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PART III

THE MANDARIN REVOLUTION

When the Great War came, Keynes was not attracted to the trenches. He went to the Treasury, where his job was to take British earnings from trade, proceeds from loans floated in the United States and returns from securities conscripted and sold abroad and make them cover all possible overseas war purchases. And he helped the French and the Russians do the same. No magic was involved, as many have since suggested. Economic skill does not extend to getting very much for nothing. but an adept and resourceful mind was useful, and this Keynes had. In the course of time Keynes received a notice to report for military service. He sent it back. When the war was over, he was a natural choice for the British delegation to the Peace Conference. That, from the official view, was an appalling mistake.

The mood in Paris in the early month of 1919 was vengeful, myopic, indifferent to economic realities, and it horrified Keynes. So did his fellow civil servants. So did the politicians. In June he resigned and came home, and, in the next two month, he composed the greatest polemical document of modern times. It was against the reparations clauses of the Treaty and, as he saw it, the Carthaginian peace.

Europe would only punish itself by exacting, or seeking to exact, more from the Germans than they had the practical capacity to pay. Restraint by the victors was not a matter ot compassion but of elementary self-interest. The case was documented with figures and written with passion. In memorable passages Keynes gave his impressions of the men who were writing the peace. Woodrow Wilson he called “this blind and deaf Don Quixote.” Of Clemenceau he said: “He had one illusion - France; and one desillusion, mankind ...” On Lloyd George he was rather severe: “How can I convey to the reader, who does not know him, any just impression of this extraordinary figure of our time, this syren, this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity.”

Alas, no man is of perfect courage. Keynes deleted this passage on Lloyd George at the last moment.

The Economic Consequences of Peace was published before the end of 1919. The judgement of the British Establishment was rendered by The Times: “Mr. Keynes may be a clever economist. He may have been a useful Treasury official. But in writing this book, he has rendered the Allies a disservice for which their enemies will, doubtless, be grateful. “In time there would be a responsible view that Keynes went too far - that in calculating the limits on Germany’s ability to pay, he was excessively orthodox. Perhaps he contributed to the German’s sense of persecution and injustice that Hitler so effectively exploited. But the technique of The Times attack should also be noticed. It was not that the great men of the Treaty and the Establishment were suffering under the onslaught, although that, of course, was the real point. Rather, the criticism was causing rejoicing to the nation’s enemies. It is a device to which highly respectable men regularly resort. “Even if you are right, it is only the Communists who will be pleased.” (John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977. The Age of Uncertainty. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, p.198-200).

According to the text:

Item 3 - In time, the (British) Government’s concluded it was a mistake to ask Keynes to join the delegation to the Peace Conference.