Anglo-American Establishment

before? Will she fail at this second and last crisis of her fate, as she failed at the first, like

Athens and Prussia, forsaking freedom for power, thinking the shadow more real than the

light, and esteeming the muckrake more than the crown?”

Four years later, in 1920, Curtis wrote: "The whole effect of the war has been to bring

movements long gathering to a sudden head . . . companionship in arms has fanned . . .

long smouldering resentment against the prescription that Europeans are destined to

dominate the rest of the world. In every part of Asia and Africa it is bursting into

flames.... Personally, I regard this challenge to the long unquestioned claim of the white

man to dominate the world as inevitable and wholesome especially to ourselves." (5)

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.

Curtis was registered as an undergraduate at New College for fourteen years (1891-

1905) because he was too busy to take time to get his degree. This is undoubtedly also the

reason he was admitted to All Souls so belatedly, since an ordinary fellowship requires as

a qualification the possession either of a university prize or of a first-class honours

degree. By the time Curtis took his degree he had fought in the Boer War, been Town

Clerk of Johannesburg, and been assistant secretary for local government in the

Transvaal. In 1906 he resigned his official positions to organize "Closer Union Groups"

agitating for a federation of South Africa. When this work was well started, he became a

member of the Transvaal Legislative Council and wrote the Transvaal draft of a projected

constitution for such a federation. In 1910-1912, and at various times subsequently, he

traveled about the world, organizing Round Table Groups in the Dominions and India. In

1912 he was chosen Beit Lecturer in Colonial History at Oxford, but gave it up in 1913 to

turn his attention for almost six years to the preparatory work for the Government of

India Act of 1919. He was secretary to the Irish Conference of 1921 (arranged by General

Smuts) and was adviser on Irish affairs to the Colonial Office for the next three years. In

1919 he was one of the chief—if not the chief,—founders of the Royal Institute of

International Affairs, and during the 1920s divided his attention between this and the

League of Nations—in neither case, however, in a fashion to attract public attention.

Undoubtedly his influence within the Milner Group declined after 1922, the

preponderance falling into the hands of Lothian, Brand, and Dawson. The failure to

achieve federation within the Empire was undoubtedly a blow to his personal feeling and

possibly to his prestige within the Group. Nonetheless, his influence remained great, and

still is. In the 1920s he moved to Kidlington, near Oxford, and thus was available for the

Group conferences held at All Souls. His chief published works include The Problem of

the Commonwealth (1915), The Commonwealth of Nations (1916), Dyarchy (1920), The

Prevention of War (1924), the Capital Question of China (1932), The Commonwealth of

God (1932-1938), and The Protectorates of South Africa (1935).

John Dove (1872-1934) was sent to Milner in 1903 by Sir William Anson, Warden of

All Souls. He was assistant Town Clerk and later Clerk of Johannesburg (1903-1907) and

then chairman of the Transvaal Land Settlement Board (1907-1909). After a trip to

Australia and India with Lionel Curtis, for the purpose of organizing Round Table

Groups, he returned to London in 1911 and lived with Brand and Kerr in Cumberland

Mansions. He went to South Africa with Earl Grey in 1912 to unveil the Rhodes

Memorial, and served in the First World War with military intelligence in France. In

1918 he became a kind of traveling representative of financial houses, probably as a

result of his relationship with Brand. He began this with an extended trip to India for the

Commonwealth Trust Company in 1918 and in the next fifteen years made almost annual

trips to Europe. Editor of The Round Table from 1921 to his death in 1934, he displayed

an idealistic streak similar to that found in Curtis but without the same driving spirit

behind it. After his death, Brand published a volume of his letters (1938). These are

chiefly descriptive of foreign scenes, the majority written to Brand himself.

Leopold Amery was not a member of the Kindergarten but knew all the members well

and was in South Africa, during their period of service, as chief correspondent of The

Times for the Boer War and the editor of The Times History of the South African War

(which appeared in seven volumes in the decade 1900-1909). Amery, who was a Fellow

of All Souls for fourteen years early in the century and has been one again since 1938, is

one of the inner core of the Milner Group. He started his career as private secretary to

Leonard H. Courtney, Unionist Member of Parliament and Deputy Speaker in Lord

Salisbury's second government. Through this connection, Amery was added to The Times

editorial staff (1899-1909) and would have become editor but for his decision to go into

politics. In this he was not, at first, successful, losing three contests as a Unionist and

tariff reformer in the high tide of Liberal supremacy (1906-1910). When victory came in

1911, it was a good one, for Amery held the same seat (for Birmingham) for thirty-four

years. During that time he held more important government posts than can be mentioned

here. These included the following: assistant secretary of the War Cabinet and Imperial

War Council (1917); secretary to the Secretary of State for War (Milner, 1917-1918);

Parliamentary Under Secretary for Colonies (1919-1921); Parliamentary and Financial

Secretary to the Admiralty (1921-1922); First Lord of the Admiralty (1922-1924);

Secretary of State for Colonies (1924-1929) and for Dominion Affairs (1925-1929);

Secretary of State for India and Burma (1940-1945). Amery wrote dozens of volumes,

chiefly on the Empire and imperial trade relations. In 1910 he married the sister of a

fellow Member of Parliament, Florence Greenwood. The colleague, Hamar Greenwood

(Baron Greenwood since 1929 and Viscount Greenwood since 1937), was a Liberal M.P.

for sixteen years (1906-1922) and a Conservative M.P. for five (1924-1929), a change in

which Amery undoubtedly played an important role. Lord Greenwood was secretary of

the Overseas Trade Department (1919-1920) and Chief Secretary for Ireland (1920-

1922). In recent years he has been chairman of the board of directors of one of England's

greatest steel firms (Dorman, Long, and Company), treasurer of the Conservative Party,

and president of the British Iron and Steel Federation (1938-1939).

Amery can be regarded as Milner's political heir. From the beginning of his own

political career in 1906 to the death of Milner in 1925, he was more closely associated

with Milner's active political life than any other person. 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. In his last years of public office, Milner was generally

assisted by Amery (1917-1921), and when he died it was Amery who arranged the public

memorial service and controlled the distribution of tickets.

Edward William Mackay Grigg (Sir Edward after 1920, Lord Altrincham since 1945)

is one of the most important members of the Milner Group. On graduating from New

College, he joined the staff of The Times and remained with it for ten years (1903-1913),

except for an interval during which he went to South Africa. In 1913 he became joint

editor of The Round Table, but eventually left to fight the war in the Grenadier Guards. In

1919, he went with the Prince of Wales on a tour of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

After replacing Kerr for a year or so as secretary to Lloyd George (1921-1922), he was a

Member of Parliament in 1922-1925 and again in 1933-1945. He has also been Governor

of Kenya Colony (1925-1931), parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Information

(1939-1940), Joint Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for War (1940-1942), and

Minister Resident in the Middle East (1944-1945). He also found time to write many

books, such as The Greatest Experiment in History (1924); Three Parties or Two?

(1931), The Faith of an Englishman (1931), Britain Looks at Germany (1938), The

British Commonwealth (1943), and British Foreign Policy (1944).

Another visitor to South Africa during the period of the Kindergarten was H. A. L.

Fisher. Fisher, a famous historian in his own right, can be regarded as one of the founders

of the Kindergarten and was a member of the Milner Group from at least 1899. The chief

recruiting for the Kindergarten, beyond that done by Milner himself, was done by Fisher

and his close friend Sir William Anson. The relationships between these two, Goschen,

and Milner were quite close (except that Milner and Anson were by no means close), and

this quartet had a great deal to do with the formation of the Milner Group and with giving

it a powerful hold on New College and All Souls. Fisher graduated from New College in

1888 and at once became fellow and tutor in the same college. These positions were held,

with interruptions, until 1912, when Fisher left Oxford to become Vice-Chancellor of

Sheffield University. He returned to New College as Warden for the last fifteen years of

his life (1925-1940). Fisher originally expected to tutor in philosophy, but his

appointment required him to teach history. His knowledge in this field was scanty, so it

was amplified by vacation reading with A. L. Smith (the future Master of Balliol, an

older contemporary of Milner's at Balliol, and a member of the Milner Group). Smith, in

addition to teaching Fisher history, also taught him how to skate and to ride a bicycle and

worked with him on the literary remains of Fisher's brother-in-law, Frederic W. Maitland,

the great historian of the English law. As a result of this last activity, Fisher produced in

1911 a three-volume set of Maitland's Collected Works, and a biographical sketch of

Maitland (1910), while Smith in 1908 published two lectures and a bibliography on

Maitland. Smith's own biographical sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography was

written by another member of the Milner Group, Kenneth Norman Bell (Fellow of All

Souls, 1907-1914; Beit Lecturer in Colonial History, 1924-1927; and member of the

family that controlled the publishing house of G. Bell and Sons). His son, Arthur Lionel

Foster Smith, was a Fellow of All Souls under Anson (1904-1908) and later organized

and supervised the educational system of Mesopotamia (1920-1931).

H. A. L. Fisher held many important posts in his career, partly because of membership

in the Milner Group. In 1908, while the Kindergarten, which he had helped to assemble,

was still in South Africa, he went there on an extended lecture tour; in 1911-1912 he was

Chichele Lecturer in Foreign History; in 1912-1915 he was an important member of the

Royal Commission on Public Services in India; in 1916-1926 he was a member of the

House of Commons, the first half of the period as a Cabinet member (President of the

Board of Education, 1916-1922). He was a delegate to the Assembly of the League of

Nations for three years (1920-1922), governor of the British Broadcasting Corporation

for four (1935-1939), and a Rhodes Trustee for about fifteen (1925-1940).(6)

Fisher's bibliography forms an extensive list of published works. Besides his

Unfinished Biography (1940) and his famous three-volume History of Europe (1935-

1936), it contains many writings on subjects close to the Milner Group. His Creighton

Lecture in 1911 on Political Unions examines the nature of federalism and other unions

and fits in well with the discussions going on at the time within Round Table Groups on

this subject—discussions in which Fisher played an important part. In the section of this

lecture dealing with the Union of South Africa, Fisher was almost as deliberately evasive

as Brand had been in his book on the Union, which appeared two years earlier. He

mentions the preliminary work of the Kindergarten toward union (work in which he had

taken a part himself during his visit to South Africa in 1908) as the work of anonymous

persons, but does state that the resulting constitution for a united South Africa was

largely the work of the Transvaal delegation (which, as we shall see, was one controlled

by the Kindergarten).

Other writings of Fisher's resulting from his work with the Milner Group are his

"Imperial Administration" in Studies in History and Politics (1920); his An International

Experiment, dealing with the League of Nations (1921); The Common Weal, dealing with

the duties of citizenship (1924); and Our New Religion (1929), dealing with Christian

Science. In connection with this last book, it might be mentioned that Christian Science

became the religion of the Milner Group after Milner's death. Among others, Nancy

Astor and Lord Lothian were ardent supporters of the new belief. Christian Science was

part of the atmosphere of Cliveden.

Fisher's relationship with Milner was quite close and appeared chiefly in their

possession of fellowships in New College, obtained by the older man in 1878 and by the

younger ten years later. In 1901, when the Kindergarten was formed, the two had been

Fellows together for thirteen years, and in 1925, when Milner died and Fisher became

Warden, they had been Fellows together for thirty-seven years.

There was also a more personal relationship, created in 1899, when Fisher married

Lettice Ilbert. Her father, Sir Courtenay Ilbert (1841-1924), was a lifelong friend of

Anson and an old friend of Milner. Sir Courtenay, as law member of the Viceroy of

India's Council in 1883, had tried in vain to remove from the Indian code"every judicial

disqualification based merely upon race distinctions." Under Lord Dufferin (Lord Basil

Blackwood's father), he set up the general system of law and procedure for Burma

(1885), and in 1898 he issued what became the basic codification of Indian law. He was

clerk of the House of Commons from 1902 to 1921. Mrs. H. A. L. Fisher, one of Sir

Courtenay's five daughters, recalls in The Milner Papers how Alfred Milner use to romp

with the girls when they were children.

Fisher was a very valuable member of the Milner Group because he, along with Lord

Goschen, became the chief means by which the Group secured access to the College of

All Souls. This access was secured by the friendship of these two men with Sir William

Anson. Anson himself was a member of the Cecil Bloc rather than the Milner Group. His

personal relations with Milner were not very close, and, indeed, there is some doubt as to

his actual feeling toward Milner. The only comment about Milner in the published

portions of Anson's journal is a rather acid remark regarding the lack of eloquence in a

Milner speech in the House of Lords against the Parliament Act of 1911.(7) Nor did

Anson see eye to eye with Milner, or indeed with most members of the Milner Group,

since he was much too conservative. He was, to be sure, a Liberal Unionist, as most

important members of the Group were. He was also an imperialist and interested in social

welfare, but he did not have the high disregard for systems of economics that is so

characteristic of all members of the Group before 1917. Anson had an ingrained respect

for the economic status quo, and the old Liberal's suspicion of the intervention by public

authority in the economic field. These tendencies had been strengthened by years of

tender attention to the extensive landed wealth possessed by All Souls. Nonetheless,

Anson became one of the chief architects of the Milner Group and is undoubtedly the

chief factor in the Group's domination of All Souls since Anson's death. During his

wardenship (1881-1914), Anson was the most influential figure in All Souls, not merely

in its social and intellectual life but also in the management of its fortune and the

selection of its members. In the ordinary expectation of affairs, the former task was

generally left in the hands of the estates bursar, and the latter was shared with the other

Fellows. Anson, however, took the dominant role in both matters, to such a degree in fact

that Bishop Henson (himself a member of All Souls since 1884), in his Memoir of

Anson, says that the Warden was always able to have his candidate emerge with the

prized fellowship.

In seeking to bestow fellowships at All Souls on those individuals whom we now

regard as the chief members of the Milner Group, Anson was not conscious that he was

dealing with a group at all. The candidates who were offering themselves from New

College in the period 1897-1907 were of such high ability that they were able to obtain

the election on their own merits. The fact that they came strongly recommended by

Fisher served to clinch the matter. They thus did not enter All Souls as members of the

Milner Group—at least not in Anson's lifetime. After 1914 this was probably done (as in

the case of Lionel Curtis in 1921, Basil Williams in 1924, or Reginald Coupland in

1920), but not before. Rather, likely young men who went to New College in the period

on either side of the Boer War were marked out by Fisher and Anson, elected to All

Souls, and sent into Milner's Kindergarten on the basis of merit rather than connections.

Another young man who came to visit in South Africa in 1904 and 1905 was Edward

Frederick Lindley Wood, already a Fellow of All Souls and a future member of the

Milner Group. Better known to the world today as the first Earl of Halifax, he was the

son of the second Viscount Halifax and in every way well qualified to become a member

of the Milner Group. Lord Halifax is a great-grandson of Lord Grey of the great Reform

Bill of 1832, and a grandson of Lord Grey's secretary and son-in-law, Charles Wood

(1800-1885), who helped put the Reform Bill through. The same grandfather became, in

1859-1866, the first Secretary of State for the new India, putting through reforms for that

great empire which were the basis for the later reforms of the Milner Group in the

twentieth century. Lord Halifax is also a grandnephew of Lord Durham, whose famous

report became the basis for the federation of Canada in 1867.

As Edward Wood, the future Lord Halifax undoubtedly found his path into the select

company of All Souls smoothed by his own father's close friendship with Phillimore and

with the future Archbishop Lang, who had been a Fellow for fifteen years when Wood

was elected in 1903.

As a newly elected Fellow, Wood went on a world tour, which took him to South

Africa twice (in 1904 and 1905). Each time, he was accompanied by his father, Viscount

Halifax, who dined with Milner and was deeply impressed. The Viscount subsequently

became Milner's chief defender in the House of Lords. In 1906, for example, when

Milner was under severe criticism in the Commons for importing Chinese laborers into

South Africa, Lord Halifax introduced and carried in the Upper House a resolution of

appreciation for Milner's work.

Edward Wood's subsequent career is one of the most illustrious of contemporary

Englishmen. A Member of Parliament for fifteen years (1910-1925), he held posts as

Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Colonies (1921-1922), President of the Board of

Education (in succession to H. A. L. Fisher, 1922-1924), and Minister of Agriculture,

before he went to India (as Baron Irwin) to be Viceroy. In this post, as we shall see, he

furthered the plans of the Milner Group for the great subcontinent (1926-1931), before

returning to more brilliant achievements as president of the Board of Education (1932-

1935), Secretary of State for War (1935), Lord Privy Seal (1935-1937), Lord President of

the Council (1937-1938), Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1938-1940), and, finally,

Ambassador to Washington (as successor to Lord Lothian, 1941-1946). In Washington,

as we shall see, he filled the embassy with members of All Souls College.

