In a dispatch which he sent to Lond, on 1 May 1941, Sir Samuel Hoare admitted that Spain was ‘shaking under the shocks’ of the recent British defeats in the Eastern Mediterranean. Nevertheless, he refused to subscribe to ‘the doctrine of Calvinist inevitability’ which deemed Spanish belligerency on the Axis side to be ineluctable. He therefore repeated his oft-expressed call for extensive Anglo-American aid to Spain, for a United States propaganda campaign there to publicise the scale of their support for Britain's fight, and for some effort to mobilise Latin American influence against Spanish adherence to the Axis. Makins of the Foreign Office, however, did not see that there was much more Britain could do to consolidate Spanish non-belligerency. He minuted, on 9 May 1941, in reaction to Hoare's advice, thus: