During World War I he was a Treasury Civil Servant. Although he would have been excused from military service, he did write to the Tribunal pleading conscientious objection. The Tribunal declined to rule.
In 1909 he was elected a Fellow at Kings College, Cambridge. Keynes drifted into monetary economics. Keynes seems to have thought of the structure of his argument before he put pencil to paper. Intuition was present in large works and in his day-to-day tasks. Keynes believed that intuition could run ahead of analysis.
Keynes was almost continuously absorbed in questions of policy. It seemed to Keynes that economics was a branch of logic. Probability is not subjective. Probability was the subject of one of his first major works. Keynes disliked theorizing for its own sake. Keynes used the Cambridge didactic style in presenting some of his arguments. As a working economist, Keynes was a rationalist.
The political elite of senior politicians, civil servants, and higher journalists could be influenced by rational persuasion and public opinion. In a democracy the elite was subject to public opinion, but opinion generated by an inner core could significantly shape general beliefs and currents of thought. Public opinion was not really firm. It could be changed by events.
Keynes had a conception of desirable society. He broke new ground in his view of the role of the state. He borrowed from Bentham in designating an agenda and nonagenda of government. First it was necessary to distinguish matters technically social or technically individual. The social ones would not get done at all if not performed by the state.
Keynes made friends with the Americans in the course of working for the treasury department during World War I. In 1918 he bought four works of art by Delacroix, Ingres, and Cezanne. In 1919 he resigned the Peace Conference and resumed private life. Keynes married Lydia Lopokova in 1925.
He spent six years, 1925-1931, on A TREATISE ON MONEY. In the United State the Federal Reserve System was showing that monetary management could combine price stability with economic expansion. In the treatise Keynes developed new tools of analysis. In the treatise Keynes accepted the desirability of an international standard of value.
Keynes advocated public works as a solution to Britain's unemployment. Britain left the gold standard in September 1931. 1931-1936 were years of preparing THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST AND MONEY. The theory of the rate of interest was Keynes's main ground for controversy in 1936 and after.
During World War II Keynes was deeply involved in framing economic issues. After the outbreak of war, Keynes's main concern was the best method of transferring resources from peacetime to wartime uses. Fiscal measures were at the center of his vision.
Keynes was mindful of the postwar consequences of wartime acts. The Bretton Woods Conference yielded plans for the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Keynes had passionate concern for the world and its ills. He emphasized the need for useful operational economic models.