Anglo-American Establishment

members on the delegations from the Dominions. The South African delegation in 1920

had Robert Cecil; in 1921 it had Robert Cecil and Gilbert Murray; in 1923 it had Smuts

and Gilbert Murray. The Australian delegation had Sir John Latham in 1926, while the

Canadian delegation had Vincent Massey ten years later. The Indian delegation had L. F.

Rushbrook Williams in 1925.

The Milner Group was also influential in the Secretariat of the League. Sir Eric

Drummond (now sixteenth Earl of Perth), who had been Balfour's private secretary from

1916 to 1919, was Secretary-General to the League from 1919 to 1933, when he resigned

to become British Ambassador in Rome. Not a member of the Group, he was

nevertheless close to it. Harold Butler, of the Group and of All Souls, was deputy director

and director of the International Labor Office in the period 1920-1938. Arthur Salter, of

the Group and All Souls, was director of the Economic and Financial Section of the

League in 1919-1920 and again in 1922-1931. B. H. Sumner, of the Group and All Souls

(now Warden), was on the staff of the ILO in 1920-1922. R. M. Makins, of the Group

and All Souls, was assistant adviser and adviser on League of Nations affairs to the

Foreign Office in 1937-1939.

To build up public opinion in favor of the League of Nations, the Milner Group

formed an organization known as the League of Nations Union. In this organization the

most active figures were Lord Robert Cecil, Gilbert Murray, the present Lord Esher, Mrs.

Lyttelton, and Wilson Harris. Lord Cecil was president from 1923 to 1945; Professor

Murray was chairman from 1923 to 1938 and co-president from 1938 to 1945; Wilson

Harris was its parliamentary secretary and editor of its paper, Headway, for many years.

Among others, C. A. Macartney, of All Souls and the RIIA, was head of the Intelligence

Department from 1928 to 1936. Harris and Macartney were late additions to the Group,

the former becoming a member of the inner circle about 1922, while the latter became a

member of the outer circle in the late 1920s, probably as a result of his association with

the Encyclopedia Britannica as an expert on Central Europe. Wilson Harris was one of

the most intimate associates of Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr, and other members of the inner

core in the 1920s, and this association became closer, if possible, in the 1930s. A

graduate of Cambridge University in 1906, he served for many years in various capacities

with the Daily News. Since 1932 he has been editor of The Spectator, and since 1945 he

has been a Member of Parliament from Cambridge University. He was one of the most

ardent advocates of appeasement in the period 1935-1939, especially in the meetings at

Chatham House. In this connection, it might be mentioned that he was a member of the

council of the RIIA in 1924-1927. He has written books on Woodrow Wilson, the peace

settlement, the League of Nations, disarmament, etc. His most recent work is a biography

of J. A. Spender, onetime editor of the Westminster Gazette (1896-1922), which he and

his brother founded in 1893 in collaboration with Edmund Garrett and Edward Cook,

when all four left the Pall Mall Gazette after its purchase by Waldorf Astor.

The ability of the Milner Group to mobilize public opinion in regard to the League of

Nations is almost beyond belief. It was not a simple task, since they were simultaneously

trying to do two things: on the one hand, seeking to build up popular opinion in favor of

the League so that its work could be done more effectively; and, at the same time,

seeking to prevent influential people from using the League as an instrument of world

government before popular opinion was ready for a world government. In general, The

Round Table and The Times were used for the latter purpose, while the League of Nations

Union and a strange assortment of outlets, such as Chatham House, Toynbee Hall,

extension courses at Oxford, adult-education courses in London, International

Conciliation in the United States, the Institute of Politics at Williamstown, the Institute of

Intellectual Cooperation at Paris, the Geneva School of International Studies and the

Graduate Institute of International Studies at Geneva, and the various branches of the

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, were used for the former purpose. The

Milner Group did not control all of these. Their influence was strong in all of them, and,

since the influence of J. P. Morgan and Company was also strong in most of them and

since Morgan and the Group were pursuing a parallel policy on this issue, the Group were

usually able to utilize the resources of these various organizations when they wished.

As examples of this, we might point out that Curtis and Kerr each gave a series of

lectures at the Institute of Politics, Williamstown, in 1922. Selections from these, along

with an article from the September 1922 issue of The Round Table, were published in

International Conciliation for February 1923. Kerr and Lord Birkenhead spoke at the

Institute in 1923; Sir Arthur Willert, a close associate if not a member of the Group,

spoke at the Institute of Politics in 1927. Sir Arthur was always close to the Group. He

was a member of the staff of The Times from 1906 to 1921, chiefly as head of the

Washington office; he was in the Foreign Office as head of the News Department from

1921 to 1935, was on the United Kingdom delegation to the League of Nations in 1929-

1934, was an important figure in the Ministry of Information (a Milner Group fief) in

1939-1945, and wrote a book called The Empire and the World in collaboration with H.

V. Hodson and B. K. Long of the Kindergarten.

Other associates of the Group who spoke at the Institute of Politics at Williamstown

were Lord Eustace Percy, who spoke on wartime shipping problems in 1929, and Lord

Meston, who spoke on Indian nationalism in 1930. (7)

The relationship between the Milner Group and the valuable little monthly publication

called International Conciliation was exercised indirectly through the parallel group in

America, which had been organized by the associates of J. P. Morgan and Company

before the First World War, and which made its most intimate connections with the

Milner Group at the Peace Conference of 1919. We have already mentioned this

American group in connection with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute of

Pacific Relations. Through this connection, many of the activities and propaganda

effusions of the Milner Group were made available to a wide public in America. We have

already mentioned the February 1923 issue of International Conciliation, which was

monopolized by the Group. A few other examples might be mentioned. Both of General

Smuts's important speeches, that of 23 October 1923 and that of 13 November 1934,

were reproduced in International Conciliation. So too was an article on "The League and

Minorities" by Wilson Harris. This was in the September 1926 issue. A Times editorial of

22 November 1926 on "The Empire as It Is" was reprinted in March 1927; another of 14

July 1934 is in the September issue of the same year; a third of 12 July 1935 is in the

issue of September 1935. Brand's report on Germany's Foreign Creditors' Standstill

Agreements is in the May issue of 1932; while a long article from the same pen on "The

Gold Problem" appears in the October 1937 issue. This article was originally published,

over a period of three days, in The Times in June 1937. An article on Russia from The Round Table was reprinted in December 1929. Lord Lothian's speeches of 25 October

1939 and of 11 December 1940 were both printed in the issues of International

Conciliation immediately following their delivery. An article by Lothian called "League

or No League," first published in The Observer in August 1936, was reprinted in the

periodical under consideration in December 1936. An article by Lord Cecil on

disarmament, another by Clarence Streit (one of the few American members of the

Group) on the League of Nations, and a third by Stephen King-Hall on the Mediterranean

problem were published in December 1932, February 1934, and January 1938

respectively. A speech of John Simon's appears in the issue of May 1935; one of Samuel

Hoare's is in the September issue of the same year; another by Samuel Hoare is in the

issue of November 1935. Needless to say, the activities of the Institute of Pacific

Relations, of the Imperial Conferences, of the League of Nations, and of the various

international meetings devoted to reparations and disarmament were adequately reflected

in the pages of International Conciliation.

The deep dislike which the Milner Group felt for the Treaty of Versailles and the

League of Nations was shared by the French, but for quite opposite reasons. The French

felt insecure in the face of Germany because they realized that France had beaten

Germany in 1918 only because of the happy fact that she had Russia, Great Britain, Italy,

and the United States to help her. From 1919 onward, France had no guarantee that in any

future attack by Germany she would have any such assistance. To be sure, the French

knew that Britain must come to the aid of France if there was any danger of Germany

defeating France. The Milner Group knew this too. But France wanted some arrangement

by which Britain would be alongside France from the first moment of a German attack,

since the French had no assurance that they could withstand a German onslaught alone,

even for a brief period. Moreover, if they could, the French were afraid that the opening

onslaught would deliver to the Germans control of the most productive part of France as

captured territory. This is what had happened in 1914. To avoid this, the French sought in

vain one alternative after another: (a) to detach from Germany, or, at least, to occupy for

an extended period, the Rhineland area of Germany (this would put the Ruhr, the most

vital industrial area of Germany, within striking distance of French forces); (b) to get a

British-American, or at least a British, guarantee of French territory; (c) to get a "League

of Nations with teeth," that is, one with its own police forces and powers to act

automatically against an aggressor. All of these were blocked by the English and

Americans at the Peace Conference in 1919. The French sought substitutes. Of these, the

only one they obtained was a system of alliances with new states, like Poland,

Czechoslovakia, and the enlarged Rumania, on the east of Germany. All of these states

were of limited power, and the French had little faith in the effectiveness of their

assistance. Accordingly, the French continued to seek their other aims: to extend the

fifteen years' occupation of the Rhineland into a longer or even an indefinite period; to

get some kind of British guarantee; to strengthen the League of Nations by "plugging the

gaps in the Covenant"; to use the leverage of reparations and disarmament as provided in

the Treaty of Versailles to keep Germany down, to wreck her economically, or even to

occupy the Ruhr. All of these efforts were blocked by the machinations of the Milner

Group. At the moment, we shall refer only to the efforts to "plug the gaps in the

Covenant."

These "gaps," as we have indicated, were put in by Cecil Hurst and were exactly to the

taste of the Milner Group. The chief efforts of the French and their allies on the Continent

to "plug the gaps" were the Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance (1923) and the Geneva

Protocol (1924). What the Milner Group thought of both of these can be gathered from

the following extracts from The Round Table's denunciation of the Protocol. In the

December 1924 issue, in an article entitled "The British Commonwealth, the Protocol,

and the League," we find the following: "What is to be the British answer to this

invitation to reenter the stormy field of internal European politics? Can the British

Commonwealth afford to become permanently bound up with the internal political

structure of Europe? And will it promote the peace and stability of Europe or the world

that Europe should attempt to solve its problems on the basis of a permanent British

guarantee? The answer in our judgment to both these questions must be an emphatic,

No." Then, after repeating its contention that the only purpose of the Covenant was to

secure delay in a crisis for consultation, it continued:

“The idea that all nations ought to consult how they are to deal with States which

precipitate war without allowing any period for enquiry and mediation is the real heart of

the League of Nations, and, if the British Commonwealth wants to prevent a recurrence

of the Great War, it must be willing to recognize that it has a vital interest in working out

with other nations the best manner of giving effect to this fundamental idea. . . .

