MAKING PEACE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 93, 21 April 1933, Page 7

MAKING PEACE

LLOYD GEORGE'S PART

THE VERSAILLES CONFERENCE

SKETCH BY MR. KEYNES

Of all that has been written about the Conference of Versailles, Mr. Keynes's chapter on the Council of Tour stands most chance of survival. But in those brilliant, ironical pages of the "Economic Consequences of the Peace," which hit off the witches round the cauldron, most readers must have sensed a gap. Clemenccau was painted down to the stylo of his boots and the texture of his grey gloves; President Wilson, was explored to the dark obstinate recesses of his Presbyterian tern- j perament. What tho disillusioned Treasury official thought of tho British Primo Minister was hinted at rather j than said. A "certain, compunction/ a sense of its partiality and incompleteBess, kept him from printing what he had written of Mr. Lloyd George. He feels "some compunction still," but now, when these things belong to history, he lets us have it as a historical fragment of 1919, in his new book, "Essays in Biography," says a writer dn the "Manchester Guardian." . . As to its justice the reader may judge from a few extracts; as to the felicity .'of tho style he will bo in no doubt: "Thus when the British delegation left for Paris there seemed no insuperable obstacles for an almost complete understanding between the British and American negotiators. . . •. Why then did not the joint forces of these two powerful and enlightened autocrats give us tho Good Peace? . i "The answer is to be sought more in those intimate workings of the heart and character which make the tragedies and comedies of the domestic hearthrug than in the supposed ambitions of empires or philosophies of statesmen. Tho President, the Tiger, and the Welsh witch we?e shut up in a room, together for six months, and the Treaty was what, came out. Yea, the Welsh witch— for the British Prime Minister contributed thß female clement to this triangular intrigue. I have called Mr. Wilson a noncomformistt clergyman.. Let the reader" figure Mr. Lloyd George as a femme fatale. An old man of the world, a femme fatale, and a nonconformist clergyman—theso aro the chnr.acters of our drama. Even though the lady was very religious at times, the Fourteen Commandments could hardly expect to emerge perfectly intact," TOWAEDS PEACE. i Mr. Keynes goes through the impressive list of Mr. Lloyd George's "good instincts." Ho was on "the side of all the right things. "His labours were inimerise, and he spent his vast stores of spirit and of energy without stint on the formidable task he had put his hand to. His advocacy1 of the League of Nations was sincere; his support of a fair application of the principle of Self-Determination to Germany's eastern frontiers was:«lisinterested. He had no wish to impose a Peace;, the crushing of Germany was no part of his purpose. His hatred of war is real, and the strain of pacifism and radical idealism, which governed him during tho Boer War, is H; genuine part of his composition. He would have defended a Good Peace before the House'of Commons with more heart than ho did that which he actually Tbrought back to ihenl," . ;ji.,i i . r. But "if Mr. Lloyd George had no good qualities, no charms, no fascinations, he would not be dangerous. If he were not a siren, we need not fear fthe 'whirlpools." Mr, Keynes is driven back on" the metaphor of the super(natural: : "Ono catches in his company that flavour of final purposolessness, inner irresponsibility, existence outside or away from our Saxon good or evil, mixed ■with, cunning, reinorsolcssness, love of power, that lend fascinajion, enthralment, and terror to the /jai£Beeining jnagieians of North'^3^j|>p/ean folklore. .. , j . .. "Lloyd George is rooted "n'nothing; lie is void and without content; he Kveß and feeds on his immediate surroundings; he is an instrument and a player at,the same time which plays on the company and is played on by them too; he is a prism, as I have heard him 'described, which collects light and distorts it and is most brilliant if the light comes from many quarters at. once; a.vampire and a medium in.one." FRANCE'S VICTORY, ' How he came to take the middle path fet Versailles and how Clemenccau came to be the "real victor" was the theme' ■of the "Economic Consequences.".Mr. Eeynes's "Fragmont" sums up bitterly: "Even, so, close observers never regarded it as impossible right up to the conclusion of the affair that the Prime Minister 'a better instincts and truer judgment might yet prevail—he knew in his heart that this Peace would disgrace him and that it might ruin Europe. But he had dug a pit for himself deeper, than even he could leap out of; he was caught in his own toils, defeated by his own methods. Besides, it is a characteristic of his inner being, of his kinship with the trolls and the soulless simulacra of the earth, that at the great crises of his fortunes it is the lowor. instincts of tho hour that cdnyper." An aspect only, "a thing seen but hot the whole picture," Mr. Keynes grants. The Lloyd George of the Coalition, of the Irish war and the Irish peace, had yet to come. Of the Lloyd George of the Radical programme Mr. would have an equally intimate iSnd perhaps rather differently balanced '(estimate to make. This portrait is only on© of the de-' iflghts of this book, in which Mr. Keynes &aB gathered together some of. his perfectly finished occasional journalism— fchort essays on politicians and economists—of the last ten years, together Vith some larger pieces. There is, for instance, the,substantial memoir of Alfred Marshall that was prefixed to 'fhe ''Memorials," the memoir of F. Y. (Edgeworth from the "Economic Journal,** and a new and fascinating sketch ;j63?iJKTalthus, whom Mr, Keynes .displays imotywith, hoofs and horns but with the Mo;of *'the first of the Cambridge %et>ttonf!sts." f-. 1 THE SAME SIDE. *fflfe^3s,a Parson Malthus on the side Jbf >tKojang.els with a vengeance. Did fiemot discover, in tho great slump that followed the other great Peace Treaty, 'Siat though a private virtue, Bad ceased to be a public duty; and that public works and expenditure by landlords and persons of property was the 'iftppropriate remedy"? Alter the idiom sjftf 1820 and Mr. Keynes, Mr. Lloyd #Jeorge, and the Rev. Thomas Robert Jbtalthus meet under one umbrella: "Altogether I should say, that the (employment of the poor in roads and public works, and a tendency among landlords and persons of property to build, to improve and beautify their grounds, and to employ workmen and menial servants, are the means most within our power and most directly ealfculated to remedy the evils arising'from that disturbance in the balance of produce and consumption, which has been occasioned by the sudden conversion of soldiers, sailors, and various other classes which the war employed, into 'productive laborers."