Conflicting ideological belief, political opportunism and strategic insight impelled Winston Churchill through a succession of varying attitudes towards the Spanish Civil War. By 1938, however, he had come to a characteristic conclusion. Had he been Spanish, he told an Argentinian journalist, he would have supported Franco, who, as a patriot and a defender of Europe against the Communist danger, had right on his side. Yet as an Englishman, he continued, he preferred the ‘others’ to triumph, since Franco, unlike them, could menace and disturb British interests. Such a candid declaration readily lent itself to effective anti-British propaganda in Spain, during Churchill's wartime premiership. This propaganda emphasised the callousness and cynical self-interest of the British Prime Minister in his dealings with Spain. As Prime Minister, Churchill naturally did continue to give priority to furthering British interests in Anglo-Spanish affairs, but he no longer felt that this necessarily entailed friction or conflict with Franco. For, after replacing Chamberlain, in May 1940, Churchill soon revealed his anxiety to prove his earlier judgement wrong and to come to terms with Franco. His concern to do so was clearly connected with the increasingly massive rout of the Anglo-French armies in France, and he rapidly dispatched one of the recently discharged Cabinet Ministers, Sir Samuel Hoare, to Madrid as British Ambassador, ‘to keep the Spanish Government neutral’.