There can be little doubt that Lora Halifax owed much of his rise in public affairs to

his membership in the Milner Group. His authorized biographer, Alan Campbell Johnson,

writes in connection with one appointment of Halifax's: "It is widely believed that the

influence of Geoffrey Dawson and other members of The Times editorial staff discovered

him as an ideal Viceroy and whispered his name at the proper time both to the proper

authorities in George V's entourage and at 10 Downing Street." In connection with his

appointment as Foreign Secretary, Johnson says:

“Lothian, Geoffrey Dawson, and Brand, who used to congregate at Cliveden House as

the Astors' guests and earned the title of a "set," to which, in spite of imaginative left-

wing propaganda, they never aspired, urged Chamberlain at the decisive moment to have

the courage of his convictions and place Halifax, even though he was a Peer, in the office

to which his experience and record so richly entitled him. They argued forcibly that to

have a Foreign Secretary safely removed from the heat of the House of Commons battle

was just what was required to meet the delicate international situation.”

Another member of this South African group who was not technically a member of

the Kindergarten (because not a member of the civil service) was Basil Kellett Long. He

went from Brasenose to Cape Town to study law in 1902 and was called to the bar three

years later. In 1908 he was elected to the Cape Parliament, and a year later succeeded

Kerr as editor of the Kindergarten's propagandist journal, The State (1909-1912). He was

a member of the first Parliament of a united South Africa for three years (1910-1913) and

then succeeded Amery as head of the Dominions Department of The Times. In 1921 he

left this post and the position of foreign editor (held jointly with it in 1920-1921) to return

to South Africa as editor of the Cape Times (1921-1935). He was one of the most

important figures in the South African Institute of International Affairs after its belated

foundation. With the outbreak of war in 1939, he was put in charge of liaison work

between the South African branch and the parent institute in London.

The work of the Kindergarten in South Africa is not so well known as might be

expected. Indeed, until very recently the role played by this group, because of its own

deliberate policy of secrecy, has been largely concealed. The only good narration of their

work is to be found in Worsfold's The Reconstruction of the New Colonies under Lord

Milner, but Worsfold, writing so early, could not foresee the continued existence of the

Kindergarten as a greater and more influential group. Lionel Curtis's own account of

what the Group did, in his Letter to the People of India (1917), is very brief and virtually

unknown in the United States or even in England. The more recent standard accounts,

such as that in Volume VIII of the Cambridge History of the British Empire (1936), give

even less than Worsfold. This will not appear surprising when we point out that the

chapter in this tome dealing with "The Formation of the Union, 1901-1910" is written by

Hugh A. Wyndham, a member of the Kindergarten. It is one of the marvels of modern

British scholarship how the Milner Group has been able to keep control of the writing of

history concerned with those fields in which it has been most active.

Only in very recent years has the role played by the Kindergarten as part of a larger

group been appreciated, and now only by a very few writers, such as the biographer of

Lord Halifax, already mentioned, and M. S. Green. The latter, a high school teacher in

Pretoria, South Africa, in his brief work on The Making of the Union of South Africa

(1946) gives an account of the Kindergarten which clearly shows his realization that this

was only the early stages of a greater group that exercised its influence through The

Round Table, The Times, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the College of

All Souls. The work of union in South Africa was only part of the much greater task of

imperial union. This was always the ultimate goal of Cecil Rhodes, of Milner, and of the

Kindergarten. Milner wrote in his diary on 25 January 1904: "My work has been

constantly directed to a great and distant end—the establishment in South Africa of a

great and civilized and progressive community, one from Cape Town to the Zambesi—

independent in the management of its own affairs, but still remaining, from its own firm

desire, a member of the great community of free nations gathered together under the

British flag. That has been the object of all my efforts. It is my object still." (8) In his

great farewell speech of March 1905, Milner called upon his hearers, and especially the

Kindergarten, to remain loyal to this ultimate goal. He said:

“What I pray for hardest is, that those with whom I have worked in a great struggle

and who may attach some weight to my words should remain faithful, faithful above all

in the period of reaction, to the great idea of Imperial Unity. Shall we ever live to see its

fulfillment? Whether we do or not, whether we succeed or fail, l shall always be steadfast

in that faith, though I should prefer to work quietly and in the background, in the

formation of opinion rather than in the exercise of power.... When we who call ourselves

Imperialists talk of the British Empire, we think of a group of states, all independent in

their local concerns, but all united for the defense of their own common interests and the

development of a common civilization; united, not in an alliance—for alliances can be

made and unmade, and are never more than nominally lasting—but in a permanent

organic union. Of such a union the dominions as they exist today, are, we fully admit,

only the raw material. Our ideal is still distant but we deny that it is either visionary or

unattainable.... The road is long, the obstacles are many, the goal may not be reached in

my lifetime—perhaps not in that of any man in this room. You cannot hasten the slow

growth of a great idea like that by any forcing process. But what you can do is to keep it

steadily in view, to lose no opportunity to work for it, to resist like grim death any policy

which leads away from it. I know that the service of that idea requires the rarest

combination of qualities, a combination of ceaseless effort with infinite patience. But

then think on the other hand of the greatness of the reward; the immense privilege of

being allowed to contribute in any way to the fulfillment of one of the noblest

conceptions which has ever dawned on the political imagination of mankind.”

For the first couple of years in South Africa the Kindergarten worked to build up the

administrative, judicial, educational, and economic systems of South Africa. By 1905

they were already working for the Union. The first steps were the Inter-colonial Council,

which linked the Transvaal and Orange River Colony; the Central South African Railway

amalgamation; and the customs union. As we have seen, the Kindergarten controlled the

first two of these completely; in addition, they controlled the administration of Transvaal

completely. This was important, because the gold and diamond mines made this colony

the decisive economic power in South Africa, and control of this power gave the

Kindergarten the leverage with which to compel the other states to join a union.

In 1906, Curtis, Dawson, Hichens, Brand, and Kerr, with the support of Feetham and

Malcolm, went to Lord Selborne and asked his permission to work for the Union. They

prevailed upon Dr. Starr Jameson, at that time Premier of Cape Colony, to write to

Selborne in support of the project. When permission was obtained, Curtis resigned from

his post in Johannesburg and, with Kerr's assistance, formed "Closer Union Societies" as

propaganda bodies throughout South Africa. Dawson, as editor, controlled the

Johannesburg Star. The Times of London was controlled completely, as far as news from

South Africa was concerned, with Monypenny, Amery, Basil Williams, and Grigg in

strategic spots—the last as head of the imperial department of the paper. Fabian Ware

published articles by various members of the Milner Group in his Morning Post. In South

Africa, £5000 was obtained from Abe Bailey to found a monthly paper to further the

cause of union. This paper, The State, was edited by Philip Kerr and B. K. Long and

became the predecessor of The Round Table, also edited by Kerr and financed by Bailey.

Bailey was not only the chief financial support of the Kindergarten's activities for closer

union in South Africa, but also the first financial contributor to The Round Table in 1910,

and to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919. He contributed to both during

his life, and at his death in 1940 gave The Round Table £1000 a year for an indefinite

period. He had given the Royal Institute £5000 a year in perpetuity in 1928. Like his

close associates Rhodes and Beit, he left part of his immense fortune in the form of a trust

fund to further imperial interests. In Bailey's case, the fund amounted to £250,000.

As part pf the project toward a Union of South Africa, Curtis in 1906 drew up a

memorandum on the need for closer union of the South African territories, basing his

arguments chiefly on the need for greater railway and customs unity. This, with the

addition of a section written by Kerr on railway rates, and a few paragraphs by Selborne,

was issued with the famous Selborne Federation Dispatch of 7 January 1907 and

published as an Imperial Blue Book (Cmd. 3564 of 1907). It was republished, with an

introduction by Basil Williams of the Kindergarten, by Oxford University Press in 1925.

The Central Committee of the Closer Union Societies (which was nothing but the

Kindergarten) wrote a complete and detailed account of the political institutions of the

various areas concerned. This was called The Government of South Africa and was issued

anonymously in five parts, and revised later in two quarto volumes. A copy was sent to

every delegate to the National Convention in Durban in 1908, along with another

anonymous work (edited by B. K. Long), called The Framework of Union. This latter

work contained copies of the five chief federal constitutions of the world (United States,

Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia). Curtis was also the chief author of the

draft of projected constitution presented by the Transvaal delegation to the National

Convention. This draft, with modifications, became the Constitution of the Union of

South Africa in 1910. The Transvaal delegation, alone of the various delegations, lived

together in one house and had a body of expert advisers; both of these circumstances

were due to the Kindergarten.

After the convention accepted the Union Constitution, it was necessary to have it

accepted by the Imperial Parliament and the various states of South Africa. In both of

these tasks the Kindergarten played an important role, in England through their control of

The Times and The Morning Post as well as other sources of propaganda, and in South

Africa by the economic pressure of the Transvaal. In Natal, the only state which

submitted the question to a referendum, the Kindergarten put on an intensive propaganda

drive, financed with money from the Transvaal. Of this struggle in Natal, Brand, with his

usual secrecy on all matters dealing with the Kindergarten, merely says: "A referendum

was therefore taken—contrary to general expectation, it revealed an overwhelming

majority for union, a good testimony to the sound sense of the people of the colony."(9)

Brand, as secretary to the Transvaal delegation to the Convention, knew more than this!

The same secrecy was maintained in regard to the whole convention. No record of its

proceedings was kept, but, according to Worsfold, its resolutions were drafted by Brand

and Duncan.

Throughout these activities, the Kindergarten received powerful support from a man

who by this time was a member of the Milner Group and later gained international fame,

chiefly because of this membership. This was Jan C. Smuts.

Smuts had studied in England, at Cambridge University and the Middle Temple. By

1895 he was a lawyer in Cape Town. His lack of success in this profession doubtless had

some influence in turning him into the devious opportunist he soon became, but

throughout his opportunism he clung to that ideal which he shared with Rhodes and

Milner—the ideal of a united South Africa. All his actions from this date onward—no

matter how much they may seem, viewed superficially, to lead in another direction—

were directed toward the end ultimately achieved: a United South Africa within the

British Empire—and, to him almost equally important, a United South Africa in which he

would be the dominant figure. Smuts and Milner differed chiefly on this last point, for if

Milner was "selfless," this was almost the last word which could be applied to Smuts.

Otherwise the two seemed very similar—similar in their desires for a united South Africa

and later a united British Empire, and extraordinarily similar in their cold austerity,

impersonal intellectualism, and driving discipline (applied to self even more than to

others). In spite of their similar goals for the Empire, Smuts and Milner were not close

friends. Perhaps such similar personalities could not be expected to find mutual

agreement, but the divergence probably rests, rather, on the one characteristic in their

personalities where they most obviously differed.

Smuts and Rhodes, on the other hand, got on together very well. As early as 1895, the

unsuccessful Cape Town lawyer was sent by the great imperialist to Kimberley to speak

in his defense. But after the Jameson Raid, Smuts became one of the most vociferous

critics of Rhodes and the British. These attacks gave Smuts a reputation as an

Anglophobe, which yielded considerable profits immediately. Going to the Transvaal

(where he added to his fame by uncompromising support of President Kruger), he was

raised, at the age of twenty-eight, to the post of State Attorney (1898). In this position,

and later as Colonial Secretary, he adopted tactics which led steadily to war (forcing the

Uitlanders to pay taxes while denying them the franchise, arresting Uitlander newspaper

editors like Monypenny, etc.). At the Bloemfontein Conference of 1899 between Kruger

and Milner, all of Smuts's advice to the former was in the direction of concessions to

Milner, yet it was Smuts who drafted the ultimatum of 9 October, which led to the

outbreak of war. During the war he was one of the most famous of Boer generals, yet,

when negotiations for peace began, it was he who drew up the proposal to accept the

British terms without delay. With the achievement of peace, Smuts refused Milner's

invitation to serve in the Legislative Council of the Transvaal, devoting himself instead to

violent and frequently unfair attacks on Milner and the Kindergarten, yet as soon as self-

government was granted (in 1906) he became Colonial Secretary and Minister of

Education and worked in the closest cooperation with the Kindergarten to obtain Milner's

ideal of a united South Africa.

There is really nothing puzzling or paradoxical in these actions. From the beginning,

Smuts wanted a brilliant career in a united South Africa within a united British Empire,

within, if possible, a united world. No stage would be too big for this young actor's

ambitions, and these ambitions were not, except for his own personal role, much different

from those of Milner or Rhodes. But, as a very intelligent man, Smuts knew that he could

play no role whatever in the world, or in the British Empire, unless he could first play a

role in South Africa. And that required, in a democratic regime (which he disliked), that

he appear pro-Boer rather than pro-British. Thus Smuts was pro-Boer on all prominent

and nonessential matters but pro-British on all unobtrusive and essential matters (such as

language, secession, defense, etc.).

At the National Convention of 1908-1909, it was Smuts who dominated the Transvaal

delegation and succeeded in pushing through the projects prepared by the Kindergarten.

From this emerged a personal connection that still exists, and from time onward, as a

member of the Milner Group, Smuts, with undeniable ability, was able to play the role he

had planned in the Empire and the world. He became the finest example of the Milner

Group's contention that within a united Empire rested the best opportunities for freedom

and self-development for all men. (10)

In the new government formed after the creation of the Union of South Africa, Smuts

held three out of nine portfolios (Mines, Defense, and Interior). In 1912 he gave up two

of these (Mines and Interior) in exchange for the portfolio of Finance, which he held until

the outbreak of war. As Minister of Defense (1910-1920) and Prime Minister (1919-

1924), he commanded the British forces in East Africa (1916-1917) and was the South

African representative and one of the chief members of the Imperial War Cabinet (1917-

1918). At the Peace Conference at Paris he was a plenipotentiary and played a very

important role behind the scenes in cooperation with other members of the Milner Group.

In 1921 he went on a secret mission to Ireland and arranged for an armistice and opened

negotiations between Lloyd George and the Irish leaders. In the period following the war,

his influence in South African politics declined, but he continued to play an important

role within the Milner Group and in those matters (such as the Empire) in which the

Group was most concerned. With the approach of the Second World War, he again came

to prominence in political affairs. He was Minister of Justice until the war began (1933-

1939) and then became Prime Minister, holding the Portfolios of External Affairs and

Defense (1939-1948). Throughout his political life, his chief lieutenant was Patrick

Duncan, whom he inherited directly from Milner.

Smuts was not the only addition made to the Milner Group by the Kindergarten during

its stay in South Africa. Among the others were two men who were imported by Milner

from the Indian Civil Service to guide the efforts of the Kindergarten in forming the

Transvaal Civil Service. These two were James S. Meston (later Lord Meston, 1865-

1943) and William S. Marris (later Sir William, 1873-1945). Both had studied briefly at

Oxford in preparation for the Indian Civil Service. Meston studied at Balliol (after

graduating from Aberdeen University) at the time when Milner was still very close to the

college (c. 1884), and when Toynbee, tutor to Indian Civil Service candidates at Balliol,

had just died. It may have been in this fashion that Milner became acquainted with

Meston and thus called him to South Africa in 1903. Until that time, Meston's career in

the Indian Civil Service had been fairly routine, and after eighteen years of service he had

reached the position of Financial Secretary to the United Provinces.

Marris, a younger colleague of Meston's in the Indian Civil Service, was a native of

New Zealand and, after studying at Canterbury College in his own country, went to

Christ Church, Oxford, to prepare for the Indian Civil Service. He passed the necessary

examinations and was made an assistant magistrate in the United Provinces. From this

post he went to South Africa to join the Kindergarten two years after Meston had.

Meston's position in South Africa was adviser to the Cape Colony and the Transvaal

on civil service reform (1904-1906). He remained ever after a member of the Milner

Group, being used especially for advice on Indian affairs. On his return from South

Africa, he was made secretary to the Finance Department of the Government of India

(1906-1912). Two years later he was made Finance Member of the Governor-General's

Council, and, the following year, became a member of the Imperial Legislative Council.

In 1912 he became for five years Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces. During

this period he worked very closely with Lionel Curtis on the projected reforms which

ultimately became the Government of India Act of 1919. In 1917 Meston went to London

as Indian representative to the Imperial War Cabinet and to the Imperial Conference of

that year. On his return to India, he again was Finance Member of the Governor-

General's Council until his retirement in 1919. He then returned to England and, as the

newly created Baron Meston of Agra and Dunottar, continued to act as chief adviser on

Indian affairs to the Milner Group. He was placed on the boards of directors of a score of

corporations in which the Group had influence. On several of these he sat with other

members of the Group. Among these we might mention the English Electric Company

(with Hichens), the Galloway Water Power Company (with Brand), and the British

Portland Cement Manufacturers Association (with the third Lord Selborne). From its

foundation he was an important member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs,

was chairman of its executive committee in 1919-1926, and was a member of the council

for most of the period 1926-1943.

