his theory of politics was Bismarck's.... His principles for the Peace can be expressed simply. In the first place, he was a foremost believer in the view of German psychology that the German understands nothing but intimidation, that he is without generosity, or remorse in negotiation, that there is no advantage he will not take of you, that he is without honour, pride, or mercy. Therefore you must never negotiate with a German; you must dictate to him." All this is perfectly true about Germany, and Mr Keynes's dispraise of M. Clemenceau is a eulogy of his olear-sightedness. Germany cannot be trusted, and no Frenchman could be trusted who did not insist upon the strongest guarantees, who was not resolute so effectively to weaken Germany that she could not for many a long year make another sudden dash across the frontier. Had M. Clemenceau insisted upon less than he did, he would have been no true patriot. There lies Germany, just across the French frontier. She exceeds France in wealth and population. She has during the last few years deliberately destroyed the mines and factories of France, that she may have the start in industrial recovery. She has destroyed French towns and blotted out a generation of gallant Frenchmen. Therefore, not only is she not entitled to any consideration; but M. Clemenceau would have failed in his trust had he not done his best to weaken a dangerous neighbour in pocket and opportunity. It is Mr Keynes's infirmity that, being an internationalist in sentiment, he cannot perceive the justice and the necessity of a Carthaginian Peace. 8 And so he looked hopefully for the coming of Mr Wilson, as to one who would bring solace to a troubled world, and he was wofully disappointed. "With what ouriosity, anxiety, and hope," he exclaims dithyrambically, "we sought glimpse of the features and bearing of the man of destiny who, coming from the West, was to bring healing to the wounds of the ancient parent of his civilisation and lay for us the foundations of the future. The disillusion was so complete, that some of those who had trusted most hardly dared speak of it." Mr Keynes and his friends had, indeed, formed a very wrong idea of the President. They had believed him to be self-willed and obstinate; they found him undetermined, neither a scholar nor a student, a man without the culture of the world, and not at all sensitive to his environment. What could the poor President do but play blind-man's buff with MM. Clemenceau and George? "Never could a man," says Mr Keynes, "have stepped into the parlour a more perfect and predestined victim to the finished accomplishments of the Prime Minister. The Old World was tough in wicked people overturned the foundations on which we all lived and built." That is all. Reproaches are hurled at the Allies on many a page. Mr Keynes is very careful to belittle the harm done by our enemies in the war. Writing of Belgium, he says: "The first onrush of the Germans did some damage locally." As ness anyhow; the Old World's heart of stone might blunt the sharpest blade of the bravest knight-errant. But this blind and deaf Don Quixote was entering a cavern where the swift and glittering blade was in the hands of the adversary." For our part we are thankful that it was. Mr Wilson had done Europe enough harm with his fourteen points, to France, in some places she transmitted from Berlin by way of Washington, before he came these shores; and it was vastly to the advantage of Europe that he proved himself to be nothing more than a Nonconformist minister. has gained by the conflict: "The value of Calais and Boulogne must have been increased by the new work of various kinds executed for the use of the British Army." As this new work would not have been done had not Germany made its attack upon Europe, perhaps France should be asked to pay an indemnity to Germany for value received. When Mr Keynes drops the rôle of a man and an observer, and takes up that of an economist, he is less amusing and far more dangerous. He leaves out of the argument all such With whatever punishment human feelings as honour and is inflicted upon Germany he justice, and fills up the gaps quarrels. He objects to the exwith figures. He detaches propriation of German owners himself completely from all in Alsace-Lorraine because the wholesome partisanship. As mineral wealth of these provinoes has been greatly developed since 1871, and because German economic interests there are closely bound up with interests in Germany itself. "Alsace-Lorraine," we are told, "has been a part of the German Empire for nearly fifty years-a considerable majority of its population is Germanspeaking-and it has been the seene of Germany's most important economic enterprises." So might a burglar prove his right to his swag because he had turned it to a profitable use. Again, Mr Keynes thinks far as he is concerned, the country to which he belongs might not have been interested in the war. His one passion is to save Germany distress or inconvenience. "It is only the Treaty's extreme immoderation," says he, ". . . which may save the situation in the long-run." "Save the situation," indeed! That phrase shows where his sympathy lies. Only once has he a single reproof for Germany. "Moved by insane delusion and reckless self- regard," he writes, "the German 1920.] Mr Keynes's Philanthropy and Absurd Remedies. that the Germans will be harshly excluded from Egypt. "Not only are special privileges renounced, but by Article 150 ordinary liberties are withdrawn, the Egyptian Government being accorded 'complete liberty of action in regulating the status of German nationals and the conditions under which they may establish themselves in Egypt."" Has Mr Keynes forgotten the use which the Germans made of their free access to Egypt before the war, how they intrigued against the British and did their best to stir up rebellion? We should be fools indeed if we had not learned the lesson of caution which they have taught us. On another page he objects to our control of the German mines. "It is almost," says he, "as though the Powers of Continental Europe were to be placed in a majority on the Thames Conservancy or the Port of London." They would assuredly have been if Germany had won; but Mr Keynes never admits into the account the purposes of Germany. Had the victory been hers, she would not have troubled her mind about the economic security of her enemies, She would have put the world under her feet, and exacted tribute from all those upon whom, against their will, she forced the war. Nor is there any other method of bringing home to Germany the enormity of her misdeeds except punishment, condign and severe. And Mr Keynes VOL CCVII.