ABSTRACT
In the years between 1919 and 1926 and again from 1933 to 1938 France experienced financial and economic difficulties which seriously compromised its foreign policy. In the former period, mounting budget deficits, inflation and accelerating currency depreciation increasingly dominated domestic politics, eventually forcing France to go cap in hand to British and American bankers, whose dislike of French policy towards Germany was well known.1 In the latter period, when the world economic slump had caught up with France, the problem of declining government revenues and the threat of renewed currency instability had a devastating effect upon defence spending, employment and political morale.2
