"Yes" is surely the answer to the question posed by Margaret MacMillan at the start of her excellent article on the Treaty of Versailles (The consequences of Mr Keynes, 2nd November, 2018). The "brilliant, self-assured British economist" was "right", and "all the assembled statesmen" at the 1919 peace conference "wrong". Even in the context of an angry public opinion spurred on by a right-wing press, determined like Geddes to "squeeze Germany until the pips squeaked", the Diktat`s punishments of land losses, demilitarisation, "war guilt", Rhineland`s occupation, and excessive reparations appear ridiculously harsh and myopic.
Keynes`s idea of "getting Germany`s economy going again" should not have been treated with such disdain, especially as only seventeen years earlier the British after the Boer war, despite similar media-induced hysteria, and huge suffering on both sides involving atrocities and concentration camps, imposed the lenient Treaty of Vereeniging in 1902. This not only promised self-government to Transvaal and the Orange Free State, but granted three million pounds from the British to repair damage done to Boer lands. Unsurprisingly, South Africa fought on the British side in the first world war!
Sadly, as MacMillan intimates, "building lasting peace" seems beyond our politicians, but that doesn`t mean it`s rocket science!
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