The Economic Consequences of the Peace
The Economic Consequences of the PeaceChapter IChapter IIChapter IIIChapter IVChapter VChapter VIChapter VIICopyright
The Economic Consequences of the Peace
John Maynard Keynes
Chapter I
Introductory
The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked
characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realize with conviction
the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary
nature of the economic organization by which Western Europe has
lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most
peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural,
permanent, and to be depended on, and we lay our plans accordingly.
On this sandy and false foundation we scheme for social improvement
and dress our political platforms, pursue our animosities and
particular ambitions, and feel ourselves with enough margin in hand
to foster, not assuage, civil conflict in the European family.
Moved by insane delusion and reckless self-regard, the German
people overturned the foundations on which we all lived and built.
But the spokesmen of the French and British peoples have run the
risk of completing the ruin, which Germany began, by a Peace which,
if it is carried into effect, must impair yet further, when it
might have restored, the delicate, complicated organization,
already shaken and broken by war, through which alone the European
peoples can employ themselves and live.
In England the outward aspect of life does not yet teach us to feel
or realize in the least that an age is over. We are busy picking up
the threads of our life where we dropped them, with this difference
only, that many of us seem a good deal richer than we were before.
Where we spent millions before the war, we have now learnt that we
can spend hundreds of millions and apparently not suffer for it.
Evidently we did not exploit to the utmost the possibilities of our
economic life. We look, therefore, not only to a return to the
comforts of 1914, but to an immense broadening and intensification
of them. All classes alike thus build their plans, the rich to
spend more and save less, the poor to spend more and work
less.
But perhaps it is only in England (and America) that it is possible
to be so unconscious. In continental Europe the earth heaves and no
one but is aware of the rumblings. There it is not just a matter of
extravagance or "labor troubles"; but of life and death, of
starvation and existence, and of the fearful convulsions of a dying
civilization.
For one who spent in Paris the greater part of the six months which
succeeded the Armistice an occasional visit to London was a strange
experience. England still stands outside Europe. Europe's voiceless
tremors do not reach her. Europe is apart and England is not of her
flesh and body. But Europe is solid with herself. France, Germany,
Italy, Austria and Holland, Russia and Roumania and Poland, throb
together, and their structure and civilization are essentially one.
They flourished together, they have rocked together in a war, which
we, in spite of our enormous contributions and sacrifices (like
though in a less degree than America), economically stood outside,
and they may fall together. In this lies the destructive
significance of the Peace of Paris. If the European Civil War is to
end with France and Italy abusing their momentary victorious power
to destroy Germany and Austria-Hungary now prostrate, they invite
their own destruction also, being so deeply and inextricably
intertwined with their victims by hidden psychic and economic
bonds. At any rate an Englishman who took part in the Conference of
Paris and was during those months a member of the Supreme Economic
Council of the Allied Powers, was bound to become, for him a new
experience, a European in his cares and outlook. There, at the
nerve center of the European system, his British preoccupations
must largely fall away and he must be haunted by other and more
dreadful specters. Paris was a nightmare, and every one there was
morbid. A sense of impending catastrophe overhung the frivolous
scene; the futility and smallness of man before the great events
confronting him; the mingled significance and unreality of the
decisions; levity, blindness, insolence, confused cries from
without,—all the elements of ancient tragedy were there. Seated
indeed amid the theatrical trappings of the French Saloons of
State, one could wonder if the extraordinary visages of Wilson and
of Clemenceau, with their fixed hue and unchanging
characterization, were really faces at all and not the tragi-comic
masks of some strange drama or puppet-show.
The proceedings of Paris all had this air of extraordinary
importance and unimportance at the same time. The decisions seemed
charged with consequences to the future of human society; yet the
air whispered that the word was not flesh, that it was futile,
insignificant, of no effect, dissociated from events; and one felt
most strongly the impression, described by Tolstoy in War and
Peace or by Hardy in The Dynasts, of events marching on
to their fated conclusion uninfluenced and unaffected by the
cerebrations of Statesmen in Council:
Spirit of the Years
Observe that all wide sight and self-command
Deserts these throngs now driven to demonry
By the Immanent Unrecking. Nought remains
But vindictiveness here amid the strong,
And there amid the weak an impotent rage.
