The Illusion of Normal — The Economic Consequences of the Peace

People habituate to unstable systems and mistake temporary prosperity for permanent law. Keynes opens by arguing that Western Europe's prewar economic order was intensely unusual, unreliable, and temporary, yet after the Armistice leaders scheme for social improvement on a sandy foundation as if nothing fundamental had broken. Germany overturned the foundations; Allied spokesmen risk completing the ruin with a Peace that further impairs the delicate organization through which Europeans live and work.

England still looks untouched. Classes plan to spend more and work less, treating wartime expenditure as proof that economic limits no longer bind. On the continent the crisis is starvation, convulsion, and the fear of a dying civilization. Keynes contrasts insulated London with Paris, where he served on the Supreme Economic Council amid hourly reports of misery from Central and Eastern Europe.

Paris becomes nightmare theater: Wilson and Clemenceau like tragic masks, proceedings charged with cosmic importance yet whispered futile. Hardy and Tolstoy echo through his account of statesmen driven by vindictiveness while events march toward fated conclusions. He writes as an Englishman who became European in outlook, unable to disinterest himself while London receives the Treaty without reading it. The chapter warns that victors who abuse momentary power to destroy prostrate enemies invite their own destruction through hidden economic and psychic bonds.