September 24, 2018 Monday
Bedtime Story
The Economic Consequences of the Peace - 1
Most of us are not high-volume prolific
readers like Mon Ami who is capable of not merely devouring but also processing
almost any amount of data in print that comes before his visual system (I call
him the human black hole sink of knowledge) and hence it would do well for
average apes like us to know about the books through their abstracts as chosen
by the story telling chimpanzee.
First let me introduce some passages from
‘The Economic Consequences of Peace’ where Keynes levels serious allegations
against the treaty and its enforcers who virtually shoved it down the throats
of the hapless nations who had lost out in the Great War and whose innocent
civilians were already suffering great impoverishment and hardships post
defeat.
“The Treaty includes no provisions for the
economic rehabilitation of Europe, - nothing to make the defeated Central
Powers (The German empire or the Imperial Germany, Austro-Hungarian Empire, the
Ottoman Empire and the Tsardom of Bulgaria or the Kingdom of Bulgaria) into
good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new states of Europe, nothing to
reclaim Russia; nor does it promote in any way a compact of solidarity amongst
the Allies themselves (Italy, Japan and China all felt let down and even
betrayed by the terms of the treaty – China because a lots of its German
territories were handed over to Japan and Japan because US vetoed a simple
“racial equality clause” that they sought as a matter of personal pride which
was an anathema to the American ruling class); no arrangement was reached at
Paris for restoring the disordered finances of France and Italy, or to adjust
the systems of the Old World and the New.
The Council of Four paid no attention to
these issues, being preoccupied with others, - Clemenceau to crush the economic
life of his enemy,
(Clemenceau had told US President Wilson: “America
is far away, protected by the ocean.
Not even Napoleon himself could touch
England.
You are both sheltered; we are not.”)
Lloyd George to do a deal and bring home
something that would pass muster for a week, the President to do nothing that
was not just and right.
It is an extraordinary fact that the
fundamental economic problems of a Europe starving and disintegrating before
their eyes, was the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the
interest of the Four.
Reparation was their main excursion into
the economic field, and they settled it as a problem of theology, of politics,
of electoral chicane, from every point of view except that of the economic
future of the States whose destiny they were handling.”
Besides this scathing criticism of the
horrendous terms of agreement made in the treaty forced upon by the big four
Keynes had – based on his novel economic ideas - made specific predictions
concerning the coming inflation in Europe and its reasons.
Mind you, on hind sight to us history buffs
it may look very obvious but during the time when the greatest and the post
powerful had met in Paris of 1919, no one expected things to take the turn it
did in Europe.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment