ABSTRACT
On 7 June 1919, two days after his 36th birthday, John Maynard Keynes resigned from the United Kingdom's Treasury team at the Paris Peace Conference, who were negotiating what was to become the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919. The details of Keynes' already lofty intellectual stature and of the political environments in Britain, France, and the United States at the time can be gleaned from Robert Skidelsky's, and from numerous other, biographies of the man. 1 Upon his resignation, Keynes penned a small book, published in 1920. Called The Economic Consequences of the Peace, he prefaced it as follows: 2
The writer of this book was temporarily attached to the British Treasury during the war and was their official representative at the Paris Peace Conference up to June 7, 1919; he also sat as deputy for the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Supreme Economic Council. He resigned from these positions when it became evident that hope could no longer be entertained of substantial modification in the draft Terms of Peace. The grounds of his objection to the Treaty, or rather to the whole policy of the Conference towards the economic problems of Europe, will appear in the following chapters. They are entirely of a public character, and are based on facts known to the whole world.
J. M. KEYNES KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, November, 1919