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The Economic Consequences of the Peace

John Maynard Keynes · 1919 (preface), composed 1919; published 1920

passage 108 of 129 · CHAPTER I > CHAPTER VI (11/12)

in brief
In “Remedies,” Keynes urges readers not to overreact to his bleak diagnosis, contrasts England’s relative stability and transition with Russia’s catastrophe risk, and returns to food costs and population limits as core structural threats.

1913 60,760 41,860 18,900 1914 48,720 36,840 11,880 1918 235,025 41,390 193,635 Jan.-Mar. 1919 229,240 38,685 191,155 Apr.-June 1919 331,035 69,250 261,785 July-Aug. 1919 223,535 84,515 139,020

[153] In the last two returns of the Bank of France available as I write (Oct. 2 and 9, 1919) the increases in the note issue on the week amounted to $93,750,000 and $94,125,000 respectively.

[154] On October 3, 1919, M. Bilinski made his financial statement to the Polish Diet. He estimated his expenditure for the next nine months at rather more than double his expenditure for the past nine months, and while during the first period his revenue had amounted to one-fifth of his expenditure, for the coming months he was budgeting for receipts equal to one-eighth of his outgoings. The Times correspondent at Warsaw reported that "in general M. Bilinski's tone was optimistic and appeared to satisfy his audience."

[155] The terms of the Peace Treaty imposed on the Austrian Republic bear no relation to the real facts of that State's desperate situation. The Arbeiter Zeitung of Vienna on June 4, 1919, commented on them as follows: "Never has the substance of a treaty of peace so grossly betrayed the intentions which were said to have guided its construction as is the case with this Treaty ... in which every provision is permeated with ruthlessness and pitilessness, in which no breath of human sympathy can be detected, which flies in the face of everything which binds man to man, which is a crime against humanity itself, against a suffering and tortured people." I am acquainted in detail with the Austrian Treaty and I was present when some of its terms were being drafted, but I do not find it easy to rebut the justice of this outburst.

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topics: famine, scarcity, and plenty · plague, famine, and mass death · poverty and wealth

The Economic Consequences of the Peace · John Maynard Keynes · 1919