The Conference — The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Before he turns to the Treaty's financial clauses, Keynes examines the four men who, in the first months of 1919, became a microcosm of mankind. On the economic terms the French take the lead and open with the most definite and extreme proposals. That is partly tactics. When compromise is expected, an extreme opening is prudent, and Clemenceau gains a reputation for moderation by throwing over a minister's wildest demand with an air of impartiality. Provisions pass where British and American critics are ignorant of the real issue, or tired of appearing to take the German part. The eleventh-hour decision to allow no discussion with Germany removes any late remedy. Behind the tactics stands a policy. Clemenceau knows which points are vital and abates little on them. In so far as the Treaty has an economic idea, it is France's and his.

Keynes paints him dominating the Council of Four from a brocade chair: grey gloves, an impassive parchment face, few papers, short cynical sentences in piquant English. He feels about France as Pericles felt about Athens, and his disillusion is mankind, including his colleagues. Nations are real things. You love one and feel indifference or hatred for the rest. European history, on this view, is a perpetual prize-fight, and this round is not the last. Germany understands only intimidation, so you dictate. France's population has stood still while Germany's industrial machine has surged. A Peace of magnanimity based on the Fourteen Points would only shorten the interval before Germany recovers. Hence the demand for guarantees, and each guarantee, by increasing the chance of a later revanche, makes further crushing provisions seem necessary. The policy is to set the clock back to 1870 and destroy the fabric of iron, coal, and transport on which Germany's new strength was built. You cannot restore Central Europe to 1870 without letting loose forces that will overwhelm those guarantees.

The Carthaginian design took the place of the Fourteen Points through a collapse Keynes traces to character and surroundings. Wilson arrived with unparalleled moral prestige. The enemy had laid down arms on a solemn compact, and Europe depended on American food and further finance. At close quarters Keynes finds a generously intentioned man among professional spellbinders, slow in the council chamber and no match for Lloyd George's reading of the room. 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. The break-up of the Council of Ten completed an isolation his own reserve had begun, and he allowed himself to be closeted, unsupported, with men much sharper than himself. Lloyd George, during interpretation, would cross the hearthrug to cut a private deal, and the room would become a bilingual mob while the morning's great issues were forgotten. Clemenceau watched aloof, then disappeared when nothing touching French security was forward.

Once Wilson took the road of compromise, the Fourteen Points became a document for gloss and interpretation. Draftsmen clothed French aims in the language of freedom and international equality. Danzig became a Free City under Polish control. Austria's independence was made inalienable except by a unanimous League Council. The decisive collapse came when Wilson accepted Allied pensions and separation allowances as damage done to civilians. His conscience, Keynes believes, left Paris intact. Then Brockdorff-Rantzau answered that Germany had laid down her arms on assurances the Treaty did not keep. That was the one admission Wilson could not make. Clemenceau succeeded in the extraordinary proposal that the Germans should not be heard. At the last moment Lloyd George wanted all the moderation he dared, and found he could not in five days persuade the President of error in what five months had proved to him to be just and right. In the last act the President stood for stubbornness and a refusal of conciliations.