John Maynard Keynes, Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920.

According to [the French] vision of the future, European history is to be a perpetual prize-fight, of which France has won this round, but of which this round is certainly not the last. . . . For Clemenceau made no pretense of considering himself bound by the Fourteen Points and left chiefly to others such concoctions as were necessary from time to time to save the scruples or the face of the President [Wilson].

. . . The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable, abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe.