The High Cost of Vengeance. This item is unavailable.The High Cost of Vengeance

FOLLOWING WORLD WAR I FRANCE AND BRITAIN REFUSED TO LISTEN to the statesmen who said that you can have peace or vengeance, not both. They broke their armistice pledge to Germany that peace would be made on the basis of President Wilson's Fourteen Points and "the principles of settlement enunciated" by the American President. They continued the starvation blockade of Germany for six months after the Armistice, in order to force the German democrats who had taken over the government to sign a dictated peace. Having promised a peace without annexations or indemnities, they deprived Germany of territory and imposed a crushing reparations burden on the newly established Weimar Republic. Having promised general disarmament they disarmed Germany without disarming themselves. The victors refused even to discuss the terms of peace with the vanquished who had surrendered on stated conditions which were not fulfilled, and in general dis- credited democracy in German eyes by associating it with broken pledges, national humiliation, and economic distress.

Freda Winifred Utley (1898-1978) était une universitaire, activiste et autrice britannique et américaine. Après avoir obtenu des diplômes en histoire à King's College London, elle s'est engagée dans le communisme dans les années 1920. Sa désillusion est survenue après avoir vécu en Union soviétique, notamment lorsque son mari russe fut arrêté en 1936. Elle s'est alors consacrée à l'écriture, devenant une autrice anti-communiste prolifique. Parmi ses oeuvres notables figurent "Lost Illusion" et "The High Cost of Vengeance". Sa vie est un témoignage de son évolution politique et de son regard critique sur les événements majeurs du 20e siècle.