John Maynard Keynes

“ Besides, a new military power establishing itself in the East, with its spiritual home in Brandenburg, drawing to itself all the military talent and all the military adventurers, all those who regret emperors and hate democracy, in the whole of Eastern and Central and south-eastern Europe, a power which would be geographically inaccessible to the military forces of the Allies, might well found, at least in the anticipations of the timid, a new Napoleonic domination, rising, as a phoenix, from the ashes of cosmopolitan militarism. So Paris dare not love Brandenburg. ”

“ Even if there is no moral solidarity between the nearly related races of Europe, there is an economic solidarity which we cannot disregard. Even now, the world markets are one. If we do not allow Germany to exchange products with Russia and so feed herself, she must inevitably compete with us for the produce of the New World. The more successful we are in snapping economic relations between Germany and Russia, the more we shall depress the level of our own economic standards and increase the gravity of our own domestic problems. ”

“ If we have to be satisfied without full compensation from Germany, how bitter will be the protests against paying it to the United States. We, it will be said, have to be content with a claim against the bankrupt estates of Germany, France, Italy, and Russia, whereas the United States has secured a first mortgage upon us. The case of France is at least as overwhelming. She can barely secure from Germany the full measure of the destruction of her countryside. Yet victorious France must pay her friends and allies more than four times the indemnity which in the defeat of 1870 she paid Germany. ”

“ If we take the view that for at least a generation to come Germany cannot be trusted with even a modicum of prosperity, that while all our recent allies are angels of light, all our recent enemies, Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, and the rest, are children of the devil, that year by year Germany must be kept impoverished and her children starved and crippled, and that she must be ringed round by enemies ”

“ England is in a state of transition, and her economic problems are serious. We may be on the eve of great changes in her social and industrial structure. Some of us may welcome such prospects and some of us deplore them. But they are of a different kind altogether from those impending on Europe. I do not perceive in England the slightest possibility of catastrophe or any serious likelihood of a general upheaval of society. The war has impoverished us, but not seriously -- I should judge that the real wealth of the country in 1919 is at least equal to what it was in 1900. ”

“ Speaking with a very intimate knowledge of the relations throughout the war between the British, the American, and the other Allied treasuries, I believe this to be an act of generosity for which Europe can fairly ask, provided Europe is making an honourable attempt in other directions not to continue war, economic or otherwise, but to achieve the economic reconstitution of the whole continent. The financial sacrifices of the United States have been, in proportion to her wealth, immensely less than those of the European states. ”

“ The only safeguard against revolution in Central Europe is indeed the fact that, even to the minds of men who are desperate, revolution offers no prospect of improvement whatever. There may, therefore, be ahead of us a long, silent process of semi-starvation, and of a gradual, steady lowering of the standards of life and comfort. The bankruptcy and decay of Europe, if we allow it to proceed, will affect everyone in the long run, but perhaps not in a way that is striking or immediate. ”

“ It is true that the need for European capitalism to find an outlet in the New World has led during the past fifty years, though even now on a relatively modest scale, to such countries as Argentina owing an annual sum to such countries as England. But the system is fragile; and it has only survived because its burden on the paying countries has not so far been oppressive, because this burden is represented by real assets and is bound up with the property system generally, and because the sums already lent are not unduly large in relation to those which it is still hoped to borrow. ”

“ As if none felt: they know not what they do.
We have been moved already beyond endurance, and need rest. Never in the lifetime of men now living has the universal element in the soul of man burnt so dimly. ”

“ Germany, on the other hand, has the experience, the incentive, and to a large extent the materials for furnishing the Russian peasant with the goods of which he has been starved for the past five years, for reorganising the business of transport and collection, and so for bringing into the world's pool, for the common advantage, the supplies from which we are now so disastrously cut off. It is in our interest to hasten the day when German agents and organisers will be in a position to set in train in every Russian village the impulses of ordinary economic motive. ”

“ On the other hand, the same people who fear such a union are even more afraid of the success of Bolshevism; and yet they have to recognise that the only efficient forces for fighting it are, inside Russia, the reactionaries, and, outside Russia, the established forces of order and authority in Germany. Thus the advocates of intervention in Russia, whether direct or indirect, are at perpetual cross-purposes with themselves. ”

“ Those readers who, chiefly mindful of the British conditions with which they are familiar, are apt to indulge their optimism, and still more those whose immediate environment is American, must cast their minds to Russia, Turkey, Hungary, or Austria, where the most dreadful material evils which men can suffer -- famine, cold, disease, war, murder, and anarchy -- are an actual present experience, if they are to apprehend the character of the misfortunes against the further extension of which it must surely be our duty to seek the remedy, if there is one. ”

