Post-War Reconstruction Quotes
1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor. For the earliest use of the phrase, see {41309}.
Almost all economists believe that Harding had it totally wrong. WWII for example was one of the greatest increases in productivity in world history. The Civil War and the two world wars both were accompanied by many increases in industrial productivity. The losing side is usually totally devastated by war, and sometimes the winners are impoverished as with England and Russia in WWII. However, the North thrived in the Civil War and America did in WWII. Many economists say that war often impairs the economy of even a winning country in that the war expenditures generally are made at the expense of the civilian economy—infrastructure, public transportation, education, and in the decades following the war the lack of domestic investment in the war years reduces medium and long term growth.
The General’s warning was not taken seriously at the time and the George W. Bush administration made him a persona non grata. But his warning turned out to be very prescient and the United States got so badly bogged down in the Iraq War.
The Boer war broke out when the Afrikaners of the Transvaal would not give suffrage and equality to the new British immigrants . However, Blacks were in even worse shape in the Transvaal. The British Colonial Minister had urged reform in this arena, but the British had fought an ugly war and settled for a non-Black Reform, platform assuring suffrage and other rights for the white English but assuring nothing for the Blacks. This set the stage for apartheid. In the settlement of the Boer War, England would not prolong the fighting and the casualties to gain civil and equal rights for the Black population which they had argued for and was one of the causes of the war. Just what Chamberlain warned about came to pass.
