MacTutor
John Maynard Keynes
Times obituary
A GREAT ECONOMIST
Lord Keynes, the great economist, died yesterday at Tilton, Firle, Sussex, from a heart attack.
By his death, the country has lost a very great Englishman. He was a man of genius, who as a political economist had a worldwide influence on the thinking of both specialists and the general public, and he was a master of a variety of other subjects which he pursued throughout his life. He was a man of action as well as of thought, who intervened on occasion with critical effect in the great affairs of state and carried on efficiently a number of practical business activities which would have filled the life of an ordinary man. And he was not merely a prodigy of intellect; he had civic virtues: courage, steadfastness, and a humane outlook; he had private virtues: he was a good son, a devoted member of his college, a loyal and affectionate friend, and a lavish and unwearying helper of young men of promise
The Right Hon. John Maynard Keynes, C.B., Baron Keynes, of Tilton, Sussex, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, was born on June 5, 1883, son of Dr. John Nevile Keynes, for many years Registrar of Cambridge University. His mother was Mayor of Cambridge as late as 1932. He was brought up in the most intellectual society of Cambridge. He was in college at Eton, which he dearly loved, and he was proud of being nominated by the masters to be their representative governor later in life. He won a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, in mathematics and classics, writing his essay on Héloïse and Abélard. He was President of the Cambridge Union, won the Members' English Essay Prize for an essay on the political opinions of Burke, and was twelfth wrangler in the mathematical tripos. Although he did not take another tripos, he studied deeply in philosophy and economics and was influenced by such men as Sidgwick, Whitehead, W. E. Johnson, G. E. Moore, and, of course, Alfred Marshall.
In 1906 he passed second into the Civil Service, getting his worst mark in economics - "The examiners presumably knew less than I did" and chose the India Office, partly out of regard for John Morley and partly because in those days of a smooth working gold standard, the Indian currency was the liveliest monetary issue and had been the subject of Royal Commissions and classic controversies. During his two years there he was working on his fellowship dissertation on "Probability," which gained him a prize fellowship at King's. This did not oblige him to resign from the Civil Service, but Marshall was anxious to get him to Cambridge and, as token, paid him 100 pounds a year out of his private pocket to supplement the exiguous fellowship dividend—those were before the days of his bursarship of the college. Anyhow, his real heart lay in Cambridge. He lectured on money. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance (1913-14). He served in the Treasury from 1915 to 1919, went with the first Lord Reading's mission to the United States, and was principal representative of the Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference and deputy for the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Supreme Economic Council. After his resignation, he returned to teaching and to his bursar's duties at King's, but he always spent part of his time in London. He was a member of the Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry, and parts of its classic report bear the stamp of his mind.
In 1940 he was made a member of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Consultative Council and played an important part in Treasury business. He was appointed a director of the Bank of England. In 1942 he was created Lord Keynes, of Tilton, and made some valuable contributions to debate in the Upper House. He became High Steward of Cambridge (Borough) in 1943. His continued interest in the arts was marked by his trusteeship of the National Gallery and chair of Music and the Arts. In 1925 he married Lydia Lopokova, renowned star of the Russian Imperial Ballet. "The best thing Maynard ever did," according to the aged Mrs. Alfred Marshall. She made a delightful home for him, and in the years after his serious heart attack in 1937 was a tireless nurse and vigilant guardian against the pressures of the outside world.
Lord Keynes's genius was expressed in his important contributions to the fundamentals of economic science; in his power of winning public interest in the practical application of economics on critical occasions; in his English prose style, his description of the protagonists at the Versailles Conference, first fully published in his Essays in Biography (1933), is likely long to remain a classic—and, perhaps it should be added, in the brilliant wit, the wisdom, and the range of his private conversation, which would have made him a valued member of any intellectual salon or coterie in the great ages of polished discussion.
