ABSTRACT
In World War I, most of the hopes for a stable international order rested on cooperation between Great Britain and France. During 1920s, Britain's economy remains stagnant while France enjoyed prosperity and the British blamed this state of affairs on a devalued franc, high French tariffs, and the sterilization of gold by the bank of France. The timing of the great depression in the United States, Great Britain, and France differences in when it first arrived, when it reached its most severe stage and the pace of recovery in each that hampered the ability of the three Western democracies to work together to uphold the international order. The economic crisis contributes to France's chronic political instability. The Secretary of State Cordell Hull personally sought to reverse the global trend toward protectionism where France and Britain both commits to a high-tariff policy that there was no chance that they would agree to anything that smacked of free trade.