“ A debtor nation does not love its creditor, and it is fruitless to expect feelings of goodwill from France, Italy and Russia towards this country or towards America, if their future development is stifled for many years to come by the annual tribute which they must pay us. There will be a great incentive to them to seek their friends in other directions, and any future rupture of peaceable relations will always carry with it the enormous advantage of escaping the payment of external debts. ”

“ It is difficult to maintain true perspective in large affairs. I have criticised the work of Paris, and have depicted in sombre colours the condition and the prospects of Europe. This is one aspect of the position and, I believe, a true one. But in so complex a phenomenon the prognostics do not all point one way; and we may make the error of expecting consequences to follow too swiftly and too inevitably from what perhaps are not all the relevant causes. The blackness of the prospect itself leads us to doubt its accuracy ”

“ Even though the result disappoint us, must we not base our actions on better expectations, and believe that the prosperity and happiness of one country promotes that of others, that the solidarity of man is not a fiction, and that nations can still afford to treat other nations as fellow-creatures?
Such changes as I have proposed above might do something appreciable to enable the industrial populations of Europe to continue to earn a livelihood. ”

“ There are other arguments, which the most obtuse cannot ignore, against a policy of spreading and encouraging further the economic ruin of great countries.
I see few signs of sudden or dramatic developments anywhere. Riots and revolutions there may be, but not such, at present, as to have fundamental significance. Against political tyranny and injustice revolution is a weapon. But what counsels of hope can revolution offer to sufferers from economic privation which does not arise out of the injustices of distribution but is general? ”

“ Yet the League in the hands of the trained European diplomatist may become an unequalled instrument for obstruction and delay. The revision of treaties is entrusted primarily, not to the council, which meets frequently, but to the assembly, which will meet more rarely and must become, as any one with an experience of large inter-Ally conferences must know, an unwieldy polyglot debating society in which the greatest resolution and the best management may fail altogether to bring issues to a head against an opposition in favour of the status quo. ”

“ But if America recalls for a moment what Europe has meant to her and still means to her, what Europe, the mother of art and of knowledge, in spite of everything, still is and still will be, will she not reject these counsels of indifference and isolation, and interest herself in what may prove decisive issues for the progress and civilisation of all mankind? ”

“ The shortening of the hours of labour may have somewhat diminished our productivity. But it should not be too much to hope that this is a feature of transition, and no one who is acquainted with the British working man can doubt that, if it suits him, and if he is in sympathy and reasonable contentment with the conditions of his life, he can produce at least as much in a shorter working day as he did in the longer hours which prevailed formerly. The most serious problems for England have been brought to a head by the war, but are in their origins more fundamental. ”

“ But the opportunity was missed at Paris during the six months which followed the armistice, and nothing we can do now can repair the mischief wrought at that time. Great privation and great risks to society have become unavoidable. All that is now open to us is to redirect, so far as lies in our power, the fundamental economic tendencies which underlie the events of the hour, so that they promote the re-establishment of prosperity and order, instead of leading us deeper into misfortune. ”

“ I agree, therefore, that our first efforts for the revision of the treaty must be made through the League rather than in any other way, in the hope that the force of general opinion, and if necessary, the use of financial pressure and financial inducements, may be enough to prevent a recalcitrant minority from exercising their right of veto. We must trust the new governments, whose existence I premise in the principal Allied countries, to show a profounder wisdom and a greater magnanimity than their predecessors. ”

“ A free trade union should be established under the auspices of the League of Nations of countries undertaking to impose no protectionist tariffs [4] whatever against the produce of other members of the union. Germany, Poland, the new states which formerly composed the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires, and the mandated states should be compelled to adhere to this union for ten years, after which time adherence would be voluntary. The adherence of other states would be voluntary from the outset. But it is to be hoped that the United Kingdom, at any rate, would become an original member. ”

“ President Wilson and General Smuts, who believe that to have secured the covenant of the League of Nations outweighs much evil in the rest of the treaty, have indicated that we must look to the League for the gradual evolution of a more tolerable life for Europe. 'There are territorial settlements', General Smuts wrote in his statement on signing the peace treaty, 'which will need revision. There are guarantees laid down which we all hope will soon be found out of harmony with the new peaceful temper and unarmed state of our former enemies. ”

“ But an economic system, to which everyone had the opportunity of belonging and which gave special privilege to none, is surely absolutely free from the objections of a privileged and avowedly imperialistic scheme of exclusion and discrimination. ”