ABSTRACT
John Maynard Keynes' conceded that the Germans should so lose this rich territory. Keynes argued that the partition of the Empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey into some twenty sovereign powers made such national autarky no longer possible. On the basis of his advocacy of a multilateral free trade system, Keynes' early foreign trade position may be unequivocally established. Moreover, a Free Trade Union, as conceived by Keynes, comprising the whole of Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe, Siberia, Turkey and the United Kingdom right do just as much for the peace and prosperity of the world as the newly formed League of Nations. Although Keynes was becoming an increasingly outspoken critic of laissez-faire economics in the period of the middle 'twenties, he remained a staunch supporter of free trade. Keynes' view in the above is anti-mercantilistic, which is quite in keeping, of course, with the classical tradition.
