Anglo-American Establishment

From Rhodes to Cliveden
Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) was a highly respected professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He was an instructor at Princeton and Harvard; a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the House Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration; and the U.S. Navy. His other major works include Evolution of Civilization and Tragedy and Hope - a History of The World in Our Time.

{p. ix} Preface

THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS, established by the terms of
Cecil Rhodes's seventh will, are known to everyone. What is not so widely known is that Rhodes in five previous wills left his fortune to form a secret society, which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. And what does not seem to be known to anyone is that this secret society was created by Rhodes and his principal trustee, Lord Milner, and continues to exist to this day. To be sure, this secret society is not a childish thing like the Ku Klux Klan, and it does not have any secret robes, secret handclasps, or secret passwords. It does not need any of these, since its members know each other intimately. It probably has no oaths of secrecy nor any formal procedure of initiation. It does, however, exist and holds secret meetings, over which the senior member present presides. At various times since 1891, these meetings have been presided over by Rhodes, Lord Milner, Lord Selborne, Sir Patrick Duncan, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Lord Lothian, and Lord Brand. They have been held in all the British Dominions, starting in South Africa about 1903; in various places in London, chiefly Piccadilly; at various colleges at Oxford, chiefly All Souls; and at many English country houses such as Tring Park, Blickling Hall, Cliveden, and others.

This society has been known at various times as Milner's Kindergarten, as the Round Table Group, as the Rhodes crowd, as The Times crowd, as the All Souls group, and as the Cliveden set. All of these terms are unsatisfactory, for one reason or another, and I have chosen to call it the Milner Group. Those persons who have used the other terms, or heard them used, have not generally been aware that all these various terms referred to the same Group.

It is not easy for an outsider to write the history of a secret group of this kind, but, since no insider is going to do it, an outsider must attempt it. It should be done, for this Group is, as I shall show, one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century.

{p. 3} ONE WINTRY AFTERNOON in February 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London. From that conversation were to flow consequences of the greatest importance to the British Empire and to the world as a whole. For these men were organizing a secret society that was, for more than fifty years, to be one of the most important forces in the formulation and execution of British imperial and foreign policy.

The three men who were thus engaged were already well known in England. The leader was Cecil Rhodes, fabulously wealthy empirebuilder and the most important person in South Africa. The second was William T. Stead, the most famous, and probably also the most sensational, journalist of the day. The third was Reginald Baliol Brett, later known as Lord Esher, friend and confidant of Queen Victoria, and later to be the most influential adviser of King Edward VII and King George V.

The details of this important conversation will be examined later. At present we need only point out that the three drew up a plan of organization for their secret society and a list of original members. The plan of organization provided for an inner circle, to be known as "The Society of the Elect," and an outer circle, to be known as "The Association of Helpers." Within The Society of the Elect, the real power was to be exercised by the leader, and a "Junta of Three." The leader was to be Rhodes, and the Junta was to be Stead, Brett, and Alfred Milner. In accordance with this decision, Milner was added to the society by Stead shortly after the meeting we have described.

The creation of this secret society was not a matter of a moment. As we shall see, Rhodes had been planning for this event for more than seventeen years. Stead had been introduced to the plan on 4 April 1889, and Brett had been told of it on 3 February 1890. Nor was the society thus founded an ephemeral thing, for, in modified form, it exists to this day. From 1891 to 1902, it was known to only a score of per-
{p. 4} sons. During this period, Rhodes was leader, and Stead was the most influential member. From 1902 to 1925, Milner was leader, while Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian) and Lionel Curtis were probably the most important members. From 1925 to 1940, Kerr was leader, and since his death in 1940 this role has probably been played by Robert Henry Brand (now Lord Brand).

During this period of almost sixty years, this society has been called by various names. During the first decade or so it was called "the secret society of Cecil Rhodes" or "the dream of Cecil Rhodes." In the second and third decades of its existence it was known as "Milner's Kindergarten" (1901-1910) and as "the Round Table Group" (1910-1920). Since 1920 it has been called by various names, depending on which phase of its activities was being examined. It has been called " The Times crowd," "the Rhodes crowd, " the "Chatham House crowd," the "All Souls group," and the "Cliveden set." All of these terms were more or less inadequate, because they focused attention on only part of the society or on only one of its activities. The Milner Kindergarten and the Round Table Group, for example, were two different names for The Association of Helpers and were thus only part of the society, since the real center of the organization, The Society of the Elect, continued to exist and recruited new members from the outer circle as seemed necessary. ... we shall generally call the organization the "Rhodes secret society" before 1901 and "the Milner Group" after this date, but it must be understood that both terms refer to the same organization.

This organization has been able to conceal its existence quite successfully and many of its most influential members, satisfied to possess the reality rather than the appearance of power, are unknown even to
{p. 5} close students of British history. This is the more surprising when we learn that one of the chief methods by which this Group works has been through propaganda. It plotted the Jameson Raid of 1895: it caused the Boer War of 1899-1902; it set up and controls the Rhodes Trust; it created the Union of South Africa in 1906-1910; it established the South African periodical The State in 1908; it founded the British Empire periodical The Round Table in 1910, and this remains the mouthpiece of the Group; it has been the most powerful single influence in All Souls, Balliol, and New Colleges at Oxford for more than a generation; it has controlled The Times for more than fifty years, with the exception of the three years 1919-1922, it publicized the idea of and the name "British Commonwealth of Nations" in the period 1908-1918; it was the chief influence in Lloyd George's war administration in 1917-1919 and dominated the British delegation to the Peace Conference of 1919; it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it; it was one of the chief influences on British policy toward Ireland, Palestine, and India in the period 1917-1945; it was a very important influence on the policy of appeasement of Germany during the years 1920-1940; and it controlled and still controls, to a very considerable extent, the sources and the writing of the history of British Imperial and foreign policy since the Boer War.

It would be expected that a Group which could number among its achievements such accomplishments as these would be a familiar subject for discussion among students of history and public affairs. In this case, the expectation is not realized, partly because of the deliberate policy of secrecy which this Group has adopted, partly because the Group itself is not closely integrated but rather appears as a series of overlapping circles or rings partly concealed by being hidden behind formally organized groups of no obvious political significance.

This Group, held together, as it is, by the tenuous links of friendship, personal association, and common ideals is so indefinite in its outlines (especially in recent years) that it is not always possible to say who is a member and who is not. Indeed, there is no sharp line of demarkation between those who are members and those who are not, since "membership'' is possessed in varying degrees, and the degree changes at different times.

{p. 6} Although the Group did not actually come into existence until 1891, its history covers a much longer period, since its origins go back to about 1873. ... It was badly split on the policy of appeasement after 16 March 1939, and received a rude jolt from the General Election of 1945. Until 1939, however, the expansion in power of the Group was fairly consistent. This growth was based on the possession by its members of ability, social connections, and wealth. ...

Milner was able to dominate this Group because he became the focus or rather the intersection point of three influences. These we shall call "the Toynbee group," "the Cecil Bloc," and the "Rhodes secret society." The Toynbee group was a group of political intellectuals formed at Balliol about 1873 and dominated by Arnold Toynbee and Milner himself. It was really the group of Milner's personal friends. The Cecil Bloc was a nexus of political and social power formed by Lord Salisbury and extending from the great sphere of politics into the fields of education and publicity. In the field of education, its influence was chiefly visible at Eton and Harrow and at All Souls College, Oxford. In the field of publicity, its influence was chiefly visible in The Quarterly Review and The Times. The "Rhodes secret society'' was a group of imperial federalists, formed in the period after 1889 and using the economic resources of South Africa to extend and perpetuate the British Empire.

It is doubtful if Milner could have formed his Group without assistance from all three of these sources. The Toynbee group gave him the ideological and the personal loyalties which he needed; the Cecil Bloc gave him the political influence without which his ideas could easily have died in the seed; and the Rhodes secret society gave him the economic resources which made it possible for him to create his own group independent of the Cecil Bloc. By 1902, when the leadership of the Cecil Bloc had fallen from the masterful grasp of Lord Salisbury into the rather indifferent hands of Arthur Balfour, and Rhodes had died, leaving Milner as the chief controller of his vast estate, the Milner Group was already established and had a most hopeful future. The long period of Liberal government which began in 1906 cast a temporary cloud over that future, but by 1916 the Milner Group had made its entrance into the citadel of political power and for the next twentythree years steadily extended its influence until, by 1938, it was the most potent political force in Britain.

The original members of the Milner Group came from well-to-do, upper-class, frequently titled families. At Oxford they demonstrated intellectual ability and laid the basis for the Group. In later years they added to their titles and financial resources, obtaining these partly by inheritance and partly by ability to tap new sources of titles and money. At first their family fortunes may have been adequate to their ambitions, but in time these were supplemented by access to the funds in the foundation of All Souls, the Rhodes Trust and the Beit Trust, the fortune of Sir Abe Bailey, the Astor fortune, certain powerful British banks (of which the chief was Lazard Brothers and Company), and, in recent years, the Nuffield money.

Although the outlines of the Milner Group existed long before 1891, the Group did not take full form until after that date. Earlier, Milner and Stead had become part of a group of neo-imperialists w ho justified the British Empire's existence on moral rather than on economic or political grounds and who sought to make this justification a reality by advocating self-government and federation within the Empire. This group formed at Oxford in the early 1870s and was extended in the early 1880s. At Bailliol it included Milner, Arnold Toynbee ... Toynbee was Milner's closest friend. After his early death in 1883, Milner was instrumental in establishing Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in London. ... In 1894 Milner delivered a eulogy of his dear friend dear friend at Toynbee Hall, and published it the next year as Arnold Toynbee: A Reminiscence. He also wrote the sketch of Toynbee in the Dictionary of National Biography. The connection is important because it undoubtedly gave Toynbee's nephew, Arnold J. Toynbee, his entree into the Royal Institute of International Affairs after the war.

{p. 10} In spite of his early death in 1883, Toynbee's ideas and outlook continue to influence the Milner Group to the present day. As Milner said in 1894, "There are many men now active in public life, and some whose best work is probably yet to come, who are simply working out ideas inspired by him." As to Toynbee's influence on Milner himself, the latter, speaking of his first meeting with Toynbee in 1873, said twenty-one years later, "I feel at once under his spell and have always remained under it." No one who is ignorant of the existence of the Milner Group can possibly see the truth of these quotations, and, as a result, the thousands of persons who have read these statements in the introduction to Toynbee's famous Lectures on the Industrial Revolution have been vaguely puzzled by Milner's insistence on the importance of a man who died at such an early age and so long ago. Most readers have merely dismissed the statements as sentimentality inspired by personal attachment, although it should be clear that Alfred Milner was about the last person in the world to display sentimentality or even sentiment.

Among the ideas of Toynbee which influenced the Milner Group we should mention three: (a) a conviction that the history of the British Empire represents the unfolding of a great moral idea - the idea of freedom - and that the unity of the Empire could best be preserved by the cement of this idea; (b) a conviction that the first call on the attention of any man should be a sense of duty and obligation to serve the state; and (c) a feeling of the necessity to do social service work (especially educational work) among the working classes of English society. These ideas were accepted by most of the men whose names we have already mentioned and became dominant principles of the Milner Group later. Toynbee can also be regarded as the founder of the method used by the Group later, especially in the Round Table Groups and in the Royal Institute of International Affairs. As described by Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, in his preface to the 1884 edition of Toynbee's Lectures on the Industrial Revolution, this method was as follows: "He would gather his friends around him; they would form an organization, they would work on quietly for a time, some at Oxford, some in London; they would prepare themselves in different parts of the subject until they were ready to strike in public."

{p. 11} The group lectured to working-class audiences in Whitechapel, Milner giving a course of speeches on "The State and the Duties of Rulers" in 1880 and another on "Socialism" in 1882. The latter series was published in the National Review in 1931 by Lady Milner.

In this group of Toynbee's was Albert Grey (later Earl Grey 1851-1917), who became an ardent advocate of imperial federation. Later a loyal supporter of Milner's, as we shall see, he remained a member of the Milner Group until his death. ...

It was probably as a result of Goschen's influence that Milner entered journalism, beginning to write for the Pall Mall Gazette in 1881 ... Stead was assistant editor in 1880-1883, and editor in 1883-1890. ... He introduced Albert Grey to Rhodes and, as a result, Grey became one of the original directors of the British South Africa Company when it was established by royal charter in 1889. Grey became administrator of Rhodesia when Dr. Jameson was forced to resign from that post in 1896 as an aftermath of his famous raid into the Transvaal. He was Governor-General of Canada in 1904-1911 and unveiled the Rhodes Memorial in South Africa in 1912. A Liberal member of the House of Commons from 1880 to 1886, he was defeated as a Unionist in the latter year. In 1894 he entered the House of Lords as the fourth Earl Grey, having inherited the title and 17,600 acres from an uncle. Throughout this period he was close to Milner and later was very useful in providing practical experience for various members of the Milner Group. His son, the future fifth Earl Grey, married the daughter of the second Earl of Selborne, a member of the Milner Group.

{p. 15} THE MILNER GROUP could never have been built up by Milner's own efforts. He had no political power or even influence. All that he had was ability and ideas. The same thing is true about many of the other members of the Milner Group, at least at the time that they joined the Group. The power that was utilized by Milner and his Group was really the power of the Cecil family and its allied families such as the Lyttelton (Viscounts Cobham), Wyndham (Barons Leconfield), Grosvenor (Dukes of Westminster), Balfour, Wemyss, Palmer (Earls of Selborne and Viscounts Wolmer), Cavendish (Dukes of Devonshire and Marquesses of Hartington), and Gathorne-Hardy (Earls of Cranbrook). The Milner Group was originally a major fief within the great nexus of power, influence, and privilege controlled by the Cecil family. It is not possible to describe here the ramifications of the Cecil influence. It has been all-pervasive in British life since 1886. This Cecil Bloc was built up by Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne and third Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903). The methods used by this man were merely copied by the Milner Group. These methods can be summed up under three headings: (a) a triple-front penetration in politics, education, and journalism; (b) the recruitment of men of ability (chiefly from All Souls) and the linking of these men to the Cecil Bloc by matrimonal alliances and by gratitude for titles and positions of power; and (c) the influencing of public policy by placing members of the Cecil Bloc in positions of power shielded as much as possible from public attention.

The triple-front penetration can be seen in Lord Salisbury's own life. He was not only Prime Minister for a longer period than anyone else in recent history (fourteen years between 1885 and 1902) but also a Fellow of All Souls (from 1853) and Chancellor of Oxford University (1869-1903), and had a paramount influence on The Quarterly Review for many years. He practiced a shameless nepotism, concealed to some extent by the shifting of names because of acquisition of titles and female marital connections, and redeemed by the fact that ability as well as family connection was required from appointees.

{p. 20} In recruiting his proteges from All Souls, Salisbury created a precedent that was followed later by the Milner Group, although the latter went much further than the former in the degree of its influence on All Souls.
All Souls is the most peculiar of Oxford Colleges. It has no undergraduates, and its postgraduate members are not generally in pursuit of a higher degree. ... at present twenty-one fellowships worth £300 a year for seven years are filled from candidates who have passed a qualifying examination. This group usually join within a year or two of receiving the bachelor's degree. In addition, there are eleven fellowships without emolument, to be held by the incumbents of various professorial chairs at Oxford. These include the Chichele Chairs of International Law, of Modern History, of Economic History, of Social and Political Theory, and of the History of War; the Drummond Chair of Political Economy; the Gladstone Chair of Government; the Regius Chair of Civil Law; the Vinerian Chair of English Law; the Marshal Foch Professorship of French Literature, and the Chair of Social Anthropology. There are ten Distinguished Persons fellowships without emolument, to be held for seven years by persons who have attained fame in law, humanities, science, or public affairs. These are usually held by past Fellows. There are a varying number of research fellowships and teaching fellowships, good for five to seven years, with annual emoluments of £300 to £600. There are also twelve seven-year fellowships with annual emoluments of £50 for past Fellows. And lastly, there are six fellowships to be held by incumbents of certain college or university offices.

The total number of Fellows at any one time is generally no more than fifty and frequently considerably fewer. ... Most of these persons were elected to fellowships in All Souls at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three years, at a time when their great exploits were set in the future. There is some question whether this ability of the Fellows of All Souls to elect as their younger colleagues men with brilliant futures is to be explained by their ability to discern greatness at an early age or by the fact that election to the fellowship opens the door to achievement in public affairs. There is some reason to believe that the second of these two alternatives is of greater w eight. As the biographer of Viscount Halifax has put it, "It is safe to assert that the Fellow of All Souls is a man marked out for a position of authority in public life, and there is no surprise if he reaches the summit of power, but only disappointment if he falls short of the opportunities that are set out before him."

{p. 31} One of the enduring creations of the Cecil Bloc is the Society for Psychical Research, which holds a position in the history of the Cecil Bloc similar to that held by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the Milner Group. The Society was founded in 1882 by the Balfour family and their in-laws, Lord Rayleigh and Professor Sidgwick.

{p. 33} WHEN MILNER went to South Africa in 1897, Rhodes and he were already old acquaintances of many years' standing. We have already indicated that they were contemporaries at Oxford, but, more than that, they were members of a secret society which had been founded in 1891. Moreover, Milner was, if not in 1897, at least by 1901, Rhodes's chosen successor in the leadership of that society. The secret society of Cecil Rhodes is mentioned in the first five of his seven wills. In the fifth it was supplemented by the idea of an educational institution with scholarships, whose alumni would be bound together by common ideals - Rhodes's ideals. In the sixth and seventh wills the secret society was not mentioned, and the scholarships monopolized the estate. But Rhodes still had the same ideals and still believed that they could be carried out best by a secret society of men devoted to a common cause. The scholarships were merely a facade to conceal the secret society, or, more accurately, they were to be one of the instruments by which the members of the secret society could carry out his purpose. This purpose, as expressed in the first will (1877), was:

The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise, ... the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of a British Empire, the consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.

To achieve this purpose, Rhodes, in this first will, written while he was still an undergraduate of Oxford at the age of twenty-four, left all his wealth to the Secretary of State for the Colonies (Lord Carnarvon) and to the Attorney General of Griqualand West (Sidney Shippard), to be used to create a secret society patterned on the Jesuits. The reference to the Jesuits as the model for his secret society is found in a "Confession of Faith" which Rhodes had written two years earlier (1875) and which he enclosed in his will. Thirteen years later, in a letter to the trustee of his third will, Rhodes told how to form the secret society, saying, "In considering questions suggested take Constitution of the Jesuits if obtainable and insert 'English Empire' for 'Roman Catholic Religion.'"