Spirit of the Pities
Why prompts the Will so senseless-shaped a doing?
Spirit of the Years
I have told thee that It works unwittingly,
As one possessed not judging.
In Paris, where those connected with the Supreme Economic Council,
received almost hourly the reports of the misery, disorder, and
decaying organization of all Central and Eastern Europe, allied and
enemy alike, and learnt from the lips of the financial
representatives of Germany and Austria unanswerable evidence, of
the terrible exhaustion of their countries, an occasional visit to
the hot, dry room in the President's house, where the Four
fulfilled their destinies in empty and arid intrigue, only added to
the sense of nightmare. Yet there in Paris the problems of Europe
were terrible and clamant, and an occasional return to the vast
unconcern of London a little disconcerting. For in London these
questions were very far away, and our own lesser problems alone
troubling. London believed that Paris was making a great confusion
of its business, but remained uninterested. In this spirit the
British people received the Treaty without reading it. But it is
under the influence of Paris, not London, that this book has been
written by one who, though an Englishman, feels himself a European
also, and, because of too vivid recent experience, cannot
disinterest himself from the further unfolding of the great
historic drama of these days which will destroy great institutions,
but may also create a new world.
Chapter II
Europe before the War
Before 1870 different parts of the small continent of Europe
had specialized in their own products; but, taken as a whole, it
was substantially self-subsistent. And its population was adjusted
to this state of affairs.
After 1870 there was developed on a large scale an unprecedented
situation, and the economic condition of Europe became during the
next fifty years unstable and peculiar. The pressure of population
on food, which had already been balanced by the accessibility of
supplies from America, became for the first time in recorded
history definitely reversed. As numbers increased, food was
actually easier to secure. Larger proportional returns from an
increasing scale of production became true of agriculture as well
as industry. With the growth of the European population there were
more emigrants on the one hand to till the soil of the new
countries, and, on the other, more workmen were available in Europe
to prepare the industrial products and capital goods which were to
maintain the emigrant populations in their new homes, and to build
the railways and ships which were to make accessible to Europe food
and raw products from distant sources. Up to about 1900 a unit of
labor applied to industry yielded year by year a purchasing power
over an increasing quantity of food. It is possible that about the
year 1900 this process began to be reversed, and a diminishing
yield of Nature to man's effort was beginning to reassert itself.
But the tendency of cereals to rise in real cost was balanced by
other improvements; and—one of many novelties—the resources of
tropical Africa then for the first time came into large employ, and
a great traffic in oil-seeds began to bring to the table of Europe
in a new and cheaper form one of the essential foodstuffs of
mankind. In this economic Eldorado, in this economic Utopia, as the
earlier economists would have deemed it, most of us were brought
up.
That happy age lost sight of a view of the world which filled with
deep-seated melancholy the founders of our Political Economy.
Before the eighteenth century mankind entertained no false hopes.
To lay the illusions which grew popular at that age's latter end,
Malthus disclosed a Devil. For half a century all serious
economical writings held that Devil in clear prospect. For the next
half century he was chained up and out of sight. Now perhaps we
have loosed him again.
What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that
age was which came to an end in August, 1914! The greater part of
the population, it is true, worked hard and lived at a low standard
of comfort, yet were, to all appearances, reasonably contented with
this lot. But escape was possible, for any man of capacity or
character at all exceeding the average, into the middle and upper
classes, for whom life offered, at a low cost and with the least
trouble, conveniences, comforts, and amenities beyond the compass
of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages. The
inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning
tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such
quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early
delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the
same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new
enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without
exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and
advantages; or he could decide to couple the security of his
fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial
municipality in any continent that fancy or information might
recommend. He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and
comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without
passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the
neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals
as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign
quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or
customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider
himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least
interference. But, most important of all, he regarded this state of
affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction
of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant,
scandalous, and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism
and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies,
restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this
paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily
newspaper, and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on
the ordinary course of social and economic life, the
internationalization of which was nearly complete in
practice.
It will assist us to appreciate the character and consequences of
the Peace which we have imposed on our enemies, if I elucidate a
little further some of the chief unstable elements already present
when war broke out, in the economic life of Europe.
