British leaders at WWI’s end rejected any return to prewar conditions.

Evidence

Cabinet documents: “Reconstruction,” it was insisted, “is not so much a question of rebuilding society as it was before the war, but of moulding a better world out of the social and economic conditions which have come into being during the war” (HMSO 1918a, xix). … Such words were not outliers: they represented a common sentiment widely present within the British public debate. Th e opening speech of incumbent prime minister Lloyd George at the November 1918 coalition election campaign was eloquent: “We cannot return to the old conditions. (Cheers.) War is like a ploughshare and a harrow. It has turned up and rent the soil of Europe. You cannot go back.” — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 194

Categorization

• XREF: This foreshadows the contrast Mattei will draw — the promised ‘better world’ reconstruction that austerity then betrayed — echoing how Polanyi’s double movement describes the surge of protective counter-movements after laissez-faire shocks. — connects to: Early austerity fused consensus-building and coercion to tame post-WWI publics. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 43; Soldiers in the 1831-32 Acre siege showed WWI-style shell shock symptoms — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1096

Broader Connections

• Early austerity fused consensus-building and coercion to tame post-WWI publics. #corroborates (0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 43
• Soldiers in the 1831-32 Acre siege showed WWI-style shell shock symptoms #complicates (0.72) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1096