In his "Confession of Faith" Rhodes outlined the types of persons who might be useful members of this secret society. As listed by the American Secretary to the Rhodes Trust, this list exactly describes the group formed by Milner in South Africa:

Men of ability and enthusiasm who find no suitable way to serve their country under the current political system; able youth recruited from the schools and universities; men of wealth with no aim in life; younger sons with high thoughts and great aspirations but without opportunity; rich men whose careers are blighted by some great disappointment. All must be men of ability and character.... Rhodes envisages a group of the ablest and the best, bound together by common unselfish ideals of service to what seems to him the greatest cause in the world. There is no mention of material rewards. This is to be a kind of religious brotherhood like the Jesuits, "a church for the extension of the British Empire."

In each of his seven wills, Rhodes entrusted his bequest to a group of men to carry out his purpose. In the first will, as we have seen, the trustees were Lord Carnarvon and Sidney Shippard. In the second will (1882), the sole trustee was his friend N. E. Pickering. In the third will (1888), Pickering having died, the sole trustee was Lord Rothschild. In the fourth will (1891), W. T. Stead was added, while in the fifth (1892), Rhodes's solicitor, B. F. Hawksley, was added to the previous two. In the sixth (1893) and seventh (1899) wills, the personnel of the trustees shifted considerably, ending up, at Rhodes's death in 1902, with a board of seven trustees: Lord Milner, Lord Rosebery {son-in-law of Lord Rothschild: see p. 45}, Lord {Sir Edward} Grey, Alfred Beit, L. L. Michell, B. F. Hawksley, and Dr. Starr Jameson. This is the board to which the world looked to set up the Rhodes Scholarships.

Dr. Frank Aydelotte, the best-known American authority on Rhodes's wills, claims that Rhodes made no reference to the secret society in his last two wills hecause he had abandoned the idea. The first chapter of his recent book, The American Rhodes Scholarshlps, states and reiterates that between 1891 and 1893 Rhodes underwent a great change in his point of view and matured in his judgment to the point that in his sixth will "he abandons forever his youthful idea of a secret society." This is completely untrue, and there is no evidence to support such a statement. On the contrary, all the evidence, both direct and circumstantial, indicates that Rhodes wanted the secret society from 1875 to his death in 1902. By Dr. Aydelotte's own admission, Rhodes wanted the society from 1877 to 1893, a period of sixteen years. Accepted practice in the use of historical evidence requires us to believe that Rhodes persisted in this idea for the remaining nine years of his life, unless there exists evidence to the contrary. There is no such evidence. On the other hand, there is direct evidence that he did not change his ideas. Two examples of this evidence can be mentioned here. On 5 February 1896, three years after his sixth will, Rhodes ended a long conversation with R. B. Brett (later Lord Esher) by saying, "Wish we could get our secret society." And in April 1900, a year after he wrote his seventh and last will, Rhodes was reprimanding Stead for his opposition to the Boer War, on the grounds that in this case he should have been willing to accept the judgment of the men on the spot who had made the war. Rhodes said to Stead, "That is the curse which will be fatal to our ideas - insubordination. Do not you think it is very disobedient of you? How can our Society be worked if each one sets himself up as the sole judge of what ought to be done? Just look at the position here. We three are in South Africa, all of us your boys ... I myself, Milner, and Garrett, all of whom learned their politics from you. We are on the spot, and we are unanimous in declaring this war to be necessary. You have never been in South Africa, and yet, instead of deferring to the judgment of your own boys, you fling yourself into a violent opposition to the war."

Dr. Aydelotte's assumption that the scholarships were an alternative to the secret society is quite untenable, for all the evidence indicates that the scholarships were but one of several instruments through which the society would work. In 1894 Stead discussed with Rhodes how the secret society would work and wrote about it after Rhodes's death as follows: "We also discussed together various projects for propaganda, the formation of libraries, the creation of lectureships, the dispatch of emissaries on missions of propaganda throughout the Empire, and the steps to be taken to pave the way for the foundation and the acquisition of a newspaper which was to be devoted to the service of the cause." This is an exact description of the way in which the Society, that is the Milner Group, has functioned. Moreover, when Rhodes talked with Stead, in January 1895, about the scholarships at Oxford, he did not abandon the society but continued to speak of it as the real power behind the scholarships. It is perfectly clear that Rhodes omitted mentioning the secret society in his last two wills because he knew that by that time he was so famous that the one way to keep a society from being secret would be to mention it in his will. Obviously, if Rhodes wanted the secret society after 1893, he would have made no mention of it in his will but would have left his money in trust for a legitimate public purpose and arranged for the creation of the secret society by a private understanding with his trustees. This is clearly what happened, because the secret society was established, and Milner used Rhodes's money to finance it, just as Rhodes had intended.

The creation of the secret society was the essential core of Rhodes's plans at all times. Stead, even after Rhodes's death, did not doubt that the attempt would be made to continue the society. In his book on Rhodes's wills he wrote in one place: "Mr. Rhodes was more than the founder of a dynasty. He aspired to be the creator of one of those vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations which, like the Society of Jesus, have played so large a part in the history of the world. To be more strictly accurate, he wished to found an Order as the instrument of the will of the Dynasty, and while he lived he dreamed of being both its Caesar and its Loyola. It was this far-reaching, world-wide aspiration of the man which rendered, to those who knew him, so absurdly inane the speculations of his critics as to his real motives." Sixty pages later Stead wrote: "The question that now arises is whether in the English-speaking world there are to be found men of faith adequate to furnish forth materials for the Society of which Mr. Rhodes dreamed."

This idea of a society throughout the world working for federal union fascinated Milner as it had fascinated Rhodes. We have already mentioned the agreement which he signed with George Parkin in 1893, to propagandize for this purpose. Eight years later, in a letter to Parkin from South Africa, Milner wrote at length on the subject of imperial union and ended: "Good-bye for today. Keep up the touch. I wish we had some like-minded persons in New Zealand and Australia, who were personal friends. More power to your elbow." Moreover, there were several occasions after 1902 when Milner referred to his desire to see "a powerful body of men" working "outside the existing political parties" for imperial unity. He referred to this desire in his letter to Congdon in 1904 and referred to it again in his "farewell speech" to the Kindergarten in 1905. There is also a piece of negative evidence which seems to me to be of considerable significance. In 1912 Parkin wrote a book called The Rhodes Scholarships, in which he devoted several pages to Rhodes's wills. Although he said something about each will and gave the date of each will, he said nothing about the secret society. Now this secret society, which is found in five out of the seven wills, is so astonishing that Parkin's failure to mention it must be deliberate. He would have no reason to pass it by in silence unless the society had been formed. If the existing Rhodes Trust were a more mature alternative for the secret society rather than a screen for it, there would be no reason to pass it by, but, on the contrary, an urgent need to mention it as a matter of great intrinsic interest and as an example of how Rhodes's ideas matured.

{p. 37} As a matter of fact, Rhodes's ideas did not mature. The one fact which appears absolutely clearly in every biography of Rhodes is the fact that from 1875 to 1902 his ideas neither developed nor matured. Parkin, who clearly knew of the secret society, even if he did not mention it, says in regard to Rhodes's last will: "It is essential to remember that this final will is consistent with those which had preceded it, that it was no late atonement for errors, as some have supposed, but was the realization of life-long dreams persistently pursued."

Leaving aside all hypothesis, the facts are clear: Rhodes wanted to create a worldwide secret group devoted to English ideals and to the Empire as the embodiment of these ideals, and such a group was created. It was created in the period after 1890 by Rhodes, Stead, and, above all, by Milner.

The idea of a secret international group of propagandists for federal imperialism was by no means new to Milner when he became Rhodes Trustee in 1901, since he had been brought into Rhodes's secret society as the sixth member in 1891. This was done by his old superior, W. T. Stead. Stead, as we have indicated, was the chief Rhodes confidant in England and very close to Milner. Although Stead did not meet Rhodes until 1889, Rhodes regarded himself as a disciple of Stead's much earlier and eagerly embraced the idea of imperial federation based on Home Rule. It was in pursuit of this idea that Rhodes contributed £10,000 to Parnell in 1888. Although Rhodes accepted Stead's ideas, he did not decide that Stead was the man he wanted to be his lieutenant in the secret society until Stead was sent to prison in 1885 for his articles on organized vice in the Pall Mall Gazette. This courageous episode convinced Rhodes to such a degree that he tried to see Stead in prison but was turned away. After Stead was released, Rhodes did not find the opportunity to meet him until 4 April 1889. The excitement of that day for Stead can best be shown by quoting portions of the letter which he wrote to Mrs. Stead immediately after the conference. It said:

Mr. Rhodes is my man! I have just had three hours talk with him! He is full of a far more gorgeous idea in connection with the paper than even I have had. I cannot tell you his scheme because it is too secret. But it involves millions. He had no idea that it would cost £250,000 to start a paper. But he offered me down as a free gift £20,000 to buy a share in the P.M. Gazette as a beginning. Next year he would do more. He expects to own before he dies, 4 or 5 millions, all of which he will leave to carry out the scheme of which the paper is an integral part. He is giving £500,000 to make a railway to Matabeleland, and so has not available, just at this moment, the money necessary for starting the morning paper. His ideas are federation, expansion, and consolidation of the Empire.... He took to me. Told me some things he has told no other man - save Lord Rothschild - and pressed me to take the £20,000, not to have any return, to give no receipt, to simply take it and use it to give me a freer hand on the P. M. G. ... How good God is to me ... Remember all the above about R. is very private.

...
About the same time, Rhodes revealed to Stead his plans to establish the British South Africa Company and asked him who in England could best help him get the necessary charter. Stead recommended Albert Grey, the future Earl Grey, who had been an intimate friend of Stead's since 1873 and had been a member of the Milner-Toynbee group in 1880-1884. As a result, Grey became one of the original directors of the British South Africa Company and took the first steps which eventually brought him into the select circle of Rhodes's secret society. ...

The secret society, after so much preliminary talk, took form in 1891, the same year in which Rhodes drew up his fourth will and made Stead as well as Lord Rothschild the trustee of his fortune. It is perfectly clear from the evidence that he expected Lord Rothschild to handle the financial investments associated with the trust, while Stead was to have full charge of the methods by which the funds were used. About the same time, in February 1891, Stead and Rhodes had another long discussion about the secret society. First they discussed their goals and agreed that, if necessary in order to achieve Anglo-American unity, Britain should join the United States. Then they discussed the organization of the secret society and divided it into two circles: an inner circle "The Society of the Elect", and an outer circle to include "The Association of Helpers and The Review of Reviews (Stead's magazine founded 1890). Rhodes said that he had already revealed the plan for "The Society of the Elect" to Rothschild and "little Johnston." By "little Johnston'' he meant Harry H. Johnston (Sir Harry after 1896), African explorer and administrator, who had laid the basis for the British claims to Nyasaland, Kenya, and Uganda. Johnston was, according to Sir Frederick Whyte, the biographer of Stead, virtually unknown in England before Stead published his portrait as the frontispiece to the first issue Of The Review of Reviews in 1890. This was undoubtedly done on behalf of Rhodes. Continuing their discussion of the membership of "The Society of the Elect," Stead asked permission to bring in Milner and Brett. Rhodes agreed ...
{p. 40} solidation of the British Empire, which they shared as an ideal with Rhodes.

With the elimination of signs, oaths, and formal initiations, the criteria for membership in "The Society of the Elect" became knowledge of the secret society and readiness to cooperate with the other initiates toward their common goal. The distinction between the initiates and The Association of Helpers rested on the fact that while members of both circles were willing to cooperate with one another in order to achieve their common goal, the initiates knew of the secret society, while the "helpers" probably did not. This distinction rapidly became of little significance, for the members of The Association of Helpers would have been very stupid if they had not realized that they were members of a secret group working in cooperation with other members of the same group. Moreover, the Circle of Initiates became in time of less importance because as time passed the members of this select circle died, were alienated, or became less immediately concerned with the project. As a result, the secret society came to be represented almost completely by The Association of Helpers - that is, by the group with which Milner was most directly concerned. And within this Association of Helpers there appeared in time gradations of intimacy, the more select ones participating in numerous areas of the society's activity and the more peripheral associated with fewer and less vital areas. Nevertheless, it is clear that "The Society of the Elect" continued to exist, and it undoubtedly recruited additional members now and then from The Association of Helpers. It is a very difficult task to decide who is and who is not a member of the society as a whole, and it is even more difficult to decide if a particular member is an initiate or a helper. Accordingly, the last distinction will not usually be made in this study. Before we abandon it completely, however, an effort should be made to name the initiates, in the earlier period at least.

Of the persons so far named, we can be certain that six were initiates. These were Rhodes, Lord Rothschild, Johnston, Stead, Brett, and Milner. Of these, Rothschild was largely indifferent and participated in the work of the group only casually. Of the others, Johnston received from £10,000 to £17,000 a year from Rhodes for several years after 1889, during which period he was trying to eliminate the influence of slave-traders and the Portuguese from Nyasaland. About 1894 he became alienated from Rhodes because of Johnston's refusal to cooperate with him in an attack on the Portuguese in Manikaland. As a result Johnston ceased to be an active member of the society. Lord Grey's efforts to heal the breach were only nominally successful.

Stead was also eliminated in an informal fashion in the period 1899-1904, at first by Rhodes's removing him from his trusteeship and later by Milner's refusal to use him, confide in him, or even see him, although continuing to protest his personal affection for him. Since Milner was the real leader of the society after 1902, this had the effect of eliminating Stead from the society.

Of the others mentioned, there is no evidence that Cardinal Manning or the Booths were ever informed of the scheme. All three were friends of Stead and would hardly be acceptable to the rising power of Milner. Cardinal Manning died in 1892. As for "General" Booth and his son, they were busily engaged in directing the Salvation Army from 1878 to 1929 and played no discernible role in the history of the Group.

Of the others who were mentioned, Brett, Grey, and Balfour can safely be regarded as members of the society, Brett because of the documentary evidence and the other two because of their lifelong cooperation with and assistance to Milner and the other members of the Group.

Brett, who succeeded his father as Viscount Esher in 1899, is one of the most influential and one of the least-known men in British politics in the last two generations. His importance could be judged better by the positions he refused than by those he held during his long life (1852-1930). Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he was a lifelong and intimate friend of Arthur Balfour, Albert Grey, Lord Rosebery, and Alfred Lyttelton. He was private secretary to the Marquess of Hartington (Duke of Devonshire) in 1878-1885 and a Liberal M.P. in 1880-1885. In the last year he was defeated in an attempt to capture the seat for Plymouth, and retired from public life to his country house near Windsor at the advanced age of thirty-three years. That he emerged from this retirement a decade later may well be attributed to his membership in the Rhodes secret society. He met Stead while still in public life and by virtue of his confidential position with the future Duke of Devonshire was able to relay to Stead much valuable information. These messages were sent over the signature "XIII."

This assistance was so highly esteemed by Stead that he regarded Brett as an important part of the Pall Mall Gazette organization. Writing in 1902 of Milner and Brett, Stead spoke of them, without mentioning their names, as "two friends, now members of the Upper House, who were thoroughly in sympathy with the gospel according to the Pall Mall Gazette and who had been as my right and left hands during my editorship of the paper." In return Stead informed Brett of Rhodes's secret schemes as early as February 1890 and brought him into the society when it was organized the following year.
The official positions held by Brett in the period after 1895 were secretary of the Office of Works (1895-1902), Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Windsor Castle (1901-1930), member of the Royal Commission on the South African War (1902-1903), permanent member of the Committee of Imperial Defence (1905-1930), chairman and later president of the London County Territorial Force Association (1909-1921), and chief British member of the Temporary Mixed Commission on Disarmament of the League of Nations (1922-1923). Although some of these posts, especially the one on the Committee of Imperial Defence, play an important role in the history of the Milner Group, none of them gives any indication of the significant position which Esher held in British political life. The same thing could be said of the positions which he refused, although they, if accepted, would have made him one of the greatest names in recent British history. Among the positions which he refused we might mention the following: Permanent Under Secretary in the Colonial Office (1899), Governor of Cape Colony (1900), Permanent Under Secretary in the War Office (1900), Secretary of State for War (1903), Director of The Times (1908), Viceroy of India (1908), and an earldom (date unknown). Esher's reasons for refusing these positions were twofold: he wanted to work behind the scenes rather than in the public view, and his work in secret was so important and so influential that any public post would have meant a reduction in his power. When he refused the exalted position of viceroy in 1908, he wrote frankly that, with his opportunity of influencing vital decisions at the center, India for him "would be (it sounds vain, but it isn't) parochial." This opportunity for influencing decisions at the center came from his relationship to the monarchy. For at least twenty-five years (from 1895 to after 1920) Esher was probably the most important adviser on political matters to Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, and King George V. This position arose originally from his personal friendship with Victoria, established in the period 1885-1887, and was solidified later when, as secretary to the Office of Works and Lieutenant Governor of Windsor Castle, he was in charge of the physical properties of all the royal residences. These opportunities were not neglected. He organized the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, the royal funeral of 1901, and the coronation of the same year. In the latter case he proved to be indispensable, for in the sixty-four years without a coronation the precedents had been forgotten. In this way Esher reached a point where he was the chief unofficial representative of the King and the "liaison between King and ministers." As an example of the former role, we might mention that in 1908, when a purchaser known only as "X" acquired control of The Times, Esher visited Lord Northcliffe on behalf of "a very high quarter" to seek assurance that the policy of the paper would not be changed. Northcliffe, who was 'X," hastened to give the necessary assurances, according to the official History of The Times. Northcliffe and the historian of The Times regarded Esher on this occasion as the emissary of King Edward, but we, who know of his relationship with the Rhodes secret society, are justified in asking if he were not equally the agent of the Milner Group, since it was as vital to the Group as to the King that the policy of The Times remain unchanged. As we shall see in a later chapter, when Northcliffe did adopt a policy contrary to that of the Group, in the period 1917-1919, the Group broke with him personally and within three years bought his controlling interest in the paper. ...

