To put it mildly, France and Britain had a long history of conflict.[1]  Beginning in the 1890s, however, Germany’s pursuit of a large navy threatened Britain’s long-standing policy of maintaining naval dominance in order to safeguard the empire.  Britain responded to Germany’s fleet construction by settling many of its outstanding international conflicts and drawing closer to France.  The two countries fought shoulder to shoulder (although not without some elbows being thrown) during the First World War. 

            Once victory over Germany had been won, Britain and France began to drift apart.  First, the Versailles Treaty deprived Germany of a real navy.  The end of German naval power removed a thorn from the lion’s paw.  Britain’s policy turned to other things.[2]  Second, Anglo-American fair words and promises persuaded the French to back off their most extreme demands for guarantees against any revival of German power.[3]  Third, the two countries diverged on policy toward Central and Eastern Europe.  American repudiation of the security guarantee for France made the French all the more determined to strictly enforce the remaining terms.  This led to the Ruhr Crisis and the near-collapse of the German economy.[4]  That added to the chaos in Central and Eastern Europe.   

Yet Britain desired a restoration of stability in the region in hopes of creating markets for its troubled economy.  Later (in 1935), a diplomat at Britain’s Foreign Office would observe that “… from the earliest years following the war it was our policy to eliminate those parts of the Peace Settlement which, as practical people, we knew to be unstable and indefensible.”[5]  Anglo-American financial pressure led France to accept a reduction in German reparations to a level that the Germans might be willing to pay, at least for a while.  This was the Dawes Plan.[6]  Then British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain[7] helped negotiate the Locarno treaty (1925).[8]  The treaty offered a general British guarantee of the existing frontiers in Western Europe.  However, the treaty offered nothing similar in Eastern Europe where France sought anti-German alliances among the “successor states” (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia).  If a future Germany attacked one of France’s allies, France would attack Germany.  However, the Locarno Treaty might require Britain to come to the aid of Germany, rather than France.  None of this was “good” from the French point of view.  It was merely the best that could be won under the circumstances. 

French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand tried to make the best of a bad deal.  His approach to the Americans about an alliance produced a meaningless general treaty open to all.  The “Kellogg-Briand Pact” (1928) renounced “aggressive war as an instrument of national policy.”  Even Weimar Germany signed. 

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[1] History of France–United Kingdom relations – Wikipedia  Very sketchy, but you’ll get the drift: war, truce, war. 

[2] “Now that I’ve eaten, I see things in a different light.”—Groucho Marx. 

[3] The Americans soon repudiated their guarantee by refusing ratification of the Versailles treaty. 

[4] Occupation of the Ruhr – Wikipedia 

[5] Part of this sprang from the de-legitimation of the Versailles Treaty by people like Keynes and Sydney Fay. 

[6] Stephen A. Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan.   

[7] Older half-brother of the future Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. 

[8] Jon Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy: Germany and the West, 1925-1929.