Note 85 — Chapter VII · THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT
Reading edition
Mr Keynes is not alone in declaring that the Treaty makes of our armistice engagements a ‘scrap of paper.’ The Round Table, in an article which aims at justifying the Treaty as a whole, says: ‘Opinions may differ as to the actual letter of the engagements which we made at the Armistice, but the spirit of them is undoubtedly strained in some of the detailed provisions of the peace. There is some honest ground for the feeling manifested in Germany that the terms on which she laid down her arms have not been observed in all respects.’
A very unwilling witness to our obligations is Mr Leo Maxse, who writes (National Review, February, 1921):—
‘Thanks to the American revelations we are in a better position to appreciate the trickery and treachery of the pre-Armistice negotiations, as well as the hideous imposture of the Paris Peace Conference, which, we now learn for the first time, was governed by the self-denying ordinance of the previous November, when, unbeknown to the countries betrayed, the Fourteen Points had been inextricably woven into the Armistice. Thus was John Bull effectively ‘dished’ of every farthing of his war costs.’
As a fact, of course, the self-denying ordinance was not ‘unbeknown to the countries betrayed.’ The Fourteen Points commitment was quite open; the European Allies could have repudiated them, as, on one point, Britain did.