PREFACE
IX
Britain the main crisis is over. There is a lullin our affairs. We are, in the autumn of 1931,resting ourselves in a quiet pool between twowaterfalls. The main point is that we haveregained our freedom of choice. Scarcely anyone in England now believes in the Treaty ofVersailles or in the pre-war Gold Standard orin the Policy of Deflation. These battles havebeen won—mainly by the irresistible pressureof events and only secondarily by the slow under-mining of old prejudices. But most of us have,as yet, only a vague idea of what we are going todo next, of how we are going to use our re-gained freedom of choice. So I should like toclinch the past, as it were, by reminding thereader of what we have been through, and howit appeared at the time, and the nature of themistakes we made.
November 8, 1931.