This volume, a companion to Volume 17 and to many of the Essays in Persuasion (Volume 9), carries Keynes's involvement in the post-1919 reparations tangle down to the Lausanne Conference and Britain's subsequent effective default on her own war debts in June 1933 - almost fourteen years to the day after Keynes's own resignation from the Treasury over the original Peace Settlement effectively removed the issue from practical politics. The events it covers were dramatic - the German hyperinflation, the occupation of the Ruhr, the Dawes and Young Plans and the Hoover Moratorium. Throughout, Keynes attempted to shape opinion and the course of events through published articles, unsigned letters, contributions to The Nation and Athenaeum, speeches, letters, official committees and memoranda. These add an important dimension to our understanding of the history of the period. |