In practical affairs, his activities in addition to his important public services were legion. As bursar of King's, he administered the college of France with undageing attention to detail. By outside trustee securities, he greatly enlarged the resources of the college, and, unlike most college bursars, he was continually urging the college to spend more money on current needs. From 1912 he was editor of the Economic Journal, which grew and flourished under his guidance, and from 1921 to 1938 he was chairman of the National Mutual Life Assurance Society. He ran an investment company. He organized the Camargo Ballet. He built and opened the Arts Theatre at Cambridge and, having himself supervised and financed it during its period of teething troubles, he handed it over, when it was established as a paying concern, as a gift to ex-officio trustees drawn from the university and city. He became chairman of C.E.M.A. in 1942 and of the Arts Council in 1945. He was chair of the Nation, and later, when the merger took place, of the New Statesman; but he had too scrupulous a regard for editorial freedom for that paper to be in any sense a reflection of his own opinions. He also did duty as a teacher of undergraduates at King's College and played an important and inspiring part in the development of the Economics faculty at Cambridge. The better students saw him at his most brilliant in his Political Economy Club. He was interested in university business, and his evidence before the Royal Commission (1919-22) was an important influence in causing it to recommend that the financial powers of the university should give it greater influence over the colleges.
To find an economist of comparable influence, one would have to go back to Adam Smith. His early interest was primarily in money and foreign exchange, and there is an austere school of thought which regards his "Indian Currency and Finance" (1912) as his best book. After the 1914-18 war, his interest in the relationship between monetary deflation and trade depression led him to reconsider the traditional theory about the broad economic forces which govern the total level of employment and activity in a society. He concluded that, to make a free system work at optimum capacity and thus provide "full employment" -- it would be necessary to have deliberate central control of the rate of interest and also, in certain cases, to stimulate capital development. These conclusions rest on a very subtle and intricate analysis of the workings of the whole system, which is still being debated wherever economics is seriously studied.
Popularly, he was supposed to have the vice of inconsistency. Serious students of his work are not inclined to endorse this estimate. His views changed in the sense that they developed. He would perceive that some particular theory had a wider application. He was always feeling his way to the larger synthesis. The new generalization grew out of the old. But he regarded words as private property which he would define and redefine. Unlike most professional theorists, he was very quick to adapt the application of theory to changes the circumstances. Speed of thought was his characteristic in all things. In general conversation he loved to disturb complacency, and when, as so often, there were two sides to a question he would emphasize the one more disturbing to the company present.
His "Treatise on Probability" is a notable work of philosophy. Although using mathematical symbols freely, it does not seek to add to the mathematical theory of probability, but rather to explore the philosophical foundations on which that theory rests. Written clearly and without pedantry, it displays a vast erudition in the history of the subject, which was reinforced by and reinforced by his activities as a bibliophile.
Keynes had on certain occasions an appreciable influence on the course of history. His resignation from the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and his publication a few months later of "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" had immediate and lasting effects on world opinion about the peace treaty. The propriety of his action became a matter of controversy. Opinions still differ on the merits of the treaty, but about the point with which he was particularly concerned, reparations, there is now general agreement with his view that the settlement, or lack of settlement, was ill-conceived and likely to do injury to the fabric of the world economy. His subsequent polemic against the gold standard did not prevent a return to it in 1925, but largely added to the ill repute of that system in wide circles since. It was mainly through his personal influence some years later that the Liberal Party adopted as their platform in the election of 1929 the proposal to conquer unemployment through a policy of public works and monetary expansion.
In two wars he had a foothold in the British Treasury. The idea of deferred credits was contained in the pamphlet entitled "How to Pay for the War," which he published in 1940. From 1943, he played a principal part in the discussions and negotiations with the United States to effect a transition from war to peace conditions of trade and finance which avoided the errors of the last peace, and to establish an international organization which would avoid both the disastrous fluctuations and the restrictions which characterized the inter-war period. He was the leader of the British experts in the preparatory discussions of 1943 and gave his name to the first British contribution, the Keynes Plan to the proposals for establishing an international monetary authority. In July 1944, he led the British delegation at the Monetary Conference of the and Associated Nations at Bretton Woods, where an agreed plan was worked out. He was the dominant figure in the British delegation, which for three months, from September to December 1945, hammered out the terms of the American Loan Agreement, which he defended brilliantly in the House of Lords. He was appointed in February Governor of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and in these capacities had just paid a further visit to the United States when he returned only two weeks ago. These continuous exertions to advance the cause of liberality and freedom in commercial and financial policies as a means to expand world trade and employment imposed an exceptionally heavy and prolonged strain, which, in view of his severe illness just before the war, Lord Keynes was physically ill-fit to bear.
