The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realise with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organisation by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent, and to be depended on, and we lay our plans accordingly. | The Economic Consequences of fhe Peace John Maynarcí Kẹynes THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE 1 The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes Get any book for free on Get any book for free on THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE 2 The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes 1919 Chapter 1 Introductory The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realise with conviction the intensely unusual unstable complicated unreliable temporary nature of the economic organisation by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural permanent and to be depended on and we lay our plans accordingly. On this sandy and false foundation we scheme for social improvement and dress our political platforms pursue our animosities and particular ambitions and feel ourselves with enough margin in hand to foster not assuage civil conflict in the European family. Moved by insane delusion and reckless self-regard the German people overturned the foundations on which we all lived and built. But the spokesmen of the French and British peoples have run the risk of completing the ruin which Germany began by a peace which if it is carried into effect must impair yet further when it might have restored the delicate complicated organisation already shaken and broken by war through which alone the European peoples can employ themselves and live. In England the outward aspect of life does not yet teach us to feel or realise in the least that an age is over. We are busy picking up the threads of our life where we dropped them with this difference only that many of us seem a good deal richer than we were before. Where we spent millions before the war we have now learnt that we can spend hundreds of millions and apparently not suffer for it. Evidently we did not exploit to the utmost the