Another person who was brought into the secret society was Edmund Garrett, the intimate friend of Stead, Milner, and Rhodes, who was later used by Milner as a go-between for communications with the other two. Garrett had been sent to South Africa originally by Stead while he was still on the Pall Mall Gazette in 1889. He went there for a second time in 1895 as editor of the Cape Times, the most influential English-language newspaper in South Africa. This position he undoubtedly obtained from Stead and Rhodes. Sir Frederick Whyte, in his biography of Stead, says that Rhodes was the chief proprietor of the paper. Sir Edward Cook, however, the biographer of Garrett and a man who was very close to the Rhodes secret society, says that the owners of the Cape Times were Frederick York St. Leger and Dr. Rutherfoord Harris. This is a distinction without much difference, since Dr. Harris, as we shall see, was nothing more than an agent of Rhodes.

In South Africa, Garrett was on most intimate personal relationships with Rhodes. Even when the latter was Prime Minister of Cape Colony, Garrett used to communicate w with him by tossing pebbles at his bedroom window in the middle of the night. Such a relationship naturally gave Garrett a prestige in South Africa which he could never have obtained by his own position or abilities. When High Commissioner Hercules Robinson drew up a proclamation after the Jameson Raid, he showed it to Garrett before it was issued and cut out a paragraph at the latter's insistence.

Garrett was also on intimate terms with Milner during his period as High Commissioner after 1897. In fact, when Rhodes spoke of political issues in South Africa, he frequently spoke of "I myself, Milner, and Garrett." We have already quoted an occasion on which he used this expression to Stead in 1900. Milner's relationship with Garrett can be gathered from a letter which he wrote to Garrett in 1899, after Garrett had to leave South Africa to go to a sanatorium in Germany: "It is no use protesting against the decrees of fate, nor do I want to say too much on what Rhodes calls 'the personal.' But this really was a great blow to me, and I have never quite got over your breakdown and departure, never quite felt the same man since, either politically or privately. ... Dear Friend, I miss you fearfully, always shall miss you. So does this young country."

I think we are justified in assuming that a man as intimate as this with Rhodes and Milner, who was used in such confidential and important ways by both of them, who knew of the plans for the Johannesburg revolt and the Jameson Raid before they occurred, and who knew of the Rhodes secret society, was an initiate. That Garrett knew of the Jameson plot beforehand is recorded by Sir Edward Cook in his biography. That Garrett knew of the secret society is recorded by Garrett himself in an article which he published in the Contemporary Review after Rhodes's death in 1902. The words in which Garrett made this last revelation are of some significance. He spoke of "that idea of a sort of Jesuit-like Secret Society for the Promotion of the Empire, which for long he hugged and which - minus, perhaps, the secrecy and the Jesuitry - I know to have had a good deal of fascination for others among our contemporaries not reckoned visionaries by the world."

We have said that Garrett was used by Milner as an intermediary with both Rhodes and Stead. The need for such an intermediary with Rhodes arose from Milner's feeling that it was politically necessary to conceal the intimacy of their relationship. As Rhodes told Stead, speaking of Milner, on 10 April 1900, "I have seen very little of him. He said to me, 'The less you and I are seen together the better.' Hence, I never invited him to Groote Schuur."

Garrett was also used by Milner as an intermediary with Stead after the latter became alienated from the initiates because of his opposition to the Boer War. One example of this is of some significance. In 1902 Milner made a trip to England without seeing Stead. On 12 April of that year, Garrett, who had seen Milner, wrote the following letter to Stead: "I love the inner man, Stead, in spite of all differences, and should love him if he damned me and my policy and acts ten times more. So does Milner - in the inner court - we agreed when he was over - only there are temporary limitations and avoidances.... He told me why he thought on the whole he'd better not see you this time. I quite understood, though I'm not sure whether you would, but I'm sure you would have liked the way in which, without any prompting at all, he spoke of his personal feelings for you being unaffected by all this. Someday let us hope, all this tyranny will be overpast, and we shall be able to agree again, you and Milner, Cook and I." It is possible that the necessity for Milner to overrule his personal feelings and the mention of "the inner court" may be oblique references to the secret society. In any case, the letter shows the way in which Stead was quietly pushed aside in that society by its new leader.

Another prominent political figure who may have been an initiate in the period before 1902 is Lord Rosebery. Like his father-in-law, Lord Rothschild, who was an initiate, Rosebery was probably not a very active member of The Society of the Elect, although for quite different reasons. Lord Rothschild held aloof because to him the whole project was incomprehensible and unbusinesslike; Lord Rosebery held aloof because of his own diffident personality and his bad physical health. However, he cooperated with the members of the society and was on such close personal relationships with them that he probably knew of the secret society. Brett was one of his most intimate associates and introduced him to Milner in 1885. As for Rhodes, Roseberv's official biographer, the Marquess of Crewe, says that he "both liked and admired Cecil Rhodes who was often his guest." He made Rhodes a Privy Councillor, and Rhodes made him a trustee of his will. These things, and the fact that the initiates generally assumed that Rosebery would grant their requests, give certain grounds for believing that he was a member of their society. If he was, he played little role in it after 1900. Two other men, both fabulously wealthy South Africans, may be regarded as members of the society and probably initiates. These were Abe Bailey and Alfred Beit.

Abe Bailey (later Sir Abe, 1864-1940) was the largest landowner in Rhodesia, a large Transvaal mine-owner, and one of the chief, if not the chief, financial supporters of the Milner Group in the period up to 1925. These financial contributions still continue, although since 1925 they have undoubtedly been eclipsed by those of Lord Astor. Bailey was an associate of Rhodes and Alfred Beit, the two most powerful figures in South Africa, and like them was a close friend of Milner. He named his son, born in 1900, John Milner Bailey. Like Rhodes and Beit, he was willing that his money be used by Milner because he sympathized with his aims. As his obituary in The Times expressed it, "In politics he modeled himself deliberately on Rhodes as his ideal of a good South African and a devoted Imperialist.... He had much the same admiration of Milner and remained to the end a close friend of 'Milner's young men.' " This last phrase refers to Milner's Kindergarten or The Association of Helpers, which will be described in detail later.

Abe Bailey was one of the chief plotters in the Jameson Raid in 1895. He took over Rhodes's seat in the Cape Parliament in 1902-1907 and was Chief Whip in the Progressive Party, of which Dr. Jameson was leader. When the Transvaal obtained self-government in 1907, he went there and was Whip of the same party in the Legislative Assembly at Pretoria. After the achievement of the Union of South Africa, in the creation of which, as we shall see, he played a vital role, he was a member of the Union Parliament and a loyal supporter of Botha and Smuts from 1915 to 1924. After his defeat in 1924, he divided his time between South Africa and London. In England, as The Times said at his death, he "took a close interest behind the scenes in politics." This "close interest" was made possible by his membership in the innermost circle of the Milner Group, as we shall see.

Certain others of Rhodes's chief associates cooperated w ith Milner in his designs after Rhodes's death and might well be regarded as members of Rhodes's society and of the Milner Group. Of these we might mention Alfred Beit, Dr. Starr Jameson and his assistant R. S. Holland, J. Rochfort Maguire, and Lewis Loyd Michell.

Alfred Beit (1853-1906) was the business genius who handled all Rhodes's business affairs and incidentally had most to do with making the Rhodes fortune. He was a Rhodes Trustee and left much of his own fortune for public and educational purposes similar to those endowed by Rhodes. This will be discussed later. His biography was written by George Seymour Fort, a protege of Abe Bailey, who acted as Bailey's agent on the boards of directors of many corporations, a fact revealed by Fort himself in a letter to The Times, 13 August 1940.

Leander Starr Jameson (later Sir Starr, 1853-1917) was Rhodes's doctor, roommate, and closest friend, and had more to do with the opening up of Rhodesia than any other single man. His famous raid into the Transvaal with Rhodesian police in 1895 was one of the chief events leading up to the Boer War. After Rhodes's death, Jameson was leader of his party in Cape Colony and served as Premier in 1904-1908. A member of the National Convention of 1908-1909, he was also director of the British South Africa Company and a Rhodes Trustee. ... Jameson's biographical sketch in The Dictionary of National Biography was written by Dougal Malcolm of Milner's Kindergarten.

Reginald Sothern Holland (now Sir Sothern) was private secretary to Dr. Jameson in 1904 and later for three years permanent head of the Prime Minister's Department (1905-1908). He was secretary to the South African Shipping Freights Conference (1905-1906) with Birchenough and succeeded Birchenough as His Majesty's Trade Commissioner to South Africa (1908-1913). During the war he was in charge of supply of munitions, at first in the War Office and later (1915) in the Ministry of Munitions. He was also on various commissions in which Milner was interested, such as the Royal Commission on Paper Supplies (with Birchenough), and ended the war as Controller of the Cultivation Division of the Food Production Department (which was seeking to carry out recommendations made by the Milner and Selborne Committee on Food Production). He became a Rhodes Trustee in 1932.

Lewis Loyd Michell (later Sir Lewis, 1842-1928) was Rhodes's banker in South Africa and after his death took over many of his interests. A Minister without Portfolio in Jameson's Cabinet in the Cape Colony (1904-1905), he was also a director of the British South Africa Lionel Curtis is one of the most important members of the Milner Group, or, as a member of the Group expressed it to me, he is the fons et origo. It may sound extravagant as a statement, but a powerful defense could be made of the claim that what Curtis thinks should be done to the British Empire is what happens a generation later. I shall give here only two recent examples of this. In 1911 Curtis decided that the name of His Majesty's Dominions must be changed from "British Empire" to "Commonwealth of Nations." This was done officially in 1948. Again, about 1911 Curtis decided that India must be given complete self-government as rapidly as conditions permitted. This was carried out in 1947. As we shall see, these are not merely coincidental events, for Curtis, working behind the scenes, has been one of the chief architects of the present Commonwealth. It is not easy to discern the places where he has passed, and no adequate biographical sketch can be put on paper here. Indeed, much of the rest of this volume will be a contribution to the biography of Lionel Curtis. Burning with an unquenchable ardor, which some might call fanatical, he has devoted his life to his dominant idea, that the finer things of life - liberty, democracy, toleration, etc. - could be preserved only within an integrated world political system, and that this political system could be constructed about Great Britain, but only if Britain adopted toward her Dominions, her colonies, and the rest of the world a policy of generosity, of trust, and of developing freedom. Curtis was both a fanatic and an idealist. But he was not merely "a man in a hurry." He had a fairly clear picture of what he wanted. He did not believe that complete and immediate freedom and democracy could be given to the various parts of the imperial system, but felt that they could only be extended to these parts in accordance with their ability to develop to a level where they were capable of exercising such privileges. When that level was achieved and those privileges were extended, he felt that they would not be used to disrupt the integrated world system of which he dreamed, but to integrate it more fully and in a sounder fashion - a fashion based on common outlook and common patterns of thought rather than on the dangerous unity of political subjection, censorship, or any kind of duress. To Curtis, as to H. G. Wells, man's fate depended on a race between education and disaster. This was similar to the feeling which animated Rhodes when he established the Rhodes Scholarships, although Curtis has a much broader and less nationalistic point of view than Rhodes. Moreover, Curtis believed that people could be educated for freedom and responsibility by giving them always a little more freedom, a little more democracy, and a little more responsibility than they were quite ready to handle. This is a basically Christian attitude - the belief that if men are trusted they will prove trustworthy - but it was an attitude on which Curtis was prepared to risk the existence of the British Empire. It is not yet clear whether Curtis is the creator of the Commonwealth of Nations or merely the destroyer of the British Empire. The answer will be found in the behavior of India in the next few years. The Milner Group knew this. That is why India, since 1913, has been the chief object of their attentions.

These ideas of Curtis are clearly stated in his numerous published works. The following quotations are taken from The Problem of the Commonwealth drawn up by the Round Table Group and published under Curtis's name in 1916:

Responsible government can only be realized for any body of citizens in so far as they are fit for the exercise of political power. In the Dependencies the great majority of the citizens are not as yet capable of governing themselves and for them the path to freedom is primarily a problem of education.... The Commonwealth is a typical section of human society including every race and level of civilization organized in one state. In this world commonwealth the function of government is reserved to the European minority, for the unanswerable reason that for the present this portion of its citizens is alone capable of the task - civilized states are obliged to assume control of backward communities to protect them from exploitation by private adventurers from Europe.... The Commonwealth cannot, like despotisms, rest content with establishing order within and between the communities it includes. It must by its nature prepare these communities first to maintain order within themselves. The rule of law must be rooted in the habits and wills of the peoples themselves.... The peoples of India and Egypt, no less than those of the British Isles and Dominions, must be gradually schooled to the management of their national affairs.... It is not enough that free communities should submit their relations to the rule of law. Until all those people control that law the principle by which the commonwealth exists is unfulfilled. The task of preparing for freedom the races which cannot as yet govern themselves is the supreme duty of those races who can. It is the spiritual end for which the Commonwealth exists, and material order is nothing except a means to it.... In India the rule of law is firmly established. Its maintenance is a trust which rests on the government of the Commonwealth until such time as there are Indians enough able to discharge it. India may contain leaders qualified not only to make but also to administer laws, but she will not be ripe for self-government until she contains an electorate qualified to recognize those leaders and place them in office.... For England the change is indeed a great one. Can she face it? Can she bear to lose her life, as she knows it, to find it in a Commonwealth, wide as the world itself, a life greater and nobler than before? Will she fail at this second and last crisis of her fate, as she failed at the first, like Athens and Prussia, forsaking freedom for power, thinking the shadow more real than the light, and esteeming the muckrake more than the crown?

Four years later, in 1920, Curtis wrote: "The whole effect of the war has been to bring movements long gathering to a sudden head . . . companionship in arms has fanned . . . long smouldering resentment against the prescription that Europeans are destined to dominate the rest of the world. In every part of Asia and Africa it is bursting into flames.... Personally, I regard this challenge to the long unquestioned claim of the white man to dominate the world as inevitable and wholesome especially to ourselves."

Unfortunately for the world, Curtis, and the Milner Group generally, had one grave weakness that may prove fatal. Skilled as they were in political and personal relations, endowed with fortune, education, and family connections, they were all fantastically ignorant of economics - even those, like Brand or Hichens, who were regarded within the Group as its experts on this subject. Brand was a financier, while Hichens was a businessman - in both cases occupations that guarantee nothing in the way of economic knowledge or understanding.

{p. 68} In 1906, when Amery made his first effort to be elected to Parliament, Milner worked actively in support of his candidacy. It is probable that this, in spite of Milner's personal prestige, lost more votes than it gained, for Milner made no effort to conceal his own highly unorthodox ideas. On 17 December 1906, for example, he spoke at Wolverhampton as follows: "Not only am I an Imperialist of the deepest dye - and Imperialism, you know, is out of fashion - but I actually believe in universal military training.... I am a Tariff Reformer and one of a somewhat pronounced type. ... I am unable to join in the hue and cry against Socialism. That there is an odious form of Socialism I admit, a Socialism which attacks wealth simply because it is wealth, and lives on the cultivation of class hatred. But that is not the whole story; most assuredly not. There is a nobler Socialism, which so far from springing from envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, is born of genuine sympathy and a lofty and wise conception of what is meant by national life." These sentiments may not have won Amery many votes, but they were largely shared by him, and his associations with Milner became steadily more intimate.

{p. 100} At Oxford itself, the Group has been increasingly influential in Nuffield College, while outside of Oxford it apparently controls (or greatly influences) the Stevenson Professorship of International Relations at London; the Rhodes Professorship of Imperial History at London; Birkbeck College at London; the George V Professorship of History in Cape Town University; and the Wilson Professorship of International Politics at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Some of these are controlled completely, while others are influenced in varying degrees. In Canada the influence of the Group is substantial, if not decisive, at the Universlty of Toronto and at Upper Canada College.

{p. 101} BEYOND THE ACADEMIC FIELD, the Milner Group engaged in journalistic activities that sought to influence public opinion in directions which the Group desired. One of the earliest examples of this, and one of the few occasions on which the Group appeared as a group in the public eye, was in 1905, the year in which Milner returned from Africa. At that time the Group published a volume, The Empire and the Century, consisting of fifty articles on various aspects of the imperial problem. The majority of these articles were written by members of the Milner Group, in spite of the fact that so many of the most important members were still in Africa with Lord Selborne. ... It was followed by a sequel volume, called The Empire and the Future, in 1916. The latter consisted of a series of lectures delivered at King's College, University of London, in 1915, under the sponsorship of the Royal Colonial Institute. The lectures were by members of the Milner Group who included A. L. Smith, H. A. L. Fisher, Philip Kerr, and George R. Parkin. A somewhat similar series of lectures was given on the British Dominions at the University of Birmingham in 1910-1911 by such men as Alfred Lyttelton, Henry Birchenough, and William Hely-Hutchinson. These were published by Sir William Ashley in a volume called The British Dominions.

These efforts, however, were too weak, too public, and did not reach the proper persons. Accordingly, the real efforts of the Milner Group were redirected into more fruitful and anonymous activities such as The Times and The Round Table.

The Milner Group did not own The Times before 1922, but clearly controlled it as far back as 1912. Even before this last date members of the innermost circle of the Milner Group were swarming about the great newspaper. In fact, it would appear that The Times had been controlled by the Cecil Bloc since 1884 and was taken over by the Milner Group in the same way in which All Souls was taken over, quietly and without a struggle. The midwife of this process apparently was George E. Buckle (1854-1935), graduate of New College in 1876, member of All Souls since 1877, and editor of The Times from 1884 to 1912. The chief members of the Milner Group who were associated with The Times have already been mentioned. Amery was connected with the paper from 1899 to 1909. During this period he edited and largely wrote the Times History of the South African War. Lord Esher was offered a directorship in 1908. Grigg was a staff writer in 1903-1905, and head of the Imperial Department in 1908-1913. B. K. Long was head of the Daminion Department in 1913-1921 and of the Foreign Department in 1920-1921. Monypenny was assistant editor both before and after the Boer War (1894-1899, 1903-1908) and on the board of directors after the paper was incorporated (1908-1912). Dason was the paper's chief correspondent in South Africa in the Selborne period (1905-1910), while Basil Williams was the reporter covering the National Convention there (1908-1909). When it became clear in 1911 that Buckle must soon retire, Dawson was brought into the office in a rather vague capacity and, a year later, was made editor. The appointment was suggested and urged by Buckle. Dawson held the position from 1912 to 1941, except for the three years 1919-1922. This interval is of some significance, for it revealed to the Milner Group that they could not continue to control The Times without ownership. The Cecil Bloc had controlled The Times from 1884 to 1912 without ownership and the Milner Group had done the same in the period 1912-1919, but, in this last year, Dawson quarreled with Lord Northcliffe (who was chief proprietor from 1908-1922) and left the editor's chair. As soon as the Milner Group, through the Astors, acquired the chief proprietorship of the paper in 1922, Dawson was restored to his post and held it for the next twenty years. Undoubtedly the skillful stroke which acquired the ownership of The Times from the Harmsorth {Northcliffe} estate in 1922 was engineered by Brand. During the interval of three years during which Dawson was not editor, Northcliffe entrusted the position to one of The Times's famous foreign correspondents H. W. Steed.