His lifelong activities as a book collector were not interrupted even by war. His great haul of unpublished Newton manuscripts calls for mention. He identified an anonymous pamphlet entitled "An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature," acquired by his brother, Mr. Geoffrey Keynes, as being the authentic work of David Hume himself. He had it reprinted in 1938, and it will no doubt be eagerly studied by generations of philosophers. During the Second War, his hobby was to buy and then, unlike many bibliophiles, to read rare Elizabethan works. His interest in and encouragement of the arts meant much to him. From undergraduate days, he had great friendships with writers and painters, and while his activities brought him into touch with many distinguished people of the academic world and public life, he was probably happiest with artistic people. At one period he was at the center of the literary circle which used to be known as "Bloomsbury Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and"—their intimate friends. More than fame and worldly honors, he valued the good esteem of this very cultivated and fastidious society.
And finally there was the man himself—radiant, brilliant, effervescent, gay, full of impish jokes. His entry into the room invari- ably raised the spirits of the company. He always seemed cheerful; his interests and pro- jects were so many and his knowledge so deep that he gave the feeling that the world could not get seriously out of joint in the end while he was busy in it. He did not suffer fools gladly; he often put eminent persons to shame by making a devastating retort which left no loophole for face-saving. He could be rude. He did not expect others to bear malice and bore none himself in the little or great affairs of life. He had many rebuffs but did not recriminate. When his projects were rejected, often by mere obstructionists, he went straight ahead and produced some more projects. He was a shrewd judge of men and often plumbed the depths in his psychology. He was a humane man genuinely devoted to the cause of the common good.
___________________________________________________
PROFOUND INFLUENCE ON THOUGHT AND POLICY
By Lionel Robbins
The publication of Mr. Harrod's Life has a double significance: they are something of a literary event. Lord Keynes was concerned and, at the same time, a running scrutiny of particular questions with which he was concerned. The issues with which he was concerned were so controversial that it would be a miracle if any biography, written at this date, should be regarded as immune from criticism. And the somewhat personal nature of Mr. Harrod's narrative, together with the vigour with which he argues disputed questions, make it likely that what he has written will not be so regarded. Never the less, he has placed both us and the future very greatly in his debt He has gathered together a vast body of information, indispensable for judgment on Lord Keynes's achievement, but likely to have disappeared had the writing of a biography been deferred; and he has made of it a book which, whether it commands agreement or not, it is exceedingly difficult to stop reading. My own judgment is that it will long continue to be read.
THE MARK OF GENIUS
Lord Keynes was not one whose genius was unappreciated during his lifetime. What Dr. Johnson said of Burke was true of him; it was impossible to spend a casual five minutes in his company without realizing that you were in the presence of a most unusual man. Both in his conversation, with its lightning swiftness and its kaleidoscopic variety, and in his prose style, with its infinite resources of vigour and exquisite cadence, he had command of a certain magic which made everything he said or wrote the center of attention. From the publication of The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919 to his death in 1946, throughout the English-speaking world he dominated the intellectual scene; and his influence left a profound mark on public policy. The future historian of social thought may well call this period the period of John Maynard Keynes. Yet it is not at all easy to find any simple formula to describe wherein this ascendancy consisted
That Keynes was a great economist is not open to serious question. At all stages of his thought, whether you agree with him or not, there is a quality which can only be described in these terms. The combination of practical grasp and theoretical insight, which is to be found in everything he wrote, is something which has not appeared more than four or five times in the history of economics. But the exact nature of his achievement is not so easy to summarize. Much of his most striking work was concerned with particular applications, where the uniqueness of his contribution consists, not so much in new theory, as in the revelation of how existing theory can be applied; and the status of the General Theory, where his concern was with the broadest type of generalization and where his claims to far-reaching innovation were emphatic, is still a matter of some dispute.
