to the British
Treasury and chief of the department charged to look after the foreign
exchanges and the financial relations between Great Britain and her
allies. A serious writer, a teacher of economics of considerable
value, he brought to his difficult task a scrupulousness and an
exactness that bordered on mistrust. Being at that time Chancellor of
the Exchequer in Italy, in the bitterest and most decisive period of
the War, I had frequent contact with Mr. Keynes, and I always admired
his exactness and his precision. I could not always find it in myself
to praise his friendly spirit. But he had an almost mystic force of
severity, and those enormous squanderings of wealth, that facile
assumption of liabilities that characterized this period of the War,
must have doubtless produced in him a sense of infinite disgust. This
state of mind often made him very exigent, and sometimes unjustifiably
suspicious. His word had a decisive effect on the actions of the
English Treasury.

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
a