I. Population
In 1870 Germany had a population of about 40,000,000. By 1892
this figure had risen to 50,000,000, and by June 30, 1914, to about
68,000,000. In the years immediately preceding the war the annual
increase was about 850,000, of whom an insignificant proportion
emigrated.[1] This great increase was only rendered possible
by a far-reaching transformation of the economic structure of the
country. From being agricultural and mainly self-supporting,
Germany transformed herself into a vast and complicated industrial
machine, dependent for its working on the equipoise of many factors
outside Germany as well as within. Only by operating this machine,
continuously and at full blast, could she find occupation at home
for her increasing population and the means of purchasing their
subsistence from abroad. The German machine was like a top which to
maintain its equilibrium must spin ever faster and faster.
In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which grew from about 40,000,000 in
1890 to at least 50,000,000 at the outbreak of war, the same
tendency was present in a less degree, the annual excess of births
over deaths being about half a million, out of which, however,
there was an annual emigration of some quarter of a million
persons.
To understand the present situation, we must apprehend with
vividness what an extraordinary center of population the
development of the Germanic system had enabled Central Europe to
become. Before the war the population of Germany and
Austria-Hungary together not only substantially exceeded that of
the United States, but was about equal to that of the whole of
North America. In these numbers, situated within a compact
territory, lay the military strength of the Central Powers. But
these same numbers—for even the war has not appreciably diminished
them[2]—if deprived of the means of life, remain a hardly less
danger to European order.
European Russia increased her population in a degree even greater
than Germany—from less than 100,000,000 in 1890 to about
150,000,000 at the outbreak of war;[3]and in the year immediately
preceding 1914 the excess of births over deaths in Russia as a
whole was at the prodigious rate of two millions per annum. This
inordinate growth in the population of Russia, which has not been
widely noticed in England, has been nevertheless one of the most
significant facts of recent years.
The great events of history are often due to secular changes in the
growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which,
escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary
observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the
fanaticism of atheists. Thus the extraordinary occurrences of the
past two years in Russia, that vast upheaval of Society, which has
overturned what seemed most stable—religion, the basis of property,
the ownership of land, as well as forms of government and the
hierarchy of classes—may owe more to the deep influences of
expanding numbers than to Lenin or to Nicholas; and the disruptive
powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater
part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of
ideas or the errors of autocracy.
II. Organization
The delicate organization by which these peoples lived
depended partly on factors internal to the system.
The interference of frontiers and of tariffs was reduced to a
minimum, and not far short of three hundred millions of people
lived within the three Empires of Russia, Germany, and
Austria-Hungary. The various currencies, which were all maintained
on a stable basis in relation to gold and to one another,
facilitated the easy flow of capital and of trade to an extent the
full value of which we only realize now, when we are deprived of
its advantages. Over this great area there was an almost absolute
security of property and of person.
These factors of order, security, and uniformity, which Europe had
never before enjoyed over so wide and populous a territory or for
so long a period, prepared the way for the organization of that
vast mechanism of transport, coal distribution, and foreign trade
which made possible an industrial order of life in the dense urban
centers of new population. This is too well known to require
detailed substantiation with figures. But it may be illustrated by
the figures for coal, which has been the key to the industrial
growth of Central Europe hardly less than of England; the output of
German coal grew from 30,000,000 tons in 1871 to 70,000,000 tons in
1890, 110,000,000 tons in 1900, and 190,000,000 tons in 1913.
Round Germany as a central support the rest of the European
economic system grouped itself, and on the prosperity and
enterprise of Germany the prosperity of the rest of the Continent
mainly depended. The increasing pace of Germany gave her neighbors
an outlet for their products, in exchange for which the enterprise
of the German merchant supplied them with their chief requirements
at a low price.
The statistics of the economic interdependence of Germany and her
neighbors are overwhelming. Germany was the best customer of
Russia, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and
Austria-Hungary; she was the second best customer of Great Britain,
Sweden, and Denmark; and the third best customer of France. She was
the largest source of supply to Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Roumania, and
Bulgaria; and the second largest source of supply to Great Britain,
Belgium, and France.
In our own case we sent more exports to Germany than to any other
country in the world except India, and we bought more from her than
from any other country in the world except the United States.
There was no European country except those west of Germany which
did not do more than a quarter of their total trade with her; and
in the case of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Holland the proportion
was far greater.
