D'Aeth emerged from the war with his reputation greatly enhanced and his commitment to the coordination of voluntary effort as being essential to social advance wholly confirmed. Indeed, it might even be said that the war for him had been no more than an exceptional opportunity to put to the test the conclusions at which he had already arrived on the basis of his previous experience. The immense task of regeneration following the declaration of peace was therefore for him an exciting and challenging opportunity to put his convictions into practice and to this he responded with his characteristic zeal. So much so that it is difficult to know where to start in reducing the welter of his interests to a straightforward narrative on a printed page. His intuitive grasp of the relevance of individual activity to that of the society in which it occurred meant that in his mind, his wide range of contacts and activities were inextricably interlocked. Moreover, his involvement in any particular project was always an ongoing one and not simply a one-off episode, so that the overall picture cannot be presented as a neat chronological package.

If it is difficult for the biographer to summarise all that he did in those busy post-war years, how much more so must it have been for D'Aeth himself to reduce his task to manageable order. He was confronted by the unprecedented onset of change and flux, upon which he embarked without the assistance of any preconceived plan of action or declared policy. Instead, as always with him, his strategy was simply to make such modest response as he could to some immediate need, and to learn by doing what the next step would be. The outcome was a medley of contacts and interests which obscures his real purpose.