Mussolini's favor — for Quigley, the clearest single act of the Group's appeasement reflex.
Group placement
Hoare was a Fellow of New College, Oxford — the same New College that, under Milner's patronage, supplied Curtis, Kerr, Brand, and the rest of the Kindergarten. Quigley lists him among the New College Fellows of 1900-1947 who constituted the Group's permanent academic-administrative ballast: 'Sir Samuel Hoare (Lord Templewood)' alongside Lothian, Milner, Berlin, Fisher, Murray, Ormsby-Gore, and Zimmern (AAE 83). The Imperial Conference of 1937 had a five-of-eight Milner-Group delegation: 'Lord Halifax, Sir John Simon, Malcolm MacDonald, W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, and Sir Samuel Hoare' (AAE 132).
Hoare-Laval Pact
In September 1935 Hoare delivered 'a smashing speech to support of the League, collective security, and sanctions against Italy' (T&H 587) at the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva — the speech that persuaded the British electorate that the Baldwin government was committed to collective security. The Conservatives won the November 1935 general election on that platform. 'The day previously he and Anthony Eden' had laid out the speech's basic line (T&H 587). Six weeks later, in early December 1935, Hoare and the French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval secretly negotiated the Hoare-Laval Pact that proposed to give Mussolini two-thirds of Ethiopia in exchange for a face-saving Italian withdrawal. The text leaked to the French press on 9 December 1935. 'To save his government, Baldwin had to sacrifice Hoare, who resigned on December 19th, but returned to the Cabinet on June 5, 1936, as soon as Ethiopia was decently buried' (T&H 589). Quigley reads this six-month cooling period as the Group recycling Hoare through reputational rehabilitation.
Quigley's framing
Hoare appears in Quigley's master appeasement list: 'The group which spread this version of the situation included Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, John Simon, Samuel Hoare, Horace Wilson, the Cliveden Set, the British ambassador in Berlin (Sir Nevile Henderson), and the British minister in Prague (Basil Newton)' (T&H 640). And again on the trajectory from appeasement to anti-Bolshevism: 'It is likely that Chamberlain, Sir John Simon, and Sir Samuel Hoare went by this road from appeasement to anti-Bolshevism. At any rate, few influential people were still in the appeasement group by 1939 in the sense that they believed that Germany could ever be satisfied' (T&H 597). Hoare ended the war as Ambassador to Franco's Spain (1940-1944), retired with the Templewood viscountcy in 1944, and died in 1959.
Cited in
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 83 Quigley
Some Fellows of New College in the years 1900-1947: Lothian; Lord Milner; Isaiah Berlin; H. A. L. Fisher; Sir Samuel Hoare (Lord Templewood); Gilbert Murray; W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (Lord Harlech); Sir Alfred Zimmern.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 132 Quigley
five were from the Milner Group (Lord Halifax, Sir John Simon, Malcolm MacDonald, W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, and Sir Samuel Hoare). The others were Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, and J. Ramsay MacDonald.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 587 Quigley
Samuel Hoare (now foreign secretary) went to the meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations in September 1935 and delivered a smashing speech to support of the League, collective security, and sanctions against Italy.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 589 Quigley
To save his government, Baldwin had to sacrifice Hoare, who resigned on December 19th, but returned to the Cabinet on June 5, 1936, as soon as Ethiopia was decently buried.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 597 Quigley
It is likely that Chamberlain, Sir John Simon, and Sir Samuel Hoare went by this road from appeasement to anti-Bolshevism. At any rate, few influential people were still in the appeasement group by 1939.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 640 Quigley
The group which spread this version of the situation included Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, John Simon, Samuel Hoare, Horace Wilson, the Cliveden Set, the British ambassador in Berlin.