Germany not only furnished these countries with trade, but, in the
case of some of them, supplied a great part of the capital needed
for their own development. Of Germany's pre-war foreign
investments, amounting in all to about $6,250,000,000, not far
short of $2,500,000,000 was invested in Russia, Austria-Hungary,
Bulgaria, Roumania, and Turkey.[4] And by the system of
"peaceful penetration" she gave these countries not only capital,
but, what they needed hardly less, organization. The whole of
Europe east of the Rhine thus fell into the German industrial
orbit, and its economic life was adjusted accordingly.
But these internal factors would not have been sufficient to enable
the population to support itself without the co-operation of
external factors also and of certain general dispositions common to
the whole of Europe. Many of the circumstances already treated were
true of Europe as a whole, and were not peculiar to the Central
Empires. But all of what follows was common to the whole European
system.
III. The Psychology of Society
Europe was so organized socially and economically as to secure
the maximum accumulation of capital. While there was some
continuous improvement in the daily conditions of life of the mass
of the population, Society was so framed as to throw a great part
of the increased income into the control of the class least likely
to consume it. The new rich of the nineteenth century were not
brought up to large expenditures, and preferred the power which
investment gave them to the pleasures of immediate consumption. In
fact, it was precisely the inequality of the distribution
of wealth which made possible those vast accumulations of fixed
wealth and of capital improvements which distinguished that age
from all others. Herein lay, in fact, the main justification of the
Capitalist System. If the rich had spent their new wealth on their
own enjoyments, the world would long ago have found such a régime
intolerable. But like bees they saved and accumulated, not less to
the advantage of the whole community because they themselves held
narrower ends in prospect.
The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great
benefit of mankind, were built up during the half century before
the war, could never have come about in a Society where wealth was
divided equitably. The railways of the world, which that age built
as a monument to posterity, were, not less than the Pyramids of
Egypt, the work of labor which was not free to consume in immediate
enjoyment the full equivalent of its efforts.
Thus this remarkable system depended for its growth on a double
bluff or deception. On the one hand the laboring classes accepted
from ignorance or powerlessness, or were compelled, persuaded, or
cajoled by custom, convention, authority, and the well-established
order of Society into accepting, a situation in which they could
call their own very little of the cake that they and Nature and the
capitalists were co-operating to produce. And on the other hand the
capitalist classes were allowed to call the best part of the cake
theirs and were theoretically free to consume it, on the tacit
underlying condition that they consumed very little of it in
practice. The duty of "saving" became nine-tenths of virtue and the
growth of the cake the object of true religion. There grew round
the non-consumption of the cake all those instincts of puritanism
which in other ages has withdrawn itself from the world and has
neglected the arts of production as well as those of enjoyment. And
so the cake increased; but to what end was not clearly
contemplated. Individuals would be exhorted not so much to abstain
as to defer, and to cultivate the pleasures of security and
anticipation. Saving was for old age or for your children; but this
was only in theory,—the virtue of the cake was that it was never to
be consumed, neither by you nor by your children after you.
In writing thus I do not necessarily disparage the practices of
that generation. In the unconscious recesses of its being Society
knew what it was about. The cake was really very small in
proportion to the appetites of consumption, and no one, if it were
shared all round, would be much the better off by the cutting of
it. Society was working not for the small pleasures of to-day but
for the future security and improvement of the race,—in fact for
"progress." If only the cake were not cut but was allowed to grow
in the geometrical proportion predicted by Malthus of population,
but not less true of compound interest, perhaps a day might come
when there would at last be enough to go round, and when posterity
could enter into the enjoyment of our labors. In that day
overwork, overcrowding, and underfeeding would have come to an end,
and men, secure of the comforts and necessities of the body, could
proceed to the nobler exercises of their faculties. One geometrical
ratio might cancel another, and the nineteenth century was able to
forget the fertility of the species in a contemplation of the dizzy
virtues of compound interest.
There were two pitfalls in this prospect: lest, population still
outstripping accumulation, our self-denials promote not happiness
but numbers; and lest the cake be after all consumed, prematurely,
in war, the consumer of all such hopes.
