13 - Preparing the ‘Revision’

Summary

Keynes had been thinking of the ‘fuller arguments’ that he mentioned to Wicksell for some time. In June 1921 he had proposed a revised edition of The Economic Consequences of the Peace to Alfred Harcourt. Harcourt suggested a sequel instead and the outcome of their correspondence through the summer and autumn was a plan for a new book. The title that Keynes eventually decided on, 2 November 1921, was ‘A Revision of the Treaty being a sequel to The Economic Consequences of the Peace’ (JMK, vol. III, pp. xiii-xiv).

In August 1921 he wrote to Melchior for some statistical information. Melchior replied with figures from the German ministries of reconstruction and finance.

To DR CARL MELCHIOR, 22 September 1921

Dear Dr Melchior,

Very many thanks for the particulars which you have sent me. They answer my questions completely. I wanted these figures because I am at work on a brief sequel to The Economic Consequences of the Peace, a volume which will hardly deserve the name of an independent book but will bring matters up to date, and will serve instead of a revised edition of The Economic Consequences, a task in some respects necessary but one which the form of that book would render extremely difficult.

The gossip which I hear about the Loucheur-Rathenau agreement is rather disquieting. I am all in favour of France being paid in kind, and in priority to Great Britain.