We show that, because the cost of the war had been so high in France, the size of the French public debt, the budget deficit and the monetary overhang made it impossible to stabilise immediately after World War I, even on the anti-Keynesian assumption that a stabilisation would have had no negative effects on income. The reason for the immediate postwar inflation was then not mismanaged policy but a wise choice in the French context; nevertheless, a stabilisation was historically possible from early 1924, and it would most likely have benefited not only France but the entire international monetary system.