Abstract: This concluding chapter begins by discussing the evolution of Keynes’s ideas that underpinned his approach to reconstruction after the first and second world wars. Keynes’s economics after the First World War were classical, stressing sound finance to defeat inflation; after the Second World War, his economics were Keynesian, and while he wished to avoid inflation, he especially sought to ensure full, or at least high, employment. A central element of Keynes’s idealism was the view that there are important economic causes of conflict between states, but that these could be remedied. He also believed at times, not only that the economic causes of conflict could be eliminated, but that certain economic measures, such as the creation of a free trade union, might themselves actively foster political harmony.

Keywords: economics, First World War, Second World War, inflation, conflicts,