Behind the façade of the Entente Cordiale after the Great War

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Robert Boyce

Published:

2006

Publisher:

Palgrave Macmillan UK

The relationship between Britain and France after the Great War has been described not unfairly as a mésentente cordiale.1 In the early 1920s the two powers diverged radically over the basis of European security and the place of Germany in the post-war world order. In the later 1920s the relationship was further strained by differences over commercial policy, the operation of the gold standard, war debts, disarmament and a host of other issues. Two features of the bilateral relationship stand out. One is the extraordinary number of issues on which the two countries differed. The other is the one-sidedness of the anger this caused. In France, there was evidence of impatience, frustration, even cynicism at Britain’s aloofness from the Continent and its efforts to see Germany freed from the constraints of the Treaty of Versailles. After the Treaty was signed and the promised Anglo-American guarantee to France failed to materialise, several Paris cabaret acts caricatured David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, as a trickster or conman. The acts attracted the notice of the French ambassador in London who demanded the intervention of the police on account of their potential damage to relations with Britain.2 Subsequently, efforts by Raymond Poincaré, the French premier, to hold Britain to its Treaty commitments encouraged the impression of hostility.

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