Marris, who replaced Meston in the Transvaal in 1906, was eight years his junior

(born 1873) and, perhaps for this reason, was much closer to the member of the

Kindergarten and became, if possible, an even more intimate member of the Milner

Group. He became Civil Service Commissioner of the Transvaal and deputy chairman of

the Committee on the Central South African Railways. He did not return to India for

several years, going with Curtis instead on a world tour through Canada, Australia, and

New Zealand, organizing the Round Table Groups (1911). It was he who persuaded

Curtis, and through him the Milner Group, that India should be allowed to proceed more

rapidly than had been intended on the path toward self-government.

Back in India in 1912, Marris became a member of the Durbar Executive Committee

and, later, secretary to the Home Department of the Government of India. In 1916 he

became Inspector General of Police for the United Provinces, and the following year

Joint Secretary to the Government of India. During this period he helped Curtis with the

projected reforms plans, and he was made responsible for carrying them out when the act

was passed in 1919, being made Commissioner of Reforms and Home Secretary to the

Government of India (1919-1921). At the same time he was knighted. After a brief period

as Governor of Assam (1921-1922), he was Governor of the United Provinces (1922-

1928) and a member of the Council of India (1928-1929). After his retirement from

active participation in the affairs of India, he embarked upon a career in academic

administration, which brought him additional honors. He was Principal of Armstrong

College in 1929-1937, Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Durham University

in 1929-1937, a Governor of the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester in 1937-1945.

Marris's son, Adam D. Marris, born in the year his father went to the Transvaal, is

today still a member of the Milner Group. After graduating from Winchester School and

Trinity College, Oxford, he went to work with Lazard Brothers. There is no doubt that

this position was obtained through his father's relationship with Brand, at that time

manager of Lazard. Young Marris remained with the banking firm for ten years, but at

the outbreak of war he joined the Ministry of Economic Warfare for a year. Then he

joined the All Souls Group that was monopolizing the British Embassy in Washington,

originally as First Secretary and later as Counselor to the Embassy (1940-1945). After the

war he was British Foreign Office representative on the Emergency Economic

Committee for Europe as secretary-general. In 1946 he returned to Lazard Brothers.

The older Marris brought into the Milner Group from the Indian Civil Service another

member who has assumed increasing importance in recent years. This was Malcolm

Hailey (since 1936 Lord Hailey). Hailey, a year older than Marris, took the Indian Civil

Service examinations with Marris in 1895 and followed in his footsteps thereafter.

Secretary to the Punjab government in 1907 and Deputy Secretary to the Government of

India the following year, he was a member of the Delhi Durbar Committee in 1912 and

Chief Commissioner in that city for the next eight years. In this post he was one of the

advisers used by Curtis on Indian reforms (1916). After the war Hailey was a member of

the Executive Council of the Viceroy in the Financial and Home Departments (1919-

1924), Governor of Punjab (1924-1928), and Governor of the United Provinces (1928-

1930, 1931-1934). During this last period he was one of the closest advisers to Baron

Irwin (Lord Halifax) during his term as Viceroy (1926-1936). After Hailey left the Indian

Service in 1934, he was used in many important capacities by the Milner Group,

especially in matters concerned with Africa and the mandates. Since this use illustrates to

perfection the skillful way in which the Milner Group has functioned in recent years, it

might be presented here as a typical case.

We have seen that the Milner Group controlled the Rhodes money after Rhodes's

death in 1902. In 1929 the Group invited General Smuts to give the Rhodes Lectures at

Oxford. In these lectures, Smuts suggested that a detailed survey of Africa and its

resources was badly needed. The Royal Institute of International Affairs took up this

suggestion and appointed a committee, with Lord Lothian as chairman, to study the

project. This committee secured the services of the retiring Governor of the United

Provinces to head the survey. Thus Sir Malcolm Hailey became the director of the project

and general editor of the famous African Survey, published in 1938 by the Royal Institute

of International Affairs, with funds obtained from the Carnegie Corporation of New

York. Thus the hand of the Milner Group appears in this work from its first conception to

its final fruition, although the general public, ignorant of the existence of such a group,

would never realize it.

Hailey was also made a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of International

Affairs, a member of the Permanent Mandate Commission of the League of Nations

(1935-1939), chairman of the School of Oriental and African Studies (1941-1945),

chairman of International African Institute, president of the Royal Central Asian Society,

chairman of the Colonial Research Committee, member of the Senate of the University of

London, Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College at Oxford (1939-1947), head of an

economic mission to the Belgian Congo (1941), Romanes Lecturer at Oxford (1941), etc.,

etc.

Along with all these important posts, Lord Hailey found time to write in those fields

with which the Milner Group was most concerned. Among these works we might

mention: Britain and Her Dependencies, The Future of Colonial Peoples, and Great

Britain, India, and the Colonial Dependencies in the Post-War World (all three published

in 1943).

The achievement of the Union of South Africa in 1910 did not mean the end of the

Kindergarten. Instead, it set out to repeat on the imperial scene what it had just

accomplished in South Africa. In this new project the inspiration was the same (Milner),

the personnel was the same (the Kindergarten), the methods were the same (with the

Round Table Groups replacing the 'Closer Union Societies" and The Round Table

replacing The State. But, as befitted a larger problem, additional personnel and additional

funds were required. The additional personnel came largely from New College and All

Souls; the additional funds came from Cecil Rhodes and his associates and All Souls. The

older sources of funds (like Abe Bailey) and influence (like The Times) remained loyal to

the Group and continued to assist in this second great battle of the Milner Croup. As John

Buchan wrote in his autobiography, "Loyalty to Milner and his creed was a strong cement

which endured long after our South African service ended, since the Round Table coterie

in England continued the Kindergarten." Or, if we may call another competent witness,

Lord Oxford and Asquith, writing of Milner after his death, stated: "His personality was

so impressive that he founded a school of able young men who during his lifetime and

since have acknowledged him as their principal political leader.... He was an

Expansionist, up to a point a Protectionist, with a strain in social and industrial matters of

semi-Socialist sentiment."(11)

More convincing, perhaps, than either Buchan or Asquith is the word of the Group

itself. The Round Table, in its issue of September 1935, celebrated its twenty-fifth

anniversary by printing a brief history of the Group. This sketch, while by no means

complete and without mentioning any names of members, provides irrefutable proof of

the existence and importance of the Milner Group. It said, in part:

“By the end of 1913 The Round Table had two aspects. On the one hand, it published

a quarterly review. . . . On the other hand it represented a body of men united in support

of the principle of freedom and enquiring jointly, through the method of group study,

how it could be preserved and expanded in the conditions of the then existing world. In

calling for preparation against the German danger (as it did from the very beginning) The

Round Table was not merely, or even chiefly, concerned with saving British skins. It was

concerned with upholding against the despotic state what it began to call ‘the principle of

the commonwealth.’ . . . The root principle of The Round Table remained freedom—‘the

government of men by themselves’ and it demanded that within the Empire this principle

should be persistently pursued and expressed in institutions. For that reason it denounced

the post-war attempt to repress the Irish demand for national self-government by ruthless

violence after a century of union had failed to win Irish consent, as a policy in conflict

with British wealth; and it played its part in achieving the Irish Treaty, and the Dominion

settlement. Within the limits of the practiceable it fought for the Commonwealth ideal in

India. It was closely associated with the device of dyarchy, which seemed for the time

being the most practical method of preventing the perpetuation of an irremovable

executive confronting an irresponsible legislature and of giving Indians practical training

in responsibility for government—the device embodied in the Montagu-Chelmsford

Report and the Government of India Act.... The Round Table, while supporting the legal

formulation of national freedom in the shape of Dominion autonomy, has never lost sight

of its ultimate ideal of an organic and articulate Commonwealth. The purpose of

devolution is not to drive liberty to the point of license but to prepare for the ultimate

basis on which alone freedom can be preserved the reign of law over all.... Federal Union

is the only security for the freedom both of the individual and of the nation. . . . The

principle of anonymity has never been broken and it remains not only as a means of

obtaining material from sources that would otherwise be closed, but also as a guarantee

that both the opinions and the facts presented in the articles are scrutinized by more than

one individual judgment.... Imperceptibly, the form of the review has changed to suit

altered circumstances.... But the fundamentals remain unchanged. Groups in the four

overseas Dominions still assemble their material and hammer out their views,

metaphorically, ‘round the table.’ Some of their members have shared continuously in

this work for a quarter of a century; and in England, too, the group of friends who came

together in South Africa still help to guide the destinies and contribute to the pages of the

review they founded, though the chances of life and death have taken some of their

number, and others have been brought in to contribute new points of view and younger

blood.”

Chapter 5—Milner Group, Rhodes, and Oxford, 1901-1925

It is generally believed, and stated as a fact by many writers, that Milner hoped for

some new political appointment after his return from Africa and was deprived of this by

the election of 1906, which swept the Conservatives from office and brought in the

Liberals. It is perfectly true that Milner was out of political life for ten years, but there is,

so far as I know, no evidence that this was contrary to his own wish. In his farewell

speech of March 1905, delivered long before the Liberal victory at the polls, Milner

stated in reference "to the great idea of Imperial Unity": "I shall always be steadfast in

that faith, though I should prefer to work quietly and in the background, in the formation

of opinion rather than in the exercise of power." This is exactly what Milner did. Even

after he returned to positions of power in 1915-1921, he worked as quietly as possible

and attracted public attention at an absolute minimum. (1)

Milner had nothing to gain from public office after 1905, until the great crisis of 1915-

1918 made it imperative for all able men to take a hand in active affairs. If he wanted to

speak his own mind, he always had his seat in the House of Lords, and speaking

engagements elsewhere were easy—indeed, too easy—to get. In South Africa his union

program after 1905 was going forward at a rate that exceeded his most optimistic hopes.

And nowhere else did it seem, in 1905, that he could, in actual administration,

accomplish more than he could in quietly building up a combination propaganda and

patronage machine at home. This machine was constructed about Rhodes and his

associates, New College, and All Souls.

Milner was not of any political party himself and regarded party politics with disgust

long before 1905. As his friend Edmund Garrett wrote in 1905: "Rhodes and Milner both

number themselves of that great unformed party which is neither the ins nor the outs,

which touches here the foreign politics of the one, here the home politics of the other; a

party to which Imperialism and Carlyle's Condition of the People Question are one and

the same business of fitly rearing, housing, distributing, coordinating, and training for

war and peace the people of this commonwealth; a party which seems to have no name,

no official leader, no paper even, but which I believe, when it comes by a soul and a

voice, will prove to include a majority of the British in Britain and a still greater majority

of the British overseas." (2) There can be no doubt that these were Milner's sentiments.

He hoped to give that unformed party "a soul and a voice," and he intended to do this

apart from party politics. When he was offered the position of president of the imperial

federalist organization he refused it, but wrote to the secretary, Mr. F. H. Congdon, as

follows:

“Personally I have no political interest worth mentioning, except the maintenance of

the Imperial connection, and I look upon the future with alarm. The party system at home

and in the Colonies seems to me to work for the severance of ties, and that contrary to the

desire of our people on both sides. It is a melancholy instance of the manner in which bad

political arrangements, lauded to the skies from year s end to year's end as the best in the

world, may not only injure the interests, but actually frustrate the desires of the people. I

can see no remedy or protection, under the present circumstances, except a powerful

body of men—and it would have to be very powerful—determined at all times and under

all circumstances to vote and work, regardless of every other circumstance, against the

man or party who played fast and loose with the cause of National Unity. You can be sure

that for my own part I shall always do that....”(3)

Milner, in his distaste for party politics and for the parliamentary system, and in his

emphasis on administration for social welfare, national unity, and imperial federation,

was an early example of what James Burnham has called the "managerial revolution"—

that is, the growth of a group of managers, behind the scenes and beyond the control of

public opinion, who seek efficiently to obtain what they regard as good for the people. To

a considerable extent this point of view became part of the ideology of the Milner Group,

although not of its most articulate members, like Lionel Curtis, who continued to regard

democracy as a good in itself.

Milner's own antipathy to democracy as practiced in the existing party and

parliamentary system is obvious. Writing to his old friend Sir Clinton Dawkins, who had

been, with Milner, a member of the Toynbee group in 1879-1884, he said in 1902: "Two

things constantly strike me. One is the soundness of the British nation as a whole,

contrasted with the rottenness of party politics." About the same time he wrote to another

old Balliol associate, George Parkin: "I am strongly impressed by two things: one that the

heart of the nation is sound,—and secondly that our constitution and methods are

antiquated and bad, and the real sound feeling of the nation does not get a chance of

making itself effective." Two years later he wrote to a friend of Rhodes, Sir Lewis

Michell: "Representative government has its merits, no doubt, but the influence of

representative assemblies, organized on the party system, upon administration—

'government' in the true sense of the word—is almost uniformly bad."(4)

With sentiments such as these, Milner laid down the duties of public office with relief

and devoted himself, not to private affairs, but to the secret public matters associated with

his "Association of Helpers." To support himself during this period, Milner acted as

confidential adviser to certain international financiers in London's financial district. His

entree to this lucrative occupation may have been obtained through Lord Esher, who had

just retired from a similar well-remunerated collaboration with Sir Ernest Cassel.

Milner's most important work in this period was concerned with the administration of

the Rhodes Trust and the contacts with Oxford University which arose out of this and

from his own position as a Fellow of New College.

The Rhodes Trust was already in operation when Milner returned from Africa in 1905,

with the actual management of the scholarships in the hands of George Parkin, who had

been brought from his position as Principal of Upper Canada College by Milner. He held

the post for eighteen years (1902-1920). The year following his appointment, an Oxford

secretary to the trustees was appointed to handle the local work during Parkin's extended

absences. This appointment went to Francis Wylie (Sir Francis since 1929), Fellow and

tutor of Brasenose, who was named by the influence of Lord Rosebery, whose sons he

had tutored.(5) The real control of the trust has rested with the Milner Group from 1902

to the present. Milner was the only really active trustee and he controlled the bureaucracy

which handled the trust. As secretary to the trustees before 1929, we find, for example,

George Parkin (1902-1920), Geoffrey Dawson (1921-1922), Edward Grigg (1922-1925),

and Lord Lothian (1925-1940)—all of them clearly Milner's nominees. On the Board of

Trustees itself, in the same period, we find Lord Rosebery, Lord Milner, Lord Grey, Dr.

Jameson, Alfred Beit, Lewis Michell, B. F. Hawksley, Otto Beit, Rudyard Kipling,

Leopold Amery, Stanley Baldwin, Geoffrey Dawson, H. A. L. Fisher, Sothern Holland,

and Sir Edward Peacock. Peacock had been teacher of English and housemaster at Upper

Canada College during the seven years in which Parkin was principal of that institution

(1895-1902) and became an international financier as soon as Parkin became secretary of

the Rhodes Trust. Apparently he did not represent the Rhodes Trust but rather the

interests of that powerful and enigmatic figure Edward Rogers Wood of Toronto. Wood

and Peacock were very close to the Canadian branch of the Milner Group, that is to say,

to A. J. Glazebrook, Parkin, and the Massey family, but it is not clear that either

represented the interests of the Milner Group. Peacock was associated at first with the

Dominion Securities Corporation of London (1902-1915) and later with Baring Brothers

as a specialist in utility enterprises in Mexico, Spain, and Brazil (1915-1924). He was

made Receiver-General of the Duchy of Cornwall in 1929 and was knighted in 1934. He

was a director of the Bank of England from 1921-1946, managing director of Baring

Brothers from 1926, a director of Vickers-Armstrong from 1929, and in addition a

director of many world-famous corporations, such as the Canadian Pacific Railway, the

Hudson Bay Company, and the Sun Life Assurance Society. He was an expert at the

Genoa Conference in 1922 and acted as the British Treasury's representative in

Washington during the Second World War.

If we look at the list of Rhodes Trustees, we see that the Milner Group always had

complete control. Omitting the five original trustees, we see that five of the new additions

were from the Milner Group, three were from the Rhodes clique, and three represented

the outside world. In the 1930s the Board was stabilized for a long period as Amery,

Baldwin, Dawson, Fisher, Holland, and Peacock, with Lothian as secretary. Six of these

seven were of the Milner Group, four from the inner core.

