Subject: Carroll Quigley: The Anglo-American Establishment
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Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American
Establishment - Selections by Peter Myers, October 14, 2001;
update April 16, 2003. My comments are shown {thus}.

You are at http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/quigley.html.

This book gives an inside account of how Anglo-American parliamentary
democracy has been hijacked by an elitist duopoly bent upon World Government. It
covers the conspiracy from about 1890 to 1945. It is my contention that there is
another, deeper conspiracy which operates through the top-level conspiracy
Quigley discloses here. That explains some of the disparity between the
top-level conspiracy's goals, and the actual outcomes.

Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American
Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, Books In Focus, New York
1981.

{frontispiece} 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 bv
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. {the
Conspiracy was anti-Labour; but after 1945 its institutions may have been taken
over by New Leftists.} 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.

{The "Toynbee" referred to above is Arnold Toynbee (1852-1883); his nephew
Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975) later joined the group too}

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

{p. 7} 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 thev added to their titles and
financial resources, obtaining these partlv 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

{p. 12} 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

{p. 16} 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 Gover-

{p. 21} nment; 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 vears 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 bv incumbents of
certain college or university offices.

The total number of Fellows at any one time is generallv 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 abilitv 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

{p. 32} 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:

{quote} 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. {end
quote}

{i.e. a World Government, originally to be run by Whites, but now
multi-racial, as a result of the influence of the second-level conspiracy, and
as endorsed, for example, by H. G. Wells in his book The Open
Conspiracy}

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

{p. 34 } 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:

{quote} Men of ability and enthusiasm who find no suitable way to serve their
country under the current political svstem; 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." {end quote}

{today, some call it the British-American Empire, and its headquarters may be
in New York.}

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 {of Rothschild's
faith: see p. 135 below}, 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

{p. 35} 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 vears. 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

{p. 36} 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."

{H. G. Wells was one, who also described this political cause as his
religion, in The
Open Conspiracy}

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
uhich 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. {the Mont Pelerin
Society is a modern part of it, promoting privatisation, deregulation, and
"Thatcherism".} 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 {today called "World Federalism"} 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:

{quote} 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,

{p. 38} 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. {end quote} ...

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. {i.e. the capital should be in the U. S.} Then they discussed the
organiza-

{p. 39} tion 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 aleady 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 hecame 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 vvith 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 Societv 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. {might that mean that he disagreed with its political
goals? The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was addressed to Lord Rothschild -
perhaps indicating a divergence from the "White Christian" orientation of the
secret society, as articulated by Lionel Curtis about the same time, e.g. in his
book The Commonwealth of Nations.} 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

{p. 41} 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 Com-

{p. 42} mission 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

{p. 43} 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

{p. 44} 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 Em-

{p. 45} pire, 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
keld aloof because to him the whole project was incomprehensible and
unbusinesslike {this implies a divergence of goals}; 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,

{p. 46} 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

{p. 47} 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

{p. 63} 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,

{p. 64} 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
{hence the role of propaganda} 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:

{quote} 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 {i.e.
one country}. In this world commonwealth {i.e. World Government} the
function of government is reserved to the European minority, for the
unanswerable reason that for the present this

{p. 65} 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? {end quote}

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. {and in Australia, at the Australian National University, in Canberra,
perhaps?}

{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

{p. 102} 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 abot 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 strggle. 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 alrady 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 aquired 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

{p. 104} 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.

{in a "democracy", such "agenda-setting" by an elite is a process of
"seeding" public opinion.}

{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;

{p. 116} 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

{p. 118} government, . . . however far distant, was the only intelligble
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

{p. 119} 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

{p. 127} 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:

{p. 130} 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

{p. 131} 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 de-

{p. 132} liberately 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 Britlsh government
followed, with such disastrous results, for the next thirteen years. He wrote:

{quote} 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 depreciatlon 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. {end quote}

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 publlc 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

{p. 133} 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:

{quote} 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. {end quote}

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 subor-
dinate to the king. {Reg Little, author of The Confucian Renaissance,
once said to me, very perceptibly I think, that the East regards Divinity as
Impersonal (Karma, Tao, Brahman etc.) and Law as Personal (vested in the
Emperor) whereas the West regards Divinity as Personal (Jehovah, Allah) and Law
as Impersonal (above the King). I believe that the Eastern system is better, and
that it characteristic of all the great civilizations from Egypt on. The Milner
Group stigmatised all of them as "Oriental Despotisms".} 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. {Yes, even Germany was then
seen as an "Oriental Despotism", as China is seen today.} 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

