THE NATION, Dec. 13, 1919.—“This is the first heavy shot that has been fired in the war which the intellectuals opened on the statesmen the moment they realized what a piece of work the Treaty was.”

WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, Dec. 20, 1919.—“Mr. Keynes has produced a smashing and unanswerable indictment of the economic settlement.... It is too much to hope that the arbiters of our destinies will read it and perhaps learn wisdom, but it should do much good in informing a wide section of that public which will in its turn become the arbiters of theirs.”

SUNDAY CHRONICLE, Dec. 21, 1919.—“No criticism of the Peace which omits, as Mr. Keynes seems to me by implication to omit, the aspect of it not as a treaty, but as a sentence, has any right to be heard by the European Allied peoples.”

THE SPECTATOR, Dec. 20, 1919.—“The world is not governed by economical forces alone, and we do not blame the statesmen at Paris for declining to be guided by Mr. Keynes if he gave them such political advice as he sets forth in his book.”

THE TIMES, Jan. 5, 1920.—“Mr. Keynes has written an extremely ‘clever’ book on the Peace Conference and its economic consequences.... As a whole, his cry against the Peace seems to us the cry of an academic mind, accustomed to deal with the abstractions of that largely metaphysical exercise known as ‘political economy,’ in revolt against the facts and forces of actual political existence.... Indeed, one of the most striking features of Mr. Keynes's book is the political inexperience, not to say ingenuousness, which it reveals.... He believes it would have been wise and just to demand from Germany payment of £2,000,000,000 ‘in final settlement of all claims without further examination of particulars.’”

THE ATHENÆUM, Jan. 23, 1920.—“This book is a perfectly well–equipped arsenal of facts and arguments, to which every one will resort for years to come who wishes to strike a blow against the forces of prejudice, delusion, and stupidity. It is not easy to make large numbers of men reasonable by a book, yet there are no limits to which, without undue extravagance, we may not hope that the influence of this book may not extend. Never was the case for reasonableness more powerfully put. It is enforced with extraordinary art. What might easily have been a difficult treatise, semi–official or academic, proves to be as fascinating as a good novel.”

FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, March 1, 1920.—“Mr. Keynes's book has now been published three months, and no sort of official reply to it has been issued. Nothing but the angry cries of bureaucrats have been heard. No such crushing indictment of a great act of international policy, no such revelation of the futility of diplomats has even been made.”

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, April 29, 1920.—“Mr. Keynes ... has violently attacked the whole work of those who made the Treaty in a book which exhibits every kind of ability except the political kind.... Mr. Keynes knows everything except the elements of politics, which is the science of discovering, and the art of accomplishing, the practicable in public affairs.”

TIMES (“Annual Financial and Commercial Review”), Jan. 28, 1921.—“The almost unhealthy greed with which Mr. Keynes's book on The Economic Consequences of the Peace was devoured in a dozen countries was but a symptom of the new desire to appreciate, and, if possible, to cope with, the economic consequences not only of the peace but of the war.”

LIVERPOOL COURIER, Feb. 2, 1921.—“In the eyes of the world—at least, of the world that is not pro–German—the reparation costs are wholly inadequate. It is true that in the eyes of Mr. J. M. Keynes it is wicked to charge Germany with the cost of war pensions, but we imagine that the average man with a simple sense of simple justice does not agree with Mr. Keynes.”

“Realist” in the ENGLISH REVIEW, March 1921.—“The operation of indemnity–payment must be followed through to its remorseless end.... The cry ‘Germany must pay’ has still a good healthy sound about it.”

ENGLISH REVIEW, June 1921.—“What Mr. Maynard Keynes predicted in his remarkable book is coming only too true. All over Europe the nations are standing to arms, thinking boundaries, while trade languishes, production stagnates, and credit lapses into the relativities.”

Joseph P. Cotton in the EVENING POST, New York, Jan. 30, 1920.—“Mr. Keynes's book is the first good book on peace and the reconstruction of Europe. The writing is simple and sincere and true ... a great book with a real message.”

Paul D. Cravath in the SUN AND NEW YORK HERALD, Feb. 2, 1920.—“No English novel during or since the war has had such a success as this book. It should be read by every thoughtful American. It is the first serious discussion of the Peace Treaty by a man who knows the facts and is capable of discussing them with intelligence and authority.”

Harold J. Laski in the NATION, New York, Feb. 7, 1920.—“This is a very great book. If any answer can be made to the overwhelming indictment of the Treaty that it contains, that answer has yet to be published. Mr. Keynes writes with a fullness of knowledge, an incisiveness of judgment, and a penetration into the ultimate causes of economic events that perhaps only half–a-dozen living economists might hope to rival. Nor is the manner of his book less remarkable than its substance. The style is like finely-hammered steel. It is full of unforgettable phrases and of vivid portraits etched in the biting acid of a passionate moral indignation.”

F. W. Taussig, Harvard University, in the QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Feb. 1920.—“Mr. Keynes needs no introduction to economists. The high quality of his work is known. This book shows the sure touch, the wide interests, the independent judgment, which we expect. It shows, also, fine spirit and literary skill.... Coming to the economic provisions of the Treaty, I find myself in general accord with what Mr. Keynes says. He makes out an estimate of what Germany can do in the way of reparation.... The maximum cannot, in his judgment, exceed ten billions of dollars. Some such figure, it is not improper to say, was reached independently by Professor A. A. Young in his estimates for the American financial advisers.”

FINANCIAL WORLD, New York City, Feb. 16, 1920.—“There is a thousand dollars of information in it for the average business man.”

Frank A. Vanderlip in CHICAGO NEWS, March 3, 1920.—“I regard it as the most important volume published since the Armistice. It is certain to have a profound effect on world thought. It is a deep analysis of the economic structure of Europe at the outbreak of the war, a brilliant characterisation of the Peace Conference, a revealing analysis of the shortcomings of the Treaty, a dissection of the reparation claims, done with the scientific spirit and steadiness of hand of a great surgeon, a vision of Europe after the Treaty, which is the most illuminating picture that has yet been made of the immediate situation on the Continent, and, finally, constructive remedial proposals. Every chapter bears the imprint of a master hand, of a mind trained to translate economic data, and of absolutely unfaltering courage to tell the truth.”

Alvin Johnson in the NEW REPUBLIC, April 14, 1920.—“There has been no failure anywhere to recognise that Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace requires an ‘answer.’ Too many complacencies have been assailed by it.... What progress are his critics making in their attack on it?... There is surprisingly little effort made by American reviewers to refute the charge that the Treaty is in many respects in direct violation of the preliminary engagements, nor is anywhere a serious attempt made to show that those engagements were not morally binding.... The critics have not seriously shaken Keynes's characterization of the Treaty. They have not been able to get far away from agreement with him as to what the Treaty should have been. They admit the desirability of revision.”

DETROIT FREE PRESS, Nov. 21, 1921.—“Only once have I seen Viviani go into action gradually. It was after his last trip to the United States. He was talking in a subdued conversational tone when suddenly he thought of John Maynard Keynes's book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. His face, hitherto motionless, twitched a little. His words accelerated slowly. The current of his emotion spread curiously through the muscles of his whole body, until the figure which had been relaxed from head to foot became tense in every fibre. In a moment he was denouncing, with the sonorous blast of his anger, the book which he said he had encountered in every country in the New World, as ‘a monument of iniquity,’ a monster which confronted him everywhere in South or North America, and which for some (to him) incredible reason everyone seemed to believe as the gospel truth about the pact of Versailles.”