Donald Coleman has provided us with a characteristically succinct account of Courtaulds' war:

Such a description appears somewhat heretical when compared with more general accounts of the impact of the First World War on the British economy; though it is important to note that most attention has been given to the immediate postwar period while discussions of the war years themselves have tended to concentrate on the ways in which extraordinary financial, production and manpower needs were met. As to the economic effects of the war, two main lines of argument emerge from the literature. One concludes that it had powerfully damaging consequences which continued well into the 1920s and even beyond.The other seeks to show that the war exacerbated longer-term problems affecting the British economy through the scale, nature and speed of its demands, and through thedistortions it caused in international trade and finance; altogether, it is alleged,this made it much more difficult to achieve necessary structural changes, in particular in the industrial sector.