{p. 134} 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

{p. 135} were Jews (like Beit), and in three of his wills he left
Lord Rothschild as his trustee, in one as his sole trustee. {Leo Amery,
later revealed as author of the Balfour Declaration, was also a Jew, a secret
one: http://www.jewishsf.com/bk990115/ibalfour.htm}
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
savs: "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 stronglv 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

{p. 136} 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

{p. 137} 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, bv 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 fleld 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, Ber-

{p. 138} nard 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:

{quote} 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. {end quote}

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 monopollzed 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

{p. 141} 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 Ceorge'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

{p. 149} 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
commonweaith is a later development which

{p. 150} 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 thern as
defeatist. For this reason, some believers in federation organized a new
movement calltd the "World Commonwealth Movement." Evidence of this movement is
an article by Lord Davies in The Nineteetlth 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 couldd find
security in

{p. 151} isolation from the Continent and a balance-of-power policy supported
bv 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. Bv 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 plaved 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

{p. 171} 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:

{quote} 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. {end quote}

{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:

{quote} 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
interpeted 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 policv 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. {end quote}

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
Jevvs 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

{p. 173} 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 {The Dome of the Rock, the Temple Mount etc}.
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:

{quote} 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. ... {end quote}

{Amery, now revealed as author of the Balfour Declaration, was a secret Jew:
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk990115/ibalfour.htm}

{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
wldest 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 excluslvely from the Milner Group and Cecil
Bloc. The American

{p. 183} 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

{p. 193} 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 Philospohv 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 Croup did not see this, because they did not want to see
it. Not that thev 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 Ger-

{p. 235} many 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

{p. 236} 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

{p. 237} 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 ac-

{p. 239} tion 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."

{quote} 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. {end
quote}

{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 Croup 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.

{quote} 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." {end quote}

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.

{quote} 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. {end quote}

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

{p. 254} 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:

{quote} 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

{p. 255} 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. {end quote}

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

{quote} 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 {quote terminated here}

{end of text}

The Will of Cecil Rhodes: provided for a Secret Society (the Round
Table) to further the Empire: rhodes-will.html.

After World War I, the Round Table established an American branch, the
Council On Foreign Relations (CFR), and the headquarters moved across the
Atlantic. The CFR, in turn, set up the Trilateral Commission.

For the sceptics:

1. Just after WW1, Rhodes' secret society set up the Council On Foreign
Relations, which now controls both the Democratic and Republican parties in the
US. Virtually all leading government personnel (Presidents, Cabinet Ministers,
senior advivers etc.) are selected from it, after being vetted for years. http://www.cfr.org/

The CFR's magazine is called Foreign Affairs. Until a few years ago, it used
to bill itself as "the most influential journal in print" http://www.foreignaffairs.org/.

2. A major goal of the Rhodes group was to recapture the US for the Empire
(now renamed Commonwealth), even if the capital had to be transferred to the US.
The fact that the US is a republic is not the point. This group doesn't care
much one way or the other on that matter; George Bush accepted an honorary
knighthood (KBE: Knight of the British Empire) from the Queen, for his
performance during the Gulf War. In 2000, Elizabeth Taylor, an American citizen,
accepted the title "Dame of the British Empire". Many other prominent Americans
have accepted such awards. Why do these titles speak of the British Empire - if
it does not exist?

3. During WW2, a secret defence (military) pact was established between the
core countries (the White countries) of the British Empire/Commonwealth, and the
US. It still operates; it's called the UKUSA Pact. This Pact is a secret
alliance that the public is not privy to: http://watserv1.uwaterloo.ca/~brobinso/cseukusa.html

4. That Pact operates Echelon as its Signals Intelligence network. Once
again, it's unknown to the public. It was recently exposed in the European
Parliament because, after the Cold War, Echelon had been used to give
Anglo-American companies commerical advantage: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37411,00.html

Search for "Echelon" in Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=echelon.