A somewhat similar situation existed in respect to the Beit Railway Fund. Although of

German birth, Alfred Beit became a British subject and embraced completely the ideas on

the future role of the British Empire shared by Rhodes and Milner. An intimate friend of

these and of Lord Rosebery, he was especially concerned with the necessity to link the

British possessions in Africa together by improved transportation (including the Cape to

Cairo Railway). Accordingly, he left £1,200,000 as the Beit Railway Trust, to be used for

transportation and other improvements in Africa. The year before his death (1906), he

was persuaded by the Milner Group to establish a Beit Professorship and a Beit

Lecturership in Colonial History at Oxford. The money provided yielded an income far in

excess of the needs of these two chairs, and the surplus has been used for other

"imperialist" purposes. In addition, Beit gave money to the Bodleian Library at Oxford

for books on colonial history. In 1929, when Rhodes House was opened, these and other

books on the subject were moved from the Bodleian to Rhodes House, and the Beit

Professor was given an office and lecture hall in Rhodes House. There have been only

two incumbents of the Beit Professorship since 1905: Hugh Edward Egerton in 1905-

1920, and Reginald (Sir Reginald since 1944) Coupland since 1920. Egerton, a member

of the Cecil Bloc and the Round Table Group, was a contemporary of Milner's at Oxford

whose father was a member of the House of Commons and Under Secretary for Foreign

Affairs. He was originally private secretary to his cousin Edward Stanhope, Colonial

Secretary and Secretary of War in Lord Salisbury's first government. In 1886, Egerton

became a member of the managing committee of the newly created Emigrants

Information Office. He held this job for twenty years, during which time he came into the

sphere of the Milner Group, partly because of the efforts of South Africa, and especially

the British South Africa Company, to encourage emigration to their territories, but also

because of his Short History of British Colonial Policy, published in 1897. On the basis

of this contact and this book, he was given the new Beit Chair in 1905 and with it a

fellowship at All Souls. In his professional work he constantly supported the aims of the

Milner Group, including the publication of Federations and Unions within the British

Empire (1911) and British Colonial Policy in the Twentieth Century (1922). His book

Canadian Constitutional Development, along with Sir Charles Lucas's edition of Lord

Durham's reports, was the chief source of information for the process by which Canada

was federated used by the Milner Group. He wrote the biography of Joseph Chamberlain

in the Dictionary of National Biography, while his own biography in the same collection

was written by Reginald Coupland. He remained a Fellow of All Souls and a member of

the Milner Group until his death in 1927, although he yielded his academic post to

Reginald Coupland in 1920. Coupland, who was a member of the Milner Group from his

undergraduate days at New College (1903-1907), and who became one of the inner circle

of the Milner Group as early as 1914, will be discussed later. He has been, since 1917,

one of the most important persons in Britain in the formation of British imperial policy.

The Beit Railway Trust and the Beit chairs at Oxford have been controlled by the

Milner Group from the beginning, through the board of trustees of the former and

through the board of electors of the latter. Both of these have interlocking membership

with the Rhodes Trust and the College of All Souls. For example, the board of electors of

the Beit chair in 1910 consisted of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, the Regius Professor

of Modern History, the Chichele Professor of Modern History, the Secretary of State for

Colonies, Viscount Milner, H. A. L. Fisher, and Leopold Amery. By controlling All

Souls and the two professorships (both ex-officio fellowships of All Souls), the Milner

Group could control five out of seven electors to the Beit professorship. In recent years

the board of electors has consistently had a majority of members of All Souls and/or the

Milner Group. In 1940, for example, the board had, besides three ax-officio members,

two members of All Souls, a Rhodes Trustee, and H. A. L. Fisher.

The Beit Lectureship in Colonial History was similarly controlled. In 1910 its board of

electors had seven members, four ax-officio (The Vice-Chancellor, the Regius Professor

of History, the Chichele Professor of History, the Beit Professor) and three others (A. L.

Smith, H, A. L. Fisher, and Leopold Amery). In 1930 the board consisted of the Vice-

Chancellor, the Beit Professor, H. A. L. Fisher, F. M. Powicke, and three fellows of All

Souls. As a result, the lectureship has generally been held by persons close to the Milner

Group, as can be seen from the following list of incumbents:

W. L. Grant, 1906-1910

J. Munro, 1910-1912

L. Curtis, 1912-1913

R. Coupland, 1913-1918

E. M. Wrong, 1919-1924

K. N. Bell, 1924-1927

W. P. Morrell, 1927-1930

V. T. Harlow, 1930-1935

K. C. Wheare, 1935-1940

Without attempting to identify all of these completely, it should be pointed out that

four were Fellows of All Souls, while, of the others, one was the son-in-law of George

Parkin, another was the son-in-law of A. L. Smith, and a third was librarian of Rhodes

House and later acting editor of The Round Table.

During this period after 1905, the Milner Group was steadily strengthening its

relationships with New College, All Souls, and to some extent with Balliol. Through

Fisher and Milner there came into the Group two tutors and a scholar of New College.

These were Alfred Zimmern, Robert S. Rait (1874-1936), and Reginald Coupland.

Alfred Zimmern (Sir Alfred since 1936) was an undergraduate at New College with

Kerr, Grigg, Brand, Curtis, Malcolm, and Waldorf Astor (later Lord Astor) in 1898-1902.

As lecturer, fellow, and tutor there in the period 1903-1909, he taught a number of future

members of the Milner Group, of whom the chief was Reginald Coupland. His teaching

and his book The Greek Commonwealth (1911) had a profound effect on the thinking of

the inner circle of the Milner Group, as can be seen, for example, in the writings of

Lionel Curtis. In the period up to 1921 he was close to this inner core and in fact can be

considered as a member of it. After 1921 he disagreed with the policy of the inner core

toward the League of Nations and Germany, since the core wanted to weaken the

one and strengthen the other, an opinion exactly opposite to that of Zimmern. He

remained, however, a member of the Group and was, indeed, its most able member and

one of its most courageous members. Since his activities will be mentioned frequently in

the course of this study, we need do no more than point out his various positions here. He

was a staff inspector of the Board of Education in 1912-1915; the chief assistant to Lord

Robert Cecil in the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office in 1918-1919;

Wilson Professor of International Politics at University College of Wales, Abersytwyth,

in 1919-1921; Professor of Political Science at Cornell in 1922-1923; deputy director and

chief administrator of the League of Nations Institute of Intellectual Cooperation in 1926-

1930; Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford in 1930-1944;

deputy director of the Research Department of the Foreign Office in 1943-1945; adviser

to the Ministry of Education in 1945; director of the Geneva School of International

Studies in 1925-1939; adviser and chief organizer of the United Nations Educational,

Scientific, and Cultural Organization in 1946; and Visiting Professor at Trinity College,

Hartford, Connecticut, from 1947.

Another Fellow of New College who joined the Milner Group was R. S. Rait (1874-

1936). Of much less significance than Zimmern, he worked with the Group in the Trade

Intelligence Department of the War Office in 1915-1918. He is the chief reason why the

Milner Group, especially in the writings of Lionel Curtis, emphasized the union with

Scotland as a model for the treatment of Ireland. A close friend of A. V. Dicey, Fellow of

All Souls, he wrote with him Thoughts on the Union between England and Scotland

(1920), and, with C. H. Firth, another Fellow of All Souls, he wrote Acts and

Ordonnances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660 (1911). He left New College in 1913 to

become Professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow (1913-1929) and five

years later was made Royal Historiographer of Scotland (1919-1929). Originally intimate

with the inner circle of the Milner Group, he drifted away after 1913.

Reginald Coupland (Sir Reginald since 1944) came into the Milner Group's inner

circle shortly before Rait moved out, and has been there ever since. A student of

Zimmern's at New College in 1903-1907, he became a Fellow and lecturer in ancient

history at Trinity College, Oxford, immediately upon graduation and stayed there for

seven years. Since then his academic career has carried him to the following positions:

Beit Lecturer in Colonial History (1913-1918), Beit Professor of Colonial History (since

1920), Fellow of All Souls (since 1920), and Fellow of Nuffield College (since 1939). He

was also editor of The Round Table after Lord Lothian left (1917-1919) and again at the

beginning of the Second World War (1939-1941). His most important activities,

however, have been behind the scenes: as member of the Royal Commission on Superior

Civil Services in India (1923), as adviser to the Burma Round Table Conference of 1931,

as a member of the Peel Commission to Palestine (1936-1937), and as a member of Sir

Stafford Cripps's Mission to India (1942). He is reputed to have been the chief author of

the Peel Report of 1937, which recommended partition of Palestine and restriction of

Jewish immigration into the area—two principles which remained at the basis of British

policy until 1949. In fact, the pattern of partition contained in the Peel Report, which

would have given Transjordan an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea across the southern

portion of Palestine, was a subject of violent controversy in 1948.

Coupland has been a prolific writer. Besides his many historical works, he has written

many books that reflect the chief subjects of discussion in the inmost circle of the Milner

Group. Among these, we might mention Freedom and Unity, his lecture at Patna College,

India, in 1924; The American Revolution and the British Empire (1930); The Empire in These Days (1935); The Cripps Mission (1942); and Report on the Constitutional

Problem in India (3 parts, 1942-1943).

The Milner Group's relationships with All Souls were also strengthened after Milner

returned to England in 1905, and especially after the Kindergarten returned to England in

1909-1911. The Milner Group's strength in All Souls, however, was apparently not

sufficiently strong for them to elect a member of the Milner Group as Warden when

Anson died in 1914, for his successor, Francis W. Pember, onetime assistant legal adviser

to the Foreign Office, and a Fellow of All Souls since 1884, was of the Cecil Bloc rather

than of the Milner Group. Pember did not, however, resist the penetration of the Milner

Group into All Souls, and as a result both of his successors as Warden, W. G. S. Adams

(1933-1945) and B. H. Sumner (1945- ), were members of the Milner Group.

In general, the movement of persons was not from the Milner Group to All Souls but

in the reverse direction. All Souls, in fact, became the chief recruiting agency for the

Milner Group, as it had been before 1903 for the Cecil Bloc. The inner circle of this

Group, because of its close contact with Oxford and with All Souls, was in a position to

notice able young undergraduates at Oxford. These were admitted to All Souls and at

once given opportunities in public life and in writing or teaching, to test their abilities and

loyalty to the ideals of the Milner Group. If they passed both of these tests, they were

gradually admitted to the Milner Group's great fiefs such as the Royal Institute of

International Affairs, The Times, The Round Table, or, on the larger scene, to the ranks of

the Foreign or Colonial Offices. So far as I know, none of these persons recruited through

All Souls ever reached the inner circle of the Milner Group, at least before 1939. This

inner circle continued to be largely monopolized by the group that had been in South

Africa in the period before 1909. The only persons who were not in South Africa, yet

reached the inner circle of the Milner Group, would appear to be Coupland, Lord Astor,

Lady Astor, Arnold Toynbee, and H. V. Hodson. There may be others, for it is difficult

for an outsider to be sure in regard to such a secret matter.

Of the members of All Souls who got into at least the second circle of the Milner

Group, we should mention the names of the following:

Name Birth College All Souls

Date Fellow

W. G. S. Adams 1874 Balliol, 1896-1900 1910- (Warden 1933-1945)

K. N. Bell 1884 Balliol, 1903-1906 1907-1914

I. Berlin 1909 Corpus Christi, 1928-1932 1932-1939

H. B. Butler 1883 Balliol, 1902-1905 1905-1912

R. D’O. Butler Balliol, 1935-1938 1938-

F. Clarke Balliol, 1905-1908 1908-1915

P. E. Corbett 1892 Balliol, 1919-1920 1920-1928

C. R. M. F. Cruttwell Queen’s, 1906-1910 1911-1918

H. W. C. Davis 1874 Balliol, 1891-1895 1895-1902

G. C. Faber 1889 Christ Church, 1908-1913 1919-

J. G. Foster New College, 1922-1925 1924-

M. L Gwyer 1878 Christ Church, 1897-1901 1902-1916

W. K. Hancock 1898 Balliol, 1922-1923 1924-1930, 1944-

C. R. S. Harris 1896 Corpus Christi, 1918-1923 1921-1936

H. V. Hodson 1906 Balliol, 1925-1928 1928-1935

C. S. Macartney 1896 Trinity College, Cambridge 1936-

R. M. Makins 1904 Christ Church, 1922-1925 1925-1932

J. Morley 1938 Lincoln, 1856-1859 1904-1911

C. J. Radcliffe 1899 New College, 1919-1922 1922-1937

J. A. Salter 1881 Brasenose, 1899-1904 1932-

D. B. Somervell 1889 Magdalen 1907-1911 1912-

A. H. D. R. Steel- 1876 Balliol, 1896-1900 1900-1907

Maitland

B. H. Sumner 1893 Balliol, 1912-1916 1919-1926, Warden 1945-

L. F. R. Williams 1890 University 1909-1912 1914-1921

E. L. Woodward 1890 Corpus Christi, 1908-1911 1911-1944

Of these twenty-five names, four were Fellows of Balliol during the periods in which

they were not Fellows of All Souls (Bell, David, Sumner, and Woodward).

It is not necessary to say much about these various men at this time, but certain of

them should be identified. The others will be mentioned later.

William George Stewart Adams was lecturer in Economics at Chicago and

Manchester universities and Superintendent of Statistics and Intelligence in the

Department of Agriculture before he was elected to All Souls in 1910. Then he was

Gladstone Professor of Political Theory and Institutions (1912-1933), a member of the

committee to advise the Irish Cabinet (1911), in the Ministry of Munitions (1915),

Secretary to Lloyd George (1916-1919), editor of the War Cabinet Reports (1917-1918),

and a member of the Committee on Civil Service Examinations (1918).

The Reverend Kenneth Norman Bell was lecturer in history at Toronto University

during his fellowship in All Souls (1907-1914); a director of G. Bell and Sons,

Publishers; a tutor and Fellow of Balliol (1919-1941); Beit Lecturer in Colonial History

(1924-1927); and a member of the committee for supervision of the selection of

candidates for the Colonial Administrative Service. He edited, with W. P. Morrell, Select

Documents in British Colonial History, 1830-1860 (1928).

Harold Beresford Butler (Sir Harold since 1946) was a civil servant, chiefly in the

Home Office, and secretary to the British delegation to the International Conference on

Aerial Navigation in Paris during his Fellowship at All Souls. He was subsequently in the

Foreign Trade Department of the Foreign Office (1914-1917) and in the Ministry of

Labour (1917-1919). On the Labour Commission of the Paris Peace Conference and at

the International Labor Conference in Washington (1919), he later became deputy

director (1920-1932) and director (1932-1938) of the International Labour Office of the

League of Nations. Since 1939, he has been Warden of Nuffield College (1939-1943) and

minister in charge of publicity in the British Embassy in Washington (1942-1946). He

has written a number of books, including a history of the inter-war period called The Lost

Peace (1941).

H. W. C. Davis, the famous medieval historian, became a Fellow of All Souls

immediately after graduating from Balliol in 1895, and was a Fellow of Balliol for

nineteen years after that, resigning from the latter to become Professor of History at

Manchester University (1921-1925). During this period he was a lecturer at New College

(1897-1899), Chichele Lecturer in Foreign History (1913), editor of the Oxford

Pamphlets on the war (1914-1915), one of the organizers of the War Trade Intelligence

Department of the Ministry of Blockade in the Foreign Office (1915), acting director of

the Department of Overseas Trade under Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland (1917-1919), an

expert at the Paris Peace Conference (1918-1919), and editor of the Dictionary of

National Biography (1920-1928). In 1925 he returned from Manchester to Oxford as

Regius Professor of Modern History in succession to Sir Charles Firth, became a Fellow

of Oriel College, Curator of the Bodleian, and was named by the International Labour

Office (that is, by Harold Butler) as the British representative on the Blanesburgh

Committee on Factory Legislation in Europe. He edited the report of this committee. In

addition to his very valuable studies in medieval history, Davis also wrote The History of

the Blockade (1920) and sections of the famous History of the Peace Conference, edited by Harold Temperley (also a member of the Group).

Sir Maurice Linford Gwyer was a Fellow of All Souls for fourteen years after

graduating from Christ Church (1902-1916). During this time he was admitted to the bar,

practiced law, was lecturer in Private International Law at Oxford (1912-1915) and

solicitor to the Insurance Commissioners (1902-1916). He was then legal adviser to the

Ministry of Shipping (1917-1919) and to the Ministry of Health (1919-1926), then

Procurator-General and Solicitor to the Treasury (1926-1933), First Parliamentary

Counsel to the Treasury (1934-1937), and Chief Justice of India (1937-1943). He was

first British delegate to The Hague Conference on Codification of International Law

(1930) and a member of the Indian States Inquiry Committee (1932). He edited the later

editions of Anson's Law of Contract and Law and Custom of the Constitution.

