"It is very pleasant," said French Finance Minister René Mayer one day last week, "to cooperate with a man who has as sane ideas as Sir Stafford Cripps." Nonetheless, he was not taking all Sir Stafford's ideas. This week, despite Crippsian objections, the French devalued the franc in a way that, Cripps thought, threatened the pound.
The French had simply made up their minds to stop biting off their noses. With the franc artificially pegged at 119 to the U.S. dollar (when its real value was closer to 340 to the dollar), the French were losing too...
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