BOOKS OF THE DAY
The Younger Keynes
Two Memoirs. By J. M. Keynes. (Han-Davis. 7s. 6d.) THESE two memoirs, fragments of autobiography and history, were originally written by Maynard Keynes for an intimate circle of friends. The longer, Dr. Melchior : a Defeated Enemy, includes a vivid and moving portrait of this small, grey, modest—and noble— Jew, with whom Keynes established a deeply emotional friendship at Paris in 1919. I knew Melchior a few years later at Geneva ; and I think this is a true picture as well as a touching tribute.
But Melchior is rather the symbol of all that inspired Keynes to his efforts to secure the supply of food to Germany during the Armistice than the subject of the memoir. The real theme is the conflict, national and personal, in the negotiations about the blockade and the arrangements to pay for and ship the food. Keynes describes, with his incomparable art, his own efforts and those of Lloyd George, Lord (Robert) Cecil, Woodrow Wilson and Mr. Hoover ; the resis- tance of the French, particularly M. Klotz, to the use of German gold, the only available means of payment, because they wanted it for reparations ; the pathetic stupidity of some of the German negotiators • the obstction of the British naval bureaucrats con-
cerned in the ru
e blockade ; and the dramatic production of the famous, pre-arranged, " Plumer " telegram' at the last crucial conference. He attributes the objection of the British experts to the discon- tinuance of the blockade to " a cause inherent in bureaucracy. The Blockade had become a very perfect instrument. It had taken four years to create and was Whitehall's finest achievement. Its authors had grown to love it for its own sake. The experts reported, there- fore, that it was our one instrument for imposing our Peace Terms on Germany, and that once suspended it could hardly be re-imposed." I believe this to be true.
There is throughout the same brilliance and intensity of convic- tion, the same passion of pity, as in his account of the reparations dispute in his Economic Consequences of the Peace. The portraits are as vivid, and even in some cases more merciless, partly perhaps because they were not originally intended for publication. They present the men, not just as they vietie but as incarnating the mental attitude with which Keynes found himself in conflict at Paris.
These recollections, while they are first-hand evidence and incon- testably true in what they state, scarcely in themselves, I think, do full justice to the complexity of the issues and the conflicting motives of the statesmen concerned. The emphasis, and the colour, of his narrative reflect the emotions, and particular point of view, of an active combatant. This is, therefore, rather an important contribu- tion to history than itself the history of the " Armistice blockade." Keynes, Sir John Beale and myself were the principal British officials, as distinct from Ministers, on finance, food and shipping respectively. We all took part in some negotiations of which the others were incompletely informed, and if we had kept notes they would—not contradictory but complementary—have together com- posed a picture, I think, more just to the Allies than Keynes's account alone. It is fair, for example, to record the answer given by the blockade experts when, with Lord Robert Cecil's assent, I argued with them foi the suspension of the blockade. They pointed out that the blockade was not itself stopping the feeding of Germany since it allowed imports up to stated maxima, and through various administrative difficulties we l ad never been able to reach these maxima. My argument that, since there would certainly be some starvation, it would be believed that this was intentional if the blockade was formally still in operation, was not successful.
The fact is that no Government wished to starve Germany. The worst that can be said even of the French was that they at first attached a prior importance to holding the German gold for reparation. Where there was underfeeding, it was due neither to deliberate intention nor to the continuance of the formal blockade, but to a combination of physical shortages, administrative failures and some obstruction by departmental specialists. The armistice blockade as an instrument of international starvation was essentially a myth—which in later years had the most fatal political conse- quences. There was more folly and incompetence, and much less deliberate wickedness, than the German, British and American public came later to believe.
The shorter memoir, My Early Beliefs, gives .a fascinating picture of a brilliant Cambridge circle in Keynes's earlier, undergraduate, days under the influence of a great professor, G. E. Moore. It reveals the inner life of the young Keynes, his deeply emotional character and his sensitive temperament, with a certain protective cynicism against the wounds such a temperament must suffer. Much of his later work and methods of advocacy will be better understood with this picture of his early years as a background.
The creed or faith of Keynes and his circle was platonic, or neo-platonic, non-utilitarian, individual almost to the point of what is now called existentialism, a-moral in the sense of a repudiation of any personal liability to obey general rules. " We claimed the right to judge every individual case on its own merits, and the wisdom, experience and self-control to do so successfully. We repudi- ated all versions of the doctrine of original sin, or there being insane and irrational springs of wickedness in most men." Keynes's own later reflections afford the best comment :
" We were not aware that civilisation was a thin and precarious crust . . . maitained by rules and conventions. . . . As the years wore on the thinness and superficiality, as well as the falsity, of our view of man's heart became . . . more obvious. . . . I can see us as water spiders, gracefully skimming, as light and reasonable as air, the surface of the stream without any contact at all with the eddies and currents underneath."
Both memoirs will recall vividly to all who knew him both the rich personality and the intellectual genius, displayed in so many different spheres of thought and action, which made Keynes beyond
question one of the greatest men of our age. ARTHUR SALTER.
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