William Keith Hancock, of Australia and Balliol, was a member of All Souls from

1924. He was Professor of History at Adelaide in 1924-1933, Professor of Modern

History at Birmingham in 1934-1944, and is now Chichele Professor of Economic

History at Oxford. He wrote the three-volume work Survey of British Commonwealth

Affairs, published by Chatham House in 1937-1942.

John Morley (Lord Morley of Blackburn) was a member of the Cecil Bloc rather than

of the Milner Group, but in one respect, his insistence on the inadvisability of using force

and coercion within the Empire, a difference which appeared most sharply in regard to

Ireland, he was more akin to the Group than to the Bloc. He was a close friend of Lord

Salisbury, Lord Esher, and Joseph Chamberlain and was also a friend of Milner's, since

they worked together on the Pall Mall Gazette in 1882-1883. He had close personal and

family connections with H. A. L. Fisher, the former going back to a vacation together in

1892 and the latter based on Morley's lifelong friendship with Fisher's uncle, Leslie

Stephen. It was probably through Fisher's influence that Morley was elected a Fellow of

All Souls in 1904. He had shown that his heart was in the right place, so far as the Milner

Group was concerned, in 1894, when Gladstone retired from the leadership of the Liberal

Party and Morley used his influence to give the vacant position to Lord Rosebery. Morley

was Secretary of State for India in the period 1905-1910, putting through the famous

Morley-Minto reforms in this period. In this he made use of a number of members of the

Milner and All Souls groups. The bill itself was put through the House of Commons by a

member of All Souls, Thomas R. Buchanan (1846-1911), who was shifted from Financial

Secretary in the War Office under Haldane to Under Secretary in the India Office for the

purpose (1908-1909).(6)

James Arthur Salter (Sir Arthur since 1922) was born in Oxford and lived there until

he graduated from Brasenose in 1904. He went to work for the Shipping Department of

the Admiralty in the same year and worked in this field for most of the next fourteen

years. In 1917 he was Director of Ship Requisitioning and later secretary and chairman of

the Allied Maritime Transport Executive. He was on the Supreme Economic Council in

1919 and became general secretary to the Reparations Commission for almost three years

(1920- 1922). He was Director of the Economic and Finance Section of the League of

Nations in 1919-1922 and again in 1922-1931. In the early 1930s he went on several

missions to India and China and served on various committees concerned with railroad

matters. He was Gladstone Professor of Political Theory and Institutions in 1934-1944,

Member of Parliament from Oxford University after 1937, Parliamentary Secretary to the

Ministry of Shipping in 1939-1941, head of the British Merchant Shipping Mission in

America in 1941-1943, Senior Deputy Director General of UNRRA in 1944, and

Chancellor to the Duchy of Lancaster in 1945.

Donald B. Somervell (Sir Donald since 1933) has been a Fellow of All Souls since he

graduated from Magdalen in 1911, although he took his degree in natural science. He

entered Parliament as a Unionist in 1931 and almost at once began a governmental

career. He was Solicitor General (1933-1936), Attorney General (1936-1945), and Home

Secretary (1945), before becoming a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1946. His brother, D. C.

Somervell, edited the one-volume edition of Toynbee's A Study of History for Chatham

House.

Sir Arthur Ramsay Steel-Maitland was a Fellow of All Souls for the seven years

following his graduation from Balliol in 1900. He was unsuccessful as a candidate for

Parliament in 1906, but was elected as a Conservative from Birmingham four years later.

He was Parliamentary Under Secretary for Colonies (1915-1917), Joint Parliamentary

Under Secretary in the Foreign Office and Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade

in the capacity of head of the Department of Overseas Trade (1917-1919), and Minister

of Labour (1924-1929).

Benedict H. Sumner was a Fellow of All Souls for six years (1919-1928) and a Fellow

of Balliol for twenty (1925-1944), before he became Warden of All Souls (1945). During

the First World War, he was with Military Intelligence and afterwards with the British

delegation at the Peace Conference. During the Second World War, he was attached to

the Foreign Office (1939-1942). He is an authority on Russian affairs, and this probably

played an important part in his selection as Warden of All Souls in 1945.

Laurence F. R. Williams went to Canada as lecturer in medieval history at Queen's

University after leaving Balliol (1913-1914). Immediately on becoming a Fellow of All

Souls in 1914, he went to India as Professor of Indian History at the University of

Allahabad. In 1918 and in 1919 he was busy on constitutional reforms associated with the

Government of India Act of 1919, working closely with Sir William Marris. He then

became director of the Central Bureau of Information for six years (1920-1926) and

secretary to the Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes for four (1926-1930). He was, in

this period, also secretary to the Indian Delegation at the Imperial Conference of 1923,

political secretary to the Maharaja of Patiala, substitute delegate to the Assembly of the

League of Nations (1925), member of the Legislative Assembly (1924-1925), joint

director of the Indian Princes' Special Organization (1929-1931), adviser to the Indian

States delegation at the Round Table Conference of 1930-1931, and delegate to the

Round Table Conference of 1932. In the 1930s he was Eastern Service director of the

BBC (under H. A. L. Fisher), and in the early days of the Second World War was adviser

on Middle East Affairs to the Ministry of Information. Since 1944 he has been in the

editorial department of The Times. His written output is considerable, much of it having

been published as official documents or parliamentary papers. Among these are the

Moral and Material Progress Reports of India for 1917-1925, the official Report on Lord

Chelmsford's Administration, and the official History of the Tour of the Prince of Wales.

He also wrote Lectures on the Handling of Historical Material (1917), a History of the

Abbey of St. Alban (1917), and a half dozen books and pamphlets on India.

Ernest Llewellyn Woodward, the last Fellow of All Souls whom we shall mention

here, is of great significance. After studying at Oxford for seven years (1908-1915) he

went into the British Expeditionary Force for three, and then was elected a Fellow of All

Souls, an appointment he held until he became a Fellow of Balliol in the middle of the

1940s. He was also a tutor and lecturer at New College, a Rhodes Traveling Fellow

(1931), and in 1944 succeeded Sir Alfred Zimmern as Montague Burton Professor of

International Relations. When the decision was made after the Second World War to

publish an extensive selection of Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939,

Woodward was made general editor of the series and at once associated with himself

Rohan D'Olier Butler, who has been a Fellow of All Souls since leaving Balliol in 1938.

Woodward was a member of the council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs

in the middle 1930s, and domestic bursar of All Souls a little later. He has written a

number of historical works, of which the best known are Volume XIII of the Oxford

History of England ("The Age of Reform," 1938), Three Studies in European

Conservatism (1929), and Great Britain and the German Navy (1935).

These twenty-five names give the chief members of All Souls, in the period before

1939, who became links with the Milner Group and who have not previously been

discussed. In the same period the links with New College and Balliol were also

strengthened. The process by which this was done for the former, through men like H. A.

L. Fisher, has already been indicated. Somewhat similar but less intimate relationships

were established with Balliol, especially after A. L. Smith became Master of that college

in 1916. Smith, as we have indicated, was a contemporary and old friend of Milner at

Balliol and shared his (and Toynbee's) ideas regarding the necessity of uplifting the

working classes and preserving the Empire. His connections with Fisher and with All

Souls were intimate. He was a close friend of Lord Brassey, whose marital relationships

with the Rosebery and Brand families and with the Cecil Bloc have been mentioned

already. Through A. L. Smith, Brassey reorganized the financial structure of the Balliol

foundation in 1904. He was, as we have shown, a close collaborator of Milner in his

secret plans, by intimate personal relationships before 1897 and by frequent

correspondence after that date. There can be no doubt that A. L. Smith shared in this

confidence. He was a collaborator with the Round Table Group after 1910, being

especially useful, by his Oxford position, in providing an Oxford background for Milner

Group propaganda among the working classes. This will be mentioned later. A. L.

Smith's daughter Mary married a Fellow of All Souls, F. T. Barrington-Ward, whose

older brother, R. M. Barrington-Ward, was assistant editor of The Times in 1927-1941

and succeeded Dawson as editor in 1941. Smith's son, A. L. F. Smith, was elected to All

Souls in 1904, was director, and later adviser, of education to the Government of Iraq in

1920-1931, and was Rector of Edinburgh Academy from 1931 to 1945.

A. L. Smith remained as Master of Balliol from 1916 to his death in 1924. His

biographical sketch in The Dictionary of National Biography was written by K. N. Bell of

All Souls.

The influence of the Milner Group and the Cecil Bloc on Balliol in the twentieth

century can be seen from the following list of persons who were Fellows or Honorary

Fellows of Balliol:

Archbishop Lang K. N. Bell

Lord Asquith H. W. C. Davis

Lord Brassey J. H. Hofmeyr

Lord Curzon Vincent Massey

Lord Ernle F. W. Pember

Lord Grey of Fallodon A. L. Smith

Lord Lansdowne B. H. Sumner

Lord Milner A. J. Toynbee

Leopold Amery E. L. Woodward

Of these eighteen names, nine were Fellows of All Souls, and seven were clearly of

the Milner Group.

There was also a close relationship between the Milner Group and New College. The

following list gives the names of eight members of the Milner Group who were also

Fellows or Honorary Fellows of New College in the years 1900-1947:

Lothian

Lord Milner

Isaiah Berlin

H. A. L. Fisher

Sir Samuel Hoare (Lord Templewood)

Gilbert Murray

W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (Lord Harlech)

Sir Alfred Zimmern

If we wished to add names to the Cecil Bloc, we would add those of Lord David Cecil,

Lord Quickswood (Lord Hugh Cecil), and Bishop A. C. Headlam.

It is clear from these lists that almost every important member of the Milner Group

was a fellow of one of the three colleges—Balliol, New College, or All Souls. Indeed,

these three formed a close relationship, the first two on the undergraduate level and the

last in its own unique position. The three were largely dominated by the Milner Group,

and they, in turn, largely dominated the intellectual life of Oxford in the fields of law,

history, and public affairs. They came close to dominating the university itself in

administrative matters. The relationships among the three can be demonstrated by the

proportions of All Souls Fellows who came from these two colleges, in relation to the

numbers which came from the other eighteen colleges at Oxford or from the outside

world. Of the one hundred forty-nine Fellows at All Souls in the twentieth century, forty-

eight came from Balliol and thirty from New College, in spite of the fact that Christ

Church was larger than these and Trinity, Magdalen, Brasenose, St. John's, and

University colleges were almost as large. Only thirty-two came from these other five

large colleges, while at least fifteen were educated outside Oxford.

The power of the Cecil Bloc and the Milner Group in Oxford in the twentieth century

can be seen by glancing at the list of Chancellors of the University during the century: (7)

Salisbury, 1869-1903

Lord Goschen, 1903-1907

Lord Curzon, 1907-1925

Lord Milner, 1925Lord George Cave, 1925-1928

Lord Grey of Fallodon, 1928-1933

Lord Halifax, 1933-

The influence of the Milner Group at Oxford was sufficient to enable it to get control

of the Dictionary of National Biography after this work was given to the university in

1917. This control was exercised by H. W. C. Davis and his protege J. R. H. Weaver

during the period before 1938. The former had been brought into the gifted circle because

he was a Fellow of All Souls and later a Fellow of Balliol (1895-1921). In this connection

he was naturally acquainted with Weaver (who was a Fellow of Trinity from 1913 to

1938) and brought him into the War Trade Intelligence Department when Davis

organized this under Cecil-Milner auspices in 1915. Davis became editor of the

Dictionary of National Biography under the same auspices in 1921 and soon asked

Weaver to join him. They jointly produced the Dictionary supplement for 1912-1921.

After Davis's death in 1928, Weaver became editor and brought out the supplement for

1922-1930. (8) He continued as editor until shortly before he was made President of

Trinity College in 1938. Weaver wrote the sketch of Davis in the Dictionary and also a

larger work called Henry William Carless Davis, a Memoir and a Selection of His

Historical Papers, published in 1933.

This control of the Dictionary of National Biography will explain how the Milner

Group controlled the writing of the biographies of its own members so completely in that

valuable work. This fact will already have been observed in the present work. The only

instance, apparently, where a member of the Milner Group or the Cecil Bloc did not have

his biographical sketch written by another member of these groups is to be found in the

case of Lord Phillimore, whose sketch was written by Lord Sankey, who was not a

member of the groups in question. Phillimore is also the only member of these groups

whose sketch is not wholeheartedly adulatory.

The influence of the Milner Group in academic circles is by no means exhausted by

the brief examination just made of Oxford. 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 University of Toronto and at Upper Canada College. At Toronto the Glazebrook-

Massey influence is very considerable, while at present the Principal of Upper Canada

College is W. L. Grant, son-in-law of George Parkin and former Beit Lecturer at Oxford.

Vincent Massey is a governor of the institution.

Chapter 6—TheTimes

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. The volume was issued under

the general editorship of Charles S. Goldman, a friend of John Buchan and author of With

General French and the Cavalry in South Africa. Among those who wrote articles were

W. F. Monypenny, Bernard Holland, John Buchan, Henry Birchenough, R. B. Haldane,

Bishop Lang, L. S. Amery, Evelyn Cecil, George Parkin, Edmund Garrett, Geoffrey

Dawson, E. B. Sargant (one of the Kindergarten), Lionel Phillips, Valentine Chirol, and

Sir Frederick and Lady Lugard.

This volume has many significant articles, several of which have already been

mentioned. 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.(1) A somewhat similar series of lectures was given on the

British Dominions at the University of Birmingham in 1910-1911 by such men as Alfred

Lyttelton, Henry Birchenough, and William Hely-Hutchinson. These were published by

Sir William Ashley in a volume called The British Dominions.

These efforts, however, were too weak, too public, and did not reach the proper

persons. Accordingly, the real efforts of the Milner Group were directed 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 at least

as far back as 1912. Even before this last date, members of the innermost circle of the

Milner Group were swarming about the great newspaper. In fact, it would appear that The

Times had been controlled by the Cecil Bloc since 1884 and was taken over by the

Milner Group in the same way in which All Souls was taken over, quietly and without a

struggle. The midwife of this process apparently was George E. Buckle (1854-1935),

graduate of New College in 1876, member of All Souls since 1877, and editor of The

Times from 1884 to 1912. (2) The chief members of the Milner Group who were

associated with The Times have already been mentioned. Amery was connected with the

paper from 1899 to 1909. During this period he edited and largely wrote the Times

History of the South African War. Lord Esher was offered a directorship in 1908. Grigg

was a staff writer in 1903-1905, and head of the Imperial Department in 1908-1913. B.

K. Long was head of the Dominion 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). Dawson 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.(3) Dawson

held the position from 1912 to 1941, except for the three years 1919-1922. This interval

is of some significance, for it revealed to the Milner Group that they could not continue

to control The Times without ownership. The Cecil Bloc had controlled The Times from

1884 to 1912 without ownership, and the Milner Group had done the same in the period

1912-1919, but, in this last year, Dawson quarreled with Lord Northcliffe (who was chief

proprietor from 1908-1922) and left the editor's chair. As soon as the Milner Group,

through the Astors, acquired the chief proprietorship of the paper in 1922, Dawson was

restored to his post and held it for the next twenty years. Undoubtedly the skillful stroke

which acquired the ownership of The Times from the Harmsworth 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 Time'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. 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 International Affairs.

Harris's literary versatility, as well as the large number of members of All Souls who

drifted over to the staff on The Times, unquestionably can be explained by the activities

of Lord Brand. Brand not only brought these persons from All Souls to The Times, but

also brought the Astors to The Times. Brand and Lord Astor were together at New

College at the outbreak of the Boer War. They married sisters, daughters of Chiswell

Dabney Langhorne of Virginia. Brand was apparently the one who brought Astor into the

Milner Group in 1917, although there had been a movement in this direction considerably

earlier. Astor was a Conservative M.P. from 1910 to 1919, leaving the Lower House to

take his father's seat in the House of Lords. His place in Commons has been held since

1919 by his wife, Nancy Astor (1919-1945), and by his son Michael Langhorne Astor

(1945- ). In 1918 Astor became parliamentary secretary to Lloyd George; later he held

the same position with the Ministry of Food (1918-1919) and the Ministry of Health

(1919-1921). He was British delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations in 1931,

chairman of the League Committee on Nutrition (1936-1937), and chairman of the

council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (since 1935). With help from

various people, he wrote three books on agricultural problems: Land and Life (1932), The

Planning of Agriculture (1933), and British Agriculture (1938). Both of his sons

graduated from New College, and both have been Members of Parliament, the older in

the period 1935-1945, and the younger since 1945. The older was secretary to Lord

Lytton on the League of Nations Commission of Enquiry into the Manchurian Episode

(1932) and was parliamentary private secretary to Sir Samuel Hoare when he was First

Lord of the Admiralty and Home Secretary (1936-1939).