Decisions as to the rights and wrongs of international disputes, and of what common

action the nations should take when they are called together to deal with such an outlaw,

must be left to be determined in the light of the circumstances of the time.... The view of

The Round Table is that the British Commonwealth should make it perfectly clear . . .

that it will accept no further obligations than this and that the Covenant of the League

must be amended to establish beyond question that no authority, neither the Council nor

any arbitral body it may appoint, has any power to render a binding decision or to order a

war, except with the consent of the members themselves.”

The bitterness of the Group's feelings against France at the time appears in the same

article a couple of pages later when it asked: "Or is the proposal implicit in the Protocol

merely one for transferring to the shoulders of Great Britain, which alone is paying her

debts, some part of the cost of maintaining that preponderance which now rests upon the

European States which profit most by it.... It is sheer rubbish to suggest that France needs

military guarantees for security.... What France really wants is a guarantee that the allies

will maintain a perpetual preponderance over Germany. This we can never give her, for

in the long run it makes not for peace but for war."

In another article in the same issue, the Protocol was analyzed and denounced. The

final conclusion was: "It is our firm conviction that no alternative is acceptable which

fails to provide for the free exercise by the Parliaments and peoples of the Empire of their

judgment as to how to deal with any disturbance of the peace, or any threat of such

disturbance, on its merits as it arises. That has been the guiding principle throughout the

political history of the British peoples. The methods of the Protocol belong to another

world, and, if for no other reason, they should be rejected."

The Protocol was officially rejected by Austen Chamberlain at a session of the

Council of the League of Nations in March 1925. John Dove, Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr,

and Wilson Harris went to Geneva to be present at the meeting. After the deed was done,

they went to visit Prague and Berlin, and ended by meeting Lady Astor in Paris. From

Geneva and Paris, John Dove wrote to Brand letters which Brand later published in his

edition of The Letters of John Dove.

One of the reasons given by Austen Chamberlain in 1925 for rejecting the Geneva

Protocol was the opposition of the Dominions. That the Milner Group was able to affect

Dominion opinion on this subject is clear. They could use men like Massey and

Glazebrook in Canada, Bavin and Eggleston in Australia, Downie Stewart and Allen in

New Zealand, Smuts and Duncan in South Africa.

More important than the Milner Group's ability to influence opinion in the Dominions

was its ability to influence decisions in London. In much of this latter field, Lord Esher

undoubtedly played an important role. It is perfectly clear that Lord Esher disliked

collective security, and for the same reasons as The Round Table. This can be seen in his

published Journals and Letters. For example, on 18 February 1919, in a letter to Hankey,

he wrote: "I fervently believe that the happiness and welfare of the human race is more

closely concerned in the evolution of English democracy and of our Imperial

Commonwealth than in the growth of any international League." On 7 December 1919, in

another letter to Hankey, he wrote: "You say that my letter was critical and not

constructive. So it was. But the ground must be cleared of debris first. I assume that this

is done. We will forget the high ideals and the fourteen points for the moment. We will

be eminently practical. So here goes. Do not let us bother about a League of Nations. It

may come slowly or not at all. What step forward, if any, can we take? We can get a

League of Empire." Shortly afterwards, writing to his heir, the present Viscount Esher, he

called the League "a paper hoop." The importance of this can be seen if we realize that

Lord Esher was the most important factor on the Committee of Imperial Defence, and

this committee was one of the chief forces determining British foreign policy in this

period. In fact, no less an authority than Lord Robert Cecil has said that the Geneva

Protocol was rejected on the advice of the Committee of Imperial Defence and that he

accepted that decision only when he was promised a new project which subsequently

became the Locarno Pacts.(8)

The rejection of the Protocol by Britain was regarded subsequently by real supporters

of the League as the turning point in its career. There was an outburst of public sentiment

against this selfish and cold-blooded action. Zimmern, who knew more than he revealed,

went to Oxford in May 1925 and made a brilliant speech against those who were

sabotaging the League. He did not identify them, but clearly indicated their existence,

and, as the cruelest blow of all, attributed their actions to a failure of intelligence.

As a result of this feeling, which was widespread throughout the world, the Group

determined to give the world the appearance of a guarantee to France. This was done in

the Locarno Pacts, the most complicated and most deceitful international agreement made

between the Treaty of Versailles and the Munich Pact. We cannot discuss them in detail

here, but must content ourselves with pointing out that in appearance, and in the publicity

campaign which accompanied their formation, the Locarno agreements guaranteed the

frontier of Germany with France and Belgium with the power of these three states plus

Britain and Italy. In reality the agreements gave France nothing, while they gave Britain a

veto over French fulfillment of her alliances with Poland and the Little Entente. The

French accepted these deceptive documents for reasons of internal politics: obviously,

any French government which could make the French people believe that it had been able

to secure a British guarantee of France's eastern frontier could expect the gratitude of the

French people to be reflected at the polls. The fundamental shrewdness and realism of the

French, however, made it difficult to conceal from them the trap that lay in the Locarno

agreements. This trap consisted of several interlocking factors. In the first place, the

agreements did not guarantee the German frontier and the demilitarized condition of the

Rhineland against German actions, but against the actions of either Germany or France.

This, at one stroke, gave Britain the legal grounds for opposing France if she tried any

repetition of the military occupation of the Ruhr, and, above all, gave Britain the right to

oppose any French action against Germany in support of her allies to the east of

Germany. This meant that if Germany moved east against Czechoslovakia, Poland, and,

eventually, Russia, and if France attacked Germany's western frontier in support of

Czechoslovakia or Poland, as her alliances bound her to do, Great Britain, Belgium, and

Italy might be bound by the Locarno Pacts to come to the aid of Germany. To be sure, the

same agreement might bind these three powers to oppose Germany if she drove westward

against France, but the Milner Group did not object to this for several reasons. In the first

place, if Germany attacked France directly, Britain would have to come to the help of

France whether bound by treaty or not. The old balance-of-power principle made that

clear. In the second place, Cecil Hurst, the old master of legalistic double-talk, drew up

the Locarno Pacts with the same kind of loopholes which he had put in the crucial articles

of the Covenant. As a result, if Germany did violate the Locarno Pacts against France,

Britain could, if she desired, escape the necessity of fulfilling her guarantee by slipping

through one of Hurst's loopholes. As a matter of fact, when Hitler did violate the Locarno

agreements by remilitarizing the Rhineland in March 1936, the Milner Group and their

friends did not even try to evade their obligation by slipping through a loophole, but

simply dishonored their agreement.

This event of March 1936, by which Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, was the most

crucial event in the whole history of appeasement. So long as the territory west of the

Rhine and a strip fifty kilometers wide on the east bank of the river were demilitarized, as

provided in the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pacts, Hitler would never have

dared to move against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. He would not have dared

because, with western Germany unfortified and denuded of German soldiers, France

could have easily driven into the Ruhr industrial area and crippled Germany so that it

would be impossible to go eastward. And by this date, certain members of the Milner

Group and of the British Conservative government had reached the fantastic idea that

they could kill two birds with one stone by setting Germany and Russia against one

another in Eastern Europe. In this way they felt that the two enemies would stalemate one

another, or that Germany would become satisfied with the oil of Rumania and the wheat

of the Ukraine. It never occurred to anyone in a responsible position that Germany and

Russia might make common cause, even temporarily, against the West. Even less did it

occur to them that Russia might beat Germany and thus open all Central Europe to

Bolshevism.

This idea of bringing Germany into a collision with Russia was not to be found, so far

as the evidence shows, among any members of the inner circle of the Milner Group.

Rather it was to be found among the personal associates of Neville Chamberlain,

including several members of the second circle of the Milner Group. The two policies

followed parallel courses until March 1939. After that date the Milner Group's

disintegration became very evident, and part of it took the form of the movement of

several persons (like Hoare and Simon) from the second circle of the Milner Group to the

inner circle of the new group rotating around Chamberlain. This process was concealed

by the fact that this new group was following, in public at least, the policy desired by the

Milner Group; their own policy, which was really the continuation of appeasement for

another year after March 1939, was necessarily secret, so that the contrast between the

Chamberlain group and the inner circle of the Milner Group in the period after March

1939 was not as obvious as it might have been.

In order to carry out this plan of allowing Germany to drive eastward against Russia, it

was necessary to do three things: (1) to liquidate all the countries standing between

Germany and Russia; (2) to prevent France from honoring her alliances with these

countries; and (3) to hoodwink the English people into accepting this as a necessary,

indeed, the only solution to the international problem. The Chamberlain group were so

successful in all three of these things that they came within an ace of succeeding, and

failed only because of the obstinacy of the Poles, the unseemly haste of Hitler, and the

fact that at the eleventh hour the Milner Group realized the implications of their policy

and tried to reverse it.

The program of appeasement can be divided into three stages: the first from 1920 to

1934, the second from 1934 to 1937, and the third from 1937 to 1940. The story of the

first period we have almost completed, except for the evacuation of the Rhineland in

1930, five years ahead of the date set in the Treaty of Versailles. It would be too

complicated a story to narrate here the methods by which France was persuaded to yield

on this point. It is enough to point out that France was persuaded to withdraw her troops

in 1930 rather than 1935 as a result of what she believed to be concessions made to her in

the Young Plan. That the Milner Group approved this evacuation goes without saying.

We have already mentioned The Round Table's demand of June 1923 that the Rhineland

be evacuated. A similar desire will be found in a letter from John Dove to Brand in

October 1927.

The second period of appeasement began with Smuts's famous speech of 13

November 1934, delivered before the RIIA. The whole of this significant speech deserves

to be quoted here, but we must content ourselves with a few extracts:

“With all the emphasis at my command, I would call a halt to this war talk as

mischievous and dangerous war propaganda. The expectation of war tomorrow or in the

near future is sheer nonsense, and all those who are conversant with affairs know it....

