Britain's customary postwar response was to reduce its armed forces and repay debt quickly, restoring its capacity to borrow in another crisis. The scale of First World War debt made that policy harder to apply. A ten-year planning assumption could be defended through debt repayment only if the debt could actually be cleared within that period. If repayment instead took sixty or seventy years, security needs would have to be weighed against a somewhat longer repayment schedule. The proposed investment programme accepts slower repayment in return for better preparation before the next conflict.
Notable Point · 1:41:41-1:43:33
Debt policy and the limits of the ten-year rule
An automatic postwar wind-down made less sense when First World War debt could not realistically be repaid before another major security crisis.