Before dissecting the Treaty's financial clauses, Keynes examines the personal politics that shaped them. He acknowledges that judging contemporaries is perilous, yet argues the world needs light, even partial and uncertain, on the struggle of four men who, in early 1919, became a microcosm of mankind.
On economic terms the French took the lead, opening with the most definite and extreme proposals. That was partly tactics: when compromise is expected, starting from an extreme position is prudent. Clemenceau gained a reputation for moderation by throwing over ministers' wildest demands with an air of impartiality, while provisions passed where British and American critics were ignorant of the real issue or tired of appearing pro-German. The eleventh-hour decision to allow no discussion with Germany removed any late remedy. Behind tactics stood policy: Clemenceau knew which points were vital and abated little on them. In so far as the Treaty has an economic idea, it is France's and Clemenceau's.
Keynes paints Clemenceau dominating the Council of Four from his brocade chair: gray gloves, impassive parchment face, few papers, short cynical sentences delivered in piquant English. He felt about France as Pericles felt about Athens; his disillusion was mankind, including his colleagues. Lloyd George possessed uncanny social intuition, crossing the hearthrug during interpretation to cut private deals that turned the room into a surging, bilingual mob while the morning's great issues were forgotten. Clemenceau would watch aloof, then disappear when nothing touching French security was forward.
Wilson arrived with unparalleled moral prestige and material leverage over starving Europe, yet Keynes finds him a generously intentioned amateur among professional spellbinders. The President had thundered the Fourteen Points but arrived with no concrete scheme to embody them. His temperament was theological rather than intellectual: he could preach a sermon on justice but not frame its application to Europe's actual state. Insensitive to his surroundings, he was outmatched by Lloyd George's opportunism and gradually entangled by Clemenceau. The breakup of the Council of Ten isolated him further; Orlando spoke only French while Wilson spoke only English. In the last act Wilson stood for stubbornness where conciliation might still have mattered.
Paris combined theatrical grandeur with moral exhaustion. This chapter explains why technically worded clauses bear the imprint of revenge, fatigue, and misunderstood idealism rather than the arithmetic of reconstruction.
Coming Up in Chapter 4
Chapter 4, The Economic Dismantling of Germany, shifts the lens. Two rival schemes for the future polity of the world took the field,--the Fourteen Points of the President, and the Carthaginian Peace. Keynes moves from the argument so far into the next layer of evidence and consequence..