The remedy for this fear complex is ... bringing it into the open and exposing it to the

light of day.... And this is exactly the method of the League of Nations . . . it is an open

forum for discussion among the nations, it is a round table for the statesmen around

which they can ventilate and debate their grievances and viewpoints.... There are those

who say that this is not enough—that as long as the League remains merely a talking

shop or debating society, and is not furnished with "teeth" and proper sanctions, the sense

of insecurity will remain.... It is also felt that the inability of the League to guarantee the

collective system by means of force, if necessary, is discrediting it and leading to its

decay.... I cannot visualize the League as a military machine. It was not conceived or

built for that purpose, it is not equipped for such functions. And if ever the attempt were

made to transform it into a military machine, into a system to carry on war for the

purpose of preventing war, I think its fate is sealed.... Defection of the United States has

largely defeated its main objects. And the joining up of the United States must continue

to be the ultimate goal of all true friends of the League and of the cause of peace. A

conference of the nations the United States can, and eventually will, join; it can never

join an international War Office. Remembering the debates on this point in the League of

Nations Commission which drafted the Covenant, I say quite definitely that the very idea

of a league of force was negatived there; and the League would be quite false to its

fundamental idea and to its great mission . . . if it allowed itself to be turned into

something quite different, something just the opposite of its original idea—into a league

of force.... To endeavor to cast out the Satan of fear by calling in the Beelzebub of

militarism, and militarizing the League itself, would be a senseless and indeed fatal

proceeding.... The removal of the inferiority complex from Germany is just as essential to

future peace as the removal of fear from the mind of France; and both are essential to an

effective disarmament policy. How can the inferiority complex which is obsessing and, I

fear, poisoning the mind and indeed the soul of Germany be removed? There is only one

way, and that is to recognize her complete equality of status with her fellows, and to do

so frankly, freely, and unreservedly. That is the only medicine for her disease.... While

one understands and sympathizes with French fears, one cannot but feel for Germany in

the position of inferiority in which she still remains sixteen years after the conclusion of

the War. The continuance of her Versailles status is becoming an offense to the

conscience of Europe and a danger to future peace.... There is no place in international

law for second-rate nations, and least of all should Germany be kept in that position....

Fair play, sportsmanship— indeed, every standard of private and public life—calls for

frank revision of the position. Indeed, ordinary prudence makes it imperative. Let us

break those bonds and set the captive, obsessed, soul free in a decent human way. And

Europe will reap a rich reward in tranquillity, security, and returning prosperity.... I

would say that to me the future policy and association of our great British

Commonwealth lie more with the United States than with any other group in the world. If

ever there comes a parting of the ways, if ever in the crisis of the future we are called

upon to make a choice, that, it seems to me, should be the company we should prefer to

walk with and march with to the unknown future.... Nobody can forecast the outcome of

the stormy era of history on which we are probably entering.”

At the time that Smuts made this significant speech, the Milner Group had already

indicated to Hitler officially that Britain was prepared to give Germany arms equality.

France had greeted the arrival to power of Hitler by desperate efforts to form an "Eastern

Locarno" against Germany. Sir John Simon, who was Foreign Secretary from September

1931 to June 1935, repudiated these efforts on 13 July 1934 in a speech which was

approved by The Times the following day. He warned the French that Britain would not

approve any effort "to build up one combination against another," would refuse to assume

any new obligations herself, would insist that Russia join the League of Nations before

she become a party to any multilateral settlement, and insisted on arms equality for

Germany. On the same day, Austen Chamberlain laid the groundwork for the German

remilitarization of the Rhineland by a speech in which he insisted that the Locarno

agreements did not bind Britain to use troops. He clearly indicated how Britain, by her

veto power in the Council of the League, could prevent a League request to provide

troops to enforce Locarno, and added that such a request would not be binding on Britain,

even if voted, since "there was no automatic obligation under the Government to send our

Army to any frontier."

In a debate in the House of Lords on 5 December 1934, Lord Cecil contradicted

Smuts's statement that "the idea of a League of force was negatived" in 1918 and restated

his own views that force should be available to compel the observance of the three

months' moratorium between the settlement of a question by the Council and the outbreak

of war. He said: "The thing which we were most anxious to secure against a renewal of a

great war was that there should be collective action to prevent a sudden outbreak of war.

It was never part of the Covenant system that force should be used in order to compel

some particular settlement of a dispute. That, we thought, was going beyond what public

opinion of the world would support; but we did think we could go so far as to say: 'You

are not to resort to war until every other means for bringing about a settlement has been

exhausted.' " This was merely a restatement of the point of view that Lord Cecil had held

since 1918. It did not constitute collective security, as the expression was used by the

world in general. Yet this use of the words "collective security" to mean the enforcement

of a three months' moratorium before issuing a declaration of war—this weaker

meaning—was being weakened even further by the Milner Group. This was made

perfectly clear in a speech by Lord Lothian (Philip Kerr) immediately after Lord Cecil.

On this day the latter parted from the Milner Group program of appeasement; more than

ten years after Zimmern's, this defection is of less significance than the earlier one

because Lord Cecil did not see clearly what was being done and he had never been,

apparently, a member of the inner circle of the Group, although he had attended meetings

of the inner circle in the period after 1910.(9)

Lord Lothian's speech of 5 December 1934 in the House of Lords is, at first glance, a

defense of collective security, but a second look shows clearly that by "collective

security" the speaker meant appeasement. He contrasts collective security with power

diplomacy and, having excluded all use of force under the former expression, goes on to

interpret it to mean peaceful change without war. In the context of events, this could only

mean appeasement of Germany. He said: "In international affairs, unless changes are

made in time, war becomes inevitable.... If the collective system is to be successful, it

must contain two elements. On the one hand, it must be able to bring about by pacific

means alterations in the international structure, and, on the other hand, it must be strong

enough to restrain Powers who seek to take the law into their own hands either by war or

by power diplomacy, from being successful in their efforts." This was nothing but the

appeasement program of Chamberlain and Halifax—that concessions should be made to

Germany to strengthen her on the Continent and in Eastern Europe, while Britain should

remain strong enough on the sea and in the air to prevent Hitler from using war to obtain

these concessions. The fear of Hitler's using war was based not so much on a dislike of

force (neither Lothian nor Halifax was a pacifist in that sense) but on the realization that

if Hitler made war against Austria, Czechoslovakia, or Poland, public opinion in France

and England might force their governments to declare war in spite of their desire to yield

these areas to Germany. This, of course, is what finally happened.

Hitler was given ample assurance by the Milner Group, both within and without the

government, that Britain would not oppose his efforts "to achieve arms equality." Four

days before Germany officially denounced the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of

Versailles, Leopold Amery made a slashing attack on collective security, comparing "the

League which exists" and "the league of make-believe, a cloud cuckoo land, dreams of a

millennium which we were not likely to reach for many a long year to come; a league

which was to maintain peace by going to war whenever peace was disturbed. That sort of

thing, if it could exist, would be a danger to peace; it would be employed to extend war

rather than to put an end to it. But dangerous or not, it did not exist, and to pretend that it

did exist was sheer stupidity."

Four days later, Hitler announced Germany's rearmament, and ten days after that,

Britain condoned the act by sending Sir John Simon on a state visit to Berlin. When

France tried to counterbalance Germany's rearmament by bringing the Soviet Union into

her eastern alliance system in May 1935, the British counteracted this by making the

Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 18 June 1935. This agreement, concluded by Simon,

allowed Germany to build up to 35 percent of the size of the British Navy (and up to 100

percent in submarines). This was a deadly stab in the back to France, for it gave Germany

a navy considerably larger than the French in the important categories of ships (capital

ships and aircraft carriers) in the North Sea, because France was bound by treaty in these

categories to only 33 percent of Britain's; and France, in addition, had a worldwide

empire to protect and the unfriendly Italian Navy off her Mediterranean coast. This

agreement put the French Atlantic coast so completely at the mercy of the German Navy

that France became completely dependent on the British fleet for protection in this area.

Obviously, this protection would not be given unless France in a crisis renounced her

eastern allies. As if this were not enough, Britain in March 1936 accepted the German

remilitarization of the Rhineland and in August 1936 began the farcical nonintervention

agreement in Spain, which put another unfriendly government on France's remaining land

frontier. Under such pressure, it was clear that France would not honor her alliances with

the Czechs, the Poles, or the Russians, if they came due.

In these actions of March 1935 and March 1936, Hitler was running no risk, for the

government and the Milner Group had assured him beforehand that it would accept his

actions. This was done both in public and in private, chiefly in the House of Commons

and in the articles of The Times. Within the Cabinet, Halifax, Simon, and Hoare resisted

the effort to form any alignment against Germany. The authorized biographer of Halifax

wrote in reference to Halifax's attitude in 1935 and 1936:

"Was England to allow herself to be drawn into war because France had alliances in

Eastern Europe? Was she to give Mussolini a free pass to Addis Ababa merely to prevent

Hitler marching to Vienna?" Questions similar to these were undoubtedly posed by

Halifax in Cabinet. His own friends, in particular Lothian and Geoffrey Dawson of The

Times, had for some time been promoting Anglo-German fellowship with rather more

fervour than the Foreign Office. In January 1935 Lothian had a long conversation with

Hitler, and Hitler was reputed to have proposed an alliance between England, Germany,

and the United States which would in effect give Germany a free hand on the Continent,

in return for which he had promised not to make Germany "a world power" or to attempt

to compete with the British Navy. The Times consistently opposed the Eastern Locarno

and backed Hitler's non-aggression alternative. Two days before the Berlin talks, for

instance, it advocated that they should include territorial changes, and in particular the

question of Memel; while on the day they began [March 1935] its leading article

suggested that if Herr Hitler can persuade his British visitors, and through them the rest

of the world, that his enlarged army is really designed to give them equality of status and

equality of negotiation with other countries, and is not to be trained for aggressive

purposes, then Europe may be on the threshold of an era in which changes can be made

without the use of force, and a potential aggressor may be deterred by the certain prospect

of having to face overwhelming opposition! How far The Times and Lothian were

arguing and negotiating on the Government's behalf is still not clear, but that Halifax was

intimately acquainted with the trend of this argument is probable.”