Dawson was succeeded as editor in 1944 by R. M. Barrington-Ward whose brother was a Fellow of All Souls and son-in-law of A. L. Smith.

{p. 103} Laurence Rushbrook Williams, who functions in many capacities in Indian affairs after his fellowship in All Souls (1914-1921), also joined the editorial staff in 1944. Douglas Jay, who graduated from New College in 1930 and was a Fellow of All Souls in 1930-1937, was on the staff of The Times in 1929-1933 and of the Economist in 1933-1937. He became a Labour M.P. in 1946, after having performed the unheard-of feat of going directly from All Souls to the city desk of the Labour Party's Daily Herald (1937-1941). Another interesting figure on The Times staff in the more recent period was Charles R. S. Harris, who was a Fellow of All Souls for fifteen years (1921-1936), after graduating from Corpus Christi. He was leader-writer of The Times for ten years (1925-1935) and, during part of the same period, was on the staff of the Economist (1932-1935) and editor of The Nineteenth Century and After (1930-1935). He left all three positions in 1935 to go for four years to the Argentine to be general manager of the Buenos Aires Great Southern and Western Railways. During the Second World War he joined the Ministry of Economic Warfare for a year, the Foreign Office for two years, and the Finance Department of the War Office for a year (1942-1943). Then he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel with the military government in occupied Sicily, and ended up the war as a member of the Allied Control Commission in Italy. Harris's written works cover a range of subjects that would be regarded as extreme anywhere outside the Milner Group. A recognized authority on Duns Scotus, he wrote two volumes on this philosopher as well as the chapter on "Philosophy" in The Legacy of the Middle Ages, but in 1935 he wrote Germany's Foreign Indebtedness for the Royal Institute of Inter- national Affairs.

Harris's literary versatility, as well as the large number of members of All Souls who drifted over to the staff on The Times, unquestionably can be explained by the activities of Lord Brand. Brand not only brought these persons from All Souls to The Times, but also brought the Astors to The Times. Brand and Lord Astor were together at New College at the outbreak of the Boer War. They married sisters, daughters of Chiswell Dabney Langhorne of Virginia. Brand was apparently the one who brought Astor into the Milner Group in 1917, although there had been a movement in this direction considerably earlier. Astor was a Conservative M.P. from 1910 to 1919, leaving the Lower House to take his father's seat in the House of Lords. His place in Commons has been held since 1919 by his wife, Nancy Astor (1919-1945), and by his son Michael Langhorne Astor (1945- ). In 1918 Astor became parliamentary secretary to Lloyd George; later he held the same position with the Ministry of Food (1918-1919) and the Ministry of Health (1919-1921). He was British delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations in 1931, chairman of the League Committee on Nutrition (1936-1937), and chairman of the council of the Royal Institute of International affairs (since 1935). ...

Lord Astor's chief importance in regard to The Times is that he and his brother became chief proprietors in 1922 by buying out the Harmsworth interest. ...

The Times has recently published the first three volumes of a four-volume history of itself. Although no indication is given as to the authorship of these volumes, the acknowledgments show that the authors worked closely with All Souls and the Milner Group. For example, Harold Temperley and Keith Feiling read the proofs of the first two volumes, while E. L. Wooread those of the third volume.

{p. 113} This influence was not exercised by acting directly on public opinion, since the Milner Group never intended to influence events by acting through any instruments of mass propaganda, but rather hoped to work on the opinions of the small group of "important people," who in turn could influence wider and wider circles of persons. This was the basis on which the Milner Group itself was constructed; it was the theory behind the Rhodes Scholarships; it was the theory behind "The Round Table and the Royal Institute of International Affairs; it was the theory behind the efforts to control All Souls, New College, and Balliol and, through these three, to control Oxford University; and it was the theory behind The Times. No effort was made to win a large circulation for The Times, for, in order to obtain such a circulation, it would have been necessary to make changes in the tone of the paper that would have reduced its influence with the elite, to which it had been so long directed. The theory of "the elite" was accepted by the Milner Group and by The Times, as it was by Rhodes.

{p. 114} The Times was to be a paper for the people who are influential, and not for the masses. The Times was influential, but the degree of its influence would never be realized by anyone who examined only the paper itself. The greater part of its influence arose from its position as one of several branches of a single group, the Milner Group. By the interaction of these various branches on one another, under the pretense that each branch was an autonomous power, the influence of each branch was increased through a process of mutual reinforcement. The unanimity among the various branches was believed by the outside world to be the result of the influence of a single Truth, while really it was the result of the existence of a single group. Thus, a statesman (a member of the Group) announces a policy. About the same time, the Royal Institute of International Affairs publishes a study on the subject, and an Oxford don, a Fellow of All Souls (and a member of the Group) also publishes a volume on the subject (probably through a publishing house, like G. Bell and Sons or Faber and Faber, allied to the Group). The statesman's policy is subjected to critical analysis and final approval in a "leader" in The Times, while the two books are reviewed (in a single review) in The Times Literary Supplement. Both the "leader" and the review are anonymous but are written by members of the Group. And finally, at about the same time, an anonymous article in The Round Table strongly advocates the same policy. The cumulative effect of such tactics as this, even if each tactical move influences only a small number of important people, is bound to be great. If necessary, the strategy can be carried further, by arranging for the secretary to the Rhodes Trustees to go to America for a series of "informal discussions" with former Rhodes Scholars, while a prominent retired statesman (possibly a former Viceroy of India) is persuaded to say a few words at the unveiling of a plaque in All Souls or New College in honor of some deceased Warden. By a curious coincidence, both the "informal discussions" in America and the unveiling speech at Oxford touch on the same topical subject.

{p. 115} An analogous procedure in reverse could be used for policies or books which the Group did not approve. A cutting editorial or an unfriendly book review, followed by a suffocating blanket of silence and neglect, was the best that such an offering could expect from the instruments of the Milner Group. This is not easy to demonstrate because of the policy of anonymity followed by writers and reviewers in The Times, The Round Table, and The Times Literary Supplement, but enough cases have been found to justify this statement. When J. A. Farrer's book England under Edward VII was published in 1922 and maintained that the British press, especially The Times, was responsible for bad Anglo-German feeling before 1909, The Times Literary Supplement gave it to J. W. Headlam-Morley to review. And when Baron von Eckardstein, who was in the German Embassy in London at the time of the Boer War, published his memoirs in 1920, the same journal gave the book to Chirol to review, even though Chirol was an interested party and was dealt with in a critical fashion in several passages in the book itself. Both of these reviews were anonymous.

There is no effort here to contend that the Milner Group ever falsified or even concealed evidence (although this charge could be made against The Times). Rather it propagated its point of view by interpretation and selection of evidence. In this fashion it directed policy in ways that were sometimes disastrous. The Group as a whole was made up of intelligent men who believed sincerely, and usually intensely, in what they advocated, and who knew that their writings were intended for a small minority as intelligent as themselves. In such conditions there could be no value in distorting or concealing evidence. To do so would discredit the instruments they controlled. By giving the facts as they stood, and as completely as could be done in consistency with the interpretation desired, a picture could be construed that would remain convincing for a long time.

This is what was done by The Times. Even today, the official historian of The Times is unable to see that the policy of that paper was anti-German from 1895 to 1914 and as such contributed to the worsening of Anglo-German relations and thus to the First World War. This charge has been made by German and American students, some of them of the greatest diligence and integrity, such as Professors Sidney B. Fav, William L. Langer, Oron J. Hale, and others. The recent History of The Times devotes considerable space and obviously spent long hours of research in refuting these charges, and fails to see that it has not succeeded. With the usual honesty and industry of the Milner Group, the historian gives the evidence that will convict him, without seeing that his interpretation will not hold water. He confesses that the various correspondents of The Times in Berlin played up all anti-English actions and statements and played down all pro-English ones; that they quoted obscure and locally discredited papers in order to do this; that all The Times foreign correspondents in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and elsewhere were anti-German, and that these were the ones who were kept on the staff and promoted to better positions; that the one member of the staff who was recognized as being fair to Germany (and who was unquestionably the most able man in the whole Times organization), Donald Mackenzie Wallace, was removed as head of the Foreign Department and shunted off to be editor of the supplementary volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica (which was controlled by The Times); and that The Times frequently printed untrue or distorted information on Germany. All of this is admitted and excused as the work of honest, if hasty, journalists, and the crowning proof that The Times was not guilty as charged is implied to be the fact that the Germans did ultimately get into a war with Britain, thus proving at one stroke that they were a bad lot and that the attitude of The Times staff toward them was justified by the event.

It did not occur to the historian of The Times that there exists another explanation of Anglo-German relations, namely that in 1895 there were two Germanies - the one admiring Britain and the other hating Britain - and that Britain, by her cold-blooded and calculated assault on the Boers in 1895 and 1899, gave the second (and worse) Germany the opportunity to criticize and attack Britain and gave it the arguments with which to justify a German effort to build up naval defenses. The Times, by quoting these attacks and actions representative of the real attitude and actual intentions of all Germans, misled the British people and abandoned the good Germans to a hopeless minority position, where to be progressive, peaceful, or Anglophile was to be a traitor to Germany itself. Chirol's alienation of Baron von Eckardstein (one of the "good" Germans, married to an English lady), in a conversation in February 19OO, shows exactly how The Times attitude was contributing to consolidate and alienate the Germans by the mere fact of insisting that they were consolidated and alienated - and doing this to a man who loved England and hated the reactionary elements in Germany more than Chirol ever did.

{p. 117} THE SECOND important propaganda effort of the Milner Group in the period after 1909 was The Round Table. This was part of an effort by the circle of the Milner Group to accomplish for the whole Empire what they had just done for South Africa. The leaders were Philip Kerr in London, as secretary of the London group, and Lionel Curtis throughout the world, as organizing secretary for the whole movement, but most of the members of the Kindergarten cooperated in the project. The plan of procedure was the same as that which had worked so successfully in South Africa - that is, to form local groups of influential men to agitate for imperial federation and to keep in touch with these groups by correspondence and by the circulation of a periodical. As in South Africa, the original cost of the periodical was paid by Abe Bailey. This journal, issued quarterly, was called The Round Table and the same name was applied to the local groups.

Of these local groups, the most important by far was the one in London. In this, Kerr and Brand were the chief figures. The other local groups, also called Round Tables, were set up by Lionel Curtis and others in South Africa, in Canada, in New Zealand, in Australia, and, in a rather rudimentary fashion and somewhat later, in India.

The reasons for doing this were described by Curtis himself in 1917 in A Letter to the People of India, as follows: "We feared that South Africa might abstain from a future war with Germany, on the grounds that they had not participated in the decision to make war. ... Confronted by this dilemma at the very moment of attaining Dominion self-government, we thought it would be wise to ask people in the oldest and most experienced of all Dominions what they thought of the matter. So in 1909, Mr. Kerr and I went to Canada and persuaded Mr. Marris, who was then on leave, to accompany us." On this trip the three young men covered a good portion of the Dominion.

One day, during a walk through the forests on the Pacific slopes of the Canadian Rockies, Marris convinced Curtis that "self government, . . . however far distant, was the only intelligible goal of British policy in India.... The existence of political unrest in India, far from being a reason for pessimism, was the surest sign that the British, with all their manifest failings, had not shirked their primary duty of extending Western education to India and so preparing Indians to govern themselves." "I have since looked back on this walk," wrote Curtis, "as one of the milestones of my own education. So far I had thought of self-government as a Western institution, which was and would always remain peculiar to the peoples of Europe.... It was from that moment that I first began to think of 'the Government of each by each and of all by all' not merely as a principle of Western life, but rather of all human life, as the goal to which all human societies must tend. It was from that moment that I began to think of the British Commonwealth as the greatest instrument ever devised for enabling that principle to be realized, not merely for the children of Europe, but for all races and kindreds and peoples and tongues. And it is for that reason that I have ceased to speak of the British Empire and called the book in which I published my views The Commonwealth of Nations."

Because of Curtis's position and future influence, this walk in Canada was important not only in his personal life but also in the future history of the British Empire. It needs only to be pointed out that India received complete self-government in 1947 and the British Commonwealth changed its name officially to Commonwealth of Nations in 1948. There can be no doubt that both of these events resulted in no small degree from the influence of Lionel Curtis and the Milner Group, in which he was a major figure.

Curtis and his friends stayed in Canada for four months. Then Curtis returned to South Africa for the closing session of the Transvaal Legislative Council, of which he was a member. He there drafted a memorandum on the whole question of imperial relations, and, on the day that the Union of South Africa came into existence, he sailed to New Zealand to set up study groups to examine the question. These groups became the Round Table Groups of New Zealand.

The memorandum was printed with blank sheets for written comments opposite the text. Each student was to note his criticisms on these blank pages. Then they were to meet in their study groups to discuss these comments, in the hope of being able to draw up joint reports, or at least majority and minority reports, on their conclusions. These reports were to be sent to Curtis, who was to compile a comprehensive report on the whole imperial problem. This comprehensive report would then be submitted to the groups in the same fashion and the resulting comments used as a basis for a final report.

Five study groups of this style were set up in New Zealand, and then five more in Australia. The decision wasmade to do the same thing in Canada and in England, and this was done by Curtis, Kerr, and apparently Dove during 1910. On the trip to Canada, the missionaries carried with them a letter from Milner to his old friend Arthur J. Glazebrook, with whom he had remained in close contact throughout the years since Glazebrook went to Canada for an English bank in 1893. The Round Table in 1941, writing of Glazebrook, said, "His great political hero was his friend Lord Milner, with whom he kept up a regular correspondence." As a result of this letter from Milner, Glazebrook undertook the task of founding Round Table Groups in Canada and did this so well that he was for twenty years or more the real head of the network of Milner Group units in the Dominion. He regularly wrote the Canadian articles in The Round Table magazine. When he died, in 1940, The Round Table obituary spoke of him as "one of the most devoted and loyal friends that The Round Table has ever known. Indeed he could fairly claim to be one of its founding fathers."

{p. 126} A thousand copies of this, with the title Project of a Commonwealth, were distributed among the groups. Then a popular volume on the subject, with the title The Problem of the Commonwealth and Curtis's name as editor, was published (May 1916). Two months later, the earlier work (Project) was published under the title The Commonwealth of Nations, again with Curtis named as editor. Thus appeared for the first time in public the name which the British Empire was to assume thirty-two years later. In the September 1916 issue of The Round Table, Kerr published a statement on the relationship of the two published volumes to the Round Table Groups. Because of the paper shortage in England, Curtis in 1916 went to Canada and Australia to arrange for the separate publication of The Problem of the Commonwealth in those countries. At the same time he set up new Round Table Groups in Australia and New Zealand. Then he went to India to begin serious work on Indian reform. From this emerged the Government of India Act of 1919, as we shall see later.

By this time Curtis and the others had come to realize that any formal federation of the Empire was impossible. As Curtis wrote in 1917 (in his Letter to the People of India): "The people of the Dominions rightly aspire to control their own foreign affairs and yet retain their status as British citizens. On the other hand, they detest the idea of paying taxes to any Imperial Parliament, even to one upon which their own representatives sit. The inquiry convinced me that, unless they sent members and paid taxes to an Imperial Parliament, they could not control their foreign affairs and also remain British subjects. But I do not think that doctrine is more distasteful to them than the idea of having anything to do with the Government of India."

Reluctantly Curtis and the others postponed the idea of a federated Empire and fell back on the idea of trying to hold the Empire together by the intangible bonds of common culture and common outlook. This had originally (in Rhodes and Milner) been a supplement to the project of a federation. It now became the chief issue, and the idea of federation fell into a secondary place. At the same time, the idea of federation was swallowed up in a larger scheme for organizing the whole world within a League of Nations. This idea had also been held by Rhodes and Milner, but in quite a different form. To the older men, the world was to be united around the British Empire as a nucleus. To Curtis, the Empire was to be absorbed into a world organization. This second idea was fundamentally mystical. Curtis believed: "Die and ye shall be born again." He sincerely felt that if the British Empire died in the proper way (by spreading liberty, brotherhood, and justice), it would be born again in a higher level of existence - as a world community, or, as he called it, a "Commonwealth of Nations." It is not yet clear whether the resurrection envisaged by Curtis and his associates will occur, or whether they merely assisted at the crucifixion of the British Empire. The conduct of the new India in the next few decades will decide this question.

The idea for federation of the Empire was not original with the Round Table Group, although their writings would indicate that they sometimes thought so. The federation which they envisaged had been worked out in detail by persons close to the Cecil Bloc and was accepted by Milner and Rhodes as their own chief goal in life.

The original impetus for imperial federation arose within the Liberal Party as a reaction against the Little England doctrines that were triumphant in England before 1868. The original movement came from men like John Stuart Mill (whose arguments in support of the Empire are just like Curtis's) and Earl Grey (who was Colonial Secretary under Russell in 1846-1852).

This movement resulted in the founding of the Royal Colonial Society (now Royal Empire Society) in 1868 and, as a kind of subsidiary of this, the Imperial Federation League in 1884. Many Unionist members of the Cecil Bloc, such as Brassey and Goschen, were in these organizations. In 1875 F. P. Labilliere, a moving power in both organizations, read a paper before the older one on "The Permanent Unity of the Empire" and suggested a solution of the imperial prob!em by creating a superimposed imperial legislative body and a central executive over the whole Empire, including the United Kingdom. Seven years later, in "The Political Organization of the Empire," he divided authority between this new federal authority and the Dominions by dividing the business of government into imperial questions, local questions, and questions concerning both levels. He then enumerated the matters that would be allotted to each division, on a basis very similar to that later advocated by Curtis. Another speaker, George Bourinot, in 1880, dealt with "The Natural Development of Canada" in a fashion that sounds exactly like Curtis.