-NO. MCCLII. 297 talks of our "imbecile greed." Truly that greed would be imbecile which set Germany on her legs again merely that she might bring money into our coffers. Whether Germany can or cannot pay the just bill that has been presented to her we do not know. That will be discovered presently. When Bismarck sent his account to France in 1871 he did not make an inventory of her goods. He thought that probably she could not pay what he asked, and when she disappointed him he wanted to go to war again with her, because he had not bled her enough. The settlement after a war cannot and should not be based upon philanthropy. We agree with Mr Keynes that the sight of the starving children of Germany is deplorable. We should agree with him more heartily if he deplored with an equal sentiment the starvation of the children of Lille and other French towns. But Germany has brought the suffering on herself and on the world, and she must still bear the responsibility. That the sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the third and fourth generation is not a piece of rhetoric, but a stern fact. In the last chapter Mr Keynes presents us with the remedies which he himself would apply, were omnipotence his. In the first place, he would cancel all the debts which still exist among the U Allies. If this be not done, once more to their advantage. then will France and England and the rest, denied by his philanthropy any sufficient reparation from Germany, be compelled to pay interest and capital until the end of time, because they have won the war. But since this suggestion would involve the United States in the greatest loss, it is from the United States that it must come. For the rest, his remedies are absurd enough to throw a doubt upon the seriousness of his book. He would fix the total payment to be made by Germany at 2000 millions. He would knock a quarter off this for the surrender of merchant ships and submarine cables. He would ask that the balance should be exempt from interest, and should be paid in thirty annual instalments of fifty millions, beginning in 1923! Thus Germany would be given three years to find one quarter of the sum which France found easily in 1871. And as Mr Keynes would abolish the Reparation Committee, it is unlikely that the second instalment would ever be paid. A better plan and more simple would be to endow Germany for ever with all the money and raw materials which she needs. Lastly, he proposes that the blockade should be raised in Russia, and that Germany should be asked to revive Russian trade. Thus the misoreants, who for their own profit inaugurated Bolshevism, should be permitted to turn it If once the Germans got into Russia, no power on earth would ever get them out, and their victory would be complete. Their military expansion would march, as always, with their industrial. The wealth of Russia would be their booty, and in a few years they would march undisturbed into India, and destroy our influence in Egypt, which their politicians have always described as England's spine. "It is our interest," says Mr Keynes, "to hasten the day when German agents and organisers will be in a position to set in train in every Russian village the impulses of ordinary economic motive." Then will the Kaiser or his successor welcome the bagman's millennium, and will take care that conquered France and England take no share of the profit. "I have paid little heed to Austria, Hungary, and Russia,” says Mr Keynes. He was so busy in writing his book to plead the cause of Germany that he had not space to touch upon the real wickedness of the peace. The Allies, who should have aimed, as we said, at a strong Austria, a strong Hungary, and a weak Germany, have made the strength and weakness change places. They have not left Germany so happy and prosperous as Mr Keynes would like to see it, but they have left her with every opportunity of recovering a dangerous position. They have destroyed Hungary and Austria utterly. Cut off from alliances and commercial the sea, stripped, on the foolish treaties. She must find markets for her produce, and manufacturers from abroad who shall supply her with what she needs. Shall she also be offered up upon the altar of sacrifice to Germany's rapacity? Shall she follow Russia, according to Mr Keynes's formula, into the Teutonio maw? plea of self-determination, of provinces which were essential to their livelihood, they are to-day in a pitiable condition. We do not envy the ingenious gentleman who invented the two new states, Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia. Their composite names prove their composite characters. That they will last long beneath the fanciful masks which have been put upon them we do not believe. But at what a cost will the theatrical experiment have been made! How many lost lives will it have entailed? How much misery and starvation will it have brought with it! But pedantry must be served, and pedantry conscience nor neither has memory. Take the case of Hungary, for instance. Her share in the guilt of the war was small enough. She was dragged by her neighbour inevitably into the conflict. To-day her plight is miserable enough. She has been ravaged by the Roumanians; she has been butchered by Bolsheviks, whose baleful rule she has been wise enough and strong enough to discard. And all the help or sympathy which the Allies have tendered her has been to suggest that the sentences of death, passed upon the Jews, who murdered and tortured her citizens, should be commuted! Yet some day Hungary will be forced into There are many and sound reasons against such a policy. In the first place, Hungary has no longing for a closeknit friendship with Germany, especially after the bitter experience of the last five years. For many years she has turned in the moments of her stress to England. In a little book,1 written by Mr Charles Sproxton, a young scholar who was killed in the war, you may read how, after the revolution of 1848, it was Hungary's first impulse to seek the aid of England. Palmerston refused to see the Hungarian envoy, because he would not hurt the susceptibilities of Austria, which he regarded as a wall against Russian aggression, but the reception of Pulszky by the English has not yet been forgotten, and the seeds of friendship then sown have borne fruit. Once again Hungary looks to us, and there is no reason why we should not grasp her proffered hand. From her rich agricultural land she produces that of which we stand in need, and we are not without the 1 'Palmerston and the Hungarian Revolution,' by Charles Sproxton. Cambridge: At the University Press. |