Key decision-makers on both sides of the Channel agreed that an alliance between Britain and France in the aftermath of the First World War would represent a major step towards securing their hard-won victory and achieving European stability. Yet negotiations during and after the Paris Peace Conference failed to conclude terms satisfactory to both states.
This paper investigates British attitudes towards a possible pact with France, concentrating in particular on the discussions that occurred in late and early which revealed much about the perceptions and objectives of the two powers now most responsible, in the absence of the United States, for executing the Versailles settlement with Germany.
As a result of the war there remain only two really great powers in Europe - France and ourselves For a considerable period, therefore, a combination of Great Britain and France would be so strong that no other likely combination could successfully resist it. It follows that a definite and publicly announced agreement between the two countries to stand by one another in case either were attacked would offer a guarantee of peace of the strongest kind.
Why were the two principal European victors from the First World War unable to negotiate the pact that leading decision-makers on both sides of the Channel believed would preserve the hard-won peace and indeed was essential to doing so? The discussions about an Anglo-French alliance between cabinet ministers in Britain, the advice offered by diplomats and other men of influence on both sides of the Channel and the exchanges between British and French leaders revealed a continuing relationship dogged by mutual suspicion and antagonism tempered by a grudging recognition by both states that the other was vital to the realisation of its objectives.
The unsolved problem was to find a way to reconcile their very different perceptions of an ideal international order without sacrificing the interests that each saw as vital to its national and great power interests. Britain was anxious to revive the German economy and re-establish trading links, perceiving its population as 65 million potential customers, whereas the current dominant strand of French policy saw a prosperous and populous Germany as a security menace.