It goes without saying that the whole inner core of the Group, and their chief

publications, such as The Times and The Round Table, approved the policy of

appeasement completely and prodded it along with calculated indiscretions when it was

felt necessary to do so. After the remilitarization of the Rhineland, The Times cynically

called this act "a chance to rebuild." As late as 24 February 1938, in the House of Lords,

Lothian defended the same event. He said: "We hear a great deal of the violation by Herr

Hitler of the Treaty because he returned his own troops to his own frontier. You hear

much less today of the violation by which the French Army, with the acquiescence of this

country, crossed the frontier in order to annihilate German industry and in effect

produced the present Nazi Party."

In the House of Commons in October 1935, and again on 6 May 1936, Amery

systematically attacked the use of force to sustain. the League of Nations. On the earlier

occasion he said:

“From the very outset there have been two schools of thought about the League and

about our obligations under the League. There has been the school, to which I belong and

to which for years, I believe, the Government of this country belonged, that regards the

League as a great institution, an organization for promoting cooperation and harmony

among the nations, for bringing about understanding, a permanent Round Table of the

nations in conference . . . provided always that it did not have at the background the

threat of coercion. There is another school which thinks that the actual Articles of the

Covenant, concocted in the throes of the peace settlement and in that atmosphere of

optimism which led us to expect ten million pounds or more in reparations from

Germany, constitute a sacrosanct dispensation, that they have introduced a new world

order, and would, if they were only loyally adhered to, abolish war for good and all. The

Covenant, I admit, as originally drafted, embodied both aspects and it was because the

Covenant contained the Clauses that stood for coercion and for definite automatic

obligations that the United States . . . repudiated it. From that moment the keystone was

taken out of the whole arch of any League of coercion.... The League is now undergoing

a trial which may well prove disastrous to it. In this matter, as in other matters, it is the

letter that killeth. The letter of the Covenant is the one thing which is likely to kill the

League of Nations.”

Amery then continued with a brief resume of the efforts to make the League an

instrument of coercion, especially the Geneva Protocol. In regard to this, he continued:

"The case I wish to put to the House is that the stand taken by His Majesty's Government

then and the arguments they used were not arguments merely against the Protocol, but

arguments against the whole conception of a League based on economic and military

sanctions." He quoted Austen Chamberlain in 1925 and General Smuts in 1934 with

approval, and concluded: "I think that we should have got together with France and Italy

and devised some scheme by which under a condominium or mandate certain if not all of

the non-Amharic provinces of Abyssinia should be transferred to Italian rule. The whole

thing could have been done by agreement, and I have no doubt that such agreement

would have been ratified at Geneva."

This last statement was more then seven weeks before the Hoare-Laval Plan was made

public, and six weeks after its outlines were laid down by Hoare, Eden, and Laval at a

secret meeting in Paris (10 September 1935).

In his speech of 6 May 1936, Amery referred back to his October speech and

demanded that the Covenant of the League be reformed to prevent sanctions in the future.

Once again he quoted Smuts's speech of November 1934 with approval, and demanded "a

League which is based not upon coercion but upon conciliation."

Between Amery's two speeches, on 5 February 1936, Sir Arthur Salter, of the Group

and All Souls, offered his arguments to support appeasement. He quoted Smuts's speech

of 1934 with approval and pointed out the great need for living space and raw materials

for Japan, Italy, and Germany. The only solution, he felt, was for Britain to yield to these

needs.

“I do not think it matters [he said] if you reintroduce conscription and quadruple or

quintuple your Air Force. That will not protect you. I believe that the struggle is destined

to come unless we are prepared to agree to a fairer distribution of the world's land surface

and of the raw materials which are needed by modern civilized nations. But there is a

way out; there is no necessity for a clash. I am sure that time presses and that we cannot

postpone a settlement indefinitely.... I suggest that the way out is the application of those

principles [of Christianity], the deliberate and conscious application of those principles to

international affairs by this nation and by the world under the leadership of this nation. . .

. Treat other nations as you would desire to be treated by them.”

The liquidation of the countries between Germany and Russia could proceed as soon

as the Rhineland was fortified, without fear on Germany's part that France would be able

to attack her in the west while she was occupied in the east. The chief task of the Milner

Group was to see that this devouring process was done no faster than public opinion in

Britain could accept, and that the process did not result in any out burst of violence,

which the British people would be unlikely to accept. To this double purpose, the British

government and the Milner Group made every effort to restrain the use of force by the

Germans and to soften up the prospective victims so that they would not resist the

process and thus precipitate a war.

The countries marked for liquidation included Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland,

but did not include Greece and Turkey, since the Group had no intention of allowing

Germany to get down onto the Mediterranean "lifeline". Indeed, the purpose of the

Hoare-Laval Plan of 1935, which wrecked the collective-security system by seeking to

give most of Ethiopia to Italy, was intended to bring an appeased Italy into position

alongside England, in order to block any movement of Germany southward rather than

eastward. The plan failed because Mussolini decided that he could get more out of

England by threats from the side of Germany than from cooperation at the side of

England. As a result of this fiasco, the Milner Group lost another important member,

Arnold J. Toynbee, who separated himself from the policy of appeasement in a fighting

and courageous preface to The Survey of International Affairs for 1935 (published in

1936). As a result of the public outcry in England, Hoare, the Foreign Secretary, was

removed from office and briefly shelved in December 1935. He returned to the Cabinet

the following May. Anthony Eden, who replaced him, was not a member of the Milner

Group and considerably more to the public taste because of his reputation (largely

undeserved) as an upholder of collective security. The Milner Group was in no wise

hampered in its policy of appeasement by the presence of Eden in the Foreign Office, and

the government as a whole was considerably strengthened. Whenever the Group wanted

to do something which Eden's delicate stomach could not swallow, the Foreign Secretary

went off for a holiday, and Lord Halifax took over his tasks. Halifax did this, for

example, during the first two weeks of August 1936, when the nonintervention policy

was established in Spain; he did it again in February 1937, when the capable British

Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, was removed at Ribbentrop's demand and

replaced by Sir Nevile Henderson; he did it again at the end of October 1937, when

arrangements were made for his visit to Hitler at Berchtesgaden in November; and,

finally, Halifax replaced Eden as Foreign Secretary permanently in February 1938, when

Eden refused to accept the recognition of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in return for an

Italian promise to withdraw their forces from Spain. In this last case, Halifax was already

negotiating with Count Grandi in the Foreign Office before Eden's resignation statement

was made. Eden and Halifax were second cousins, both being great-grandsons of Lord

Grey of the Reform Bill of 1832, and Halifax's daughter in 1936 married the half-brother

of Mrs. Anthony Eden. Halifax and Eden were combined in the Foreign Office in order

that the former could counterbalance the "youthful impetuosities" of the latter, since these

might jeopardize appeasement but were regarded as necessary stage-settings to satisfy the

collective-security yearnings of public opinion in England. These yearnings were made

evident in the famous "Peace Ballot" of the League of Nations Union, a maneuver put

through by Lord Cecil as a countermove to the Group's slow undermining of collective

security. This countermove, which w as regarded with extreme distaste by Lothian and

others of the inner circle, resulted, among other things, in an excessively polite crossing

of swords by Cecil and Lothian in the House of Lords on 16 March 1938.

During the period in which Halifax acted as a brake on Eden, he held the sinecure

Cabinet posts of Lord Privy Seal and Lord President of the Council (1935-1938). He had

been added to the Cabinet, after his return from India in 1931, as President of the Board

of Education, but devoted most of his time from 1931 to 1935 in helping Simon and

Hoare put through the Government of India Act of 1935. In October 1933, the same

group of Conservative members of Convocation who had made Lord Milner Chancellor

of Oxford University in 1925 selected Lord Irwin (Halifax), for the same position, in

succession to the late Lord Grey of Fallodon. He spent almost the whole month of June

1934 in the active functions of this position, especially in drawing up the list of recipients

of honorary degrees. This list is very significant. Among sixteen recipients of the

Doctorate of Civil Law, we find the following five names: Samuel Hoare, Maurice

Hankey, W. G. S. Adams, John Buchan, and Geoffrey Dawson.

We have indicated that Halifax's influence on foreign policy was increasingly

important in the years 1934-1937. It was he who defended Hoare in the House of Lords

in December 1935, saying: "I have never been one of those . . . who have thought that it

was any part in this dispute of the League to try to stop a war in Africa by starting a war

in Europe. It was Halifax who went with Eden to Paris in March 1936 to the discussions

of the Locarno Powers regarding the remilitarization of the Rhineland. That his task at

this meeting was to act as a brake on Eden's relatively large respect for the sanctity of

international obligations is admitted by Lord Halifax’s authorized biographer. It was

Halifax, as we have seen, who inaugurated the nonintervention policy in Spain in August

193fi. And it was Halifax who opened the third and last stage of appeasement in

November 1937 by his visit to Hitler in Berchtesgaden.

It is probable that the groundwork for Halifax's visit to Hitler had been laid by the

earlier visits of Lords Lothian and Londonderry to the same host, but our knowledge of

these earlier events is too scanty to be certain. Of Halifax's visit, the story is now clear, as

a result of the publication of the German Foreign Office memorandum on the subject and

Keith Feiling's publication of some of the letters from Neville Chamberlain to his sister.

