In April 1922, the Guardian began publishing the Reconstruction in Europe, a series of 12 monthly supplements discussing the economic and financial problems of rebuilding the continent. Edited by John Maynard Keynes, contributors included leading continental economists, politicians and Nobel laureates (there were more foreign writers than British), as well as 13 pieces by Keynes himself.
There were also numerous illustrations, maps and graphs. The series had a wide readership, being published simultaneously in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
CP Scott, Guardian editor, persuaded Keynes take on the project in 1921, after an assurance was given the he could, ‘really exercise pretty detailed supervision over the writers.’ The main areas covered included finance, industry, trade and labour, with some issues specialising in topics such as shipping or oil. The supplements were the main vehicle for Keynes’ views at the time, as well as the first full account of the theory he later summarised in A Tract on Monetary Reform. In advance of the first issue he wrote about the Genoa conference (34 nations trying to resolve issues in Europe), which he attended as the Guardian’s special correspondent. Detailed preparation of the series fell to AP Wadsworth, who later became editor of the paper.
Reconstruction in Europe appeared in the Manchester Guardian Commercial, a regular weekly economic review aimed at the business community, that was launched in 1920, and ran throughout the interwar years. Excerpts from the supplements appeared in the daily paper.
Reconstruction in Europe: a study of economic problems
9 March 1922
The Genoa Conference should begin a new and more hopeful period for Europe. Coincidently with the opening of Conference at Genoa, the Manchester Guardian Commercial will publish the first of a series of twelve Special Numbers on Reconstruction in Europe, which are intended to form an authoritative guide, on a scale not hitherto attempted, to international economic problems. The numbers will have a world circulation, and will he printed in five editions, in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. Their contents will include contributions from leading European statesmen, businessmen, financial experts, and economists. The General Editor of the series is Mr John Maynard Keynes.
Reconstruction in Europe is the concern of the hour. It is realised in all countries that without great and concerted effort there can be no return to industrial and financial stability, no recovery of trade and employment. Industry is stifled in one country and stimulated to a dangerous fever in another. One country is poor because it cannot buy, and its neighbour poor because it, cannot sell. Why is trade with half Europe reduced to a hazard and international exchange to a gamble? Many of the obvious causes, war and its sequels, are familiar, but the failure of statesmen and financiers to find a remedy proves that a more complete equipment of knowledge than we yet have is a necessary foundation upon which to build.
There can be no greater contribution to this end than an exhaustive survey of European conditions, financial, economic, and industrial, written by the chief authorities of Europe. The whole series will form such a survey. It will deal with European reconstruction in all its phases – problems of international exchange, of national finance and credit, of tariffs, of communications, of emigration, and of food supply. It will investigate the resources of Europe, the prospects of Russia, the supplies of raw materials. The whole of this vast field will be surveyed and the attempt made to fashion out a policy based on more complete knowledge than is yet anywhere available.
An important and novel feature will be the Business Barometer, an indicator of economic and industrial conditions, and consisting of a series of charts and tables prepared by experts in Great Britain, the United States, and the chief European countries, setting forth, so that they may be seen at a glance, movements and tendencies of world finance, trade, prices, employment, and so forth. This barometer will constitute a new departure in the presentation of economic facts, and will be the most comprehensive and authoritative graphic survey published. The European sections will be compiled by the London School of Economics, assisted by correspondents abroad. The American section will contain the Business Barometer prepared by the Economic Research Department of Harvard University, which has an influential circulation among business men in the United States.
A contribution to reconstruction
20 April 1922
With to-day’s issue of the Manchester Guardian Commercial is published the first of a series of twelve special numbers which, will form, we think, the most considerable contribution any newspaper has made to European Reconstruction. The numbers aim at doing for the business man what the high-placed economic experts do for the statesmen who in conference and negotiation determine the course of international policy. They aim at providing an authoritative survey of all those factors and conditions that enter into the disordered state of European industry and commerce. Mr JM Keynes, as general editor of the series, has enlisted the services of the greatest authorities of Europe.
Through their wide European circulation – they are published in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish – the Reconstruction Numbers may play an important part in the work of informing and influencing opinion. They will deal with Reconstruction in Europe in all its phases. The first number concentrates on one set of problems which are now one of the greatest barriers to trade – the problems of the foreign exchanges.
Experts in all the chief countries discuss the causes and tendencies of exchanges and currencies, front the standpoint not of theory but of actuality. Mr. Keynes, himself the greatest British authority on post-war finance, puts forward a suggestive plan for stabilising the exchanges, explains the principles and causes which in behind exchange movements, and in another extremely valuable article describes an entirely new side of the problem – the forward market in exchanges.
This is an edited extract. Read the article in full.
An extract from the second of the series
18 May 1922
Some clues to reconstruction. By JM Keynes
In a sense nearly all the elements or the situation may be attributed to the war. The boom was due to the war: and therefore the reaction from the boom can he ascribed to it also. But, except in this indirect sense, popular opinion attributes, in my opinion, too much to the war and too little to the results of the cyclical fluctuation of trade, as economists call it, which we have just experienced, on an unprecedented scale indeed, but of a type which was regular and familiar even before the war. I divide up the causes of our misfortunes under the four head’s following:– (1) The direct destruction of material wealth by war: (2) the destruction of immaterial wealth in the form of organisation by the complete or partial destruction of the four great empires of Europe: (3) the atmosphere of distrust and hostility arising out of the hatreds and revenges of war itself, the rivalries and animosities of the new States, and the deep conflict of political and economic principle with the Soviet Power of Russia: (4) the cyclical fluctuation of the credit organism.
Extracts from the third of the series
15 June 1922
The Genoa Conference. By Signor Nitti (ex-prime minister of Italy)
The idea in many French circles of continuing the state of war by means of the treaties of peace represents a programme which Great Britain and Italy cannot accept. It is true that France has suffered great losses; but it also true that she has had many advantages. The loss suffered by British commerce amounts to an impressive total. Italy has seen her wealth diminished through the war very much more than that of France. Yet in Italy no one at all, not even the most excitable, considers that Italian economy should be restored by indemnities. The Italians desire only to trade with Germany in the same way as with other peoples. Everyone now considers that it is necessary to resume intercourse as before the war.
France and England. By Baron d’Estournelle de Constant (Member of the Hague Court, Senator of Finance, French Delegate to the Hague Conference of 1907)
What have we won in this gamble? We have steadily lost the gains from our wartime sacrifices, and in consequence the confidence of public opinion. The mistakes have unfortunately been prolific. We imagined that we were acting wisely in setting our press to attack Lloyd George. A gross and a classic error. British jingoism rose up against French jingoism. In vain did King George and the Queen pay pilgrimage to our devastated regions. Aching hearts in our country were credited with the appalling conviction that the heroism and the sacrifices of our Allies will prove to have been no more than a flash in the pan; one had to be thankful when the attempt was not made to find beneath them heaven knows what sordid calculations. There is a propaganda, a debasing cult of ingratitude.
Consciences are awakening – with or without or against the Governments. I realise the difficulties of the French Government, as the inheritor, in Clemenceau’s phrase, of glorious Pyrrhic victories. But it will surmount these difficulties or will render them irremediable according as it remains in accord or not with our English friends.
The Lesson of Genoa. By Professor Gustav Cassel (Swedish Delegate to the Conference).
Although there is a wide scope for fertile action on the ground laid down by the Genoa Conference, it should not for a moment be thought that such action can lead to an improvement in the world situation, still less to a real recovery, unless that fundamental condition is fulfilled which may be summed up in the very simple word Peace. The peace we want is a constructive peace, with positive work for the recovery of Europe considered as an economic unit.
