War and Social Policy1

This chapter focuses on the relationship of war and social policy. So far as the story of modern war before 1939 is concerned, little has been recorded in any systematic way about the social arid economic effects of war on the population as a whole. Only long and patient research in out-of-the-way documentary places can reveal something of the characteristics and flavour of social life during the experience of wars in the past. In discussing social policy, the chapter pertains to those acts of governments deliberately designed and taken to improve the welfare of the civil population in time of war. It also asks whether there were any recorded accounts of the movement of civilian populations in past wars as a calculated element in war strategy.