When the War was finished, he took part as first delegate of the English Treasury at the Peace Conference of Paris, and was substituted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Supreme Economic Council.  He quitted his office when he had come to the conclusion that it was hopeless to look for any fundamental change of the peace treaties.

His book is not only a document of political uprightness but the first appeal to a sense of reality which, after an orgy of mistakes, menaces a succession of catastrophes.  In my opinion it merits a serious reconsideration as the expression of a new conscience, as well as an expression of the truth, which is only disguised by the existing state of exasperation and violence.

After two years we must recognize that all the forecasts of Keynes have been borne out by the facts:  that the exchange question has grown worse in all the countries who have been in the War, that the absurd indemnities imposed on the enemies cannot be paid, that the depressed condition of the vanquished is harmful to the victors almost in equal measure with the vanquished themselves, that it menaces their very existence, that, in fine, the sense of dissolution is more widespread than ever.

The moment has come to make an objective examination of the indemnity question, and to discuss it without any hesitation.

Let us lay aside all sentiment and forget the undertakings of the peace treaties.  Let us suppose that the Entente’s declarations and Wilson’s proposals never happened.  Let us imagine that we are examining a simple commercial proposition stripped of all sentiment and moral ideas.

After a great war it is useless to invoke moral sentiments:  men, while they are blinded by hatred, recognize nothing save their passion.  It is the nature of war not only to kill or ruin a great number of men, not only to cause considerable material damage, but also, necessarily, to bring about states of mind full of hate which cannot be ended at once and which are even refractory to the language of reason.

For a long time I myself have looked upon the Germans with the profoundest hatred.  When I think of all the persons of my race dead in the War, when I look back upon the fifteen months of anguish when my first-born son was a prisoner of war in Germany, I am quite able to understand the state of mind of those who made the peace and the mental condition in which it was made.  What determined the atmosphere of the peace treaties was the fact that there was a conference presided over by Clemenceau, who remembered the Prussians in the streets of Paris after the war of 1870, who desired but one thing:  the extermination of the Germans.  What created this atmosphere, or helped to create it, was the action of Marshal Foch, who had lost in the War the two persons dearest to him in life, the persons who attached him to existence.

But now we must examine the question not in the light of our sentiments or even of our hatreds.  We must see quite calmly if the treaties are possible of application without causing the ruin of the vanquished.  Then we must ask ourselves if the ruin of the vanquished does not bring in its train the ruin of the victors.  Putting aside, then, all moral considerations, let us examine and value the economic facts.