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. As a result, the brother,

Colonel John Jacob Astor, has been chairman of the board of The Times Publishing

Company since 1922, and Brand was a director on the board for many years before 1944.

Colonel Astor, who matriculated at New College in 1937, at the age of fifty-one, was

military aide to the Viceroy of India (Lord Hardinge) in 1911-1914, was a Member of

Parliament from 1922 to 1945, and is a director of both Hambros' and Barclay's Banks.

This connection between the Milner Group and The Times was of the greatest

importance in the period up to 1945, especially in the period just before the Munich

crisis. However, the chief center of gravity of the Milner Group was never in The Times.

It is true that Lord Astor became one of the more important figures in the Milner Group

after Milner's death in 1925, but the center of gravity of the Group as a whole was

elsewhere: before 1920, in the Round Table Group; and after 1920, in All Souls. Lord

Astor was of great importance in the later period, especially after 1930, but was of no

significance in the earlier period—an indication of his relatively recent arrival in the

Group.

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. Woodward read those of the third volume.

While members of the Milner Group thus went into The Times to control it, relatively

few persons ever came into the Milner Group from The Times. The only two who readily

come to mind are Sir Arthur Willert and Lady Lugard. (4)

Arthur Willert (Sir Arthur since 1919) entered Balliol in 1901 but did not take a

degree until 1928. From 1906 to 1910 he was on the staff of The Times in Paris, Berlin,

and Washington, and was then chief Times correspondent in Washington for ten years

(1910-1920). During this period he was also secretary to the British War Mission in

Washington (1917-1918) and Washington representative of the Ministry of Information.

This brought him to the attention of the Milner Group, probably through Brand, and in

1921 he joined the Foreign Office as head of the News Department. During the next

fifteen years he was a member of the British delegations to the Washington Conference

of 1922, to the London Economic Conference of 1924, to the London Naval Conference

of 1930, to the World Disarmament Conference of 1932-1934, and to the League of

Nations in 1929-1934. He retired from the Foreign Office in 1935, but returned to an

active life for the duration of the Second World War as head of the southern region for

the Ministry of Information (1939-1945). In 1937, in cooperation with H. V. Hodson

(then editor of The Round Table) and B. K. Long (of the Kindergarten), he wrote a book called The Empire in the World. He had previously written Aspects of British Foreign

Policy (1928) and The Frontiers of England (1935).

The second person to come into the Milner Group from The Times was Lady Lugard

(the former Flora Shaw), who was probably a member of the Rhodes secret society on

The Times and appears to have been passing from The Times to the Milner Group, when

she was really passing from the society to the Milner Group. She and her husband are of

great significance in the latter organization, although neither was a member of the

innermost circle.

Frederick Lugard (Sir Frederick after 1901 and Lord Lugard after 1928) was a regular

British army officer who served in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and Burma in 1879-1887. In

1888 he led a successful expedition against slave-traders on Lake Nyasa, and was

subsequently employed by the British East African Company, the Royal Niger Company,

and British West Charterland in leading expeditions into the interior of Africa (1889-

1897). In 1897 he was appointed by the Salisbury government to be Her Majesty's

Commissioner in the hinterland of Nigeria and Lagos and commandant of the West

African Frontier Force, which he organized. Subsequently he was High Commissioner of

Northern Nigeria (1900-1906) and Governor of Hong Kong (1907-1912), as well as

Governor, and later Governor-General, of Nigeria (1912-1919). He wrote Our East

African Empire (1893) and The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922), and also numerous articles (including one on West Africa in The Empire and the Century). He was

one of the chief assistants of Lord Lothian and Lord Hailey in planning the African

Survey in 1934- 1937, was British member of the Permanent Mandates Commission of

the League of Nations from 1922 to 1936, was one of the more influential figures in the

Royal Institute of International Affairs, and is generally regarded as the inventor of the

British system of "indirect rule" in colonial areas.

Flora Shaw, who married Sir Frederick Lugard in 1902, when he was forty-four and

she was fifty, was made head of the Colonial Department of The Times in 1890, at the

suggestion of Sir Robert George Wyndham Herbert, the Permanent Under Secretary of

the Colonial Office. Sir Robert, whose grandmother was a Wyndham and whose

grandfather was Earl of Carnarvon, was a Fellow of All Souls from 1854 to 1905. He was

thus elected the year following Lord Salisbury's election. He began his political career as

private secretary to Gladstone and was Permanent Under Secretary for twenty-one years

(1871-1892, 1900). He was subsequently Agent General for Tasmania (1893-1896), High

Sheriff of London, chairman of the Tariff Commission, and adviser to the Sultan of

Johore, all under the Salisbury-Balfour governments.

When Miss Shaw was recommended to The Times as head of the Colonial

Department, she was already a close friend of Moberly Bell, manager of The Times, and

was an agent and close friend of Stead and Cecil Rhodes. The story of how she came to

work for The Times, as told in that paper's official history, is simplicity itself: Bell wanted

someone to head the Colonial Department, so he wrote to Sir Robert Herbert and was

given the name of Flora Shawl Accordingly, Bell wrote, "as a complete stranger," to Miss

Shaw and asked her "as an inexperienced writer for a specimen column." She wrote a

sample article on Egyptian finance, which pleased Bell so greatly that she was given the

position of head of the Colonial Department. That is the story as it appears in volume III

of The History of The Times, published in 1947. Shortly afterward appeared the

biography of Flora Shaw, written by the daughter of Moberly Bell and based on his

private papers. The story that emerges from this volume is quite different. It goes

somewhat as follows:

Flora Shaw, like most members of that part of the Cecil Bloc which shifted over to the

Milner Group, was a disciple of John Ruskin and an ardent worker among the depressed

masses of London's slums. Through Ruskin, she came to write for W. T. Stead of the Pall

Mall Gazette in 1886, and three years later, through Stead, she met Cecil Rhodes. In the

meantime, in 1888, she went to Egypt as correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette and

there became a close friend of Moberly Bell, The Times correspondent in that country.

Bell had been employed in this capacity in Egypt since 1865 and had become a close

friend of Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer), the British agent in Egypt. He had also become

an expert on Egyptian finance and published a pamphlet on that subject in 1887. Miss

Shaw's friendship with the Bell family was so close that she was practically a member of

it, and Bell's children knew her, then and later, as "Aunt Flora."

In 1890, when Bell was transferred to Printing House Square as manager of The

Times, Baring tried to persuade The Times to name Miss Shaw as Egyptian correspondent

in Bell's place. This was not done. Instead, Miss Shaw returned to London and was

introduced by Bell to Buckle. When Buckle told Miss Shaw that he wanted a head for the

Colonial Department of the paper, she suggested that he consult with Sir Robert Herbert.

From that point on, the account in The History of The Times is accurate. But it is clear, to

anyone who has the information just mentioned, that the recommendation by Sir Robert

Herbert, the test article on Egyptian finance, and probably the article itself, had been

arranged previously between Moberly Bell and "Aunt Flora."

None of these early relationships of Miss Shaw with Bell, Buckle, and Herbert are

mentioned in The History of The Times, and apparently they are not to be found in the

records at Printing House Square. They are, however, a significant indication of the

methods of the Milner Group. It is not clear what was the purpose of this elaborate

scheme. Miss Moberly Bell apparently believes that it was to deceive Buckle. It is much

more likely that it was to deceive the chief owners of The Times, John Walter III and his

son, Arthur F. Walter.

Miss Shaw, when she came to The Times, was an open champion of Lord Salisbury

and an active supporter of a vigorous imperial policy, especially in South Africa. She was

in the confidence of the Colonial Office and of Rhodes to a degree that cannot be

exaggerated. She met Rhodes, on Stead's recommendation, in 1889, at a time when Stead

was one of Rhodes's closest confidants. In 1892, Miss Shaw was sent to South Africa by

Moberly Bell, with instructions to set up two lines of communication from that area to

herself. One of these was to be known to The Times and would handle routine matters;

the second was to be known only to herself and was to bring confidential material to her

private address. The expenses of both of these avenues would be paid for by The Times,

but the expenses of the secret avenue would not appear on the records at Printing House

Square.(5)

From this date onward, Miss Shaw was in secret communication with Cecil

Rhodes. This communication was so close that she was informed by Rhodes of the

plot which led up to the Jameson Raid, months before the raid took place. She was

notified by Rhodes of the approximate date on which the raid would occur, two

weeks before it did occur. She even suggested on several occasions that the plans be

executed more rapidly, and on one occasion suggested a specific date for the event.

In her news articles, Miss Shaw embraced the cause of the British in the Transvaal

even to the extent of exaggerating and falsifying their hardships under Boer rule.(6) It

was The Times that published as an exclusive feature the famous (and fraudulent)

"women and children" letter, dated 20 December 1895, which pretended to be an appeal

for help from the persecuted British in the Transvaal to Dr. Jameson's waiting forces, but

which had really been concocted by Dr. Jameson himself on 20 November and sent to

Miss Shaw a month later. This letter was published by The Times as soon as news of the

Jameson' Raid was known, as a justification of the act. The Times continued to defend

and justify the raid and Jameson. After this became a rather delicate policy—that is, after

the raid failed and had to be disavowed— The Times was saved from the necessity of

reversing itself by the "Kruger telegram" sent by the German Kaiser to congratulate the

Boers on their successful suppression of the raiders. This "Kruger telegram" was played

up by The Times with such vigor that Jameson was largely eclipsed and the incident

assumed the dimensions of an international crisis. As the official History of The Times

puts it, " The Times was carried so far by indignation against the outrageous interference

of the Kaiser in the affairs of the British Empire that it was able to overlook the

criminality of Jameson's act." A little later, the same account says, "On January 7,

Rhodes' resignation from the Premiership was announced, while the Editor found it more

convenient to devote his leading article to the familiar topic of German interference

rather than to the consequences of the Raid."(7)

All of this was being done on direct instructions from Rhodes, and with the knowledge

and approval of the management of The Times. In fact, Miss Shaw was the intermediary

between Rhodes, The Times, and the Colonial Office (Joseph Chamberlain). Until the end

of November 1895, her instructions from Rhodes came to her through his agent in

London, Dr. Rutherfoord Harris, but, when the good Dr. Harris and Alfred Beit returned

to South Africa in order to be on hand for the anticipated excitement, the former gave

Miss Shaw the secret code of the British South Africa Company and the cable address

TELEMONES LONDON, so that communications from Rhodes to Miss Shaw could be

sent directly. Dr. Harris had already informed Rhodes by a cable of 4 November 1895:

“If you can telegraph course you wish Times to adopt now with regard to Transvaal

Flora will act.”

On 10 December 1895, Miss Shaw cabled Rhodes:

“Can you advise when will you commence the plans, we wish to send at earliest

opportunity sealed instructions representative of the Lond Times European Capitals; it is

most important using their influence in your favor.”

The use of the word "we" in this message disposes once and for all of Miss Shaw's

later defense that all her acts were done on her own private responsibility and not in her

capacity as a department head of The Times. In answer to this request, Rhodes replied the

next day: “We do think about new year.”

This answer made The Times’s manager “very depressed,” so the next day (12

December) Miss Shaw sent the following cable to Rhodes:

“Delay dangerous sympathy now complete but will depend very much upon action

before European powers given time enter a protest which as European situation

considered serious might paralyze government.”

Five days after this came another cable, which said in part:

“Chamberlain sound in case of interference European powers but have special reason

to believe wishes you must do it immediately.”

To these very incriminating messages might be added two of several wires from

Rhodes to Miss Shaw. One of 30 December 1895, after Rhodes knew that the Jameson

Raid had begun and after Miss Shaw had been so informed by secret code, stated:

“Inform Chamberlain that I shall get through all right if he supports me, but he must

not send cable like he sent high commissioner in South Africa. Today the crux is, I will

win and South Africa will belong to England.”

And the following day, when the outcome of the raid was doubtful because of the

failure of the English in the Transvaal to rise against the Boers—a failure resulting from

that the fact that they were not as ill-treated as Miss Shaw, through The times, had been

telling the world for months—Rhodes cabled:

“Unless you can make Chamberlain instruct the high commissioner to proceed at once

to Johannesburg the whole position is lost. High commissioner would receive splendid

reception and still turn position to England advantage but must be instructed by cable

immediately. The instructions must be specific as he is weak and will take no

responsibility.” (8)

When we realize that the anticipated uprising of the English in the Transvaal had

been financed and armed with munitions from the funds of the British South Africa

Company, it is clear that we must wait until Hitler's coup in Austria in March 1938

to find a parallel to Rhodes's and Jameson's attempted coup in South Africa forty-

two years earlier.

The Jameson Raid, if the full story could ever be told, would give the finest

possible example of the machinations of Rhodes's secret society. Another example,

almost as good, would be the completely untold story of how the society covered up

these activities in the face of the investigation of the Parliamentary Select

Committee. The dangers from this investigation were so great that even Lord Rothschild

was pressed into service as a messenger. It was obvious from the beginning that the star

witness before the committee would be Cecil Rhodes and that the chief danger would be

the incrimination of Joseph Chamberlain, who clearly knew of the plot. Milner, Garrett,

Stead, and Esher discussed possible defenses and reached no conclusion, since Stead

wanted to admit that Chamberlain was implicated in plans for a raid but not plans for the

raid. By this, Stead meant that Chamberlain and Rhodes had seen the possibility of an

uprising in the Transvaal and, solely as a precautionary measure, had made the

preparations for Jameson's force so that it would be available to go to Johannesburg to

restore order. The others refused to accept this strategy and insisted on the advantages of

a general and blanket denial. This difference of opinion probably arose from the fact that

Stead did not know that the prospective rebels in Johannesburg were armed and financed

by Rhodes, were led by Rhodes's brother and Abe Bailey, and had written the"women

and children" message, in collaboration with Jameson, weeks before. These facts, if

revealed to the committee, would make it impossible to distinguish between "the raid"

and "a raid." The event of 31 December 1895, which the committee was investigating,

was the former and not the latter merely because the plotters in Johannesburg failed to

revolt on schedule. This is clear from Edward Cook's statement, in his biography of

Garrett, that Garrett expected to receive news of a revolution in Johannesburg at any

moment on 30 December 1895. (9)

The difficulty which the initiates in London had in preparing a defense for the Select

Committee was complicated by the fact that they were not able to reach Rhodes, who was

en route from South Africa with Garrett. As soon as the boat docked, Brett (Lord Esher)

sent "Natty" Rothschild from London with a message from Chamberlain to Rhodes.

When Rothschild returned, Brett called in Stead, and they discussed the projected

defense. Stead had already seen Rhodes and given his advice.(10) The following day (5

February 1896), Brett saw Rhodes and found that he was prepared to confess everything.

Brett tried to dissuade him. As he wrote in his Journal, "I pointed out to him that there

was one consideration which appeared to have escaped him, that was the position of Mr.

Chamberlain, the Secretary of State. Chamberlain was obviously anxious to help and it

would not do to embarrass him or to tie his hands. It appeared to me to be prudent to

endeavour to ascertain how Chamberlain would receive a confidence of this kind. I said I

would try to find out. On leaving me he said, 'Wish we could get our secret society.'"

Brett went to Chamberlain, who refused to receive Rhodes's confession, lest he have to

order the law officers to take proceedings against Rhodes as against Jameson.

Accordingly, the view of the majority, a general denial, was adopted and proved

successful, thanks to the leniency of the members of the Select Committee. Brett

recognized this leniency. He wrote to Stead on 19 February 1897: "I came up with Milner

from Windsor this morning. He has a heavy job; and has to start de novo. The committee

will leave few of the old gang on their legs. Alas. Rhodes was a pitiful object. Harcourt

very sorry for him; too sorry to press his question home. Why did Rhodes try to shuffle

after all we had told him?"(11)

It is clear that the Select Committee made no real effort to uncover the real

relationships between the conspirators, The Times, and the Salisbury government. When

witnesses refused to produce documents or to answer questions, the committee did not

insist, and whole fields of inquiry were excluded from examination by the committee.