The visit was arranged by Halifax himself, early in November 1937, at a time when he

was Acting Foreign Secretary, Eden being absent in Brussels at a meeting of signers of

the Nine-Power Pacific Treaty of 1922. As a result, Halifax had a long conversation with

Hitler on 19 November 1937 in which, whatever may have been Halifax's intention,

Hitler's government became convinced of three things: (a) that Britain regarded Germany

as the chief bulwark against communism in Europe; (b) that Britain was prepared to join

a Four Power agreement of France, Germany, Italy, and herself; and (c) that Britain was

prepared to allow Germany to liquidate Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland if this could

be done without provoking a war into which the British Government, however

unwillingly, would be dragged in opposition to Germany. The German Foreign Ministry

memorandum on this conversation makes it perfectly clear that the Germans did not

misunderstand Halifax except, possibly, on the last point. There they failed to see that if

Germany made war, the British Government would be forced into the war against

Germany by public opinion in England. The German diplomatic agents in London,

especially the Ambassador, Dirksen, saw this clearly, but the Government in Berlin

listened only to the blind and conceited ignorance of Ribbentrop. As dictators themselves,

unfamiliar with the British social or constitutional systems, the German rulers assumed

that the willingness of the British Government to accept the liquidation of Austria,

Czechoslovakia, and Poland implied that the British Government would never go to war

to prevent this liquidation. They did not see that the British Government might have to

declare war to stay in office if public opinion in Britain were sufficiently aroused. The

British Government saw this difficulty and as a last resort were prepared to declare war

but not to wage war on Germany. This distinction was not clear to the Germans and was

not accepted by the inner core of the Milner Group. It was, however, accepted by the

other elements in the government, like Chamberlain himself, and by much of the second

circle of the Milner Group, including Simon, Hoare, and probably Halifax. It was this

which resulted in the' phony war" from September 1939 to April 1940.

The memorandum on Halifax's interview, quoting the Englishman in the third person,

says in part:(10)

“In spite of these difficulties [British public opinion, the English Church, and the

Labour Party] he and other members of the British Government were fully aware that the

Führer had not only achieved a great deal inside Germany herself, but that, by destroying

Communism in his country, he had barred its road to Western Europe, and that Germany

therefore could rightly be regarded as a bulwark of the West against Bolshevism. . . .

After the ground had been prepared by an Anglo-German understanding, the four Great

West-European Powers must jointly lay the foundation for lasting peace in Europe.

Under no conditions should any of the four Powers remain outside this cooperation, or

else there would be no end to the present unstable situation.... Britons were realists and

were perhaps more than others convinced that the errors of the Versailles dictate must be

rectified. Britain always exercised her influence in this realistic sense in the past. He

pointed to Britain's role with regard to the evacuation of the Rhineland ahead of the fixed

time, the settlement of the reparations problem, and the reoccupation of the Rhineland....

He therefore wanted to know the Fuhrer's attitude toward the League of Nations, as well

as toward disarmament. All other questions could be characterized as relating to changes

in the European order, changes that sooner or later would probably take place. To these

questions belonged Danzig, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. England was only interested

that any alterations should be effected by peaceful evolution, so as to avoid methods

which might cause far-reaching disturbances, which were not desired either by the Fuhrer

or by other countries.... Only one country, Soviet Russia, stood to gain from a general

conflict. All others were at heart in favour of the consolidation of peace.”

That this attitude was not Halifax's personal argument but the point of view of the

government (and of the Milner Croup) is perfectly clear. On arrival, Halifax assured the

Germans that the purposes of his visit had been discussed and accepted by the Foreign

Secretary (Eden) and the Prime Minister. On 26 November 1937, one week after

Halifax's conversation with Hitler, Chamberlain wrote to his sister that he hoped to

satisfy German colonial demands by giving them the Belgian Congo and Angola in place

of Tanganyika. He then added: "I don't see why we shouldn't say to Germany, 'Give us

satisfactory assurances that you won't use force to deal with the Austrians and

Czechoslovakians, and we will give you similar assurances that we won't use force to

prevent the changes you want if you can get them by peaceful means.'" (11)

It might be noted that when John W. Wheeler-Bennett, of Chatham House and the

Milner Group, wrote his book on Munich: Prologue to Tragedy, published in 1948, he

relegated the last quotation to a footnote and suppressed the references to the Belgian

Congo and Angola. This, however, was an essential part of the appeasement program of

the Chamberlain group. On 3 March 1938, the British Ambassador in Berlin, Nevile

Henderson, one of the Chamberlain group, tried to persuade Hitler to begin negotiations

to carry out this plan but did not succeed. He repeated Lord Halifax's statement that

changes in Europe were acceptable to Britain if accomplished without "the free play of

forces," and stated that he personally "had often expressed himself in favour of the

Anschluss." In the colonial field, he tried to interest Hitler in an area in Africa between

the 5th parallel and the Zambezi River, but the Fuhrer insisted that his interest was

restricted to restoration of Germany's 1914 colonies in Africa.

At the famous interview between Hitler and Schuschnigg in February 1938, Hitler told

the Austrian that Lord Halifax agreed"with everything he [Hitler] did with respect to

Austria and the Sudeten Germans." This was reported in a "rush and strictly confidential"

message of 16 February 1938 from the American Consul General in Vienna to Secretary

of State Hull, a document released to the American press on 18 December 1948.

Chamberlain and others made it perfectly clear, both in public and in private, that Britain

would not act to prevent German occupation of Austria or Czechoslovakia. On 21

February 1938, during the Austrian crisis, John Simon said in the House of Commons,

"Great Britain has never given special guarantees regarding Austrian independence." Six

days later, Chamberlain said: "We must not try to delude small nations into thinking that

they will be protected by the League against aggression and acting accordingly when we

know that nothing of the kind can be expected." Five days after the seizure of Austria on

12 March 1938, the Soviet Union sent Britain a proposal for an international conference

to stop aggression. The suggestion was rejected at once, and, on 20 March 1938,

Chamberlain wrote to his sister: "I have therefore abandoned any idea of giving

guarantees to Czechoslovakia or to the French in connection with her obligation to that

country."

When Daladier, the French Premier, came to London at the end of April 1938 to seek

support for Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain refused and apparently, if we can believe

Feiling, put pressure on the French to compel the Czechoslovaks to make an agreement

with Hitler. On 1 May, Chamberlain wrote to his sister in this connection: "Fortunately

the papers have had no hint of how near we came to a break over Czechoslovakia. "

In a long report of 10 July 1938, Ambassador Dirksen wrote to Ribbentrop as follows:

“In England the Chamberlain-Halifax Cabinet is at the helm and the first and most

essential plank of its platform was and is agreement with the totalitarian States.... This

government displays with regard to Germany the maximum understanding that could be

displayed by any of the likely combinations of British politicians. It possesses the inner-

political strength to carry out this task. It has come nearer to understanding the most

essential points of the major demands advanced by Germany, with respect to excluding

the Soviet Union from the decision of the destinies of Europe, the League of Nations

likewise, and the advisability of bilateral negotiations and treaties. It is displaying

increasing understanding of Germany's demands in the Sudeten German question. lt

would be prepared to make great sacrifices to meet Germany s other just demands—on

the one condition that it is endeavoured to achieve these ends by peaceful means. If

Germany should resort to military means to achieve these ends, England would without

the slightest doubt go to war on the side of France.”

This point of view was quite acceptable to the Milner Group. In the leading article for

December 1937, The Round Table examined the German question at some length. In

regard to the colonial problem, it contrasted two points of view, giving greater emphasis

to "those who now feel that it was a mistake to have deprived Germany of all her colonies

in 1918, and that Great Britain should contribute her share towards finding a colonial

area—say, in central west Africa—which could be transferred to Germany under

mandate. But they, too, make it a condition that colonial revision should be part of a final

all-round settlement with Germany, and that the colonies should not be used as leverage

for fresh demands or as strategic bases." Later it said: "A majority would regard the

abandonment of France's eastern alliances as a price well worth paying for lasting peace

and the return of Germany to the League." It welcomed German rearmament, since this

would force revision of the evil Treaty of Versailles. In this connection, the same article

said: "The pressure of rearmament and the events of the last few years have at least had

this effect, that the refusal of those who have benefitted most by the peace settlement to

consider any kind of change is rapidly disappearing; for forcible changes which they have

been unable to prevent have already taken place, and further changes will certainly

follow, especially in eastern Europe, unless they are prepared to fight a very formidable

war to prevent them." The article rejected such a war on the grounds that its"outcome is

uncertain" and it "would entail objectionable domestic disasters." In adding up the

balance of military forces in such a war, the article significantly omitted all mention of

Czechoslovakia, whose forces at that time were considerably stronger than Germany's. It

placed the French Army at two-thirds the size of Germany's (which was untrue) and

Britain at no more than two or three divisions. The point of view of The Round Table was

not identical with that of the Chamberlain group (which intersected, through common

members, with the second circle of the Milner Group). The Round Table, speaking for the

inner circle of the Milner Group, was not nearly so anti-Russian as the Chamberlain

group. Accordingly, it never regarded a collision between Nazi Germany and the Soviet

Union as a practical solution of Europe's problems. It did accept the idea of a four-power

pact to exclude Russia from Europe, but it was not willing to allow Germany to expand

eastward as she wished. The Milner Group's misunderstanding of the Nazi system and of

Germany itself was so great that they envisioned a stable situation in which Europe was

dominated by a four-power pact, with Soviet Russia on one side and an Oceanic bloc of

the British Commonwealth and the United States on the other. The Group insisted on

rapid British rearmament and the building up of the Oceanic System because they had a

lower opinion of Britain's own powers than did the Chamberlain group (this idea was

derived from Milner) and they were not prepared to allow Germany to go eastward

indefinitely in the hope she would be satisfied by a war with Russia. As we shall see, the

policies of the Milner Group and the Chamberlain group went jointly forward, with slight

shifts of emphasis, until March 1939, when the Group began to disintegrate.

In the same article of December 1937 The Round Table said that the democracies

must

“make clear the point at which they are prepared to risk war rather than retreat....

During the last year or two The Round Table has criticized the popular dogma of

"collective security" on two main grounds: that it meant fighting to maintain an out-of-

date settlement, and that security depended, not merely on public opinion but on ability to

bring effective military superiority to bear at the critical point. On the other hand, The

Round Table is resolutely in favour of adequate defensive armaments and of a vigorous

and if necessary defiant foreign policy at those points where we are sure that . . . we can

bring superior power effectively to bear. And for this purpose we consider that the

nations of the Commonwealth should not only act together themselves, but should also

work in the closest cooperation with all the democracies, especially the United States.”