These ideas and projects were embraced by Milner as his chief purpose in life until, like Curtis, he came to realize their impracticality. Milner's ideas can be found in his speeches and letters, especially in two letters of 1901 to Brassey and Parkin. Brassey had started a campaign for imperial federation accompanied by devolution (that is, granting local issues to local bodies even within the United Kingdom) and the creation of an imperial parliament to include representatives of the colonies. This imperial parliament would deal with imperial questions, while local parliaments would deal with local questions. In pursuit of this project, Brassey published a pamphlet, in December 1900, called A Policy on Which All Liberals May Unite and sent to Milner an invitation to join him. Milner accepted in February 1901, saying: In this article can be found, at least implicitly, all the basic ideas of the Milner Group: their suspicion of party politics; their emphasis on moral qualities and the cement of common outlook for linking people together; their conviction that the British Empire is the supreme moral achievement of man, but an achievement yet incomplete and still unfolding; their idea that the highest moral goals are the development of personality through devotion to duty and service under freedom and law; their neglect, even scorn, for economic considerations, and their feeling for the urgent need to pursuade others to accept their point of view in order to allow the Empire to achieve the destiny for which they yearn.

The Milner Group is a standing refutation of the Marxist or Leninist interpretations of history or of imperialism. Its members were motivated only slightly by materialistic incentives, and their imperialism was motivated not at all by the desire to preserve or extend capitalism. On the contrary their economic ideology, in the early stages at least was more socialistic than Manchester in its orientation. To be sure, it was an undemocratic kind of socialism, which was willing to make many sacrifices to the well-being of the masses of the people but reluctant to share with these masses political power that might allow them to seek their own well-being. This socialistic leaning was more evident in the earlier (or Balliol) period than in the later (or New College) period, and disappeared almost completely when Lothian and Brand replaced Esher, Grey, and Milner at the center of the Group. Esher regarded the destruction of the middle class as inevitable and felt that the future belonged to the workers and an administrative state. He dedicated his book After the War (1919) to Robert Smillie, President of the Miners' Federation, and wrote him a long letter on 5 May 1919. On 12 September of the same year, he wrote to his son, the present Viscount Esher: "There are things that cannot be confiscated by the Smillies and Sidney Webbs. These seem to me the real objectives." Even earlier, Arnold Toynbee was a socialist of sorts and highly critical of the current ideology of liberal capitalism as proclaimed by the high priests of the Manchester School. Milner gave six lectures on socialism in Whitechapel in 1882 (published in 1931 in The National Review). Both Toynbee and Milner worked intermittently at social service of a mildly socialistic kind, an effort that resulted in the founding of Toynbee Hall as a settlement house in 1884. As chairman of the board of Internal Revenue in 1892-1897, Milner drew up Sir William Harcourt's budget, which inaugurated the inheritance tax. In South Africa he was never moved by capitalistic motives, placing a heavy profits tax on the output of the Rand mines to finance social improvements, and considering with objective calm the question of nationalizing the railroads or even the mines. Both Toynbee and Milner were early suspicious of the virtues of free trade - not, however, because tariffs could provide high profits for industrial concerns but because tariffs and imperial preference could link the Empire more closely into economic unity. In his later years, Milner became increasingly radical, a development that did not fit any too well with the conservative financial outlook of Brand, or even Hichens. As revealed in his book Questions of the Hour (1923), Milner was a combination of technocrat and guild socialist and objected vigorously to the orthodox financial policy of deflation, balanced budget, gold standard, and free international exchange advocated by the Group after 1918. This orthodox policy, inspired by Brand and accepted by The Round Table after 1918, was regarded by Milner as an invitation to depression, unemployment, and the dissipation of Britain's material and moral resources. On this point there can be no doubt that Milner was correct. Not himself a trained economist, Milner, nevertheless, saw that the real problems were of a technical and material nature and that Britain's ability to produce goods should be limited only by the real supply of knowledge, labor, energy, and materials and not by the artificial limitations of a deliberately restricted supply of money and credit. This point of view of Milner's was not accepted by the Group until after 1931, and not a completely as by Milner even then. The point of view of the Group, at least in the period 1918-1931, was the point of view of the international bankers with whom Brand, Hichens, and others were so closely connected. This point of view, which believed that Britain's prewar financial supremacy could be restored merely by reestablishing the prewar financial system, with the pound sterling at its prewar parity, failed completely to see the changed conditions that made all efforts to restore the prewar system impossible. The Group's point of view is clearly revealed in The Round Table articles of the period. In the issue of December 1918, Brand advocated the financial policy which the British government followed, with such disastrous results, for the next thirteen years. He wrote:

That nation will recover quickest after the war which corrects soonest any depreciation in currency, reduces by production and saving its inflated credit, brings down its level of prices, and restores the free import and export of gold.... With all our wealth of financial knowledge and experience behind us it should be easy for us to steer the right path - though it will not be always a pleasant one - amongst the dangers of the future. Every consideration leads to the view that the restoration of the gold standard - whether or not it can be achieved quickly - should be our aim. Only by that means can we be secure that our level of prices shall be as low as or lower than prices in other countries, and on that condition depends the recovery of our export trade and the prevention of excessive imports. Only by that means can we provide against and abolish the depreciation of our currency which, though the [existing] prohibition against dealings in gold prevents our measuring it, almost certainly exists and safeguard ourself against excessive grants of credit.

He then outlined a detailed program to contract credit, curtail government spending, raise taxes, curtail imports, increase exports etc. Hichens, who, as an industrialist rather than a banker, was not nearly so conservative in financial matters as Brand, suggested that the huge public debt of 1919 be met by a capital levy, but, when Brand's policies were adopted by the government, Hichens went along with them and sought a way out for his own business by reducing costs by rationalizatron of production."

These differences of opinion on economic matters within the Group did not disrupt the Group, because it was founded on political rather than economic Ideas and its roots were to be found in ancient Athens rather than in modern Manchester. The Balliol generation, from Jowett and Nettleship, and the New College generation, from Zimmern, obtained an idealistic picture of classical Greece which left them nostalgic for the fifth century of Hellenism and drove them to seek to reestablish that ancient fellowship of intellect and patriotism in modern Britain. The funeral oration of Pericles became their political Covenant with destiny. Duty to the state and loyalty to one's fellow citizens became the chief values of life. But, realizing that the jewel of Hellenism was destroyed by its inability to organize any political unit larger than a single city, the Milner Group saw the necessity of political organization in order to insure the continued existence of freedom and higher ethical values and hoped to be able to preserve the values of their day by organizing the whole world around the British Empire.

Curtis puts this quite clearly in The Commonwealth of Nations (1916), where he says:

States, whether autocracies or commonwealths, ultimately rest on duty, not on self-interest or force.... The quickening principle of a state is a sense of devotion, an adequate recognition somewhere in the minds of its subjects that their own interests are subordinate to those of the state. The bond which unites them and constitutes them collectively as a state is, to use the words of Lincoln, in the nature of dedication. Its validity, like that of the marriage tie, is at root not contractual but sacramental. Its foundation is not self-interest, but rather some sense of obligation, however conceived, which is strong enough to over-master self-interest.

History for this Group, and especially for Curtis, presented itself as an age-long struggle between the principles of autocracy and the principles of commonwealth, between the forces of darkness and the forces of light, between Asiatic theocracy and European freedom. This view of history, founded on the work of Zimmern, E. A. Freeman, Lord Bryce, and A. V. Dicey, felt that the distinguishing mark between the two hosts could be found in their views of law - the forces of light regarding law as man-made and mutable, but yet above all men, while the forces of darkness regarded law as divine and eternal, yet subordinate to the king. The one permitted diversity, growth, and freedom, while the other engendered monotony, stultification, and slavery. The struggle between the two had gone on for thousands of years, spawning such offspring as the Persian Wars, the Punic Wars, and the struggles of Britain with the forces of Philip II, of Louis XIV, of Napoleon, and of Wilhelm II. Thus, to this Group, Britain stood as the defender of all that was fine or civilized in the modern world, just as Athens had stood for the same values in the ancient world. Britain's mission, under this interpretation, was to carry freedom and light (that is, the principles of commonwealth) against the forces of theocracy and darkness (that is, autocracy) in Asia - and even in Central Europe. For this Group regarded the failure of France or Germany to utilize the English idea of "supremacy of law" (as described by Dicey in his The Law of the Constitution, 1885) as proof that these countries were still immersed, at least partially, in the darkness of theocratic law. The slow spread of English political institutions to Europe as well as Asia in the period before the First World War was regarded by the Group as proof both of their superiority and of the possibility of progress. In Asia and Africa, at least, England's civilizing mission was to be carried out by force, if necessary, for "the function of force is to give moral ideas time to take root." Asia thus could be compelled to accept civilization, a procedure justifiable to the Group on the grounds that Asians are obviously better off under European rule than under the rule of fellow Asians and, if consulted, would clearly prefer British rule to that of any other European power. To be sure, the blessings to be extended to the less fortunate peoples of the world did not include democracy. To Milner, to Curtis, and apparently to most members of the Group, democracy was not an unmixed good, or even a good, and far inferior to rule by the best, or, as Curtis says, by those who "have some intellectual capacity for judging the public interest, and, what is no less important, some moral capacity for treating it as paramount to their own."

This disdain for unrestricted democracy was quite in accordance with the ideas revealed by Milner's activities in South Africa and with the Greek ideals absorbed at Balliol or New College. However, the restrictions on democracy accepted by the Milner Group were of a temporary character, based on the lack of education and background of those who were excluded from political participation. It was not a question of blood or birth, for these men were not racists.

This last point is important because of the widespread misconception that these people were racially intolerant. They never were; certainly those of the inner circle never were. On the contrary, they were ardent advocates of a policy of education and uplift of all groups, so that ultimately all groups could share in political life and in the rich benefits of the British way of life. To be sure, the members of the Group did not advocate the immediate extension of democracy and self-government to all peoples within the Empire, but these restrictions were based not on color of skin or birth but upon cultural outlook and educational background. Even Rhodes, who is widely regarded as a racist because his scholarships were restricted to candidates from the Nordic countries, was not a racist. He restricted his scholarships to these countries because he felt that they had a background sufficiently homogeneous to allow the hope that educational interchange could link them together to form the core of the worldwide system which he hoped would ultimately come into existence. Beyond this, Rhodes insisted that there must be no restrictions placed on the scholarships on a basis of race, religion, skin color, or national origin. In his own life Rhodes cared nothing about these things. Some of his closest friends were Jews (like Beit), and in three of his wills he left Lord Rothschild as his trustee, in one as his sole trustee. Milner and the other members felt similarly. Lionel Curtis, in his writings, makes perfectly clear both his conviction that character is acquired by training rather than innate ability and his insistence on tolerance in personal contact between members of different races. In his The Commonwealth of Nations (1916) he says: "English success in planting North America and the comparative failure of their rivals must, in fact, be traced to the respective merits not of breed but of institutions"; and again: "The energy and intelligence which had saved Hellas [in the Persian Wars] was the product of her free institutions." In another work he protests against English mistreatment of natives in India and states emphatically that it must be ended. He says: "The conduct on the part of Europeans . . . is more than anything else the root cause of Indian unrest . . . I am strongly of opinion that governors should be vested with powers to investigate judicially cases where Europeans are alleged to have outraged Indian feelings. Wherever a case of wanton and unprovoked insult such as those I have cited is proved, government should have the power to order the culprit to leave the country.... A few deportations would soon effect a definite change for the better." That Dove felt similarly is clear from his letters to Brand.

Without a belief in racism, it was perfectly, possible for this Group to believe, as they did, in the ultimate extension of freedom and self-government to all parts of the Empire. To be sure, they believed that this was a path to be followed slowly, but their reluctance was measured by the inability of "backward" peoples to understand the principles of a commonwealth, not by reluctance to extend to them either democracy or self-government.

Curtis defined the distinction between a commonwealth and a despotism in the following terms: "The rule of law as contrasted with the rule of an individual is the distinguishing mark of a commonwealth. In despotism government rests on the authority of the ruler or of the invisible and uncontrollable power behind him. In a commonwealth rulers derive their authority from the law and the law from a public opinion which is competent to change it." Accordingly, "the institutions of a commonwealth cannot be successfully worked by peoples whose ideas are still those of a theocratic or patriarchal society. The premature extension of representative institutions throughout the Empire would be the shortest road to anarchy." The people must first be trained to understand and practice the chief principles of commonwealth, namely the supremacy of law and the subjection of the motives of self-interest and material gain to the sense of duty to the interests of the community as a whole. Curtis felt that such an educational process was not only morally necessary on the part of Britain but was a practical necessity, since the British could not expect to keep 430 million persons in subjection forever but must rather hope to educate them up to a level where they could appreciate and cherish British ideals. In one book he says: "The idea that the principle of the commonwealth implies universal suffrage betrays an ignorance of its real nature. That principle simply means that government rests on the duty of the citizens to each other, and is to be vested in those who are capable of setting public interest before their own." In another work he says: "As sure as day follows the night, the time will come when they [the Dominions] will have to assume the burden of the whole of their affairs. For men who are fit for it, self-government is a question not of privilege but rather of obligation. It is duty, not interest, which impels men to freedom, and duty, not interest, is the factor which turns the scale in human affairs." India is included in this evolutionary process for Curtis wrote: " A despotic government might long have closed India to Western ideas. But a commonwealth is a living thing. It cannot suffer any part of itself to remain inert. To live it must move, and move in every limb.... Under British rule Western ideas will continue to penetrate and disturb Oriental society, and whether the new spirit ends in anarchy or leads to the establishment of a higher order depends upon how far the millions of India can be raised to a fuller and more rational conception of the ultimate foundations upon which the duty of obedience to government rests."

These ideas were not Curtis's own, although he was perhaps the most prolific, most eloquent, and most intense in his feelings. They were apparently shared by the whole inner circle of the Group. Dove, writing to Brand from India in 1919, is favorable to reform and says "Lionel is right. You can't dam a world current. There is, I am convinced, purpose under such things. All that we can do is to try to turn the flood into the best channel." In the same letter he said: "Unity will in the end, have to be got in some other way.... Love - call it, if you like, by a longer name - is the only thing that can make our post-war world go round, and it has, I believe, something to say here too. The future of the Empire seems to me to depend on how far we are able to recognize this. Our trouble is that we start some way behind scratch. Indians must always find it hard to understand us." And the future Lord Lothian, ordering an article on India for The Round Table from a representative in India, wrote: "We want an article in The Round Table and I suggest to you that the main conclusion which the reader should draw from it should be that the responsibility rests upon him of seeing that the Indian demands are sympathetically handled without delay after the war."

What this Group feared was that the British Empire would fail to profit from the lessons they had discerned in the Athenian empire or in the American Revolution. Zimmern had pointed out to them the sharp contrast between the high idealism of Pericles's funeral oration and the crass tyranny of the Athenian empire. They feared that the British Empire might fall into the same difficulty and destroy British idealism and British liberties by the tyranny necessary to hold on to a reluctant Empire. And any effort to hold an empire by tyranny they regarded as doomed to failure. Britain would be destroyed, as Athens was destroyed, by powers more tyrannical than herself. And, still drawing parallels with ancient Greece, the Group feared that all culture and civilization would go down to destruction because of our inability to construct some kind of political unit larger than the national state, just as Greek culture and civilization in the fourth century B.C. went down to destruction because of the Greeks' inability to construct some kind of political unit larger than the city-state. This was the fear that had animated Rhodes, and it was the same fear that was driving the Milner Group to transform the British Empire into a Commonwealth of Nations and then place that system within a League of Nations. In 1917, Curtis wrote in his Letter to the People of India: "The world is in throes which precede creation or death. Our whole race has outgrown the merely national state, and as surely as day follows night or night the day, will pass either to a Commonwealth of Nations or else an empire of slaves. And the issue of these agonies rests with us."

At the same time the example of the American Revolution showed the Group the dangers of trying to rule the Empire from London: to tax without representation could only lead to disruption. Yet it was no longer possible that 45 million in the United Kingdom could tax themselves for the defense of 435 million in the British Empire. What, then, was the solution? The Milner Group's efforts to answer this question led eventually, as we shall see in Chapter 8, to the present Commonwealth of Nations, but before we leave The Round Table, a few words should be said about Lord Milner's personal connection with the Round Table Group and the Group's other connections in the field of journalism and publicity.

Milner was the creator of the Round Table Group (since this is but another name for the Kindergarten) and remained in close personal contact with it for the rest of his life. In the sketch of Milner in the Dictionary of National Biography, written by Basil Williams of the Kindergarten, we read: "He was always ready to discuss national questions on a non-party basis, joining with former members of his South African 'Kindergarten' in their 'moot,' from which originated the political review, The Round Table, and in a more heterogeneous society, the 'Coefficients,' where he discussed social and imperial problems with such curiously assorted members as L. S. Amery {Leo Amery later authored the Balfour Declaration}, H. G. Wells, (Lord) Haldane, Sir Edward Grey, (Sir) Michael Sadler, Bernard Shaw, J. L. Garvin, William Pember Reeves, and W. A. S Hewins." In the obituary of Hichens, as already indicated, we find in reference to the Round Table the sentence: "Often at its head sat the old masters of the Kindergarten, Lord Milner and his successor, Lord Selborne, close friends and allies of Hichens to the end." And in the obituary of Lord Milner in The Round Table for June 1925, w e find the following significant passage:

The founders and the editors of The Round Table mourn in a very special sense the death of Lord Milner. For with him they have lost not only a much beloved friend, but one whom they have always regarded as their leader. Most of them had the great good fortune to serve under him in South Africa during or after the South African war, and to learn at firsthand from him something of the great ideals which inspired him. From those days at the very beginning of this century right up to the present time, through the days of Crown Colony Government in the Transvaal and Orange Free State, of the making of the South African constitution and through all the varied and momentous history of the British Empire in the succeeding fifteen years, they have had the advantage of Lord Milner's counsel and guidance, and they are grateful to think that, though at times he disagreed with them, he never ceased to regard himself as the leader to whom, above everyone else, they looked. It is of melancholy interest to recall that Lord Milner had undertaken to come on May 13, the very day of his death, to a meeting specially to discuss with them South African problems.

The Round Table was published during the Second World War from Rhodes House, Oxford, which is but one more indication of the way in which the various instruments of the Milner Group are able to cooperate with one another.

