ABSTRACT
QUEST IONS about the proper limits and content of publicpolicy in economic matters were bound to present them-selves in an acute form after the First World War. Influential opinion hitherto had, in general, been moving gradually towards the acceptance of a greater degree of public economic enterprise and regulation, but it had scarcely been prepared for what had come to pass by 1918. There was abundant material for argument about which of the innumerable public activities then in operation were indispensable or generally beneficial, which were inescapable commitments that must be honoured even though they were both controversial and expanding, and which could be treated as temporary expedients to be discarded as soon as possible.