A LASTING IMPRINT
It must be admitted, I think, that a case which is not intellectually negligible, be made for the view that his claims to this respect were overstated: that some of what he thought to be novel was in fact in line with past developments, and some of what was truly novel was one-sided in its emphasis. Yet to leave it at that would be unjust. Economics, as Keynes once said, is not so much a body of settled doctrine as a mode of approach; and whatever may be the verdict of posterity on the detailed propositions of the General Theory or the adequacy of its scope, it is safe to say that it has made an imprint on our mode of approach which is lasting. It is one of the few books of which it can be said that no one who has read it without prejudice can feel that his own thinking can ever be the same again. It is not true, as has sometimes been assumed, that before its appearance there was no discussion of aggregate output, employment, and income; but it is true that no significant discussion since then has been from its positive influence
Keynes was, of course, much more than an economist. Both in his day-to-day pre-occupations and in his more remote objectives, his main concern was not with mere technology but rather with the ultimate underlying human issues: justice, order, improvement, the clear arena for the intellect and the creative imagination. This was one of the secrets of his power. In his hands, economic analysis was so obviously not a dismal science constricting the human horizon, but rather a necessary discipline of thought designed eventually to liberate the spirit—no danger of the ultimate values being ignored by him who realized them so conspicuously in his own life and style. Thus his various writings have a double significance: They are at once contributions to the solutions of the particular questions with which they are concerned and at the same time a commentary on the deeper problems with which our society is confronted.
If it is difficult to find a concise formula for Keynes's intrinsic qualities, it is still more difficult at this stage to make any correct estimate of the total effect of his influence. It should go without saying that the presence in our midst of a being of this kind was itself an enrichment of the general atmosphere: the spiritual flatness of our pygmy age now that he has gone is sufficient testimony to that. But the influence of genius of this degree of force is seldom only in one direction; and the influence of Keynes, if I am not mistaken, was no exception in this respect. He contributed much of illumination and inspiration; but he sometimes contributed to confusion. He shook age-long error and prejudice, but he also sometimes shook essential foundations
There was indeed something of the final mystery of ancient mythology about the nature of his genius—destroyer, preserver, creator—irreducible elements in the picture. And although in any assessment of his conscious aims and in the memories of his friends it is the preserver and creator which must be uppermost, a level view, if that be possible, cannot overlook directions and occasions when the influence of the destroyer was evident.
ATTACKS ON THE TREATY
Take, for instance, his attacks on the Treaty of Versailles, which first brought him to the notice of the general public. The Economic Consequences of the Peace is one of the most magnificent pleas for humanity and justice of this or any other age. Yet there can be little doubt that the form of his reaction against the follies of part of the settlement did some harm as well as much good. It led to an oversimplification of the German problem—to which, having regard to his considerable distaste for many things German, he was always curiously insensitive. And this, in turn, led to an inability to do justice to important elements in the French case, which, through his immense influence on public opinion, contributed somewhat to fateful misunderstandings. I confess that, in my judgment, there are elements in his later work whose influence has been similarly double-sided. Mr. Harrod devotes much space to the
last period of Keynes's work as adviser to the Chancellor. In this I think he is right, although considerations of public interest at some points still preclude a complete picture. Although, to the future, it is for his thought and his general influence that Keynes will be important, in the perspective of his own career this phase has a special significance. It was at this stage that he was no longer in opposition; no doubt now which elements were chiefly operative, the destroyer quiescent, the preserver and creator fully extended. If our financial affairs could be conducted with more enlightenment than usual, if we were more successful in avoiding inflation than any historical precedent in history could have suggested to be possible, it is to his influence that this must be largely attributed.
SUPREME ENVOY
Nor was this influence confined to domestic policy, the broad outlines of our external economic policy, the lend-lease arrangements during the war, the loan settlement which averted collapse when it was over, the structure of economic institutions which an idealistic vision of the future endeavored to erect—he was clearly the chief architect. He was not always a good negotiator; it was part of the tragedy of his end that he was apt to wear himself out on small matters where his impetuous spirit was ill at ease and where lesser men could have done at least as well. But as an envoy he was supreme. Not even Mr. Churchill could more magnificently state the case for this country than Keynes at his eloquent best. It is yet too early to do justice to these high themes. Indeed, for those who knew Keynes well, it is virtually impossible to do so To them, and perhaps especially to those who saw him in the last stages, battling against bodily weakness and eventually dying for the cause as certain as any soldier on the field of battle, the judgment of the public figure and the public achievement is too much mixed up with associations of the man himself - behind the brilliance and the vision, the authority and the paradox, the occasional arrogance and the dissolving persuasive-ness, the private Keynes whom Mr. Harrod so well delineates, the cheerful companion, the loving son, the devoted husband, a man keenly sensitive to beauty of all kinds and the small enduring joys of life, a man who, in a wider circle than most, was not only greatly admired but also greatly loved.
