JM Keynes on WilsonJohn
Maynard Keynes was one of the British delegates at the Versailles
Conference. This is what he said about Wilson: |
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What
a place the President held in the hearts and hopes of the world when he
sailed to us in the George Washington! What a great man came to Europe in
those early days of our victory! The conditions seemed favorable beyond any expectation. The
victory was so complete that fear need play no part in the settlement. The
enemy had laid down his arms in reliance on a solemn compact as to the
general character of the peace, the terms of which seemed to assure a
settlement of justice and magnanimity and a fair hope for a restoration of
the broken current of life. To make assurance certain the President was
coming himself to set the seal on his work. |
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When
President Wilson left Washington he enjoyed a prestige and a moral
influence throughout the world unequalled in history. His bold and
measured words carried to the peoples of Europe above and beyond the
voices of their own politicians. The enemy peoples trusted him to carry
out the compact he had made with them; and the Allied peoples acknowledged
him not as a victor only but almost as a prophet. In addition to this
moral influence the realities of power were in his hands. The American
armies were at the height of their numbers, discipline, and equipment.
Europe was in complete dependence on the food supplies of the United
States; and financially she was even more absolutely at their mercy. |
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Europe
not only already owed the United States more than she could pay; but only
a large measure of further assistance could save her from starvation and
bankruptcy. Never had a philosopher held such weapons wherewith to bind
the princes of this world. How the crowds of the European capitals pressed
about the carriage of the President! With what curiosity, |
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The
disillusion was so complete, that some of those who had trusted most
hardly dared speak of it. Could it be true? they asked of those who
returned from Paris. Was the treaty really as bad as it seemed? What had
happened to the President? What weakness or what misfortune had led to so
extraordinary, so unlooked-for a betrayal? |
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Yet
the causes were very ordinary and human. The President was not a hero or a
prophet; he was not even a philosopher; but a generously intentioned man,
with many of the weaknesses of other human beings, and lacking that
dominating intellectual equipment which would have been necessary to cope
with the subtle and dangerous spellbinders whom a tremendous clash of
forces and personalities had brought to the top as triumphant masters in
the swift game of give and take, face to face in council -- a game of
which he had no experience at all.... |
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The
first impression of Mr. Wilson at close quarters was to impair some but
not all of these illusions. His head and features were finely cut and
exactly like his photographs, and the muscles of his neck and the carriage
of his head were distinguished. But, like Odysseus, the President looked
wiser when he was seated; and his hands, though capable and fairly strong,
were wanting in sensitiveness and finesse. The first glance at the
President suggested not only that, whatever else he might be, his
temperament was not primarily that of the student or the scholar, but that
he had not much even of that culture of the world which marks M.
Clemenceau and Mr. Balfour as exquisitely cultivated gentlemen of their
class and generation. But more serious than this, he was not only
insensitive to his surroundings in the external sense, he was not
sensitive to his environment at all. What chance could such a man have
against Mr. Lloyd George's unerring, almost medium-like, sensibility to
everyone immediately round him? |
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To
see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven
senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and
subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each
was going to say next, and compounding with telepathic instinct the
argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest
of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President would be
playing blind man's buff in that party. Never could a man have stepped
into the parlor a more perfect and predestined victim to the finished
accomplishments of the Prime Minister. The Old World was tough in
wickedness anyhow; the Old World's heart of stone might blunt the sharpest
blade of the bravest knight-errant. But this blind and deaf Don Quixote
was entering a cavern where the swift and glittering blade was in the
hands of the adversary.... |
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The
President was like a nonconformist minister, perhaps a Presbyterian. His
thought and his temperament were essentially theological not intellectual,
with all the strength and the weakness of that manner of thought, feeling,
and expression.... |
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The
President's program for the world, as set forth in his speeches and his
Notes, had displayed a spirit and a purpose so admirable that the last
desire of his sympathizers was to criticize details-the details, they
felt, were quite rightly not filled in at present, but would be in due
course. It was commonly believed at the commencement of the Paris
conference that the President had thought out, with the aid of a large
body of advisors, a comprehensive scheme not only for the League of
Nations, but for the embodiment of the Fourteen Points in an actual treaty
of peace. But in fact the President had thought out nothing; when it came
to practice his ideas were nebulous and incomplete. He had no plan, no
scheme, no constructive ideas whatever for clothing with the flesh of life
the commandments which he had thundered from the White House. He could
have preached a sermon on any of them or have addressed a stately prayer
to the Almighty for their fulfillment; but he could not frame their
concrete application to the actual state of Europe. |
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He
not only had no proposals in detail, but he was in many respects, perhaps
inevitably, ill-informed as to European conditions. And not only was he
ill-informed -- that was true of Mr. Lloyd George also -- but his mind was
slow and unadaptable. The President's slowness amongst the Europeans was
noteworthy. He could not, all in a minute, take in what the rest were
saying, size up the situation with a glance, frame a reply, and meet the
case by a slight change of ground; and he was liable, therefore, to defeat
by the mere swiftness, apprehension, and agility of a Lloyd George. There
can seldom have been a statesman of the first rank more incompetent than
the President in the agilities of the council chamber. A moment often
arrives when substantial victory is yours if by some slight appearance of
a concession you can save the face of the opposition or conciliate them by
a restatement of your proposal helpful to them and not injurious to
anything essential to yourself. |
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The
President was not equipped with this simple and usual artfulness. His mind
was too slow and unresourceful to be ready with any alternatives. The
President was capable of digging his toes in and refusing to budge, as he
did over Fiume. But he had no other mode of defense, and it needed as a
rule but little maneuvering by his opponents to prevent matters from
coming to such a head until it was too late. By pleasantness and an
appearance of conciliation, the President would be maneuvered off his
ground, would miss the moment for digging his toes in and, before he knew
where he had been got to, it was too late. Besides, it is impossible month
after month, in intimate and ostensibly friendly converse between close
associates, to be digging the toes in all the time. Victory would only
have been possible to one who had always a sufficiently lively
apprehension of the position as a whole to reserve his fire and know for
certain the rare exact moments for decisive action. And for that the
President was far too slow-minded and bewildered. |
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He
did not remedy these defects by seeking aid from the collective wisdom of
his lieutenants. He had gathered round him for the economic chapters of
the treaty a very able group of businessmen; but they were inexperienced
in public affairs, and knew (with one or two exceptions) as little of
Europe as he did, and they were only called in irregularly as he might
need them for a particular purpose. Thus the aloofness which had been
found effective in Washington was maintained, and the abnormal reserve of
his nature did not allow near him anyone who aspired to moral equality or
the continuous exercise of influence.... |
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All
this was encouraged by his colleagues on the Council of Four.... |
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Thus day after day and week after week he allowed himself to be closeted, unsupported, unadvised, and alone, with men much sharper than himself, in situations of supreme difficulty, where he needed for success every description of resource, fertility, and knowledge. He allowed himself to be drugged by their atmosphere, to discuss on the basis of their plans and of their data, and to be led along their paths.... |
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Excerpts from The Economic
Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes (1919) on http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/ess_keynesversailles.html |
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