The Times and The Round Table are not the only publications which have been controlled by the Milner Group. At various times in the past, the Group has been very influential on the staffs of the Quarterly Review, The Nineteenth Century and After, The Economist and the Spectator. Anyone familiar with these publications will realize that most of them, for most of the time, have been quite secretive as to the names of the members of their staffs or even as to the names of their editors. The extent of the Milner Group's influence and the periods during which it was active cannot be examined here. The Milner Group was also very influential in an editorial fashion in regard to a series of excellent and moderately priced volumes known as The Home University Library. Any glance at the complete list of volumes in this series will reveal that a large number of the names are those of persons mentioned in this study. The influence of the Group on The Home University Library was chiefly exercised through H. A. L.

{p. 139} The Milner Group also attempted, at the beginning at least, to use Milner's old connections with adult education and working-class schools (a connection derived from Toynbee and Samuel Barnett) to propagate its Imperial doctrines. As A. L. Smith, the Master of Balliol, put it in 1915, "We must educate our masters." ... After the war ended, the propaganda work among the British working class became less important, for various reasons, of which the chief were that working-class ears were increasingly monopolized by Labour Party speakers and that the Round Table Group were busy with other problems like the League of Nations, Ireland and the United States.

{p. 140} THE MILNER GPOUP was out of power for a decade from 1906 to 1915. We have already indicated our grounds for believing that this condition was not regarded with distaste, since its members were engaged in important activities of their own and approved of the conduct of foreign policy (their chief field of interest) by the Liberal Party under Asquith, Grey, and Haldane. During this period came the Union of South Africa, The Morley-Minto reforms, the naval race with Germany, the military conversations with France, the agreement of 1907 with Russia, the British attitude against Germany in the Agadir crisis (a crisis to whose creation The Times had contributed no little material - in fact, a whole series of events in which the point of view of the Milner Group was carried out just as if they were in office. To be sure, in domestic matters such as the budget dispute and the ensuing House of Lords dispute, and in the question of Home Rule for Ireland, the Milner Group did not regard the Liberal achievements with complete satisfaction, but in none of these were the members of the Milner Group diehards (as members of the Cecil Bloc sometimes were). But with the outbreak of war, the Milner Group and the Cecil Bloc wanted to come to power and wanted it badly, chiefly because control of the government in wartime would make it possible to direct events toward the postwar settlement which the Group envisaged. The Group also believed that the war could be used by them to fasten on Britain the illiberal economic regulation of which they had been dreaming since Chamberlain resigned in 1903 (at least).

The Group got to power in 1916 by a method which they repeated with the Labour Party in 1931. By a secret intrigue with a parvenu leader of the government, the Group offered to make him head of a new government if he would split his own party and become Prime Minister, supported by the Group and whatever members he could split off from his own party. The chief difference between 1916 and 1931 is that in the former year the minority that was being betrayed was the Group's own social class - in fact, the Liberal Party members of the Cecil Bloc. Another difference is that in 1916 the plot worked - the Liberal Party was split and permanently destroyed - while in 1931 the plotters broke off only a fragment of the Labour Party and damaged it only temporarily (for fourteen years). This last difference, however, was not caused by any lack of skill in carrying out the intrigue but by the sociological differences between the Liberal Party and the Labour Party in the twentieth century. The latter was riding the wave of the future, while the former was merely one of two "teams" put on the field by the same school for an intramural game, and, as such, it was bound to fuse with its temporary antagonist as soon as the future produced an extramural challenger. This strange (to an outsider) point of view will explain why Asquith had no real animosity for Bonar Law or Balfour (who really betrayed him) but devoted the rest of his life to belittling the actions of Lloyd George. Asquith talked later about how he was deceived (and even lied to) in December 1915, but never made any personal attack on Bonar Law, who did the prevaricating (if any). The actions of Bonar Law were acceptable in the code of British politics, a code largely constructed on the playing fields of Eton and Harrow, but Lloyd George's actions, which were considerably less deliberate and cold-blooded, were quite unforgivable, coming as they did from a parvenu who had been built up to a high place in the Liberal Party because of his undeniable personal ability, but who, nonetheless, was an outsider who had never been near the playing fields of Eton.

In the coalition governments of May 1915 and December 1916, members of the Cecil Bloc took the more obvious positions (as befitted their seniority), while members of the Milner Group took the less conspicuous places, but by 1918 the latter group had the whole situation tied up in a neat package and held all the strings.

In the first coalition (May 1915), Lansdowne came into the Cabinet without portfolio, Curzon as Lord Privy Seal, Bonar Law at the Colonial Office, Austen Chamberlain at the India Office, Balfour at the Admiralty, Selborne as President of the Board of Agriculture, Walter Long as President of the Local Government Board, Sir Edward Carson as Attorney General, F. E. Smith as Solicitor General, Lord Robert Cecil as Under Secretary in the Foreign Office, and Arthur Steel-Maitland as Under Secretary in the Colonial Office. Of these eleven names, at least nine were members of the Cecil Bloc, and four were close to the Milner Group (Cecil, Balfour, Steel-Maitland, and Selborne).

In the second coalition government (December 1916), Milner was Minister vvithout Portfolio; Curzon was Lord President of the Council: Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir Robert Finlay, ...

{p. 148} THE EVOLUTION of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations is to a very great extent a result of the activities of the Milner Group. To be sure, the ultimate goal of the Group was quite different from the present system, since they wanted a federation of the Empire but this was a long-run goal, and en route they accepted the present system as a temporary way station. However, the strength of colonial and Dominion feeling, which made the ideal of federation admittedly remote at all times, has succeeded in making this way-station a permanent terminal and thus had eliminated, apparently forever, the hope for federation. With the exception of a few diehards (of whom Milner and Curtis were the leaders), the Group has accepted the solution of imperial cooperation and "parallelism" as an alternative to federation. This was definitely stated in The Round Table of December 1920. In that issue the Group adopted the path of cooperation as its future policy and added: "Its [The Round Table's] promoters in this country feel bound to state that all the experience of the war and of the peace has not shaken in the least the fundamental conviction with which they commenced the publication of this Review.... The Round Table has never expressed an opinion as to the form which this constitutional organization would take, nor as to the time when it should be undertaken. But it has never disguised its conviction that a cooperate system would eventually break down." In September 1935, in a review of its first twenty-five years, the journal stated: "Since the war, therefore, though it has never abandoned its view that the only final basis for freedom and enduring peace is the organic union of nations in a commonwealth embracing the whole world or, in the first instance, a lesser part of it, The Round Table has been a consistent supporter ... of the principles upon which the British Empire now rests, as set forth in the Balfour Memorandum of 1926. ... It has felt that only by trying the cooperation method to the utmost and realizing its limitations in practice would nations within or without the British Empire be brought to face the necessity for organic union."

There apparently exists within the Milner Group a myth to the effect that they invented the expression "Commonwealth of Nations," that it was derived from Zimmern's book The Greek Commonwealth (published in 1911) and first appeared in public in the title of Curtis's book in 1916. This is not quite accurate, for the older imperialists of the Cecil Bloc had used the term "commonwealth" in reference to the British Empire on various occasions as early as 1884. In that year, in a speech at Adelaide, Australia, Lord Rosebery referred to the possibility of New Zealand seceding from the Empire and added: "God forbid. There is no need for any nation, however great, leaving the Empire, because the Empire is a Commonwealth of Nations."

If the Milner Group did not invent the term, they gave it a very definite and special meaning, based on Zimmern's book, and they popularized the use of the expression. According to Zimmern, the expression "commonwealth" referred to a community based on freedom and the rule of law, in distinction to a government based on authority or even arbitrary tyranny. The distinction was worked out in Zimmern's book in the contrast between Athens, as described in Pericles's funeral oration, and Sparta (or the actual conduct of the Athenian empire). As applied to the modern world, the contrast was between the British government, as described by Dicey, and the despotisms of Philip II, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II. In this sense of the word, commonwealth was not originally an alternative to federation, as it later became, since it referred to the moral qualities of government, and these could exist within either a federated or a nonfederated Empire.

The expression "British Commonwealth of Nations" was, then, not invented by the Group but was given a very special meaning and was propagated in this sense until it finally became common usage. The first step in this direction was taken on 15 May 1917, when General Smuts, at a banquet in his honor in the Houses of Parliament, used the expression. This banquet was apparently arranged by the Milner Group, and Lord Milner sat at Smuts's right hand during the speech. The speech itself was printed and given the widest publicity, being disseminated throughout Great Britain, the Commonwealth, the United States, and the rest of the world. In retrospect, some persons have believed that Smuts was rejecting the meaning of the expression as used by the Milner Group, because he did reject the project for imperial federation in this speech. This, however, is a mistake, for, as we have said, the expression "commonwealth' at that time had a meaning which could include either federation or cooperation among the members of the British imperial system. The antithesis in meaning between federation and commonwealth is a later development which took place outside the Group. To this day, men like Curtis, Amery, and Grigg still use the term "commonwealth" as applied to a federated Empire, and they always define the word "commonwealth" as "a government of liberty under the law" and not as an arrangement of independent but cooperating states.

The development of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations and the role which the Milner Group played in this development cannot be understood by anyone who feels that federation and commonwealth were mutually exclusive ideas.

In fact, there were not two ideas, but three, and they were not regarded by the Group as substitutes for each other but as supplements to each other. These three ideas were: (1) the creation of a common ideology and world outlook among the peoples of the United Kingdom, the Empire, and the United States; (2) the creation of instruments and practices of cooperation among these various communities in order that they might pursue parallel policies; and (3) the creation of a federation on an imperial, Anglo-American, or world basis. The Milner Group regarded these as supplementary to one another and worked vigorously for all of them, without believing that they were mutually exclusive alternatives. They always realized, even the most fanatical of them, that federation, even of the Empire only, was very remote. They always, in this connection, used such expressions as "not in our lifetime" or "not in the present century." They always insisted that the basic unity of any system must rest on common ideology, and they worked in this direction through the Rhodes Scholarships, the Round Table Groups, and the Institutes of International Affairs, even when they were most ardently seeking to create organized constitutional relationships. And in these constitutional relationships they worked equally energetically and simultaneously for imperial federation and for such instruments of cooperation as conferences of Prime Ministers of Dominions. The idea, which seems to have gained currency, that the Round Table Group was solely committed to federation and that the failure of this project marked the defeat and eclipse of the Group is erroneous. On the contrary, by the 1930s, the Round Table Group was working so strongly for a common ideology and for institutions of cooperation that many believers in federation regarded them as defeatist. For this reason, some believers in federation organized a new movement called the "World Commonwealth Movement." Evidence of this movement is an article by Lord Davies in The Nineteenth Century and After for January 1935, called "Round Table or World Commonwealth?" This new movement was critical of the foreign policy rather than the imperial policy of the Round Table Group, especially its policy of appeasement toward Germany and of weakening the League of Nations, and its belief that Britain could find security in isolation from the Continent and a balance-of-power policy supported by the United Kingdom, the Dominions, and the United States.
The effort of the Round Table Group to create a common ideology to unite the supporters of the British wav of life appears in every aspect of their work. It was derived from Rhodes and Milner and found its most perfect manifestation in the Rhodes Scholarships. As a result of these and of the Milner Group's control of so much of Oxford, Oxford tended to become an international university. Here the Milner Group had to tread a narrow path between the necessity of training non-English (including Americans and Indians) in the English way of life and the possibility of submerging that way of life completely (at Oxford, at least) by admitting too many non-English to its cloistered halls. On the whole, this path was followed with considerable success, as will be realized by anyone who has had any experience with Rhodes Scholars. To be sure, the visitors from across the seas picked up the social customs of the English somewhat more readily than they did the English ideas of playing the game or the English ideas of politics, but, on the whole, the experiment of Rhodes, Milner, and Lothian cannot be called a failure. It was surely a greater success in the United States than it was in the Dominions or in India, for in the last, at least, the English idea of liberty was assimilated much more completely than the idea of loyalty to England.

The efforts of the Milner Group to encourage federation of the Empire have already been indicated. They failed and, indeed, were bound to fail, as most members of the Group soon realized. As early as 1903, John Buchan and Joseph Chamberlain had given up the attempt. By 1917 even Curtis had accepted the idea that federation was a very remote possibility, although in his case, at least, it remained as the beckoning will-o-the-wisp by which all lesser goals were measured and found vaguely dissatisfying.

The third string to the bow - imperial cooperation - remained. It became in time the chief concern of the Group. The story of these efforts is a familiar one, and no attempt will be made here to repeat it. We are concerned only with the role played by the Milner Group in these efforts. In general this role was very large, if not decisive.

The proposals for imperial cooperation had as their basic principle the assumption that communities which had a common ideology could pursue parallel courses toward the same goal merely by consultation among their leaders. For a long time, the Milner Group did not see that the greater the degree of success obtained by this method, the more remote was the possibility that federation could ever be attained. It is very likely that the Group was misled in this by the fact that they were for many years extremely fortunate in keeping members of the Group in positions of power and influence in the Donlinions. As long as
{p. 170} ... the Milner Group exercised a certain amount of influence in regard to Palestine because of its general power in the councils of the Conservative Party and because Palestine was administered through the Colonial Office, where the Milner Group's influence was considerable.

The general attitude of the Milner Group was neither pro-Arab nor pro-Zionist, although tending, if at all, toward the latter rather than the former. The Group were never anti-Semitic, and not a shred of evidence in this direction has been found. In fact, they were very sympathetic to the Jews and to their legitimate aspirations to overcome their fate, but this feeling, it must be confessed, was rather general and remote, and they did not, in their personal lives, have much real contact with Jews or any real appreciation of the finer qualities of those people. Their feeling against anti-Semitism was, on the whole, remote and academic. On the other hand, as with most upper-class English, their feeling for the Arabs was somewhat more personal. Many members of the Group had been in Arab countries, found their personal relationships with the Arabs enjoyable, and were attracted to them. However, this attraction of the Arabs never inclined the Milner Group toward that pro-Arab romanticism that was to be found in people like W. S. Blunt or T. E. Lawrence. The reluctance of the Milner Group to push the Zionist cause in Palestine was based on more academic considerations, chiefly two in number: (1) the feeling that it would not be fair to allow the bustling minority of Zionists to come into Palestine and drive the Arabs either out or into an inferior economic and social position; and (2) the feeling that to do this would have the effect of alienating the Arabs from Western, and especially British, culture, and that this would be especially likely to occur if the Jews obtained control of the Mediterranean coast from Egypt to Syria. Strangely enough, there is little evidence that the Milner Group was activated by strategic or economic considerations at all. Thus the widely disseminated charges that Britain failed to support Zionism in Palestine because of anti-Semitism or strategic and economic considerations is not supported by any evidence found within the Milner Group. This may be true of other sections of British public opinion, and certainly is true of the British Labour Party, where the existence of anti-Semitism as an influence seems clearly established.

In Palestine, as in India and probably in Ireland, the policy of the Milner Group seems to have been motivated by good intentions which alienated the contending parties, encouraged extremism, and weakened British influence with both. In the long run, this policy was pro-Arab, just as in India it was pro-Moslem, and in both cases it served to encourage an uncompromising obstructionism which could have been avoided if Britain had merely applied the principles to which she stood committed.

The attitude of the Milner Group toward the Arabs and Jews can be seen from some quotations from members of the Group. At the Peace Conference of 1919, discussing the relative merits of the Jews and Arabs, Smuts said: "They haven't the Arabs' attractive manners. They do not warm the heart by graceful subjection. They make demands. They are a bitter, recalcitrant little people, and, like the Boers, impatient of leadership and ruinously quarrelsome among themselves. They see God in the shape of an Oriental potentate." A few years later, John Dove, in a letter to Brand, asked himself why there was so much pro-Arab feeling among the British, especially "the public school caste," and attributed it to the Arabs' good manners, derived from desert life, and their love for sports, especially riding and shooting, both close to the heart of the public-school boy. A little later, in another letter, also written from Palestine, Dove declared that the whole Arab world should be in one state and it must have Syria and Palestine for its front door, not be like South Africa, with Delagoa Bay in other hands. The Arab world, he explained, needs this western door because we are trying to westernize the Arabs, and without it they would be driven to the east and to India, which they hate. He concluded:

If the Arab belongs to the Mediterranean, as T. E. Lawrence insists, we should do nothing to stop him getting back to it. Why our own nostrum for the ills of mankind everywhere is Western Civilization, and, if it is a sound one, what would be the good of forcing a people who want direct contact with us to slink in and out of their country by a back door which, like the Persian Gulf, opens only on the East? It would certainly check development, if it did not actually warp it. I suggest then that partition should not be permanent, but this does not mean that a stage of friendly tutelage is necessarily a bad thing for the Arabs. On the contrary, advanced peoples can give so much to stimulate backward ones if they do it with judgment and sympathy. Above all, it must not be the kind of help which kills individuality .... Personally, I don't see the slightest harm in Jews coming to Palestine under reasonable conditions. They are the Arabs' cousins as much as the Phoenicians, and if Zionism brings capital and labour which will enable industries to start, it will add to the strength of the larger unit which some day is going to include Palestine. But they must be content to be part of such a potential unit. They need have no fear of absorption, for they have everything to gain from an Arab Federation. It would mean a far larger field for their activities.

{p. 172} The attitude of the Milner Group toward the specific problem of Zionism was expressed in explicit terms by Lord Milner himself in a speech in the House of Lords on 27 June 1923. After expressing his wholehearted agreement with the policy of the British government as revealed in its actions and in its statements, like the Balfour Declaration and the White Paper of 1922 (Cmd. 1700), he added:

I am not speaking of the policy which is advocated by the extreme Zionists, which is a totally different thing.... I believe that we have only to go on steadily with the policy of the Balfour Declaration as we have ourselves interpreted it in order to see great material progress in Palestine and a gradual subsistence of the present [Arab] agitation the force of which it would be foolish to deny, but which I believe to be largely due to artificial stimulus and, to a very great extent, to be excited from without. The symptoms of any real and general dissatisfaction among the mass of the Arab population with the conditions under which they live, I think it would be very difficult to discover.... There is plenty of room in that country for a considerable immigrant population without injuring in any way the resident Arab population, and, indeed, in many ways it would tend to their extreme benefit. ... There are about 700,000 people in Palestine, and there is room for several millions. ... I am and always have been a strong supporter of the pro-Arab policy which was first advocated in this country in the course of the war. I believe in the independence of the Arab countries, which they owe to us and which they can only maintain with our help. I look forward to an Arab Federation. ... I am convinced that the Arab will make a great mistake ... in claiming Palestine as a part of the Arab Federation in the same sense as are the other countries of the Near East which are mainly inhabited by Arabs.

