John Maynard Keynes, celebrated economist and author of The Economic Consequences of the Peace, wrote a letter to The Times, London. He proposed to tear up all the correspondence between Britain and France and start again as follows:
If France would agree
1) To evacuate the Ruhr;
2) To fix the nominal German liability at fifty milliard gold marks (50,000,000,000).
3) To allow the rate at which this liability is discharged to be determined by a Committee of the Reparation Commission on which would sit an American representative with a vote...