The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

KEYNES, J.M..

Item Number: 5096

London: Macmillan & Company, 1919.

First edition. Octavo, original blue cloth. Inscribed by the author, “For Douglas Lepan from J.M. Keynes.” The recipient was Douglas LePan, Canadian diplomat and author traveled to King’s College, Cambridge on behalf of the Canadian government. LePan said of Keynes, “I am spellbound. This is the most beautiful creature I have ever listened to. Does he belong to our species? Or is he from some other order? There is something mythic and fabulous about him. I sense in him something massive and sphinx like, and yet also a hint of wings” (Skidelsky p. 393-4; J.M. Keynes: Fighting For Britain 1937-1946). In very good condition with some rubbing to the cloth extremities. Books signed by Keynes are uncommon, association copies on major works such as this are rare.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace was written after Keynes attended the Versailles Conference as a delegate of the British Treasury and argued for a much more generous peace. It was a best-seller throughout the world and was critical in establishing a general opinion that the Versailles Treaty was a "Carthaginian peace". It helped to consolidate American public opinion against the treaty and involvement in the League of Nations. The perception by much of the British public that Germany had been treated unfairly in turn was a crucial factor in public support for appeasement. The success of the book established Keynes' reputation as a leading economist. When Keynes was a key player in establishing the Bretton Woods system in 1944, he remembered the lessons from Versailles as well as the Great Depression. The Marshall Plan after Second World War is a similar system to that proposed by Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace. "The most important economic document relating to World War I and its aftermath" (John Kenneth Galbraith).