A GREAT ECONOMIST
Lord Keynes, the great economist, died yesterday at Tilton, Firle, Sussex, from a heart attack.
By his death, the country has lost a very great Englishman. He was a man of genius, who as a political economist had a worldwide influence on the thinking of both specialists and the general public, and he was a master of a variety of other subjects which he pursued throughout his life. He was a man of action as well as of thought, who intervened on occasion with critical effect in the great affairs of state and carried on efficiently a number of practical business activities which would have filled the life of an ordinary man. And he was not merely a prodigy of intellect; he had civic virtues: courage, steadfastness, and a humane outlook; he had private virtues: he was a good son, a devoted member of his college, a loyal and affectionate friend, and a lavish and unwearying helper of young men of promise
The Right Hon. John Maynard Keynes, C.B., Baron Keynes, of Tilton, Sussex, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, was born on June 5, 1883, son of Dr. John Nevile Keynes, for many years Registrar of Cambridge University. His mother was Mayor of Cambridge as late as 1932. He was brought up in the most intellectual society of Cambridge. He was in college at Eton, which he dearly loved, and he was proud of being nominated by the masters to be their representative governor later in life. He won a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, in mathematics and classics, writing his essay on Héloïse and Abélard. He was President of the Cambridge Union, won the Members' English Essay Prize for an essay on the political opinions of Burke, and was twelfth wrangler in the mathematical tripos. Although he did not take another tripos, he studied deeply in philosophy and economics and was influenced by such men as Sidgwick, Whitehead, W. E. Johnson, G. E. Moore, and, of course, Alfred Marshall.
In 1906 he passed second into the Civil Service, getting his worst mark in economics - "The examiners presumably knew less than I did" and chose the India Office, partly out of regard for John Morley and partly because in those days of a smooth working gold standard, the Indian currency was the liveliest monetary issue and had been the subject of Royal Commissions and classic controversies. During his two years there he was working on his fellowship dissertation on "Probability," which gained him a prize fellowship at King's. This did not oblige him to resign from the Civil Service, but Marshall was anxious to get him to Cambridge and, as token, paid him 100 pounds a year out of his private pocket to supplement the exiguous fellowship dividend—those were before the days of his bursarship of the college. Anyhow, his real heart lay in Cambridge. He lectured on money. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance (1913-14). He served in the Treasury from 1915 to 1919, went with the first Lord Reading's mission to the United States, and was principal representative of the Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference and deputy for the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Supreme Economic Council. After his resignation, he returned to teaching and to his bursar's duties at King's, but he always spent part of his time in London. He was a member of the Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry, and parts of its classic report bear the stamp of his mind.
In 1940 he was made a member of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Consultative Council and played an important part in Treasury business. He was appointed a director of the Bank of England. In 1942 he was created Lord Keynes, of Tilton, and made some valuable contributions to debate in the Upper House. He became High Steward of Cambridge (Borough) in 1943. His continued interest in the arts was marked by his trusteeship of the National Gallery and chair of Music and the Arts. In 1925 he married Lydia Lopokova, renowned star of the Russian Imperial Ballet. "The best thing Maynard ever did," according to the aged Mrs. Alfred Marshall. She made a delightful home for him, and in the years after his serious heart attack in 1937 was a tireless nurse and vigilant guardian against the pressures of the outside world.
Lord Keynes's genius was expressed in his important contributions to the fundamentals of economic science; in his power of winning public interest in the practical application of economics on critical occasions; in his English prose style, his description of the protagonists at the Versailles Conference, first fully published in his Essays in Biography (1933), is likely long to remain a classic—and, perhaps it should be added, in the brilliant wit, the wisdom, and the range of his private conversation, which would have made him a valued member of any intellectual salon or coterie in the great ages of polished discussion.
