<P> In addition to his meetings in Versailles, at the invitation of Max Warburg's brother Paul Warburg, Keynes attended an Amsterdam conference of bankers and economists in October 1919, and he drafted there with Paul Warburg a memorandum of appeal to the League of Nations calling for a reduction in German reparations . </P> <P> Keynes' book was released in late 1919 and was an immediate success: it became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic: it was released in the United States in 1920 . The scathing sketches of Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau proved to be very popular and the work established Keynes' reputation with the public as a leading economist . In six months, the book had sold 100,000 copies with translations into 12 languages . It restored Keynes' reputation with the Bloomsbury Group, which had been tarnished by his work for the Treasury during the war . Keynes returned to Cambridge to work as an economist, where he was regarded as the leading student of Alfred Marshall . </P> <P> As well as being highly successful in commercial terms in the US, the book proved to be highly influential . The book was released just before the US Senate considered the treaty and confirmed the beliefs of the "irreconcilables" against American participation in the League of Nations . As well, the book also heightened the doubts of the "reservationists", led by Henry Cabot Lodge, over the terms of the treaty and created doubts in the minds of Wilson's supporters . Lodge, the Republican Senate leader, shared Keynes' concerns about the severity of the treaty on Germany and believed that it would have to be renegotiated in the future . Keynes played a critical role in turning American public opinion against the treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, but it was Wilson's poor management of the issue and a number of strokes he had that would be decisive: America would not participate in the League of Nations . </P> <P> Keynes' portrayal of the treaty as a "Carthaginian peace"--a brutal peace which has the intent of crushing the losing side--quickly became the orthodoxy in academic circles and was a common opinion in the British public . It was widely believed in Britain that the terms of the treaty were unfair . That was influential in determining a response to the attempts by Adolf Hitler to overturn the Versailles Treaty especially in the period leading up to the Munich Agreement . In Germany, the book confirmed what the overwhelming majority of the people already believed: the unfairness of the treaty . France was reluctant to use armed force to enforce the treaty without the support of the British Government . Prior to late 1938, the strength of public opposition to prospective involvement in another war meant that British support for the French position was unreliable . </P>

The economic consequences of the peace john maynard keynes