In February 1938, Lord Lothian, "leader" of the Group, spoke in the House of Lords in

support of appeasement. This extraordinary speech was delivered in defense of the

retiring of Sir Robert Vansittart. Sir Robert, as Permanent Under Secretary in the Foreign

Office from 1930 to 1938, was a constant thorn in the side of the appeasers. The opening

of the third stage of appeasement at the end of 1937 made it necessary to get rid of him

and his objections to their policy. Accordingly, he was "promoted" to the newly created

post of Chief Diplomatic Adviser, and the Under Secretaryship was given to Sir

Alexander Cadogan of the Cecil Bloc. This action led to a debate in February 1938. Lord

Lothian intervened to insist that Sir Robert's new role would not be parallel to that of the

new Under Secretary but was restricted to advising only on "matters specifically referred

to him by the Secretary of State, and he is no longer responsible for the day to day work

of the Office." From this point, Lothian launched into a long attack on the League of

Nations, followed by a defense of Germany. In regard to the former, he expressed

satisfaction that

“the most dangerous aspect of the League of Nations—namely, the interpretation

which has habitually been put upon it by the League of Nations Union in this country—is

pretty well dead.... It seems to me that that [interpretation] is inevitably going to turn the

League of Nations itself not into an instrument for maintaining peace but into an

instrument for making war. That was not the original concept of the League at all. The

original concept of the League definitely left the way open for alteration after six months'

examination even if it meant war.... I think the League of Nations now, at last, is going to

have a chance of recovery, for the reason that this particular interpretation, which has

been its besetting sin, the one thing which has led to its failure from the beginning, is now

dead. . . . Therefore I am more hopeful of the League today than I have been for a good

long time, because it has ceased to be an instrument to try to perpetuate the status quo.”

When Lothian turned to the problem of Germany, his arguments became even more

ridiculous. "The fundamental problem of the world today is still the problem of

Germany.... Why is Germany the issue? In my view the fundamental reason is that at no

time in the years after 1919 has the rest of the world been willing to concede any

substantial justice or reasonable understanding to Germany, either when she was a

Republic or since she has become a Totalitarian State." There followed a long attack on

the war guilt thesis as applied to 1914, or even to 1870. This thesis Lothian

called"propaganda," and from this false propaganda he traced all the cruel treatment

given Germany since 1919. He disapproved of the Nazi Government's methods inside

Germany, but added: 'Ì do not think there is any doubt that modern Germany is the result

of the policy of the United States, whom I cannot absolve from responsibility, of

ourselves, and of France; and in this matter the responsibility of the United States and

ourselves is more than that of France for defaulting on the obligation to give France some

security so that she could allow Germany to recover."

It seems impossible that this could be the same man who was calling for the

extirpation of "Prussianism" in 1908-1918 and who was to call for the same crusade as

Ambassador in Washington in 1940.

In this same speech Lothian laid down what might be called the Milner Group solution

to this German problem, 1938 model:

“There is only one solution to this problem. You have got to combine collective

justice with collective security. You have got to give remedies to those nations which are

entitled to them.... You have got to be willing to concede to them—and one of them is

Germany—alterations in the status quo and you have also got to incur obligations with

other like-minded nations to resist changes which go beyond what impartial justice

regards as fair.... When we are willing to admit that we are ourselves largely responsible

for the tragedy that confronts us, for the fact that Germany is the center of the world

problem, and are willing to concede to Germany what a fair-minded and impartial

authority would say was a fair solution

of her problem, and if, in addition to that, we are willing to say, We will meet aggression

to secure more than this with the only means in which it can be met, then I consider there

is hope for the world.”

The fallacy in all of this rests on the fact that every concession to Germany made her

stronger, with no guarantee that she ever would stop; and if, after years of concessions,

she refused to stop, she might be too strong to be compelled to do so. The Milner Group

thesis was based not only on ignorance but also on logical deficiencies. The program of

the Chamberlain group was at least more consistent, since it involved no effort to stop

Germany at any point but aimed to solve the German problem by driving it into Russia.

Such an "immoral" solution could not be acceptable to the Milner Group, so they should

have had sense enough to stop Germany while she was weak.

Shortly after this speech, on 24 February 1938, Lothian intervened in the debate on

Eden's resignation to reject Eden's point of view and defend Chamberlain's. He rejected

the idea that Britain should commit herself to support Czechoslovakia against Germany

and criticized the President of Czechoslovakia for his failure to make concessions to

Republican Germany. He then repeated his speech of the week before, the chief addition

being a defense of the German remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936.

Four days after the seizure of Austria, Lothian again advised against any new pledges

to anyone and demanded rearmament and national service. In regard to rearmament he

said: "Unpreparedness and the belief that you are unwilling to accept that challenge or

that you do not mean what you say, does contribute to war. That will remain to be a

condition of the world until the nations are willing in some way to pool their sovereignty

in a common federation."

All of these ideas of Lothian's were explicitly restated by him in a speech at Chatham

House on 24 March 1938. He refuted the"war-guilt thesis," condemned the Versailles

settlement as "a very stiff Peace Treaty," insisted on revision, blamed all the disasters of

Europe on America's withdrawal from the League in 1920, called the Hitler government a

temporary "unnatural pathological state" solely caused by the stiff treaty and the failure to

revise it, defended the remilitarization of the Rhineland and the seizure of Austria,

condemned Czechoslovakia as "almost the only racially heterogeneous State left in

Europe," praised "nonintervention" in Spain, praised Chamberlain's statement of the same

day refusing to promise support to Czechoslovakia, and demanded "national service" as

insurance that Hitler would not continue to use force after he obtained what he deserved

in justice.

These arguments of Lothian's were all supported by the Group in other ways. The

Round Table in its leading articles of March 1938, September 1938, and March 1939

demanded "national service." In the leading article of June 1938 it repeated all Lothian's

arguments in somewhat different words. These arguments could be summed up in the

slogan "appeasement and rearmament." Then it added:

“Until the nations can be brought to the two principles of collective security already

described, the best security for peace is that the world should be divided into zones within

each of which one of the great armed Powers, or a group of them, is clearly preponderant,

and in which therefore other Powers do not seek to interfere. Then there may be peace for

a time. The peace of the 19th century rested on the fact that the supremacy of the British

Nà: kept the whole oceanic area free from general war. . . . The vital question now arises

whether in that same zone, to which France and Scandinavia must be added, it is not

possible, despite the immense armaments of central Europe, Russia, and the Far East, for

the democracies to create security, stability, and peace in which liberal institutions can

survive. The oceanic zone in fact constitutes the one part of the world in which it is

possible today to realize the ideals of the League of Nations.”

From this point onward (early 1938), the Milner Group increasingly emphasized the

necessity for building up this Oceanic bloc. In England the basic propaganda work was

done through The Round Table and Lionel Curtis, while in the United States it was done

through the Rhodes Scholarship organization, especially through Clarence Streit and

Frank Aydelotte. In England, Curtis wrote a series of books and articles advocating a new

federal organization built around the English-speaking countries. The chief work of this

nature was his Civitas Dei, which appeared in three volumes in 1934-1937. A one-

volume edition was issued in 1938, with the title The Commonwealth of God. The first

two volumes of this work are nothing more than a rehash and expansion of the older work

The Commonwealth of Nations (1916). By a superficial and frequently erroneous

rewriting of world history, the author sought to review the evolution of the

"commonwealth" idea and to show that all of history leads to its fulfillment and

achievement in federation. Ultimately, this federation will be worldwide, but en route it

must pass through stages, of which the chief is federation of the English-speaking

peoples. Writing early in 1937, he advocated that the League of Nations be destroyed by

the mass resignation of the British democracies. These should then take the initiative in

forming a new league, also at Geneva, which would have no power to enforce anything

but would merely form a kind of international conference. Since it would be foolish to

expect any federation to evolve from any such organization as this, a parallel, but quite

separate, effort should be made to create an international commonwealth, based on the

example of the United States in 1788. This international commonwealth would differ

from the League of Nations in that its members would yield up part of their sovereignty,

and the central organization would function directly on individuals and not merely on

states. This international commonwealth would be formed, at first, only of those states

that have evolved furthest in the direction of obtaining a commonwealth form of

government for themselves. It will be recalled that this restriction on membership was

what Curtis had originally advocated for the League of Nations in The Round Table of

December 1918. According to Curtis, the movement toward the Commonwealth of God

can begin by the union of any two national commonwealths, no matter how small. He

suggested New Zealand and Australia, or these two and Great Britain. Then the

international commonwealth could be expanded to include India, Egypt, Holland,

Belgium, Scandinavia, France, Canada, the United States, and Ireland. That the chief

obstacle to this union was to be found in men's minds was perfectly clear to Curtis. To

overcome this obstacle, he put his faith in propaganda, and the chief instruments of that

propaganda, he said, must be the churches and the universities. He said nothing about the

Milner Group, but, considering Curtis's position in this Group and that Lothian and others

agreed with him, it is not surprising that the chief source of this propaganda is to be found

in those agencies controlled by the Group. (12)

In the United States, the chief source of this propaganda was the organization known

as Union Now, which was an offshoot of the Rhodes Scholarship network. The

publicized originator of the idea was Clarence Streit, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 1920

and League of Nations correspondent of The New York Times in 1929-1938. Mr. Streit's

plan, which was very similar to Curtis's, except that it included fifteen countries to begin

with, was first made public at a series of three lectures at Swarthmore College in

February 1939. Almost simultaneously his book, Union Now, was launched and received

wide publicity. Before we look at that, we might mention that at the time the president of

Swarthmore College was Frank Aydelotte, the most important member of the Milner

Group in the United States since the death of George Louis Beer. Dr. Aydelotte was one

of the original Rhodes Scholars, attending Brasenose in 1905-1907. He was president of

Swarthmore from 1921 to 1940; has been American secretary to the Rhodes Trustees

since 1918; has been president of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars since

1930; has been a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation since 1922; and was a member of the

Council on Foreign Relations for many years. In 1937, along with three other members of

the Milner Group, he received from Oxford (and Lord Halifax) the honorary degree of

Doctor of Civil Law. The other three recipients who were members of the Group were

Brand, Ormsby-Gore, and Sir Herbert Baker, the famous architect.

