Abstract: Keynes was, in a phrase he frequently used, brought up to accept certain ideas that were central to the classical liberalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He worked in the British Treasury during the First World War to finance a war effort towards which he was increasingly hostile. He also contributed during and immediately after the war to British government thinking about how to treat the defeated enemy. But his ideas on this faced fierce resistance. This chapter traces the evolution of Keynes’s thinking on these and other issues to the end of 1918. It outlines aspects of Keynes’s thought on international issues before the First World War, especially how he was brought up to believe that free trade promoted peace; and his attitudes toward the Empire and population pressure; his approach to the First World War, conscription, and war finance; and the evolution of his thought on reparations to the end of 1918.

Keywords: classical liberalism, First World War, economic nationalism, free trade, reparations, war finance,