‘France has abandoned principle and consistency alike, but she has always refused sacrifices which were avoidable and has obeyed in the end the teachings of experience. We in England have not submitted either to the warnings of theory or to the pressures of facts, obstinately obedient to convention.’ This remark, written by Keynes in 1928, describing the respective monetary policies of France and England in the 1920s, could also be applied to the 1930s – with the roles reversed. The attempt of French governments to hang on to the parity of the franc at all costs has become a classic example of wrongheadedness in the conduct of economic policy. But at the time devaluation was denounced with the most extraordinary passion.