John Meynard Keynes | Autograph letter signed, to Lord Noel-Buxton, on the Post-War settlement of Europe, 1944

John Meynard Keynes

Letter signed, to Lord Noel-Buxton

regarding the post-war settlement of Europe, 2 pages, 4to, annotated in pencil by the recipient, Treasury Chambers, 18 May 1944, creased at fold

"In my judgement the terms in other respects are likely to be much more reasonable and promising for the future if we are not having to deal with a strong unitary Germany. But I should certainly add that any such arrangements ought not to have compulsory force for more than say 20 years. If they have power to come together again of their own free will, either as a federation or otherwise, let them."

Written two years before his death aged 62, to the British Liberal and Labour politician Noel Buxton, Keynes writes that he is disheartened so far by the proposals for the post-war settlement of Europe. In 1919 Keynes had famously predicted that the harsh treatment of Germany at the Treaty of Versailles would have disastrous consequences, and he here hopes that the same mistakes would not be repeated after the defeat of the Nazis. His wish expressed in this letter that the Germans would, in future, be free to chose to reunite if they wished proved especially prescient.