On 17 June 1942, at a dinner hosted by Gutt at the Berkeley Hotel in London to which his most important collaborators were invited, Keynes declared:

This ‘undeniable will to build something new’ would not be without its paradoxes. First, it rested on the shoulders of men who had been involved in the failures of the past. In other words, the agenda of postwar monetary reconstruction had to lay down the basis for the future while addressing unresolved issues from the interwar period. Secondly, this new economic order had to take account of the emerging new system of international relations after the Second World War. If the interwar period witnessed a transition from one great economic power, i.e. from the UK to the US, the Second World War completed this transition. Finally, this new order could not entirely discount the divergences and convergences between the US and the UK in terms of international economic policy and objectives for the postwar order. These divergences were essentially dictated by the very different lessons the two big powers drew from their interwar experience. Consequently: ‘Britain became more “nationalist”, the United States, more “internationalist”’.