In practical affairs, his activities in addition to his important public services were legion. As bursar of King's, he administered the college of France with undageing attention to detail. By outside trustee securities, he greatly enlarged the resources of the college, and, unlike most college bursars, he was continually urging the college to spend more money on current needs. From 1912 he was editor of the Economic Journal, which grew and flourished under his guidance, and from 1921 to 1938 he was chairman of the National Mutual Life Assurance Society. He ran an investment company. He organized the Camargo Ballet. He built and opened the Arts Theatre at Cambridge and, having himself supervised and financed it during its period of teething troubles, he handed it over, when it was established as a paying concern, as a gift to ex-officio trustees drawn from the university and city. He became chairman of C.E.M.A. in 1942 and of the Arts Council in 1945. He was chair of the Nation, and later, when the merger took place, of the New Statesman; but he had too scrupulous a regard for editorial freedom for that paper to be in any sense a reflection of his own opinions. He also did duty as a teacher of undergraduates at King's College and played an important and inspiring part in the development of the Economics faculty at Cambridge. The better students saw him at his most brilliant in his Political Economy Club. He was interested in university business, and his evidence before the Royal Commission (1919-22) was an important influence in causing it to recommend that the financial powers of the university should give it greater influence over the colleges.
To find an economist of comparable influence, one would have to go back to Adam Smith. His early interest was primarily in money and foreign exchange, and there is an austere school of thought which regards his "Indian Currency and Finance" (1912) as his best book. After the 1914-18 war, his interest in the relationship between monetary deflation and trade depression led him to reconsider the traditional theory about the broad economic forces which govern the total level of employment and activity in a society. He concluded that, to make a free system work at optimum capacity and thus provide "full employment" -- it would be necessary to have deliberate central control of the rate of interest and also, in certain cases, to stimulate capital development. These conclusions rest on a very subtle and intricate analysis of the workings of the whole system, which is still being debated wherever economics is seriously studied.
Popularly, he was supposed to have the vice of inconsistency. Serious students of his work are not inclined to endorse this estimate. His views changed in the sense that they developed. He would perceive that some particular theory had a wider application. He was always feeling his way to the larger synthesis. The new generalization grew out of the old. But he regarded words as private property which he would define and redefine. Unlike most professional theorists, he was very quick to adapt the application of theory to changes the circumstances. Speed of thought was his characteristic in all things. In general conversation he loved to disturb complacency, and when, as so often, there were two sides to a question he would emphasize the one more disturbing to the company present.
His "Treatise on Probability" is a notable work of philosophy. Although using mathematical symbols freely, it does not seek to add to the mathematical theory of probability, but rather to explore the philosophical foundations on which that theory rests. Written clearly and without pedantry, it displays a vast erudition in the history of the subject, which was reinforced by and reinforced by his activities as a bibliophile.
Keynes had on certain occasions an appreciable influence on the course of history. His resignation from the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and his publication a few months later of "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" had immediate and lasting effects on world opinion about the peace treaty. The propriety of his action became a matter of controversy. Opinions still differ on the merits of the treaty, but about the point with which he was particularly concerned, reparations, there is now general agreement with his view that the settlement, or lack of settlement, was ill-conceived and likely to do injury to the fabric of the world economy. His subsequent polemic against the gold standard did not prevent a return to it in 1925, but largely added to the ill repute of that system in wide circles since. It was mainly through his personal influence some years later that the Liberal Party adopted as their platform in the election of 1929 the proposal to conquer unemployment through a policy of public works and monetary expansion.
In two wars he had a foothold in the British Treasury. The idea of deferred credits was contained in the pamphlet entitled "How to Pay for the War," which he published in 1940. From 1943, he played a principal part in the discussions and negotiations with the United States to effect a transition from war to peace conditions of trade and finance which avoided the errors of the last peace, and to establish an international organization which would avoid both the disastrous fluctuations and the restrictions which characterized the inter-war period. He was the leader of the British experts in the preparatory discussions of 1943 and gave his name to the first British contribution, the Keynes Plan to the proposals for establishing an international monetary authority. In July 1944, he led the British delegation at the Monetary Conference of the and Associated Nations at Bretton Woods, where an agreed plan was worked out. He was the dominant figure in the British delegation, which for three months, from September to December 1945, hammered out the terms of the American Loan Agreement, which he defended brilliantly in the House of Lords. He was appointed in February Governor of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and in these capacities had just paid a further visit to the United States when he returned only two weeks ago. These continuous exertions to advance the cause of liberality and freedom in commercial and financial policies as a means to expand world trade and employment imposed an exceptionally heavy and prolonged strain, which, in view of his severe illness just before the war, Lord Keynes was physically ill-fit to bear.
