[515] They debauched the currency, i.e. and wasted money recklessly.
[516] Mr. Keynes ignores the fortunes made by deliberately cornering and withholding commodities in a time of shortage.
[517] Among the books consulted here, for this and the two following sections, were Dr. Dillon’s Peace Conference; H. Wilson Harris’s The Peace in the Making and President Wilson, his Problems and his Policy; J. M. Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace; Weyl’s The End of the War; Stallybrass’s Society of States; Brailsford’s A League of Nations; F. C. Howe’s Why War? L. S. Woolf’s International Government; J. A. Hobson’s Towards International Government; Lowes Dickinson’s The Choice before Us; Sir Walter Phillimore’s Three Centuries of Treaties, and C. E. Fayle’s Great Settlement.
[518] “The Allied Governments,” the effective passage ran, “have given careful consideration to the correspondence which has passed between the President of the United States and the German Government. Subject to the qualifications which follow, they declare their readiness to make peace with the Government of Germany on the terms of peace laid down in the President’s Address to Congress of January 8th, 1918, and the principles of settlement enunciated in his subsequent Addresses.”
(Note transmitted to the German Government by the Allies through the Swiss Minister on November 5th, 1918.)
[519] In his book, The Peace Conference.
[520] Dillon.
[521] Dillon. And see his The Peace Conference, Chapter III, for instances of the amazing ignorance of various delegates.
[522] See Clemenceau, by C. Ducray.
[523] He wrote several novels. They are not very good novels; they incline to sentimental melodrama. Le Plus Fort is now available to English readers in a translation under the title of “The Stronger.” It is tawdry and dull. A cinematograph version has been shown.