But these thoughts lead too far from my present purpose. I seek
only to point out that the principle of accumulation based on
inequality was a vital part of the pre-war order of Society and of
progress as we then understood it, and to emphasize that this
principle depended on unstable psychological conditions, which it
may be impossible to recreate. It was not natural for a population,
of whom so few enjoyed the comforts of life, to accumulate so
hugely. The war has disclosed the possibility of consumption to all
and the vanity of abstinence to many. Thus the bluff is discovered;
the laboring classes may be no longer willing to forego so largely,
and the capitalist classes, no longer confident of the future, may
seek to enjoy more fully their liberties of consumption so long as
they last, and thus precipitate the hour of their
confiscation.
IV. The Relation of the Old World to the New
The accumulative habits of Europe before the war were the
necessary condition of the greatest of the external factors which
maintained the European equipoise.
Of the surplus capital goods accumulated by Europe a substantial
part was exported abroad, where its investment made possible the
development of the new resources of food, materials, and transport,
and at the same time enabled the Old World to stake out a claim in
the natural wealth and virgin potentialities of the New. This last
factor came to be of the vastest importance. The Old World employed
with an immense prudence the annual tribute it was thus entitled to
draw. The benefit of cheap and abundant supplies resulting from the
new developments which its surplus capital had made possible, was,
it is true, enjoyed and not postponed. But the greater part of the
money interest accruing on these foreign investments was reinvested
and allowed to accumulate, as a reserve (it was then hoped) against
the less happy day when the industrial labor of Europe could no
longer purchase on such easy terms the produce of other continents,
and when the due balance would be threatened between its historical
civilizations and the multiplying races of other climates and
environments. Thus the whole of the European races tended to
benefit alike from the development of new resources whether they
pursued their culture at home or adventured it abroad.
Even before the war, however, the equilibrium thus established
between old civilizations and new resources was being threatened.
The prosperity of Europe was based on the facts that, owing to the
large exportable surplus of foodstuffs in America, she was able to
purchase food at a cheap rate measured in terms of the labor
required to produce her own exports, and that, as a result of her
previous investments of capital, she was entitled to a substantial
amount annually without any payment in return at all. The second of
these factors then seemed out of danger, but, as a result of the
growth of population overseas, chiefly in the United States, the
first was not so secure.
When first the virgin soils of America came into bearing, the
proportions of the population of those continents themselves, and
consequently of their own local requirements, to those of Europe
were very small. As lately as 1890 Europe had a population three
times that of North and South America added together. But by 1914
the domestic requirements of the United States for wheat were
approaching their production, and the date was evidently near when
there would be an exportable surplus only in years of exceptionally
favorable harvest. Indeed, the present domestic requirements of the
United States are estimated at more than ninety per cent of the
average yield of the five years 1909-1913.[5] At that time,
however, the tendency towards stringency was showing itself, not so
much in a lack of abundance as in a steady increase of real cost.
That is to say, taking the world as a whole, there was no
deficiency of wheat, but in order to call forth an adequate supply
it was necessary to offer a higher real price. The most favorable
factor in the situation was to be found in the extent to which
Central and Western Europe was being fed from the exportable
surplus of Russia and Roumania.
In short, Europe's claim on the resources of the New World was
becoming precarious; the law of diminishing returns was at last
reasserting itself and was making it necessary year by year for
Europe to offer a greater quantity of other commodities to obtain
the same amount of bread; and Europe, therefore, could by no means
afford the disorganization of any of her principal sources of
supply.
Much else might be said in an attempt to portray the economic
peculiarities of the Europe of 1914. I have selected for emphasis
the three or four greatest factors of instability,—the instability
of an excessive population dependent for its livelihood on a
complicated and artificial organization, the psychological
instability of the laboring and capitalist classes, and the
instability of Europe's claim, coupled with the completeness of her
dependence, on the food supplies of the New World.
The war had so shaken this system as to endanger the life of Europe
altogether. A great part of the Continent was sick and dying; its
population was greatly in excess of the numbers for which a
livelihood was available; its organization was destroyed, its
transport system ruptured, and its food supplies terribly
impaired.
It was the task of the Peace Conference to honor engagements and to
satisfy justice; but not less to re-establish life and to heal
wounds. These tasks were dictated as much by prudence as by the
magnanimity which the wisdom of antiquity approved in victors. We
will examine in the following chapters the actual character of the
Peace.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]In 1913 there were 25,843 emigrants from Germany, of whom
19,124 went to the United States.