One of these fields, and probably the most important one, was the internal policies and

administration of The Times itself. As a result, when Campbell-Bannerman, an opposition

leader, asked if it were usual practice for The Times correspondents to be used to

propagate certain policies in foreign countries as well as to obtain information, Miss

Shaw answered that she had been excused from answering questions about the internal

administration of The Times. We now know, as a result of the publication of the official

History of The Times, that all Miss Shaw's acts were done in consultation with the

manager, Moberly Bell.(12) The vital telegrams to Rhodes, signed by Miss Shaw, were

really drafted by Bell. As The History of The Times puts it, "Bell had taken the risk of

allowing Miss Shaw to commit The Times to the support of Rhodes in a conspiracy that

was bound to lead to controversy at home, if it succeeded, and likely to lead to

prosecution if it failed. The conspiracy had failed; the prosecution had resulted. Bell's

only salvation lay in Miss Shaw's willingness to take personal responsibility for the

telegrams and in her ability to convince the Committee accordingly." And, as the

evidence of the same source shows, in order to convince the committee it was necessary

for Miss Shaw to commit perjury, even though the representatives of both parties on the

Committee of Enquiry (except Labouchere) were making every effort to conceal the real

facts while still providing the public with a good show.

Before leaving the discussion of Miss Shaw and the Jameson Raid, it might be fitting

to introduce testimony from a somewhat unreliable witness, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, a

member by breeding and education of this social group and a relative of the Wyndhams,

but a psychopathic anti-imperialist who spent his life praising and imitating the Arabs

and criticizing Britain's conduct in India, Egypt, and Ireland. In his diaries, under the date

25 April 1896, he says: "[George Wyndham] has been seeing much of Jameson, whom he

likes, and of the gang that have been running the Transvaal business, about a dozen of

them, with Buckle, The Times editor, and Miss Flora Shaw, who, he told me

confidentially, is really the prime mover in the whole thing, and who takes the lead in all

their private meetings, a very clever middle-aged woman."(13) A somewhat similar

conclusion was reached by W. T. Stead in a pamphlet called Joseph Chamberlain:

Conspirator or Statesman, which he published from the office of The Review of Reviews

in 1900. Stead was convinced that Miss Shaw was the intermediary among Rhodes, The

Times, and the Colonial Office. And Stead was Rhodes's closest confidant in England.

As a result of this publicity, Miss Shaw's value to The Times was undoubtedly

reduced, and she gave up her position after her marriage in 1902. In the meantime,

however, she had been in correspondence with Milner as early as 1899, and in December

1901 made a trip to South Africa for The Times, during which she had long interviews

with Milner, Monypenny, and the members of the Kindergarten. After her resignation,

she continued to review books for The Times Literary Supplement, wrote an article on

tropical dependencies for The Empire and the Century, wrote two chapters for Amery's

History of the South African War, and wrote a biographical sketch of Cecil Rhodes for

the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

A third member of this same type was Valentine Chirol (Sir Valentine after 1912).

Educated at the Sorbonne, he was a clerk in the Foreign Office for four years (1872-

1876) and then traveled about the world, but chiefly in the Near East, for sixteen years

(1876-1892). In 1892 he was made The Times correspondent in Berlin, and for the next

four years filled the role of a second British ambassador, with free access to the Foreign

Ministry in Berlin and functioning as a channel of unofficial communication between the

government in London and that in Berlin. After 1895 he became increasingly anti-

German, like all members of the Cecil Bloc and the Milner Group, and was chiefly

responsible for the great storm whipped up over the "Kruger telegram." In this last

connection he even went so far as to announce in The Times that the Germans were really

using the Jameson episode as part of a long-range project to drive Britain out of South

Africa and that the next step in that process was to be the dispatch in the immediate

future of a German expeditionary force to Delagoa Bay in Portuguese Angola. As a result

of this attitude, Chirol found the doors of the Foreign Ministry closed to him and, after

another unfruitful year in Berlin, was brought to London to take charge of the Foreign

Department of The Times. He held this post for fifteen years (1897-1912), during which

he was one of the most influential figures in the formation of British foreign and imperial

policy. The policy he supported was the policy that was carried out, and included support

for the Boer War, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the Entente Cordiale, the agreement of

1907 with Russia, the Morley-Minto Reforms in India, and the increasing resistance to

Germany. When he retired in 1912, he was knighted by Asquith for his important

contributions to the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 and was made a member of the

Royal Commission on Public Services in India (1912-1914). He remained in India during

most of the First World War, and, indeed, made seventeen visits to that country in his

life. In 1916 he was one of the five chief advisers to Lionel Curtis in the preparatory work

for the Government of India Act of 1919 (the other four being Lord Chelmsford, Meston,

Marris, and Hailey). Later Chirol wrote articles for The Round Table and was a member

of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference.

Chirol was replaced as head of the Foreign Department during his long absences from

London by Leopold Amery. It was expected that Amery would be Chirol's successor in

the post, but Amery entered upon a political career in 1910, so the position was given

briefly to Dudley Disraeli graham. graham, a former classmate of many of the

Kindergarten at New College, was a foreign correspondent of The Times for ten years

(1897-1907) and Chirol's assistant for five (1907-1912), before he became Chirol's

successor in the Foreign Department and Grigg's successor in the Imperial Department,

thus combining the two. He resigned from The Times in 1914 to become editor of the

Daily Telegraph in Sydney, Australia, and was subsequently a very important figure in

Australian newspaper life.

This account, by no means complete, shows clearly that the Milner Group controlled

The Times, indirectly from 1912 if not earlier, and directly from 1922. The importance of

this control should be obvious. The Times, although of a very limited circulation (only

about 35,000 at the beginning of the century, 50,000 at the outbreak of the First World

War, and 187,000 in 1936), was the most influential paper in England. The reason for this

influence is not generally recognized, although the existence of the condition itself is

widely known. The influence depended upon the close relationship between the paper

and the Foreign Office. This relationship, as we are trying to show, was the result of the

Milner Group's influence in both.

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. The historian of The Times recognizes this and,

after describing the departure from Printing House Square of Bell, Chirol, and Buckle,

says, "It is a valid criticism of the 'Olaf Gang' that they had not realized that they were in

the habit of valuing news according to the demands and interests of a governing class too

narrowly defined for the twentieth century." It was on this issue that the "Old Gang"

disputed with Northcliffe in the period 1908-1912 and that Dawson disputed with

Northcliffe in 1919. Although the new owner protested to all who would listen, in 1908

and later, that he would not try to make The Times into a popular paper, he was, as The

History of The Times shows, incapable of judging the merits of a newspaper by any other

standard than the size of its circulation. After he was replaced as chief proprietor by

Astor, and Dawson re-occupied the editor's chair, the old point of view was reestablished.

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.

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. Fay, William L. Langer,

Oron J. Hale, and others. The recent History of The Times devotes considerable space and

obviously spent long hours of research in refuting these charges, and fails to see that it

has not succeeded. With the usual honesty and industry of the Milner Group, the historian

gives the evidence that will convict him, without seeing that his interpretation will not

hold water. He confesses that the various correspondents of The Times in Berlin played

up all anti-English actions and statements and played down all pro-English ones; that

they quoted obscure and locally discredited papers in order to do this; that all The Times

foreign correspondents in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and elsewhere were anti-German, and

that these were the ones who were kept on the staff and promoted to better positions; that

the one member of the staff who was recognized as being fair to Germany (and who was

unquestionably the most able man in the whole Times organization), Donald Mackenzie

Wallace, was removed as head of the Foreign Department and shunted off to be editor of

the supplementary volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica (which was controlled by The

Times); and that The Times frequently printed untrue or distorted information on

Germany. All of this is admitted and excused as the work of honest, if hasty, journalists,

and the crowning proof that The Times was not guilty as charged is implied to be the fact

that the Germans did ultimately get into a war with Britain, thus proving at one stroke

that they were a bad lot and that the attitude of The Times staff toward them was justified

by the event.

It did not occur to the historian of The Times that there exists another explanation of

Anglo-German relations, namely that in 1895 there were two Germanies—the one

admiring Britain and the other hating Britain—and that Britain, by her cold-blooded and

calculated assault on the Boers in 1895 and 1899, gave the second (and worse) Germany

the opportunity to criticize and attack Britain and gave it the arguments with which to

justify a German effort to build up naval defenses. The Times, by quoting these attacks

and actions representative of the real attitude and actual intentions of all Germans, misled

the British people and abandoned the good Germans to a hopeless minority position,

where to be progressive, peaceful, or Anglophile was to be a traitor to Germany itself.

Chirol's alienation of Baron von Eckardstein (one of the "good" Germans, married to an

English lady), in a conversation in February 1900,(14) 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.

Chapter 7—TheRoundTable

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.”(1)

On this trip the three young men covered a good portion of the Dominion. One day,

during a walk through the forests on the Pacific slopes of the Canadian Rockies, Marris

convinced Curtis that "self-government, . . . however far distant, was the only intelligible

goal of British policy in India.... The existence of political unrest in India, far from being

a reason for pessimism, was the surest sign that the British, with all their manifest

failings, had not shirked their primary duty of extending Western education to India and

so preparing Indians to govern themselves." "I have since looked back on this walk,"

wrote Curtis, "as one of the milestones of my own education. So far I had thought of self-

government as a Western institution, which was and would always remain peculiar to the

peoples of Europe.... It was from that moment that I first began to think of 'the

Government of each by each and of all by all’ not merely as a principle of Western life,

but rather of all human life, as the goal to which all human societies must tend. It was

from that moment that I began to think of the British Commonwealth as the greatest

instrument ever devised for enabling that principle to be realized, not merely for the

children of Europe, but for all races and kindreds and peoples and tongues. And it is for

that reason that I have ceased to speak of the British Empire and called the book in which

I published my views The Commonwealth of Nations."

Because of Curtis's position and future influence, this walk in Canada was important

not only in his personal life but also in the future history of the British Empire. It needs

only to be pointed out that India received complete self-government in 1947 and the

British Commonwealth changed its name officially to Commonwealth of Nations in

1948. There can be no doubt that both of these events resulted in no small degree from

the influence of Lionel Curtis and the Milner Group, in which he was a major figure.

Curtis and his friends stayed in Canada for four months. Then Curtis returned to South

Africa for the closing session of the Transvaal Legislative Council, of which he was a

member. He there drafted a memorandum on the whole question of imperial relations,

and, on the day that the Union of South Africa came into existence, he sailed to New

Zealand to set up study groups to examine the question. These groups became the Round

Table Groups of New Zealand.(2)

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 type were set up in New Zealand, and then five more in

Australia. (3) The decision was made to do the same thing in Canada and in England, and

this was done by Curtis, Kerr, and apparently Dove during 1910. On the trip to Canada,

the missionaries carried with them a letter from Milner to his old friend Arthur J.

Glazebrook, with whom he had remained in close contact throughout the years since

Glazebrook went to Canada for an English bank in 1893. The Round Table in 1941,

writing of Glazebrook, said, "His great political hero was his friend Lord Milner, with

whom he kept up a regular correspondence." As a result of this letter from Milner,

Glazebrook undertook the task of founding Round Table Groups in Canada and did this

so well that he was for twenty years or more the real head of the network of Milner

Group units in the Dominion. He regularly wrote the Canadian articles in The Round

Table magazine. When he died, in 1940, The Round Table obituary spoke of him as "one

of the most devoted and loyal friends that The Round Table has ever known. Indeed he

could fairly claim to be one of its founding fathers." In the 1930s he relinquished his

central position in the Canadian branch of the Milner Group to Vincent Massey, son-in-

law of George Parkin. Glazebrook's admiration for Parkin was so great that he named his

son George Parkin de Twenebrokes Glazebrook.(4) At the present time Vincent Massey

and G. P. de T. Glazebrook are apparently the heads of the Milner Group organization in

Canada, having inherited the position from the latter's father. Both are graduates of

Balliol, Massey in 1913 and Glazebrook in 1924. Massey, a member of a very wealthy

Canadian family, was lecturer in modern history at Toronto University in 1913-1915, and

then served, during the war effort, as a staff officer in Canada, as associate secretary of

the Canadian Cabinet's War Committee, and as secretary and director of the Government

Repatriation Committee. Later he was Minister without Portfolio in the Canadian Cabinet

(1924), a member of the Canadian delegation to the Imperial Conference of 1926, and

first Canadian Minister to the United States (1926-1930). He was president of the

National Liberal Federation of Canada in 1932-1935, Canadian High Commissioner in

London in 1935-1946, and Canadian delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations

in 1936. He has been for a long time governor of the University of Toronto and of Upper

Canada College (Parkin's old school). He remains to this day one of the strongest

supporters of Oxford University and of a policy of close Canadian cooperation with the

United Kingdom.

G. P. de T. Glazebrook, son of Milner's old friend Arthur J. Glazebrook and namesake

of Milner's closest collaborator in the Rhodes Trust, was born in 1900 and studied at

Upper Canada College, the University of Toronto, and Balliol. Since 1924 he has been

teaching history at Toronto University, but since 1942 has been on leave to the Dominion

government, engaged in strategic intelligence work with the Department of External

Affairs. Since 1948 he has been on loan from the Department of External Affairs to the

Department of Defense, where he is acting as head of the new Joint Services Intelligence.

This highly secret agency appears to be the Canadian equivalent to the American Central

Intelligence Agency. Glazebrook has written a number of historical works, including a

History of Transportation in Canada (1938), Canadian External Affairs, a Historical

Study to 1914 (1942), and Canada at the Peace Conference (1942).

It was, as we have said, George Parkin Glazebrook's father who, acting in cooperation

with Curtis, Kerr, and Marris and on instructions from Milner, set up the Round Table

organization in Canada in 1911. About a dozen units were established in various cities.

It was during the effort to extend the Round Table organization to Australia that Curtis

first met Lord Chelmsford. He was later Viceroy of India (in 1916-1921), and there can

be little doubt that the Milner Group was influential in this appointment, for Curtis

discussed the plans which eventually became the Government of India Act of 1919 with

him before he went to India and consulted with him in India on the same subject in

1916.(5)

From 1911 to 1913, Curtis remained in England, devoting himself to the reports

coming in from the Round Table Groups on imperial organization, while Kerr devoted

himself to the publication of The Round Table itself. This was an extraordinary magazine.

The first issue appeared with the date 15 November 1910. It had no names in the whole

issue, either of the officers or of the contributors of the five articles. The opening

statement of policy was unsigned, and the only address to which communications could

be sent was "The Secretary, 175 Piccadilly, London, W." This anonymity has been

maintained ever since, and has been defended by the journal itself in advertisements, on

the grounds that anonymity gives the contributors greater independence and freedom. The

real reasons, however, were much more practical than this and included the fact that the

writers were virtually unknown and were so few in numbers, at first at least, as to make

the project appear ridiculous had the articles been signed. For example, Philip Kerr,

during his editorship, always wrote the leading article in every issue. In later years the

anonymity was necessary because of the political prominence of some of the

contributors. In general, the policy of the journal has been such that it has continued to

conceal the identity of its writers until their deaths. Even then, they have never been

connected with any specific article, except in the case of one article (the first one in the

first issue) by Lord Lothian. This article was reprinted in The Round Table after the

author's death in 1940.

The Round Table was essentially the propaganda vehicle of a handful of people and

could not have carried signed articles either originally, when they were too few, or later,

when they were too famous. It was never intended to be either a popular magazine or

self-supporting, but rather was aimed at influencing those in a position to influence public

opinion. As Curtis wrote in 1920, "A large quarterly like The Round Table is not

intended so much for the average reader, as for those who write for the average reader. It

is meant to be a storehouse of information of all kinds upon which publicists can draw.

Its articles must be taken on their merits and as representing nothing beyond the minds

and information of the individual writer of each."(6)

It is perhaps worth mentioning that the first article of the first issue, called "Anglo-

German Rivalry," was very anti-German and forms an interesting bit of evidence when

taken in connection with Curtis's statement that the problem of the Empire was raised in

1909 by the problem of what role South Africa would play in a future war with Germany.

The Group, in the period before 1914, were clearly anti-German. This must be

emphasized because of the mistaken idea which circulated after 1930 that the Cliveden

group, especially men like Lord Lothian, were pro-German. They were neither anti-

German in 1910 nor pro-German in 1938, but pro-Empire all the time, changing there

their attitudes on other problems as these problems affected the Empire. And it should be

realized that their love for the Empire was not mere jingoism or flag-waving (things at

which Kerr mocked within the Group) (7) but was based on the sincere belief that

freedom, civilization, and human decency could best be advanced through the

instrumentality of the British Empire.

In view of the specific and practical purpose of The Round Table—to federate the

Empire in order to ensure that the Dominions would join with the United Kingdom in a

future war with Germany—the paper could not help being a propagandist organ,

propagandist on a high level, it is true, but nonetheless a journal of opinion rather than a

journal of information. Every general article in the paper (excluding the reports from

representatives in the Dominions) was really an editorial—an unsigned editorial speaking

for the group as a whole. By the 1920s these articles were declaring, in true editorial

style, that " The Round Table does not approve of" something or other, or, "It seems to

The Round Table that" something else.

