Wartime planning in Britain for postwar reconstruction was neither extensive nor, in the event, very useful. Some domestic problems were identified and considered; but such thought as was given to international aspects was directed almost entirely to continuing economic warfare against Germany by the control of trade, rather than towards the task of reconstruction itself. Only at the very end of the war did some government officials and ministers show any appreciation of the European problem; but their suggestions were tentative and, in the hectic circumstances of the armistice, failed to reach the highest policy-making levels.

During the first year or two of the war, planning for the postwar world was of little concern to the British government. Once it was plain that the war would be long drawn out, there was little reason to anticipate problems that were not urgent, and that threatened to raise questions of relations with Allies and neutrals, and differences within the coalition itself. Down to the end of 1916 the development of British war aims was mainly prompted by the demands of existing allies and attempts to win new ones. The resulting secret inter-Allied agreements were almost entirely concerned with territory and said little or nothing about postwar relations. Down to the end of the peace conference, discussion of a league of nations was mainly concerned with the problem of preventing war; but there were some references by radicals and the Labour Party to the possible role of a league in assuring access to raw materials and in economic cooperation.