He then went on to say that he felt that Palestine would require a permanent mandate and under that condition could become a National Home for the Jews, could take as many Jewish immigrants as the country could economically support, but "must never become a Jewish state."

This was the point of view of the Milner Group, and it remained the point of view of the British government until 1939. Like the Milner Group's point of view on other issues, it was essentially fair, compromising, and well-intentioned. It broke down in Palestine because of the obstructionism of the Arabs; the intention of the Zionists to have political control of their National Home, if they got one; the pressure on both Jews and Arabs from the world depression after 1929, and the need for a refuge from Hitler for European Jews after 1933. The Milner Group did not approve of the efforts of the Labour government in 1929-1931 to curtail Zionist rights in Palestine. They protested vigorously against the famous White Paper of 1930 (Cmd. 3692), which was regarded as anti-Zionist. Baldwin, Austen Chamberlain, and Leopold Amery protested against the document in a letter to The Times on 30 October 1930. Smuts sent a telegram of protest to the Prime Minister, and Sir John Simon declared it a violation of the mandate in a letter to The Times. Seven years later, the report of the Peel Commission said that the White Paper "betrayed a marked insensitiveness to Jewish feelings." As a result of this pressure, Ramsay MacDonald wrote a letter to Dr. Weizmann, interpreting the document in a more moderate fashion.

As might be expected, in view of the position of Reginald Coupland on the Peel Commission, the report of that Commission met with a most enthusiastic reception from the Milner Group. This report was a scholarly study of conditions in Palestine, of a type usually found in any document with which the Milner Group had direct contact. For the first time in any government document, the aspirations of Jews and Arabs in Palestine were declared to be irreconcilable and the existing mandate unworkable. Accordingly, the report recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a neutral enclave containing the Holy Places. This suggestion was accepted by the British government in a White Paper (Cmd. 5513) issued through Ormsby-Gore. He also defended it before the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. In the House of Lords it was defended by Lord Lugard, but recently retired as the British member of the Permanent Mandates Commission. It was also supported by Lord Dufferin and Archbishop Lang. In the House of Commons the motion to approve the government's policy as outlined in the White Paper Cmd. 5513 was introduced by Ormsby-Gore. The first speech in support of the motion, which was passed without a division, was from Leopold Amery.

Amery's speech in support of this motion is extremely interesting and is actually an evolution, under the pressure of hard facts, from the point of view described by Lord Milner in 1923. Amery said: "However much we may regret it, we have lost the situation in Palestine, as we lost it in Ireland, through a lack of wholehearted faith in ourselves and through the constitutional inability of the individual Briton, and indeed of the country as a whole, not to see the other fellow's point of view and to be influenced by it, even to the detriment of any consistent policy." According to Amery, the idea of partition occurred to the Peel Commission only after it had left Palestine and the report was already written. Thus the commission was unable to hear any direct evidence on this question or make any examination of how partition should be carried out in detail. He said:

Of the 396 pages of the Report almost the whole of the first 368 pages, including the whole of chapters 7 to 19 represent an earlier Report of an entirely different character. That earlier Report envisaged the continuation of the mandate in its present form. ...

{p. 182} THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (RIIA) is nothing but the Milner Group "writ large." It was founded by the Group, has been consistently controlled by the Group, and to this day is the Milner Group in its widest aspect. It is the legitimate child of the Round Table organization, just as the latter was the legitimate child of the "Closer Union" movement organized in South Africa in 1907. All three of these organizations were formed by the same small group of persons, all three received their initial financial backing from Sir Abe Bailey, and all three used the same methods for working out and propagating their ideas (the so-called Round Table method of discussion groups plus a ]ournal). This similarity is not an accident. The new organization was intended to be a wider aspect of the Milner Group, the plan being to influence the leaders of thought through The Round Table and to influence a wider group through the RIIA.

The real founder of the Institute was Lionel Curtis, although this fact was concealed for many years and he was presented to the public as merely one among a number of founders. In more recent years however, the fact that Curtis was the real founder of the Institute has been publicly stated by members of the Institute and by the Institute Itself on many occasions, and never denied. One example will suffice. In the Annual Report of the Institute for 1942-1943 we read the following sentence: "When the Institute was founded through the inspiration of Mr. Lionel Curtis during the Peace Conference of Paris in 1919 those associated with him in laying the foundations were a group of comparatively young men and women."

The Institute was organized at a joint conference of British and American experts at the Hotel Majestic on 30 May l919. At the suggestion of Lord Robert Cecil, the chair was given to General Tasker Bliss of the American delegation. We have already indicated that the experts of the British delegation at the Peace Conference were almost exclusively from the Milner Group and Cecil Bloc. The American group of experts, "the Inquiry," was manned almost as completely by persons from institutions (including universities) dominated by J. P. Morgan and Company. This was not an accident. Moreover, the Milner Group has always had very close relationships with the associates of J. P. Morgan and with the various branches of the Carnegie Trust. These relationships, which are merely examples of the closely knit ramifications of international financial capitalism, were probably based on the financial holdings controlled by the Milner Group through the Rhodes Trust. The term "international financier" can be applied with full justice to several members of the Milner Group inner circle, such as Brand, Hichens, and above all, Milner himself.

At the meeting at the Hotel Majestic, the British group included Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr, Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Eustace Percy, Sir Eyre Crowe, Sir Cecil Hurst, J. W. Headlam-Morley, Geoffrey Dawson, Harold Temperley, and G. M. Gathorne-Hardy. It was decided to found a permanent organization for the study of international affairs and to begin by writing a history of the Peace Conference. A committee was set up to supervise the writing of this work. It had Lord Meston as chairman, Lionel Curtis as secretary, and was financed by a gift of £2000 from Thomas W. Lamont of J. P. Morgan and Company. This group picked Harold Temperley as editor of the work. It appeared in six large volumes in the years 1920-1924, under the auspices of the RIIA.

The British organization was set up by a committee of which Lord Robert Cecil was chairman, Lionel Curtis was honorary secretary and the following were members: Lord Eustace Percy, J. A. C. (later Sir John) Tilley, Philip Noel-Baker, Clement Jones, Harold Temperley, A. L. Smith (classmate of Milner and Master of Balliol), George W. Prothero, and Geoffrey Dawson. This group drew up a constitution and made a list of prospective members. Lionel Curtis and GathorneHardy drew up the by-laws.

The above description is based on the official history of the RIIA published by the Institute itself in 1937 and written by Stephen King-Hall. It does not agree in its details (committees and names) with information from other sources, equally authoritative, such as the journal of the Institute or the preface to Temperley's H~story of the Peace Confererlce. The latter, for example, says that the members were chosen by a committee consisting of Lord Robert Cecil, Sir Valentine Chirol, and Sir Cecil Hurst. As a matter of fact, all of these differing accounts are correct, for the Institute was formed in such an informal fashion, as among friends, that membership on committees and lines of authority between committees were not very important. As an example, Mr. King-Hall says that he was invited to join the Institute in l919 by Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), although this name is not to be found

{p. 192} Naturally, the Milner Group did not monopolize the membership or the official positions in these new institutes any more than they did in London, for this would have weakened the chief aim of the Group in setting them up, namely to extend their influence to wider areas.

Closely associated with the various Institutes of International Affairs were the various branches of the Institute of Pacific Relations. This was originally founded at Atlantic City in September 1924 as a private organization to study the problems of the Pacific Basin. It has representatives from eight countries with interests in the area. The representatives from the United Kingdom and the three British Dominions were closely associated with the Milner Group. Originally each country had its national unit, but by 1939, in the four British areas, the local Institute of Pacific Relations had merged with the local Institute of International Affairs. Even before this, the two Institutes in each country had practically interchangeable officers, dominated by the Milner Group. In the United States, the Institute of Pacific Relations never merged with the Council on Foreign Relations, but the influence of the associates of J. P. Morgan and other international bankers remained strong on both. The chief figure in the Institute of Pacific Relations of the United States was, for many years, Jerome D. Greene, Boston banker close to both Rockefeller and Morgan and for many years secretary to Harvard University.

The Institutes of Pacific Relations held joint meetings, similar to those of the unofficial conferences on British Commonwealth relations and with a similar group of delegates from the British member organizations. These meetings met every two years at first, beginning at Honolulu in 1925 and then assembling at Honolulu again (1927), at Kyoto (1929), at Shanghai (1931), at Banff (1933), and at Yosemite Park (1936). F. W. Eggleston, of Australia and the Milner Group presided over most of the early meetings. Between meetings, the central organization, set up in 1927, was the Pacific Council, a self-perpetuating body. In 1930, at least five of its seven members were from the Milner Group, as can be seen from the following list: THE PACIFIC COUNCIL, 193O Jerome D. Greene of the United States F. W. Eggleston of Australia N. W. Rowell of Canada D. Z. T. Yui of China Lionel Curtis of the United Kingdom I. Nitobe of Japan Sir James Allen of New Zealand

The close relationships among all these organizations can be seen from a tour of inspection which Lionel Curtis and Ivison S. Macadam (secretary of Chatham House, in succession to F. B. Bourdillon, since 1929) made in 1938. They not only visited the Institutes of International Affairs of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada but attended the Princeton meeting of the Pacific Council of the IPR. Then they separated, Curtis going to New York to address the dinner of the Council on Foreign Relations and visit the Carnegie Foundation, while Macadam went to Washington to visit the Carnegie Endowment and the Brookings Institution.

Through the League of Nations, where the influence of the Milner Group was very great, the RIIA was able to extend its intellectual influence into countries outside the Commonwealth. This was done, for example, through the Intellectual Cooperation Organization of the League of Nations. This Organization consisted of two chief parts: (a) The International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, an advisory body, and (b) The International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, an executive organ of the Committee, with headquarters in Paris. The International Committee had about twenty members from various countries, Gilbert Murray was its chief founder and was chairman from 1928 to its disbandment in 1945. The International Institute was established by the French government and handed over to the League of Nations (1926). Its director was always a Frenchman, but its deputy director and guiding spirit was Alfred Zimmern from 1926 to 1930. It also had a board of directors of six persons; Gilbert Murray was one of these from 1926.
It is interesting to note that from 1931 to 1939 the Indian representative on the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation was Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. In 1931 he was George V Professor of Philosophy at Calcutta University. His subsequent career is interesting. He was knighted in 1931, became Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford in 1936, and became a Fellow of All Souls in 1944.

Beginning in 1928 at Berlin, Professor Zimmern organized annual round-table discussion meetings under the auspices of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. These were called the International Studies Conferences and devoted themselves to an effort to obtain different national points of view on international problems. The members of the Studies Conferences were twenty-five organizations. Twenty of these were Coordinating Committees created for the purpose in twenty different countries. The other five were the following international organizations: The Academy of International Law at The Hague, The European Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; the Geneva School of International Studies; the Graduate Institute of International Studies at Geneva; the Institute of Pacific
{p. 194} Relations.

{p. 234} They did not see that these four had been able to save themselves in 1918 by jettisoning the Kaiser, who had become a liability. They did not see that these four were left in their positions of influence, with their power practically intact - indeed, in many ways with their power greater than ever, since the new "democratic" politicians like Ebert, Scheidemann, and Noske were much more subservient to the four groups than the old imperial authorities had ever been. General Groner gave orders to Ebert over his direct telephone line from Kassel in a tone and with a directness that he would never have used to an imperial chancellor. In a word, there was no revolution in Germany in 1918. The Milner Group did not see this, because they did not want to see it. Not that they were not warned. Brigadier General John H. Morgan, who was almost a member of the Group and who was on the Interallied Military Commission of Control in Germany in 1919-1923, persistently warned the government and the Group of the continued existence and growing power of the German Officers' Corps and of the unreformed character of the German people. As a graduate of Balliol and the University of Berlin (1897-1905), a leader-writer on The Manchester Guardian (1904-1905), a Liberal candidate for Parliament with Amery in 1910, an assistant adjutant general with the military section of the British delegation to the Peace Conference of 1919, the British member on the Prisoners of War Commission (1919), legal editor of The Encyclopedia Britannica (14th edition), contributor to The Times, reader in constitutional law to the Inns of Court (1926-1936), Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of London, Rhodes Lecturer at London (1927-1932), counsel to the Indian Chamber of Princes (1934-1937), counsel to the Indian State of Gwalior, Tagore Professor at Calcutta (1939) - as all of these things, and thus close to many members of the Group, General Morgan issued warnings about Germany that should have been heeded by the Group. They were not. No more attention was paid to them than was paid to the somewhat similar warnings coming from Professor Zimmern. And the general, with less courage than the professor, or perhaps with more of that peculiar group loyalty which pervades his social class in England, kept his warnings secret and private for years. Only in October 1924 did he come out in public with an article in the Quarterly Review on the subject, and only in 1945 did he find a wider platform in a published book (Assize of Arms), but in neither did he name the persons who were suppressing the warnings in his official reports from the Military Commission.

In a similar fashion, the Milner Group knew that the industrialists, the Junkers, the police, and the judges were cooperating with the reactionaries to suppress all democratic and enlightened elements in Germany and to help all the forces of "despotism" and "sin" (to use Curtis's words). The Group refused to recognize these facts. For this, there were two reasons. One, for which Brand was chiefly responsible, was based on certain economic assumptions. Among these, the chief was the belief that "disorder" and social unrest could be avoided only if prosperity were restored to Germany as soon as possible. By "disorder," Brand meant such activities as were associated with Trotsky in Russia, Bela Kun in Hungary, and the Spartacists or Kurt Eisner in Germany. To Brand, as an orthodox international banker, prosperity could be obtained only by an economic system under the control of the old established industrialists and bankers. This is perfectly clear from Brand's articles in The Round Table, reprinted in his book, War and National Finance (1921). Moreover, Brand felt confident that the old economic groups could reestablish prosperity quickly only if they were given concessions in respect to Germany's international financial position by lightening the weight of reparations on Germany and by advancing credit to Germany, chiefly from the United States. This point of view was not Brand's alone. It dominated the minds of all international bankers from Thomas Lamont to Montague Norman and from 1918 to at least 1931. The importance of Brand, from out point of view, lies in the fact that, as "the economic expert" of the Milner Group and one of the leaders of the Group, he brought this point of view into the Group and was able to direct the great influence of the Group in this direction.

Blindness to the real situation in Germany was also encouraged from another point of view. This was associated with Philip Kerr. Roughly, this point of view advocated a British foreign policy based on the old balance-of-power system. Under that old system, which Britain had followed since 1500, Britain should support the second strongest power on the Continent against the strongest power, to prevent the latter from obtaining supremacy on the Continent. For one brief moment in 1918, the Group toyed with the idea of abandoning this traditional policy; for one brief moment they felt that if Europe were given self-determination and parliamentary governments, Britain could permit some kind of federated or at least cooperative Europe without danger to Britain. The moment soon passed. The League of Nations, which had been regarded by the Group as the seed whence a united Europe might grow, became nothing more than a propaganda machine, as soon as the Group resumed its belief in the balance of power. Curtis, who in December 1918 wrote in The Round Table: "That the balance of power has outlived its time by a century and that the world has remained a prey to wars, was due to the unnatural alienation of the British and American Commonwealths" - Curtis, who wrote this in 1918, four years later (9 January 1923) vigorously defended the idea of balance of power against the criticism of Professor A. F. Pollard at a meeting of the RIIA.

This change in point of view was based on several factors. In the first place, the Group, by their practical experience at Paris in 1919, found that it was not possible to apply either self-determination or the parliamentary form of government to Europe. As a result of this experience, they listened with more respect to the Cecil Bloc, which always insisted that these, especially the latter, were intimately associated with the British outlook, way of life, and social traditions, and were not articles of export. This issue was always the chief bone of contention between the Group and the Bloc in regard to India. In India, where their own influence as pedagogues was important, the Group did not accept the Bloc's arguments completely, but in Europe, where the Group's influence was remote and indirect, the Group was more receptive.

In the second place, the Group at Paris became alienated from the French because of the latter's insistence on force as the chief basis of social and political life, especially the French insistence on a permanent mobilization of force to keep Germany down and on an international police force with autonomous power as a part of the League of Nations. The Group, although they frequently quoted Admiral Mahan's kind words about force in social life, did not really like force and shrank from its use, believing, as might be expected from their Christian background, that force could not avail against moral issues, that force corrupts those who use it, and that the real basis of social and political life was custom and tradition. At Paris the Group found that they were living in a different world from the French. They suddenly saw not only that they did not have the same outlook as their former allies, but that these allies embraced the "despotic" and "militaristic" outlook against which the late war had been waged. At once, the Group began to think that the influence which they had been mobilizing against Prussian despotism since 1907 could best be mobilized, now that Prussianism was dead, against French militarism and Bolshevism. And what better ally against these two enemies in the West and the East than the newly baptized Germany? Thus, almost without realizing it, the Group fell back into the old balance-of-power pattern. Their aim became the double one of keeping Germany in the fold of redeemed sinners by concessions, and of using this revived and purified Germany against Russia and France.

In the third place, the Group in 1918 had been willing to toy with the idea of an integrated Europe because, in 1918, they believed that a permanent system of cooperation between Britain and the United States was a possible outcome of the war. This was the lifelong dream of Rhodes, of Milner, of Lothian, of Curtis. For that they would have sacrificed anything within reason. When it became clear in 1920 that the United States had no intention of underwriting Britain and instead would revert to her prewar isolationism, the bitterness of disappointment in the Milner Group were beyond bounds. Forever after, they blamed the evils of Europe, the double-dealing of British policy, and the whole train of errors from 1919 to 1940 on the American reversion to isolationism. It should be clearly understood that by American reversion to isolationism the Milner Group did not mean the American rejection of the League of Nations. Frequently they said that they did mean this, that the disaster of 1939-1940 became inevitable when the Senate rejected the League of Nations in 1920. This is completely untrue, both as a statement of historical fact and as a statement of the Group's attitude toward that rejection at the time. As we shall see in a moment, the Group approved of the Senate's rejection of the League of Nations, because the reasons for that rejection agreed completely with the Group's own opinion about the League. The only change in the Group's opinion, as a result of the Senate's rejection of the League, occurred in respect to the Group's opinion regarding the League itself. Previously they had disliked the League; now they hated it - except as a propaganda agency. The proofs of these statements will appear in a moment.

