German negotiators] assumed ... that [the Allied negotiators] were secretly as anxious as the Germans themselves to arrive at a settlement which bore some relation to the facts, and that they would therefore be willing, in view of the entanglements which they had gotten themselves into with their own publics [in promising that "Germany will pay"], to practice a little collusion in drafting the Treaty,– a supposition which in slightly different circumstances might have had a good deal of foundation. As matters actually were, this subtlety did not benefit them, and they would have done much better with a straightforward and candid estimate of what they believed to be the amount of their liabilities on the one hand, and their capacity to pay on the other. In addition to his meetings in Versailles, at the invitation of Max Warburg's brother Paul Warburg, Keynes attended an Amsterdam conference of bankers and economists in October 1919, and he drafted there with Paul Warburg a memorandum of appeal to the League of Nations calling for a reduction in German reparations. Success Keynes' book was released in late 1919 and was an immediate success: it became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic: it was released in the United States in 1920. The scathing sketches of Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau proved to be very popular and the work established Keynes' reputation with the public as a leading economist. In six months, the book had sold 100,000 copies worldwide, with translations into 12 languages. It restored Keynes' reputation with the Bloomsbury Group, which had been tarnished by his work for the Treasury during the war. Keynes returned to Cambridge to work as an economist, where he was regarded as the leading student of Alfred Marshall. Impact in the United States As well as being highly successful in commercial terms in the US, the book proved to be highly influential. The book was released just before the US Senate considered the treaty and confirmed the beliefs of the "irreconcilables" against American participation in the League of Nations. As well, the book also heightened the doubts of the "reservationists", led by Henry Cabot Lodge, over the terms of the treaty and created doubts in the minds of Wilson's supporters. Lodge, the Republican Senate leader, shared Keynes' concerns about the severity of the treaty on Germany and believed that it would have to be renegotiated in