Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/601
THE OLD ORDER
The Economic Consequences of the Peace. By John Maynard Keynes, C.B. 8va. 298 pages. Harcourt, Brace and Howe. New York.
ltrHERE are moments when facts cease to be either important or interesting. When a book has become a sensation and has been variously described as a subtle bit of British propaganda, an equally subtle bit of pro-Germanism, and the most important event since the Armistice, the mere details about it may well be summed up in the italic description given above. But since the successive printings of Mr. Keynes' analysis of the Peace Treaty have failed to meet the created demand—are we all pro-British or pro-German, then?—I shall note the main lines of the work and then ask the reader to engage with me in the attractive childhood game of "Let's pretend." The facts, therefore, will contribute to creative activity.
An English economist, for fourteen years in the British Civil Service, unhung for treason during the war, allowed, in fact, to take charge of all the delicate negotiations between the British Treasury and the financial chiefs of the Allied Powers and of the United States, went to the Peace Conference as the chief representative of his country's Treasury and was a member of the Supreme Economic Council. Although he was (as far as any one knew) a loyal Briton, he had accepted with the utmost seriousness those terms of agreement which President Wilson laid down in the Fourteen Points. When those points were (with reservations) accepted as the basis of peace by both sides, in the hysterical days preceding the Armistice, this calculating economist took pains to draw up certain specific peace terms which would be in keeping with the Fourteen Points and would still give the victors something to bring home, with honour. These conditions were summarily rejected. Since the imaginative portion of this review must come later, we omit all description of the economist's chagrin and mortification. They must have been great. Yet he survived the rebuff and remained at Paris, fighting for his ideas and trying to get some of them into the Treaty. When he understood finally that this was impossible, he resigned