September 20, 2001
N. Haque
Lord Keynes Needed
A brief background: John Maynard Keynes was a famous economist who had the courage to speak out in a famous and biting book called The economic Consequences of Peace against the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War 1 because he saw that it was based on revenge rather than reconciliation. The passages below are illustrative of his reasoning and have a bearing on the situation today.
“The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable -- abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe. Some preach it in the name of justice. In the great events of man's history, in the unwinding of the complex fates of nations, justice is not so simple. And if it were, nations are not authorized, by religion or by natural morals, to visit on the children of their enemies the misdoing of parents or of rulers.”
"If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long that final civil war between the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the late German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilization and the progress of our generation…. In one way only can we influence these hidden currents–by setting in motion those forces of instruction and imagination which change opinion. The assertion of truth, the unveiling of illusion, the dissipation of hate, the enlargement and instruction of men’s hearts and minds, must be the means.”
