John Maynard Keynes resigned form the British Treasury in 1919 to protest this high sum of money demanded . Most famously , the principal representative of the British Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference , John Maynard Keynes , resigned from the Treasury in June 1919 in protest at the scale of the reparations demands , and subsequently protested publicly in the best-selling The Economic Consequences of the Peace ( 1919 ) .