His lifelong activities as a book collector were not interrupted even by war. His great haul of unpublished Newton manuscripts calls for mention. He identified an anonymous pamphlet entitled "An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature," acquired by his brother, Mr. Geoffrey Keynes, as being the authentic work of David Hume himself. He had it reprinted in 1938, and it will no doubt be eagerly studied by generations of philosophers. During the Second War, his hobby was to buy and then, unlike many bibliophiles, to read rare Elizabethan works. His interest in and encouragement of the arts meant much to him. From undergraduate days, he had great friendships with writers and painters, and while his activities brought him into touch with many distinguished people of the academic world and public life, he was probably happiest with artistic people. At one period he was at the center of the literary circle which used to be known as "Bloomsbury Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and"—their intimate friends. More than fame and worldly honors, he valued the good esteem of this very cultivated and fastidious society.
And finally there was the man himself—radiant, brilliant, effervescent, gay, full of impish jokes. His entry into the room invari- ably raised the spirits of the company. He always seemed cheerful; his interests and pro- jects were so many and his knowledge so deep that he gave the feeling that the world could not get seriously out of joint in the end while he was busy in it. He did not suffer fools gladly; he often put eminent persons to shame by making a devastating retort which left no loophole for face-saving. He could be rude. He did not expect others to bear malice and bore none himself in the little or great affairs of life. He had many rebuffs but did not recriminate. When his projects were rejected, often by mere obstructionists, he went straight ahead and produced some more projects. He was a shrewd judge of men and often plumbed the depths in his psychology. He was a humane man genuinely devoted to the cause of the common good.
___________________________________________________
PROFOUND INFLUENCE ON THOUGHT AND POLICY
By Lionel Robbins
The publication of Mr. Harrod's Life has a double significance: they are something of a literary event. Lord Keynes was concerned and, at the same time, a running scrutiny of particular questions with which he was concerned. The issues with which he was concerned were so controversial that it would be a miracle if any biography, written at this date, should be regarded as immune from criticism. And the somewhat personal nature of Mr. Harrod's narrative, together with the vigour with which he argues disputed questions, make it likely that what he has written will not be so regarded. Never the less, he has placed both us and the future very greatly in his debt He has gathered together a vast body of information, indispensable for judgment on Lord Keynes's achievement, but likely to have disappeared had the writing of a biography been deferred; and he has made of it a book which, whether it commands agreement or not, it is exceedingly difficult to stop reading. My own judgment is that it will long continue to be read.
THE MARK OF GENIUS
Lord Keynes was not one whose genius was unappreciated during his lifetime. What Dr. Johnson said of Burke was true of him; it was impossible to spend a casual five minutes in his company without realizing that you were in the presence of a most unusual man. Both in his conversation, with its lightning swiftness and its kaleidoscopic variety, and in his prose style, with its infinite resources of vigour and exquisite cadence, he had command of a certain magic which made everything he said or wrote the center of attention. From the publication of The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919 to his death in 1946, throughout the English-speaking world he dominated the intellectual scene; and his influence left a profound mark on public policy. The future historian of social thought may well call this period the period of John Maynard Keynes. Yet it is not at all easy to find any simple formula to describe wherein this ascendancy consisted
That Keynes was a great economist is not open to serious question. At all stages of his thought, whether you agree with him or not, there is a quality which can only be described in these terms. The combination of practical grasp and theoretical insight, which is to be found in everything he wrote, is something which has not appeared more than four or five times in the history of economics. But the exact nature of his achievement is not so easy to summarize. Much of his most striking work was concerned with particular applications, where the uniqueness of his contribution consists, not so much in new theory, as in the revelation of how existing theory can be applied; and the status of the General Theory, where his concern was with the broadest type of generalization and where his claims to far-reaching innovation were emphatic, is still a matter of some dispute.
