#cannan

Walking with God–Numbers 14

...Professor Cannan has urged that the Political Economy of War is "a contradiction in terms", apparently on the ground that, since Economics is concerned with the causes of material welfare, and since war is not a cause of material welfare, war cannot be part of the subject-matter of Economics. As a moral judgment on the uses to which abstract knowledge should be put, Professor Cannan's strictures may be accepted. But it is abundantly clear, as Professor Cannan's own practice has shown, that, so far from Economics having no light to throw on the successful prosecution of modern warfare, it is highly doubtful whether the organisers of war can possibly do without it. It is a curious paradox that Professor Cannan's pronouncement on this matter should occur in a work which, more than any other published in our language, uses the apparatus of economic analysis to illuminate many of the most urgent and the most intricate problems of a community organised for war (p. 7).

Could you do a palette for someone named Cannan?

Summer 1927, D3/12/3: 72; A4.24