The change in the Group's attitude toward Germany began even before the war ended. We have indicated how the Group rallied to give a public testimonial of faith in Lord Milner in October 1918, when he became the target of public criticism because of what was regarded by the public as a conciliatory speech toward Germany. The Group objected violently to the anti-German tone in which Lloyd George conducted his electoral campaign in the "khaki election-' of December 1918. The Round Table in March 1919 spoke of Lloyd George and "the odious character of his election campaign." Zimmern, after a devastating criticism of Lloyd George's conduct in the election, wrote: "He erred, not, like the English people, out of ignorance but deliberately, out of cowardice and lack of faith." In the preface to the same volume (Europe in Convalescence) he wrote: "Since December, 1918, when we elected a Parliament pledged to violate a solemn agreement made but five weeks earlier, we stand shamed, dishonoured, and, above all, distrusted before mankind." The agreement to which Zimmern referred was the so-called Pre-Armistice Agreement of 5 November 1918, made with the Germans, by which, if they accepted an armistice, the Allies agreed to make peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points. It was the thesis of the Milner Group that the election of 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles as finally signed violated this Pre-Armistice Agreement. As a result, the Group at once embarked on its
{p. 238} campaign for revision of the treaty, a campaign whose first aim, apparently, was to create a guilty conscience in regard to the treaty in Britain and the United States. Zimmern's book, Brand's book of the previous year, and all the articles of The Round Table were but ammunition in this campaign. However, Zimmern had no illusions about the Germans, and his attack on the treaty was based solely on the need to redeem British honor. As soon as it became clear to him that the Group was going beyond this motive and was trying to give concessions to the Germans without any attempt to purge Germany of its vicious elements and without any guarantee that those concessions would not be used against everything the Group held dear, he left the inner circle of the Group and moved to the second circle. He was not convinced that Germany could be redeemed by concessions made blindly to Germany as a whole, or that Germany should be built up against France and Russia. He made his position clear in a brilliant and courageous speech at Oxford in May 1925, a speech in which he denounced the steady sabotage of the League of Nations. It is not an accident that the most intelligent member of the Group was the first member to break publicly with the policy of appeasement.

The Milner Group thus regarded the Treaty of Versailles as too severe, as purely temporary, and as subject to revision almost at once. When The Round Table examined the treaty in its issue of June 1919, it said, in substance: "The punishment of Germany was just, for no one can believe in any sudden change of heart in that country, but the treaty is too severe. The spirit of the Pre-Armistice Commitments was violated, and, in detail after detail, Germany was treated unjustly, although there is broad justice in the settlement as a whole. Specifically the reparations are too severe, and Germany's neighbors should have been forced to disarm also, as promised in Wilson's Fourth Point. No demand should have been made for William II as a war criminal. If he is a menace, he should be put on an island without trial, like Napoleon. Our policy must be magnanimous, for our war was with the German government, not with the German people." Even earlier, in December 1918, The Round Table said: "It would seem desirable that the treaties should not be long term, still less perpetual, instruments. Perpetual treaties are indeed a lien upon national sovereignty and a standing contradiction of the principle of the democratic control of foreign policy. ... It would establish a salutory precedent if the network of treaties signed as a result of the war were valid for a period of ten years only." In March 1920, The Round Table said: "Like the Peace Conference, the Covenant of the League of Nations aimed too high and too far. Six months ago we looked to it to furnish the means for peaceful revision of the terms of the peace, where revision might be required. Now we have to realize that national sentiment sets closer limits to international action than we were willing then to recognize." The same article then goes on to speak of the rejection of the treaty by the United States Senate. It defends this action and criticizes Wilson severely, saying: "The truth of the matter is that the American Senate has expressed the real sentiment of all nations with hard-headed truthfulness. ... The Senate has put into words what has already been demonstrated in Europe by the logic of events - namely that the Peace of Versailles attempted too much, and the Covenant which guarantees it implies a capacity for united action between the Allies which the facts do not warrant. The whole Treaty was, in fact, framed to meet the same impractical desire which we have already noted in the reparation terms - the desire to mete out ideal justice and to build an ideal world."
Nowhere is the whole point of view of the Milner Group better stated than in a speech of General Smuts to the South African Luncheon Club in London, 23 October 1923. After violent criticism of the reparations as too large and an attack on the French efforts to enforce these clauses, he called for a meeting "of principals" to settle the problem. He then pointed out that a continuation of existing methods would lead to the danger of German disintegration, "a first-class and irreparable disaster. ... It would mean immediate economic chaos, and it would open up the possibility of future political dangers to which I need not here refer. Germany is both economically and politically necessary to Central Europe." He advocated applying to Germany "the benevolent policy which this country adopted toward France after the Napoleonic War. ... And if, as I hope she will do, Germany makes a last appeal ... I trust this great Empire will not hesitate for a moment to respond to that appeal and to use all its diplomatic power and influence to support her, and to prevent a calamity which would be infinitely more dangerous to Europe and the world than was the downfall of Russia six or seven years ago." Having thus lined Britain up in diplomatic opposition to France, Smuts continued with advice against applying generosity to the latter country on the question of French war debts, warning that this would only encourage "French militarism."

Do not let us from mistaken motives of generosity lend our aid to the further militarization of the European continent. People here are already beginning to be seriously alarmed about French armaments on land and in the air. In addition to these armaments, the French government have also lent large sums to the smaller European States around Germany, mainly with a view to feeding their ravenous military appetites. There is a serious danger lest a policy of excessive generosity on our part, or on the part of America, may simply have the effect of enabling France still more effectively to subsidize and foster militarism on the Continent. ... If things continue on the present lines, this country may soon have to start rearming herself in sheer self-defence.

{p. 240} This speech of Smuts covers so adequately the point of view of the Milner Group in the early period of appeasement that no further quotations are necessary. No real change occurred in the point of view of the Group from 1920 to 1938, not even as a result of the death of democratic hopes in Germany at the hands of the Nazis. From Smuts's speech of October 1923 before the South African Luncheon Club to Smuts's speech of November 1934 before the RIIA, much water flowed in the river of international affairs, but the ideas of the Milner Group remained rigid and, it may be added, erroneous. Just as the speech of 1923 may be taken as the culmination of the revisionist sentiment of the Group in the first five years of peace, so the speech of 1934 may be taken as the initiation of the appeasement sentiment of the Group in the last five years of peace. The speeches could almost be interchanged. We may call one revisionist and the other appeasing, but the point of view, the purpose, the method is the same. These speeches will be mentioned again later.

The aim of the Milner Group through the period from 1920 to 1938 was the same: to maintain the balance of power in Europe by building up Germany against France and Russia; to increase Britain's weight in that balance by aligning with her the Dominions and the United States; to refuse any commitments (especially any commitments through the League of Nations, and above all any commitments to aid France) beyond those existing in 1919; to keep British freedom of action; to drive Germany eastward against Russia if either or both of these two powers became a threat to the peace of Western Europe.

The sabotage of the peace settlement by the Milner Group can be seen best in respect to reparations and the League of Nations. In regard to the former, their argument appeared on two fronts: in the first place, the reparations were too large because they were a dishonorable violation of the Pre-Armistice Agreement; and, in the second place, any demand for immediate or heavy payments in reparation would ruin Germany's international credit and her domestic economic system, to the jeopardy of all reparation payments immediately and of all social order in Central Europe in the long run.
The argument against reparations as a violation of the Pre-Armistice Agreement can be found in the volumes of Zimmern and Brand already mentioned. Both concentrated their objections on the inclusion of pension payments by the victors to their own soldiers in the total reparation bill given to the Germans. This was, of course, an obvious violation of the Pre-Armistice Agreement, which bound the Germans to pay only for damage to civilian property. Strangely enough, it was a member of the Group, Jan Smuts, who was responsible for the inclusion of the objectionable items, although he put them in not as a member of the Group, but as a South African politician. This fact
{p. 241} alone should have prevented him from making his speech of October 1923. However, love of consistency has never prevented Smuts from making a speech.

From 1921 onward, the Milner Group and the British government (if the two policies are distinguishable) did all they could to lighten the reparations burden on Germany and to prevent France from using force to collect reparations. The influence of the Milner Group on the government in this field may perhaps be indicated by the identity of the two policies. It might also be pointed out that a member of the Group, Arthur (now Sir Arthur) Salter, was general secretary of the Reparations Commission from 1920 to 1922. Brand was financial adviser to the chairman of the Supreme Economic Council (Lord Robert Cecil) in 1919; he was vice-president of the Brussels Conference of 1920; and he was the financial representative of South Africa at the Genoa Conference of 1922 (named by Smuts). He was also a member of the International Committee of Experts on the Stabilization of the German Mark in 1922. Hankey was British secretary at the Genoa Conference of 1922 and at the London Reparations Conference of 1924. He was general secretary of the Hague Conference of 1929-1930 (which worked out the detailed application of the Young Plan) and of the Lausanne Conference (which ended reparations).

On the two great plans to settle the reparations problem, the Dawes Plan of 1924 and the Young Plan of 1929, the chief influence was that of J. P. Morgan and Company, but the Milner Group had half of the British delegation on the former committee. The British members of the Dawes Committee were two in number: Sir Robert Molesworth (now Lord) Kindersley, and Sir Josiah (later Lord) Stamp. The former was chairman of the board of directors of Lazard Brothers and Company. Of this firm, Brand was a partner and managing director for many years. The instigation for the formation of this committee came chiefly from the parliamentary agitations of H. A. L. Fisher and John Simon in the early months of 1923.
The Milner Group was outraged at the efforts of France to compel Germany to pay reparations. Indeed, they were outraged at the whole policy of France: reparations, the French alliances in Eastern Europe, the disarmament of Germany, French "militarism," the French desire for an alliance with Britain, and the French desire for a long-term occupation of the Rhineland. These six things were listed in The Round Table of March 1922 as "the Poincare system." The journal then continued: "The Poincare system, indeed, is hopeless. It leads inevitably to fresh war, for it is incredible that a powerful and spirited people like the Germans will be content to remain forever meekly obeying every flourish of Marshal Foch's sword. ...
{p. 252} advance.... [The League must not be a world government.] If the burden of a world government is placed on it it will fall with a crash." He pointed out it could be a world government only if it represented peoples and not states, and if it had the power to tax those peoples. It should simply be an interstate conference of the world.

The Peace Conference ... cannot hope to produce a written constitution for the globe or a genuine government of mankind. What it can do is establish a permanent annual conference between foreign ministers themselves, with a permanent secretariat, in which, as at the Peace Conference itself, all questions at issue between States can be discussed and, if possible, settled by agreement. Such a conference cannot itself govern the world, still less those portions of mankind who cannot yet govern themselves. But it can act as a symbol and organ of the human conscience however imperfect, to which real governments of existing states can be made answerable for facts which concern the world at large."

In another article in the same issue of The Round Table ("Some Principles and Problems of the Settlement," December 1918), similar ideas were expressed even more explicitly by Zimmern. He stated that the League of Nations should be called the League of States, or th Interstate Conference, for sovereign states would be its units, and would make not laws but contracts. "The League of Nations, in fact, far from invalidating or diminishing national sovereignty, should strengthen and increase it.... The work before the coming age is not to supersede the existing States but to moralize them.... Membership must be restricted to those states where authority is based upon the consent of the people over whom it is exercised ... the reign of law.... It can reasonably be demanded that no States should be admitted which do not make such a consummation one of the deliberate aims of their policy."

Under this idea, The Round Table excluded by name from the new League, Liberia, Mexico, "and above all Russia." "The League," it continued, "will not simply be a League of States, it will be a League of Commonwealths." As its hopes in the League dwindled The Round Table became less exclusive, and, in June 1919, it declared, "without Germany or Russia the League of Nations will be dangerously incomplete."

In the March 1919 issue, The Round Table described in detail the kind of League it wanted - "a common clearing house for noncontentious business." Its whole basis was to be "public opinion," and its organization was to be that of "an assembly point of bureaucrats of various countries" about an international secretariat and various organizations like the International Postal Union or the International Institute of Agriculture.

Every great department of government in each country whose activities
{p. 253} touch those of similar departments in other countries should have its recognized delegates on a permanent international commission charged with the study of the sphere of international relations in question and with the duty of making recommendations to their various Governments ... Across the street, as it were, from these permanent Bureaux, at the capital of the League, there should be another central permanent Bureau ... an International secretariat. ... They must not be national ambassadors, but civil servants under the sole direction of a non-national chancellor; and the aim of the whole organization ... must be to evolve a practical international sense, a sense of common service.

This plan regarded the Council of the League as the successor of the Supreme War Council, made up of premiers and foreign ministers, and the instrument for dealing with political questions in a purely consultative way. Accordingly, the Council would consist only of the Great Powers.

These plans for the Covenant of the League of Nations were rudely shattered at the Peace Conference when the French demanded that the new organization be a "Super-state" with its own army and powers of action. The British were horrified, but with the help of the Americans were able to shelve this suggestion. However, to satisfy the demand from their own delegations as well as the French, they spread a camouflage of sham world government over the structure they had planned. This was done by Cecil Hurst. Hurst visited David Hunter Miller, the American legal expert, one night and persuaded him to replace the vital clauses 10 to 16 with drafts drawn up by Hurst. These drafts were deliberately drawn with loopholes so that no aggressor need ever be driven to the point where sanctions would have to be applied. This was done by presenting alternative paths of action leading toward sanctions, some of them leading to economic sanctions, but one path, which could be freely chosen by the aggressor, always available, leading to a loophole w here no collective action would be possible. The whole procedure was concealed beneath a veil of legalistic terminology so that the Covenant could be presented to the public as a watertight document, but Britain could always escape from the necessity to apply sanctions through a loophole.

In spite of this, the Milner Group were very dissatisfied. They tried simultaneously to do three things: (1) to persuade public opinion that the League was a wonderful instrument of international cooperation designed to keep the peace; (2) to criticize the Covenant for the "traces of a sham world-government" which had been thrown over it; and (3) to reassure themselves and the ruling groups in England, the Dominions, and the United States that the League was not "a world-state." All of this took a good deal of neat footwork, or, more accurately, nimble tongues and neat pen work. More doubletalk and doublewriting were emitted by the Milner Group on this subject in the two decades 1919-1939 than was issued by any other group on this subject in the period.
Among themselves the Group did not conceal their disappointment with the Covenant because it went too far. In the June 1919 issue of The Round Table they said reassuringly: "The document is not the Constitution of a Super-state, but, as its title explains, a solemn agreement between Sovereign States which consent to limit their complete freedom of action on certain points.... The League must continue to depend on the free consent, in the last resort, of its component States; this assumption is evident in nearly every article of the Covenant, of which the ultimate and most effective sanction must be the public opinion of the civilized world. If the nations of the future are in the main selfish, grasping, and bellicose, no instrument or machinery will restrain them." But in the same issue we read the complaint: "In the Imperial Conference Sir Wilfrid Laurier was never tired of saying, 'This is not a Government, but a conference of Governments with Governments.' It is a pity that there was no one in Paris to keep on saying this. For the Covenant is still marked by the traces of sham government."

By the March 1920 issue, the full bitterness of the Group on this last point became evident. It said: {note that the parentheses (my italics; this is the cat ...) below are Quigley's} "The League has failed to secure the adhesion of one of its most important members, The United States, and is very unlikely to secure it. ... This situation presents a very serious problem for the British Empire. We have not only undertaken great obligations under the League which we must now both in honesty and in self-regard revise, but we have looked to the League to provide us with the machinery for United British action in foreign affairs." (my italics; this is the cat coming out of the bag). The article continued with criticism of Wilson, and praise of the Republican Senate's refusal to swallow the League as it stood. It then said:

The vital weakness of the Treaty and the Covenant became more clear than ever in the months succeeding the signature at Versailles. A settlement based on ideal principles and poetic justice can be permanently applied and maintained only by a world government to which all nations will subordinate their private interests. ... It demands, not only that they should sacrifice their private interests to this world-interest, but also that they should be prepared to enforce the claims of world-interest even in matters where their own interests are in no wise engaged. It demands, in fact, that they should subordinate their national sovereignty to an international code and an international ideal. The reservations of the American Senate ... point the practical difficulties of this ideal with simple force. All the reservations ... are affirmations of the sovereign right of the American people to make their own policy without interference from an International League. ... None of these reservations, it should be noted, contravenes the general aims of the League; but they are, one and all, directed to ensure that no action is taken in pursuit of those aims except with the consent and approval of the Congress. ... There is nothing peculiar in this attitude. It is merely, we repeat, the broad reflex of an attitude already taken up by all the European Allies in questions where their national interests are affected, and also by the British Dominions in their relations with the British Government. It gives us a statement in plain English, of the limitations to the ideal of international action which none of the other Allies will, in practice, dispute. So far, therefore, from destroying the League of Nations, the American reservations have rendered it the great service of pointing clearly to the flaws which at present neutralize its worth.

Among these flaws, in the opinion of the Milner Group, was the fact that their plan to use the League of Nations as a method of tying the Dominions more closely to the United Kingdom had failed and, instead, the Covenant

gave the Dominions the grounds, or rather the excuse, to avoid closer union with the United Kingdom. ... It had been found in Paris that in order to preserve its unity the British delegation must meet frequently as a delegation to discuss its policy before meeting the representatives of foreign nations in conference. How was this unity of action to be maintained after the signature of peace without committing the Dominion Governments to some new constitutional organization within the Commonwealth? And if some new constitutional organization were to be devised for this purpose, how could it fail to limit in some way the full national independent status which the Dominion Governments had just achieved by their recognition as individual members of the League of Nations? The answer to these questions was found in cooperation within the League, which was to serve, not only as the link between the British Empire and foreign Powers, but as the link also between the constituent nations of the British Empire itself. Imbued with this idea, the Dominion statesmen accepted obligations to foreign Powers under the Covenant of the League more binding than any obligations which they would undertake to their kindred nations within the British Empire. In other words, they mortgaged their freedom of action to a league of foreign States in order to avoid the possibility of mortgaging it to the British Government. It hardly required the reservations of the American Senate to demonstrate the illusory character of this arrangement. ... The British Dominions have made no such reservations with regard to the Covenant, and they are therefore bound by the obligations which have been rejected by the United States. Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand are, in fact, bound by stronger written obligations to Poland and Czechoslovakia, than to the British Isles. ... It is almost needless to observe that none of the democracies of the British Empire has grasped the extent of its obligations to the League of Nations or would hesitate to repudiate them at once, if put to the test. If England were threatened by invasion, the other British domocracies would mobilize at once for her