[2]The net decrease of the German population at the end of 1918 by
decline of births and excess of deaths as compared with the
beginning of 1914, is estimated at about 2,700,000.
[3]Including Poland and Finland, but excluding Siberia, Central
Asia, and the Caucasus.
[4]Sums of money mentioned in this book in terms of dollars have
been converted from pounds sterling at the rate of $5 to £1.
[5]Even since 1914 the population of the United States has
increased by seven or eight millions. As their annual consumption
of wheat per head is not less than 6 bushels, the pre-war scale of
production in the United States would only show a substantial
surplus over present domestic requirements in about one year out of
five. We have been saved for the moment by the great harvests of
1918 and 1919, which have been called forth by Mr. Hoover's
guaranteed price. But the United States can hardly be expected to
continue indefinitely to raise by a substantial figure the cost of
living in its own country, in order to provide wheat for a Europe
which cannot pay for it.
Chapter III
The Conference
In Chapters IV. and V. I shall study in some detail the economic
and financial provisions of the Treaty of Peace with Germany. But
it will be easier to appreciate the true origin of many of these
terms if we examine here some of the personal factors which
influenced their preparation. In attempting this task, I touch,
inevitably, questions of motive, on which spectators are liable to
error and are not entitled to take on themselves the
responsibilities of final judgment. Yet, if I seem in this chapter
to assume sometimes the liberties which are habitual to historians,
but which, in spite of the greater knowledge with which we speak,
we generally hesitate to assume towards contemporaries, let the
reader excuse me when he remembers how greatly, if it is to
understand its destiny, the world needs light, even if it is
partial and uncertain, on the complex struggle of human will and
purpose, not yet finished, which, concentrated in the persons of
four individuals in a manner never paralleled, made them, in the
first months of 1919, the microcosm of mankind.
In those parts of the Treaty with which I am here concerned, the
lead was taken by the French, in the sense that it was generally
they who made in the first instance the most definite and the most
extreme proposals. This was partly a matter of tactics. When the
final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to
start from an extreme position; and the French anticipated at the
outset—like most other persons—a double process of compromise,
first of all to suit the ideas of their allies and associates, and
secondly in the course of the Peace Conference proper with the
Germans themselves. These tactics were justified by the event.
Clemenceau gained a reputation for moderation with his colleagues
in Council by sometimes throwing over with an air of intellectual
impartiality the more extreme proposals of his ministers; and much
went through where the American and British critics were naturally
a little ignorant of the true point at issue, or where too
persistent criticism by France's allies put them in a position
which they felt as invidious, of always appearing to take the
enemy's part and to argue his case. Where, therefore, British and
American interests were not seriously involved their criticism grew
slack, and some provisions were thus passed which the French
themselves did not take very seriously, and for which the
eleventh-hour decision to allow no discussion with the Germans
removed the opportunity of remedy.
But, apart from tactics, the French had a policy. Although
Clemenceau might curtly abandon the claims of a Klotz or a
Loucheur, or close his eyes with an air of fatigue when French
interests were no longer involved in the discussion, he knew which
points were vital, and these he abated little. In so far as the
main economic lines of the Treaty represent an intellectual idea,
it is the idea of France and of Clemenceau.
Clemenceau was by far the most eminent member of the Council of
Four, and he had taken the measure of his colleagues. He alone both
had an idea and had considered it in all its consequences. His age,
his character, his wit, and his appearance joined to give him
objectivity and a, defined outline in an environment of confusion.
One could not despise Clemenceau or dislike him, but only take a
different view as to the nature of civilized man, or indulge, at
least, a different hope.
