The 1920s were a kind of golden age in France, in spite of her devastating war losses in 1914-1918 - about ten per cent of the active male population. The 1930s were largely dominated by a single element, fear of a new European war, and fear of resurgent Germany in particular. Weakened militarily by understandable waves of pacifism, France was also haunted by her own "decadence", a frequent theme in her history, and was faced seemingly intractable socioeconomic problems. There was growing unrest in the industrial sector, resulting at one stage in a rash of strikes and even violence, while the efforts of Leon Blum's Popular Front to limit work-hours and ease the working man's burden proved self-defeating in the long run. Blum himself is shown as the wrong politician in the right place - intelligent, quick-witted, courteous, energetic, but an intellectual rather than a populist, and a man weakened by introspection and self-doubt. Religion both waned and made a comeback, losing much of its old basis of peasant faith, but showing itself active in new fields such as the boy-scout movement. War veterans were a force in themselves, both on the Left and the Right, and they organised themselves into large groups which could produce impressive street marches and demonstrations. The writer who typified the whole era best was Jean Giraudoux, the dramatist - "very French: facile but seldom superficial, show-off but discreetly so, prodigal lavishing culture, talents, jests, and wordplay while inviting admirers to share his enjoyment, and wildly contemporary in his classical, biblical or fairytale references." It was, however, a golden era in French cinema and in the visual arts generally, producing such marvels as Dufy's huge, magical mural painting La Fee Electricite. On the military front, the French Army wavered between over-optimism and defeatism, and its Commander-in-Chief, Gamelin, was essentially an able, negative-minded bureaucrat rather than a fighting man. His misjudgments and the army's basic weaknesses against Germany, together with the fall of Paul Reynaud as Premier, brought in old Petain from the wings, opening the way for the long humiliation of the Occupation years and the murky twilight of Vichy. France was to find her soul and her self belief again in the postwar years, though that is outside the scope of this excellent, though slightly one-sided piece of history.