In 1951 (so Edgar Faure, premier for just two months, told the Assembly), France's cost of living rose thirty-nine per cent, compared with only twelve per cent in Britain, while spiralling prices and an overvalued currency had dragged exports down twenty per cent and pushed imports up thirty-six per cent; and there was only three days' worth of reserves left in the coffers. By 1953 prices stood at twenty-three times their pre-war levels, and while, on a basis of comparison with 1929, United States industrial production had doubled, Britain's had risen by fifty-four per cent, and war-shattered Germany's by fifty-three per cent, France's had expanded by a mere eight per cent.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 192