As soon as Streit's book was published, it was hailed by Lord Lothian in an interview

with the press. Shortly afterwards, Lothian gave it a favorable review in the Christian

Science Monitor of 6 May 1939. The book was distributed to educational institutions in

various places by the Carnegie Foundation and was greeted in the June 1939 issue of The

Round Table as "the only way." This article said: "There is, indeed, no other cure.... In

The Commonwealth of God Mr. Lionel Curtis showed how history and religion pointed

down the same path. It is one of the great merits of Mr. Streit's book that he translates the

general theme into a concrete plan, which he presents, not for the indefinite hereafter, but

for our own generation, now." In the September 1939 issue, in an article headed "Union:

Oceanic or Continental," The Round Table contrasted Streit's plan with that for European

union offered by Count Coudenhove-Kalergi and gave the arguments for both.

While all this was going on, the remorseless wheels of appeasement were grinding out

of existence one country after another. The fatal loss was Czechoslovakia. This disaster

was engineered by Chamberlain with the full cooperation of the Milner Group. The

details do not concern us here, but it should be mentioned that the dispute arose over the

position of the Sudeten Germans within the Czechoslovak state, and as late as 15

September 1938 was still being expressed in those terms. Up to that day, Hitler had made

no demand to annex the Sudeten area, although on 12 September he had for the first time

asked for "self-determination" for the Sudetens. Konrad Henlein, Hitler's agent in

Czechoslovakia and leader of the Sudeten Germans, expressed no desire "to go back to

the Reich" until after 12 September. Who, then, first demanded frontier rectification in

favor of Germany? Chamberlain did so privately on 10 May 1938, and the Milner Group

did so publicly on 7 September 1938. The Chamberlain suggestion was made by one of

those "calculated indiscretions" of which he was so fond, at an "off-the-record" meeting

with certain Canadian and American newspaper reporters at a luncheon arranged by Lady

Astor and held at her London house. On this occasion Chamberlain spoke of his plans for

a four-power pact to exclude Russia from Europe and the possibility of frontier revisions

in favor of Germany to settle the Sudeten issue. When the news leaked out, as it was

bound to do, Chamberlain was questioned in Commons by Geoffrey Mander on 20 June

but refused to answer, calling his questioner a troublemaker. This answer was criticized

by Sir Archibald Sinclair the following day, but he received no better treatment. Lady

Astor, however, interjected, "I would like to say that there is not a word of truth in it." By

27 June, however, she had a change of heart and stated: "I never had any intention of

denying that the Prime Minister had attended a luncheon at my house. The Prime

Minister did so attend, the object being to enable some American journalists who had not

previously met him to do so privately and informally, and thus to make his

acquaintance."

The second suggestion for revision of frontiers also had an Astor flavor, since it

appeared as a leading article in The Times on 7 September 1938. The outraged cries of

protest from all sides which greeted this suggestion made it clear that further softening up

of the British public was urgently necessary before it would be safe to hand over

Czechoslovakia to Hitler. This was done in the war-scare of September 15-28 in London.

That this war-scare was fraudulent and that Lord Halifax was deeply involved in its

creation is now clear. All the evidence cannot be given here. There is no evidence

whatever that the Chamberlain government intended to fight over Czechoslovakia unless

this was the only alternative to falling from office. Even at the height of the crisis, when

all ways out without war seemed closed (27 September), Chamberlain showed what he

thought of the case by telling the British people over the BBC that the issue was "a

quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing."

To frighten the British people, the British government circulated stories about

the strength of the German Army and Air Force which were greatly exaggerated;

they implied that Germany would use poison gas at once and from the air, although

this was quite untrue; they distributed gas masks and madly built trenches in

London parks, although the former were needless and the latter worthless. On 23

September, the British advised the Czechoslovakian government to mobilize, although

they had previously forbidden it. This was done to increase the crisis in London, and the

fact that Göring's air force allowed it to go through without attack indicates his belief that

Germany did not need to fight. In fact, Goring told the French Ambassador on 12

September that he had positive assurance that Britain would not fight. As early as 1

September 1938, Sir Horace Wilson, Chamberlain's alter ego, told the German

charge d'affaires in London. Theodor Kordt, “If we two, Great Britain and

Germany, come to agreement regarding the settlement of the Czech problem, we

shall simply brush aside the resistance that France or Czechoslovakia herself may

offer to the decision.”

The fraudulent nature of the Munich crisis appears throughout its history. We might

mention the following: (1) the suspicious fashion in which the Runciman Mission was

sent to Czechoslovakia, immediately after Hitler's aide, Captain Wiedemann, visited

Halifax at the latter's home (not the Foreign Office) on 18 July 1938, and with the

statement, which was untrue, that it was being sent at the desire of the Czechoslovaks;

(13) (2) the fact that Runciman in Czechoslovakia spent most of his time with the

Sudetens and put pressure on the government to make one concession after another to

Henlein, when it was perfectly clear that Henlein did not want a settlement; (3) the fact

that Runciman wrote to Hitler on 2 September that he would have a plan for a settlement

by 15 September; (4) the fact that this Runciman plan was practically the same as the

Munich settlement finally adopted; (5) the fact that Chamberlain made the war-scare over

the Godesberg proposals and, after making a settlement at Munich, made no effort to

enforce those provisions by which Munich differed from Godesberg, but on the contrary

allowed the Germans to take what they wished in Czechoslovakia as they wished; (6) the

fact that the government did all it could to exclude Russia from the settlement, although

Russia was allied to both Czechoslovakia and France; (7) the fact that the government

and the French government tried to spread the belief that Russia would not honor these

commitments, although all the evidence indicated that she would; (8) the fact that

Chamberlain had a tête-à-tête conference with Hitler at Berchtesgaden on 15 September,

which lasted for three hours, and at which only Hitler's private interpreter was present as

a third party, and that this was repeated at Godesberg on 23 September; (9) the fact that

the Czechoslovaks were forced to yield to Chamberlain's settlement under pressure of

ultimatums from both France and Britain, a fact that was concealed from the British

people by omitting a crucial document from the White Paper of 28 September 1938

(Cmd. 5847).

Two additional points, concerned with the degree of German armaments and the

position of the anti-Hitler resistance within Germany, require further elucidation. For

years before June 1938, the government had insisted that British rearming was

progressing in a satisfactory fashion. Churchill and others had questioned this and had

produced figures on German rearmament to prove that Britain's own progress in this field

was inadequate. These figures were denied by the government, and their own

accomplishments were defended. In 1937 and in 1938, Churchill had clashed with

Baldwin and Chamberlain on this issue. As late as March 1938, Chamberlain said that

British armaments were such as to make her an "almost terrifying power . . . on the

opinion of the world." But as the year went on, the government adopted a quite different

attitude. In order to persuade public opinion that it was necessary to yield to Germany,

the Government pretended that its armaments were quite inadequate in comparison with

Germany." We now know, thanks to the captured papers of the German Ministry of War,

that this was a gross exaggeration. These papers were studied by Major General C. F.

Robinson of the United States Army, and analyzed in a report which he submitted to the

Secretary of War in October 1947. This document, entitled Foreign Logistical

Organizations and Methods, shows that all of the accepted estimates of German

rearmament in the period 1933-1939 were gross exaggerations. From 1936 to the

outbreak of war, German aircraft production was not raised, but averaged 425 planes a

month. Her tank production was low and even in 1939 was less than Britain's. In the first

9 months of 1939, Germany produced only 50 tanks a month; in the last 4 months of

1939, in wartime, Germany produced 247 "tanks and self-propelled guns," compared to a

British production of 314 tanks in the same period. At the time of the Munich crisis,

Germany had 35 infantry and 4 motorized divisions, none of them fully manned or

equipped. This was no more than Czechoslovakia had alone. Moreover, the Czech Army

was better trained, had far better equipment, and had better morale and better

fortifications. As an example of this point, we might mention that the Czech tank was of

38 tons, while the Germans, before 1938, had no tank over 10 tons. During 1938 they

brought into production the Mark III tank of less than 20 tons, and in 1939 brought into

production the Mark IV of 23 tons. Up to September 1939, the German Army had

obtained only 300 tanks of the Mark III and Mark IV types together. Most of these were

delivered during 1939. In comparison, the Germans captured in Czechoslovakia, in

March 1939, 469 of the superior Czech tanks. At the same time they captured 1500

planes (of which 500 were first-line), 43,000 machine-guns, and over 1 million rifles.

These figures are comparable with what Germany had at Munich, and at that time, if the

British government had desired, Germany would have been facing France, Britain, and

Russia, as well as Czechoslovakia.

It should perhaps be mentioned that up to September 1939 the German Navy had

acquired only 53 submarines during the Hitler regime. No economic mobilization for war

had been made and no reserve stocks built up. When the war began, in September 1939,

Germany had ammunition for 6 weeks, and the air force had bombs for 3 months at the

rate of expenditure experienced during the Polish campaign. At that time the Air Force

consisted of 1000 bombers and 1050 fighters. In contrast, the British air program of May

1938 planned to provide Britain with a first-line force of 2370 planes; this program was

stepped up in 1939. Under it, Britain produced almost 3000 military planes in 1938 and

about 8000 in 1939. The German figures for planes produced in these 2 years are 5235

and 8295, but these are figures for all planes produced in the country, including civil as

well as military airplanes. As Hanson Baldwin put it, "Up until 1940, at least, Germany's

production did not markedly outstrip Britain's." It might also be mentioned that British

combat planes were of better quality.