The figure and bearing of Clemenceau are universally familiar. At
the Council of Four he wore a square-tailed coat of very good,
thick black broadcloth, and on his hands, which were never
uncovered, gray suede gloves; his boots were of thick black
leather, very good, but of a country style, and sometimes fastened
in front, curiously, by a buckle instead of laces. His seat in the
room in the President's house, where the regular meetings of the
Council of Four were held (as distinguished from their private and
unattended conferences in a smaller chamber below), was on a square
brocaded chair in the middle of the semicircle facing the
fireplace, with Signor Orlando on his left, the President next by
the fireplace, and the Prime Minister opposite on the other side of
the fireplace on his right. He carried no papers and no portfolio,
and was unattended by any personal secretary, though several French
ministers and officials appropriate to the particular matter in
hand would be present round him. His walk, his hand, and his voice
were not lacking in vigor, but he bore nevertheless, especially
after the attempt upon him, the aspect of a very old man conserving
his strength for important occasions. He spoke seldom, leaving the
initial statement of the French case to his ministers or officials;
he closed his eyes often and sat back in his chair with an
impassive face of parchment, his gray gloved hands clasped in front
of him. A short sentence, decisive or cynical, was generally
sufficient, a question, an unqualified abandonment of his
ministers, whose face would not be saved, or a display of obstinacy
reinforced by a few words in a piquantly delivered
English.[6] But speech and passion were not lacking when they
were wanted, and the sudden outburst of words, often followed by a
fit of deep coughing from the chest, produced their impression
rather by force and surprise than by persuasion.
Not infrequently Mr. Lloyd George, after delivering a speech in
English, would, during the period of its interpretation into
French, cross the hearthrug to the President to reinforce his case
by some ad hominem argument in private conversation, or
to sound the ground for a compromise,—and this would sometimes be
the signal for a general upheaval and disorder. The President's
advisers would press round him, a moment later the British experts
would dribble across to learn the result or see that all was well,
and next the French would be there, a little suspicious lest the
others were arranging something behind them, until all the room
were on their feet and conversation was general in both languages.
My last and most vivid impression is of such a scene—the President
and the Prime Minister as the center of a surging mob and a babel
of sound, a welter of eager, impromptu compromises and
counter-compromises, all sound and fury signifying nothing, on what
was an unreal question anyhow, the great issues of the morning's
meeting forgotten and neglected; and Clemenceau silent and aloof on
the outskirts—for nothing which touched the security of France was
forward—throned, in his gray gloves, on the brocade chair, dry in
soul and empty of hope, very old and tired, but surveying the scene
with a cynical and almost impish air; and when at last silence was
restored and the company had returned to their places, it was to
discover that he had disappeared.
He felt about France what Pericles felt of Athens—unique value in
her, nothing else mattering; but his theory of politics was
Bismarck's. He had one illusion—France; and one
disillusion—mankind, including Frenchmen, and his colleagues not
least. 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 and can understand nothing
but intimidation, that he is without generosity or remorse in
negotiation, that there is no advantage he will not take of you,
and no extent to which he will not demean himself for profit, that
he is without honor, pride, or mercy. Therefore you must never
negotiate with a German or conciliate him; you must dictate to him.
On no other terms will he respect you, or will you prevent him from
cheating you. But it is doubtful how far he thought these
characteristics peculiar to Germany, or whether his candid view of
some other nations was fundamentally different. His philosophy had,
therefore, no place for "sentimentality" in international
relations. Nations are real things, of whom you love one and feel
for the rest indifference—or hatred. The glory of the nation you
love is a desirable end,—but generally to be obtained at your
neighbor's expense. The politics of power are inevitable, and there
is nothing very new to learn about this war or the end it was
fought for; England had destroyed, as in each preceding century, a
trade rival; a mighty chapter had been closed in the secular
struggle between the glories of Germany and of France. Prudence
required some measure of lip service to the "ideals" of foolish
Americans and hypocritical Englishmen; but it would be stupid to
believe that there is much room in the world, as it really is, for
such affairs as the League of Nations, or any sense in the
principle of self-determination except as an ingenious formula for
rearranging the balance of power in one's own interests.
These, however, are generalities. In tracing the practical details
of the Peace which he thought necessary for the power and the
security of France, we must go back to the historical causes which
had operated during his lifetime. Before the Franco-German war the
populations of France and Germany were approximately equal; but the
coal and iron and shipping of Germany were in their infancy, and
the wealth of France was greatly superior. Even after the loss of
Alsace-Lorraine there was no great discrepancy between the real
resources of the two countries. But in the intervening period the
relative position had changed completely. By 1914 the population of
Germany was nearly seventy per cent in excess of that of France;
she had become one of the first manufacturing and trading nations
of the world; her technical skill and her means for the production
of future wealth were unequaled. France on the other hand had a
stationary or declining population, and, relatively to others, had
fallen seriously behind in wealth and in the power to produce it.