This volume, together with volume xv, form the first of a group of nine or more which will make available Keynes's more ephemeral writings, his letters and contributions to the newspapers, his memoranda while employed in the India Office and in the Treasury in two wars, and such correspondence as is directly related to the events about which he is writing or is necessary to the understanding of the documents that are published.

For his published contributions to the press, the main source is the series of scrapbooks which, as explained in the General Introduction, his mother indefatigably maintained throughout his working life. (Keynes, knowing that she was doing this, helped by sending her copies of all he published.) For the periods in Whitehall, first in the India Office and subsequently in the Treasury, dependence has been primarily on the files that are now available in the Public Record Office. In some cases, however, Keynes had himself retained an earlier draft of a memorandum that he had written. Almost all of the correspondence that is here published is among his surviving papers. At points the diaries of John Neville Keynes—Maynard Keynes's father—serve to illuminate Keynes's thoughts or state of mind at important moments.