Later the members of the Group denied that the Group were concerned with the

propagation of any single point of view. Instead, they insisted that the purpose of the

Group was to bring together persons of various points of view for purposes of self-

education. This is not quite accurate. The Group did not contain persons of various points

of view but rather persons of unusual unanimity of opinion, especially in regard to goals.

There was a somewhat greater divergence in regard to methods, and the circulating of

memoranda within the Group to evoke various comments was for the purpose of reaching

some agreement on methods only—the goals being already given. In this, meetings of the

Group were rather like the meetings of the British Cabinet, although any normal Cabinet

would contain a greater variety of opinion than did the usual meetings of the Group. In

general, an expression of opinion by any one member of the Group sounded like an echo

of any of the others. Their systems of values were identical; the position of the British

Commonwealth at the apex of that system was almost axiomatic; the important role

played by moral and ideological influences in the Commonwealth and in the value

system was accepted by all; the necessity of strengthening the bonds of the

Commonwealth in view of the approaching crisis of the civilization of the West was

accepted by all, so also was the need for closer union with the United States. There was

considerable divergence of opinion regarding the practicality of imperial federation in the

immediate future; there was some divergence of ideas regarding the rate at which self-

government should be extended to the various parts of the Empire (especially India).

There was a slight difference of emphasis on the importance of relations between the

Commonwealth and the United States. But none of these differences of opinion was

fundamental or important. The most basic divergence within the Group during the first

twenty years or so was to be found in the field of economic ideas—a field in which the

Group as a whole was extremely weak, and also extremely conservative. This divergence

existed, however, solely because of the extremely unorthodox character of Lord Milner's

ideas. Milner's ideas (as expressed, for example, in his book Questions of the Hour,

published in 1923) would have been progressive, even unorthodox, in 1935. They were

naturally ahead of the times in 1923, and they were certainly far ahead of the ideas of the

Group as a whole, for its economic ideas would have been old-fashioned in 1905. These

ideas of the Group (until 1931, at least) were those of late-nineteenth-century

international banking and financial capitalism. The key to all economics and prosperity

was considered to rest in banking and finance. With "sound money," a balanced budget,

and the international gold standard, it was expected that prosperity and rising standards of

living would follow automatically. These ideas were propagated through The Round

Table, in the period after 1912, in a series of articles written by Brand and

subsequently republished under his name, with the title War and National Finance

(1921). They are directly antithetical to the ideas of Milner as revealed in his book

published two years later. Milner insisted that financial questions must be subordinated to

economic questions and economic questions to political questions. As a result, if a

deflationary policy, initiated for financial reasons, has deleterious economic or political

effects, it must be abandoned. Milner regarded the financial policy advocated by Brand in

1919 and followed by the British government for the next twelve years as a disaster, since

it led to unemployment, depression, and ruination of the export trade. instead, Milner

wanted to isolate the British economy from the world economy by tariffs and other

barriers and encourage the economic development of the United Kingdom by a system of

government spending, self-regulated capital and labor, social welfare, etc. This program,

which was based on "monopoly capitalism" or even "national socialism" rather than

"financial capitalism," as Brand's was, was embraced by most of the Milner Group after

September 1931, when the ending of the gold standard in Britain proved once and for all

that Brand's financial program of 1919 was a complete disaster and quite unworkable. As

a result, in the years after 1931 the businessmen of the Milner Group embarked on a

policy of government encouragement of self-regulated monopoly capitalism. This was

relatively easy for many members of the Group because of the distrust of economic

individualism which they had inherited from Toynbee and Milner. In April 1932, when P.

Horsfall, manager of Lazard Brothers Bank (a colleague of Brand), asked John Dove to

write a defense of individualism in The Round Table, Dove suggested that he write it

himself, but, in reporting the incident to Brand, he clearly indicated that the Group

regarded individualism as obsolete. (8)

This difference of opinion between Milner and Brand on economic questions is not of

great importance. The important matter is that Brand's opinion prevailed within the

Group from 1919 to 1931, while Milner's has grown in importance from 1931 to the

present. The importance of this can be seen in the fact that the financial and economic

policy followed by the British government from 1919 to 1945 runs exactly parallel to the

policy of the Milner Group. This is no accident but is the result, as we shall see, of the

dominant position held by the Milner Group in the councils of the Conservative-Unionist

party since the First World War.

During the first decade or so of its existence, The Round Table continued to be edited

and written by the inner circle of the Milner Group, chiefly by Lothian, Brand, Hichens,

Grigg, Dawson, Fisher, and Dove. Curtis was too busy with the other activities of the

Group to devote much time to the magazine and had little to do with it until after the war.

By that time a number of others had been added to the Group, chiefly as writers of

occasional articles. Most of these were members or future members of All Souls; they

include Coupland, Zimmern, Arnold Toynbee, Arthur Salter, Sir Maurice Hankey, and

others. The same Group that originally started the project in 1910 still controls it today,

with the normal changes caused by death or old age. The vacancies resulting from these

causes have been filled by new recruits from All Souls. It would appear that Coupland

and Brand are the most influential figures today. The following list gives the editors of

The Round Table from 1910 to the recent past:

Philip Kerr, 1910-1917 (assisted by E. Grigg, 1913-1915)

Reginald Coupland, 1917-1919

Lionel Curtis, 1919-1921

John Dove, 1921-1934

Henry V. Hodson, 1934-1939

Vincent Todd Harlow, (acting editor) 1938

Reginald Coupland, 1939-1941

Geoffrey Dawson, 1941-1944

Of these names, all but two are already familiar. H. V. Hodson, a recent recruit to the

Milner Group, was taken from All Souls. Born in 1906, he was at Balliol for three years

(1925-1928) and on graduation obtained a fellowship to All Souls, which he held for the

regular term (1928-1935). This fellowship opened to him the opportunities which he had

the ability to exploit. On the staff of the Economic Advisory Council from 1930 to 1931

and an important member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, he was assistant

editor of The Round Table for three years (1931-1934) and became editor when Dove

died in 1934. At the same time he wrote for Toynbee the economic sections of the Survey

of International Affairs from 1929 on, publishing these in a modified form as a separate

volume, with the title Slump and Recovery, 1929-1937, in 1938. With the outbreak of the

Second World War in 1939, he left The Round Table editorship and went to the Ministry

of Information (which was controlled completely by the Milner Group) as director of the

Empire Division. After two years in this post he was given the more critical position of

Reforms Commissioner in the Government of India for two years (1941-1942) and then

was made assistant secretary and later head of the non-munitions division of the Ministry

of Production. This position was held until the war ended, three years later. He then

returned to private life as assistant editor of The Sunday Times. In addition to the writings

already mentioned, he published The Economics of a Changing World (1933) and The

Empire in the World (1937), and edited The British Commonwealth and the Future

(1939).

Vincent T. Harlow, born in 1898, was in the Royal Field Artillery in 1917-1919 and

then went to Brasenose, where he took his degree in 1923. He was lecturer in Modern

History at University College, Southampton, in 1923-1927, and then came into the magic

circle of the Milner Group. He was keeper of Rhodes House Library in 1928-1938, Beit

Lecturer in Imperial History in 1930-1935, and has been Rhodes Professor of Imperial

History at the University of London since 1938. He was a member of the Imperial

Committee of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and, during the war, was head of

the Empire Information Service at the Ministry of Information. He lives near Oxford,

apparently in order to keep in contact with the Group.

In the decade 1910-1920, the inner circle of the Milner Group was busy with two

other important activities in addition to The Round Table magazine. These were studies

of the problem of imperial federation and of the problem of extending self-government to

India. Both of these were in charge of Lionel Curtis and continued with little interruption

from the war itself. The Round Table, which was in charge of Kerr, never interrupted its

publication, but from 1915 onward it became a secondary issue to winning the war and

making the peace. The problem of imperial federation will be discussed here and in

Chapter 8, the war and the peace in Chapter 7, and the problem of India in Chapter 10.

During the period 1911-1913, as we have said, Curtis was busy in England with the

reports from the Round Table Groups in the Dominions in reply to his printed

memorandum. At the end of 1911 and again in 1913, he printed these reports in two

substantial volumes, without the names of the contributors. These volumes were never

published, but a thousand copies of each were distributed to the various groups. On the

basis of these reports, Curtis drafted a joint report, which was printed and circulated as

each section was completed. It soon became clear that there was no real agreement within

the groups and that imperial federation was not popular in the Dominions. This was a

bitter pill to the Group, especially to Curtis, but he continued to work for several years

more. In 1912, Milner and Kerr went to Canada and made speeches to Round Table

Groups and their associates. The following year Curtis went to Canada to discuss the

status of the inquiry on imperial organization with the various Round Table Groups there

and summed up the results in a speech in Toronto in October 1913.(9) He decided to

draw up four reports as follows: (a) the existing situation; (b) a system involving

complete independence for the Dominions; (c) a plan to secure unity of foreign relations

by each Dominion's following a policy independent from but parallel to that of Britain

itself; (d) a plan to reduce the United Kingdom to a Dominion and create a new imperial

government over all the Dominions. Since the last was what Curtis wanted, he decided to

write that report himself and allow supporters of each of the other three to write theirs. A

thousand copies of this speech were circulated among the groups throughout the world.

When the war broke out in 1914, the reports were not finished, so it was decided to

print the four sections already sent out, with a concluding chapter. A thousand copies of

this, with the title Project of a Commonwealth, were distributed among the groups. Then

a popular volume on the subject, with the title The Problem of the Commonwealth and

Curtis's name as editor, was published (May 1916). Two months later, the earlier work

(Project) was published under the title The Commonwealth of Nations, again with Curtis

named as editor. Thus appeared for the first time in public the name which the British

Empire was to assume thirty-two years later. In the September 1916 issue of The Round

Table, Kerr published a statement on the relationship of the two published volumes to the

Round Table Groups. Because of the paper shortage in England, Curtis in 1916 went to

Canada and Australia to arrange for the separate publication of The Problem of the

Commonwealth in those countries. At the same time he set up new Round Table Groups

in Australia and New Zealand. Then he went to India to begin serious work on Indian

reform. From this emerged the Government of India Act of 1919, as we shall see later.

By this time Curtis and the others had come to realize that any formal federation of the

Empire was impossible. As Curtis wrote in 1917 (in his Letter to the People of India):

"The people of the Dominions rightly aspire to control their own foreign affairs and yet

retain their status as British citizens. On the other hand, they detest the idea of paying

taxes to any Imperial Parliament, even to one upon which their own representatives sit.

The inquiry convinced me that, unless they sent members and paid taxes to an Imperial

Parliament, they could not control their foreign affairs and also remain British subjects.

But I do not think that doctrine is more distasteful to them than the idea of having

anything to do with the Government of India."

Reluctantly Curtis and the others postponed the idea of a federated Empire and fell

back on the idea of trying to hold the Empire together by the intangible bonds of common

culture and common outlook. This had originally (in Rhodes and Milner) been a

supplement to the project of a federation. It now became the chief issue, and the idea of

federation fell into a secondary place. At the same time, the idea of federation was

swallowed up in a larger scheme for organizing the whole world within a League of

Nations. This idea had also been held by Rhodes and Milner, but in quite a different

form. To the older men, the world was to be united around the British Empire as a

nucleus. To Curtis, the Empire was to be absorbed into a world organization. This second

idea was fundamentally mystical. Curtis believed: "Die and ye shall be born again." He

sincerely felt that if the British Empire died in the proper way (by spreading liberty,

brotherhood, and justice), it would be born again in a higher level of existence—as a

world community, or, as he called it, a "Commonwealth of Nations." It is not yet clear

whether the resurrection envisaged by Curtis and his associates will occur, or whether

they merely assisted at the crucifixion of the British Empire. The conduct of the new

India in the next few decades will decide this question.

The idea for federation of the Empire was not original with the Round Table Group,

although their writings would indicate that they sometimes thought so. The federation

which they envisaged had been worked out in detail by persons close to the Cecil Bloc

and was accepted by Milner and Rhodes as their own chief goal in life.

The original impetus for imperial federation arose within the Liberal Party as a

reaction against the Little England doctrines that were triumphant in England before

1868. The original movement came from men like John Stuart Mill (whose arguments in

support of the Empire are just like Curtis's) and Earl Grey (who was Colonial Secretary

under Russell in 1846-1852).(10)

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 problem 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.(11)

These ideas and projects were embraced by Milner as his chief purpose in life until,

like Curtis, he came to realize their impracticality. (12) 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:

“There are probably no two men who are more fully agreed in their general view of

Imperial policy [than we].... It is clear to me that we require separate organs to deal with

local home business and with Imperial business. The attempt to conduct both through one

so-called Imperial Parliament is breaking down.... Granted that we must have separate

Parliaments for Imperial and Local business, I have been coming by a different road, and

for somewhat different reasons, to the conclusion which you also are heading for, viz:

that it would be better not to create a new body over the so-called Imperial Parliament,

but . . . to create new bodies, or a new body under it for the local business of Great

Britain and Ireland, leaving it to deal with the wider questions of Foreign Policy, the

Defence of the Empire, and the relations of the several parts. In that case, of course, the

colonies would have to be represented in the Imperial Parliament, which would thus

become really Imperial. One great difficulty, no doubt, is that, if this body were to be

really effective as an instrument of Imperial Policy, it would require to be reduced in

numbers.... The reduction in numbers of British members might no doubt be facilitated

by the creation of local legislatures.... The time is ripe to make a beginning.... I wish

Rosebery, who could carry through such a policy if any man could, was less pessimistic.”

The idea of devolving the local business of the imperial parliament upon local

legislative bodies for Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland was advocated in a book by

Lord Esher called After the War and in a book called The Great Opportunity by Edward

Wood (the future Lord Halifax). These books, in their main theme, were nothing more

than a restatement of this aspect of the imperial federation project. They were

accompanied, on 4 June 1919, by a motion introduced in the House of Commons by

Wood, and carried by a vote of 187 to 34, that "the time has come for the creation of

subordinate legislatures within the United Kingdom." Nothing came of this motion, just

as nothing came of the federation plans.

Milner's ideas on the latter subject were restated in a letter to Parkin on 18 September

1901:

“The existing Parliaments, whether British or Colonial, are too small, and so are the

statesmen they produce (except in accidental cases like Chamberlain), for such big issues.

Until we get a real Imperial Council, not merely a Consultative, but first a Constitutional,

and then an Executive Council with control of all our world business, we shall get

nothing. Look at the way in which the splendid opportunities for federal defence which

this war afforded, have been thrown away. I believe it will come about, but at present I do

not see the man to do it. Both you and I could help him enormously, almost decisively

indeed, for I have, and doubtless you have, an amount of illustration and argument to

bring to bear on the subject, drawn from practical experience, which would logically

smash the opposition. Our difficulty in the old days was that we were advocating a grand,

but, as it seemed, an impractical idea. I should advocate the same thing today as an urgent

practical necessity.”(13)

The failure of imperial federation in the period 1910-1917 forced Parkin and Milner to

fall back on ideological unity as achieved through the Rhodes Scholarships, just as the

same event forced Curtis and others to fall back on the same goal as achieved through the

Royal Institute of International Affairs. All parties did this with reluctance. As Dove

wrote to Brand in 1923, "This later thing [the RIIA] is all right—it may help us to reach

that unity of direction in foreign policy we are looking for, if it becomes a haunt of

visitors from the Dominions; but Lionel's first love has still to be won, and if, as often

happens, accomplishment lessens appetite, and he turns again to his earlier and greater

work, we shall all be the gainers."(14)

This shift from institutional to ideological bonds for uniting the Empire makes it

necessary that we should have a clear idea of the outlook of The Round Table and the

whole Milner Group. This outlook was well stated in an article in Volume III of that

journal, from the pen of an unidentified writer. This article, entitled"The Ethics of

Empire," is deserving of close attention. It emphasized that the arguments for the Empire

and the bonds which bind it together must be moral and not based on considerations of

material advantage or even of defense. This emphasis on moral considerations, rather

than economic or strategic, is typical of the Group as a whole and is found in Milner and

even in Rhodes. Professional politicians, bureaucrats, utilitarians, and materialist social

reformers are criticized for their failure to "appeal convincingly as an ideal of moral

welfare to the ardour and imagination of a democratic people." They are also criticized

for failure to see that this is the basis on which the Empire was reared.

“The development of the British Empire teaches how moral conviction and devotion

to duty have inspired the building of the structure. Opponents of Imperialism are wont to

suggest that the story will not bear inspection, that it is largely a record of self-

aggrandizement and greed. Such a charge betrays ignorance of its history.... The men