Also look for "UKUSA", "UKUSA Pact", "UKUSA Community" etc.: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&q=UKUSA&btnG=Google+Search.

5. Here are some other World Government sites worth looking at; note that the
operation of about 3 regional blocks is seen as a part of the scheme:

http://www.bilderberg.org/

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/worldgov.html

http://www.engr.utexas.edu/cofe/governance/

http://www.scruz.net/~tgilman/cnfdeart.dir/contents.html

http://government.faithweb.com/list.html

5. As Quigley shows above (pp. 253-4), the group had intended the League of
Nations to be a World Government - this is in print, in Rhodes publications.
Problem was, the US did not join, for that very reason.

Articles 10-16 of the League of Nations Covenant provided for a World Army:
c20-doc.html

Quigley says that these clauses were even stronger, but they were watered
down.

6. The US is still split over this issue - a World Court, for example:
Clinton signed up for it just before he left office, whereas Bush seems to
reject it.

7. As part of the plan, both factions are pushing Free Trade. This is part of
the plan for Regional Federation.

The "Democracies" are run by two conspiracies, an Anglo-American one (the
whale, because it controls the oceans), and a Zionist one (the elephant, the one
you canÕt see in the china shop until you join up the dots).

Some people canÕt see the whale; some canÕt see the elephant.

The Balfour Declaration marked the joining-up of two conspiracies, the
British one (now Anglo-American) and the Zionist one: balfour.html.

The British one had wanted to get the US back into the Empire, even if that
meant transferring the capital to the US. In the end, they were only able to do
that with the assistance of Jewish middlemen.

Before the Balfour Declaration, the two conspiracies were working against
each other. It was in the Zionist interest to keep the protagionists in World
War I as evenly balanced as possible, i.e. keep the US out of the war, until the
fall of the Tsar, their hated enemy. Then they auctioned their support to the
protagonists: freedman.html.

Suppose that the U.S. had entered the war earlier, and mobilized its troops
and sent them to the front. Then Britain would not have made the Balfour
Declaration, as "a contract with World Jewry", whereby Zionists got Palestine in
return for getting the U.S. into the war - because the U.S. would already have
titled the balance.

The catch was this: the Zionist one knew about the Anglo one, because Cecil
Rhodes had invited Lord Rothschild to join it; but the Anglos did not know about
the Zionist one.

The conspirators control the major media, but one owner, Lord Northcliffe,
defied them and took an anti-Zionist stance; he was evicted from The
Times even though he was the chief proprietor, and died mysteriously: toolkit3.html.

Writings of Samuel P. Huntington (oracle of George W. Bush's Clash of

Civilizations):
(1) The Crisis Of Democracy: Report on the
Governability of Democracies to
the Trilateral Commission (2) The
West: Unique not Universal, in Foreign
Affairs, Volume 75 No.
6, November/December 1996 (3) The Clash of
Civilizations
and the Remaking of World Order (1996):
huntington.html.

The Anglo-American Establishment is published by GSG Books. To
buy it from them: http://www.matriots.com/books/store/

To buy Quigley's books second-hand:
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/BookSearch?an=carroll+quigley

To buy The Anglo-American Establishment from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0916728501/qid=981206017/sr=2-2/ref=sc_b_2/t/105-4162626-9998369

More from Carroll Quigley: Tragedy and Hope tragedy.html.

Quigley's book The Evolution of Civilizations: huntington.html.

Lionel Curtis (of the Round Table) on why the British Empire should
re-incorporate the United States and become a World-State:

(1) The Commonwealth of Nations (1911-16): curtis1.html

(2) The Commonwealth of God (1938): curtis2.html.

Bertrand Russell & H. G. Wells promoting the Open Society as a
World-State: opensoc.html.

The 1946 Baruch Plan for World Government: baruch-plan.html.

David Lloyd-George, Prime Minister during World War I, on why Britain made "a
contract with Jewry" (the Balfour Declaration): l-george.html.

Arnold J. Toynbee was one of the leading intellectuals of the British Empire.
He combined deep insight into Civilizational History, with propaganda for the
One-World goals of Cecil Rhodes' Round Table group. Here he writes about the
formation of Judaism, and argues the case for World Government: toynbee.html.

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