ABSTRACT
The experiment of "national" or all-party government was set on foot in Britain in 1931 as a means of enabling the country to extricate her from the financial crisis of that year, which threatened to destroy her credit and to plunge her in financial confusion. Britain's financial position was fundamentally sound, though like other countries she had suffered from the strain of the crisis. The first of the greater countries to feel the effects of the cessation of American lending was Germany. France and America were highly protectionist countries, which meant that they made it as difficult as possible for their debtors to pay them in goods: America, indeed, raised her tariffs to prohibitive levels for this precise purpose. These things were quite easily done by the new National Government the first against their will, the second and third with the general assent of the nation.