A LASTING IMPRINT
It must be admitted, I think, that a case which is not intellectually negligible, be made for the view that his claims to this respect were overstated: that some of what he thought to be novel was in fact in line with past developments, and some of what was truly novel was one-sided in its emphasis. Yet to leave it at that would be unjust. Economics, as Keynes once said, is not so much a body of settled doctrine as a mode of approach; and whatever may be the verdict of posterity on the detailed propositions of the General Theory or the adequacy of its scope, it is safe to say that it has made an imprint on our mode of approach which is lasting. It is one of the few books of which it can be said that no one who has read it without prejudice can feel that his own thinking can ever be the same again. It is not true, as has sometimes been assumed, that before its appearance there was no discussion of aggregate output, employment, and income; but it is true that no significant discussion since then has been from its positive influence
Keynes was, of course, much more than an economist. Both in his day-to-day pre-occupations and in his more remote objectives, his main concern was not with mere technology but rather with the ultimate underlying human issues: justice, order, improvement, the clear arena for the intellect and the creative imagination. This was one of the secrets of his power. In his hands, economic analysis was so obviously not a dismal science constricting the human horizon, but rather a necessary discipline of thought designed eventually to liberate the spirit—no danger of the ultimate values being ignored by him who realized them so conspicuously in his own life and style. Thus his various writings have a double significance: They are at once contributions to the solutions of the particular questions with which they are concerned and at the same time a commentary on the deeper problems with which our society is confronted.
If it is difficult to find a concise formula for Keynes's intrinsic qualities, it is still more difficult at this stage to make any correct estimate of the total effect of his influence. It should go without saying that the presence in our midst of a being of this kind was itself an enrichment of the general atmosphere: the spiritual flatness of our pygmy age now that he has gone is sufficient testimony to that. But the influence of genius of this degree of force is seldom only in one direction; and the influence of Keynes, if I am not mistaken, was no exception in this respect. He contributed much of illumination and inspiration; but he sometimes contributed to confusion. He shook age-long error and prejudice, but he also sometimes shook essential foundations
There was indeed something of the final mystery of ancient mythology about the nature of his genius—destroyer, preserver, creator—irreducible elements in the picture. And although in any assessment of his conscious aims and in the memories of his friends it is the preserver and creator which must be uppermost, a level view, if that be possible, cannot overlook directions and occasions when the influence of the destroyer was evident.
ATTACKS ON THE TREATY
Take, for instance, his attacks on the Treaty of Versailles, which first brought him to the notice of the general public. The Economic Consequences of the Peace is one of the most magnificent pleas for humanity and justice of this or any other age. Yet there can be little doubt that the form of his reaction against the follies of part of the settlement did some harm as well as much good. It led to an oversimplification of the German problem—to which, having regard to his considerable distaste for many things German, he was always curiously insensitive. And this, in turn, led to an inability to do justice to important elements in the French case, which, through his immense influence on public opinion, contributed somewhat to fateful misunderstandings. I confess that, in my judgment, there are elements in his later work whose influence has been similarly double-sided. Mr. Harrod devotes much space to the
last period of Keynes's work as adviser to the Chancellor. In this I think he is right, although considerations of public interest at some points still preclude a complete picture. Although, to the future, it is for his thought and his general influence that Keynes will be important, in the perspective of his own career this phase has a special significance. It was at this stage that he was no longer in opposition; no doubt now which elements were chiefly operative, the destroyer quiescent, the preserver and creator fully extended. If our financial affairs could be conducted with more enlightenment than usual, if we were more successful in avoiding inflation than any historical precedent in history could have suggested to be possible, it is to his influence that this must be largely attributed.
SUPREME ENVOY
Nor was this influence confined to domestic policy, the broad outlines of our external economic policy, the lend-lease arrangements during the war, the loan settlement which averted collapse when it was over, the structure of economic institutions which an idealistic vision of the future endeavored to erect—he was clearly the chief architect. He was not always a good negotiator; it was part of the tragedy of his end that he was apt to wear himself out on small matters where his impetuous spirit was ill at ease and where lesser men could have done at least as well. But as an envoy he was supreme. Not even Mr. Churchill could more magnificently state the case for this country than Keynes at his eloquent best. It is yet too early to do justice to these high themes. Indeed, for those who knew Keynes well, it is virtually impossible to do so To them, and perhaps especially to those who saw him in the last stages, battling against bodily weakness and eventually dying for the cause as certain as any soldier on the field of battle, the judgment of the public figure and the public achievement is too much mixed up with associations of the man himself - behind the brilliance and the vision, the authority and the paradox, the occasional arrogance and the dissolving persuasive-ness, the private Keynes whom Mr. Harrod so well delineates, the cheerful companion, the loving son, the devoted husband, a man keenly sensitive to beauty of all kinds and the small enduring joys of life, a man who, in a wider circle than most, was not only greatly admired but also greatly loved.
