ABSTRACT
By the time the guns fell silent in 1918, European countries involved in World War I had suffered tremendous destruction. The world at the end of 1918 was considerably different than that of early 1914. The reestablishment of a European political, economic, and social equilibrium proved challenging. Having sustained minimal physical damage during the war, Britain was ready in 1918 to return to peace as quickly as possible. Prime Minister David Lloyd George's first major decision after the war was to hold national elections on December 14, 1918. In France too, political leaders were eager to return their country to normalcy, and to resume the economic growth that the country had experienced prior to World War I. The policy makers saw no need to make any serious foundational changes, since France's political and economic systems had successfully survived the test of the Great War.