We have no way of knowing if the Chamberlain government knew these facts. It

should have known them. At the least, it should not have deluged its own people with

untrue stories about German arms. Surprisingly, the British have generally refused to

modify these stories, and, in order to perpetuate the fable about the necessity for the

Munich surrender, they have continued to repeat the untrue propaganda stories of 1937-

1939 regarding German armaments. This is as true of the critics of Munich as of its

defenders. Both have adopted the version that Britain yielded to superior and

overwhelming force at Munich. They have done this even though this story is untrue and

they are in a position to know that it is untrue. For example, Winston Churchill, in his

war memoirs, repeats the old stories about German rearmament, although he has been

writing two years or more after the Reichswehr archives were captured. For this he was

criticized by Hanson Baldwin in The New York Times of 9 May 1948. In his recent book,

Munich: Prologue to Tragedy, J. W. Wheeler-Bennett, the British editor of the captured

papers of the German Foreign Ministry, accepts the old propaganda tales of German

rearmament as axiomatic, and accordingly does not even discuss the subject. He merely

tells his readers: "By the close of 1937 Germany's preparedness for war was complete.

The preference for guns rather than for butter had brought forth results. Her rearmament

had reached its apogee and could hold that peak level for a certain time. Her economy

was geared to a strict regime of rationing and output on a war level." None of this was

true, and Mr. Wheeler-Bennett should have examined the evidence. If he had, he would

not have been so severe on what he calls Professor Frederick Schumann's"fantastic theory

of the 'Pre-Munich Plot.'" (14)

The last piece of evidence which we might mention to support the theory—not of a

plot, perhaps, but that the Munich surrender was unnecessary and took place because

Chamberlain and his associates wanted to dismember Czechoslovakia—is even more

incriminating. As a result of the inadequate rearmament of Germany, a group of

conservatives within the regime formed a plot to liquidate Hitler and his close supporters

if it appeared that his policy in Czechoslovakia would result in war. This group, chiefly

army officers, included men on the highest level of government. In the group were

Colonel General Ludwig Beck (Chief of the General Staff), Field Marshal von Witzleben,

General Georg Thomas, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (Mayor of Leipzig in 1930-1936),

Ulrich von Hassell (ex-Ambassador to Italy), Johannes Popitz (Prussian Minister of

Finance), and Paul Schmidt (Hitler's private interpreter). This group formed a plot to kill

Hitler and remove the Nazis from power. The date was set eventually for 28 September

1938. Lord Halifax, on 5 September 1938, was informed of the plot by Theodore Kordt,

the German charge d'affaires in London, whose brother, Erich Kordt, chief of

Ribbentrop's office in the Foreign Ministry, was one of the conspirators. The message

which Kordt gave to Halifax begged the British government to stand fast with

Czechoslovakia in the Sudeten crisis and to make perfectly clear that Britain would go to

war if Germany violated Czechoslovakian territory. The plot was canceled at noon on 28

September, when the news reached Berlin that Chamberlain was going to Munich. It was

this plot which eventually, after many false starts, reached fruition in the attempt to

assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944.

There can be little doubt that the Milner Group knew of these anti-Nazi plots

within Germany. Several of the plotters were former Rhodes Scholars and were in

touch with members of the inner circle of the Milner Group in the period up to

1943, if not later. One of the leaders of the anti-Hitler plotters in Germany, Helmuth

von Moltke, was probably a member of the Milner Group as well as intellectual

leader of the conspirators in Germany. Count von Moltke was the son of the German

commander of 1914 and grandnephew of the German commander of 1870. His mother,

Dorothy Rose-Innes, was the daughter of Sir James Rose-Innes, whom Milner made

Chief Justice of the Transvaal in 1902. Sir James was a supporter of Rhodes and had been

Attorney General in Rhodes's ministry in 1890. He was Chief Justice of South Africa in

1914-1927 and was always close to the Milner Group. The von Moltkes were Christian

Scientists, and Dorothy, as Countess von Moltke after 1905, was one of the persons who

translated Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health into German. The younger Helmuth,

son of Dorothy, and Count von Moltke after his father's death in 1938, was openly anti-

Nazi and came to England in 1934 to join the English bar. He visited Lionel Curtis, at his

mother's suggestion, and "was made a member of the family, rooms in Duke of York

Street being put at his disposal, and Kidlington and All Souls thrown open to him at

week-ends; the opportunities of contact which these brought with them were exploited to

the full.... He was often in England until the summer of 1939, and in 1937 visited South

Africa and the grandparents there to whom he was deeply attached." This quotation, from

The Round Table for June 1946, makes perfectly clear to those who can read between the

lines that Moltke became a member of the Milner Group. It might be added that Curtis

also visited the Rose-Innes family in South Africa while Helmuth was there in 1937.

Von Moltke kept in close contact with both Curtis and Lothian even after the war

began in 1939. He was made adviser on international law to the Supreme Command of

the German Armed Forces (OKW) in 1939 and retained this position until his arrest in

1944. The intellectual leader of the German Underground, he was the inspiration and

addressee of Dorothy Thompson's book Listen, Hans. He was the center of a group of

plotters called the"Kreisau Circle," named after his estate in Silesia. After his execution

by the Nazis in January 1945, his connection with the Milner Group was revealed, to

those able to interpret the evidence, in the June 1946 issue of The Round Table. This

article extolled Moltke and reprinted a number of his letters. The same article, with an

additional letter, was published as a pamphlet in Johannesburg in 1947. (15)

Another plotter who appears to be close to the Milner Group was Adam von Trott zu

Solz, a Rhodes Scholar who went to the Far East on a mission for the Rhodes Trust in

1936 and was in frequent contact with the Institute of Pacific Relations in the period

1936-1939. He seems to have attended a meeting of the Pacific Council in New York late

in 1939, coming from Germany, by way of Gibraltar, after the war began. He remained in

contact with the democratic countries until arrested and executed by the Nazis in 1944. It

is not without significance that one of the chief projects which the plotters hoped to

further in post-Hitler German foreign policy was a "federation of Europe in a

commonwealth not unlike the British Empire."(16)

All of this evidence and much more would seem to support the theory of a "Munich

plot"—that is, the theory that the British government had no intention or desire to save

Czechoslovakia in 1938 and was willing or even eager to see it partitioned by Hitler, and

only staged the war scare of September in order to make the British people accept this

abuse of honor and sacrifice of Britain's international position. The efforts which the

British government made after Munich to conceal the facts of that affair would support

this interpretation. The chief question, from our point of view, lies in the degree to which

the Milner Group were involved in this "plot." There can be no doubt that the

Chamberlain group was the chief factor in the scheme. There is also no doubt that various

members of the Milner Group second circle, who were close to the Chamberlain group,

were involved. The position of the inner core of the Milner Group is not conclusively

established, but there is no evidence that they were not involved and a certain amount of

evidence that they were involved.

Among this latter evidence is the fact that the inner core of the Group did not object to

or protest against the partition of Czechoslovakia, although they did use the methods by

which Hitler had obtained his goal as an argument in support of their pet plan for national

service. They prepared the ground for the Munich surrender both in The Times and in The

Round Table. In the June 1938 issue of the latter, we read: "Czechoslovakia is apparently

the danger spot of the next few months. It will require high statesmanship on all sides to

find a peaceful and stable solution of the minorities problem. The critical question for the

next six months is whether the four great Powers represented by the Franco-British

entente and the Rome-Berlin axis can make up their minds that they will not go to war

with one another and that they must settle outstanding problems by agreement together."

In this statement, three implications are of almost equal importance. These are the time

limit of "six months," the exclusion of both Czechoslovakia and Russia from

the"agreement," and the approval of the four-power pact.

In the September 1938 issue of The Round Table, published on the eve of Munich, we

are told: "It is one thing to be able, in the end, to win a war. It is a far better thing to be

able to prevent a war by a readiness for just dealing combined with resolute strength

when injustice is threatened." Here, as always before 1939, The Round Table by "justice"

meant appeasement of Germany.

After the dreadful deed was done, The Round Table had not a word of regret and

hardly a kind word for the great sacrifice of the Czechs or for the magnificent

demonstration of restraint which they had given the world. In fact, the leading article in

the December 1938 issue of The Round Table began with a severe criticism of

Czechoslovakia for failure to reconcile her minorities, for failure to achieve economic

cooperation with her neighbors, and for failure to welcome a Hapsburg restoration. From

that point on, the article was honest. While accepting Munich, it regarded it solely as a

surrender to German power and rejected the arguments that it was done by negotiation,

that it was a question of self-determination or minority rights, or that Munich was any

better or more lenient than the Godesberg demands. The following article in the same

issue, also on Czechoslovakia, is a tissue of untruths except for the statement that there

never was any real Sudeten issue, since the whole thing was a fraudulent creation

engineered from Germany. Otherwise the article declares categorically: (1) that

Czechoslovakia could not have stood up against Hitler more than two or three weeks; (2)

that no opposition of importance to Hitler existed in Germany ("A good deal has been

written about the opposition of the military commanders. But in fact it does not and never

did exist."); (3) "There is no such thing as a conservative opposition in Germany." In the

middle of such statements as these, one ray of sanity shines like a light: in a single

sentence, The Round Table tossed onto the scrap heap its basic argument in support of

appeasement, namely the "injustices of Versailles." The sentence reads: "It is not

Versailles but defeat that is the essential German grievance against the western Powers."

This sentence should have been printed in gold letters in the Foreign Office in London in

1919 and read daily thereafter.

It is worthy of note that this issue of The Round Table discussed the Czech crisis in

two articles of twenty-seven pages and had only one sentence on Russia. This sentence

spoke of the weakness of Russia, where "a new Tiberius had destroyed the morale and

the material efficiency of the Russian Army." However, in a separate article, dealing

largely with Soviet-German relations, we find the significant sentences: "The Western

democracies appear to be framing their policies on the principle of ‘letting Germany go

east.'. . . [Russia faces] the fundamental need of preventing a hostile coalition of the great

Powers of western Europe."

The final judgment of the Milner Group on the Munich surrender could probably be

found in the December 1938 issue of The Round Table, where we read the following:

"The nation as a whole is acutely aware that Anglo-French predominance, resulting from

victory in the great war, is now a matter of history, that the conception of an international

society has foundered because the principle of the rule of law was prostituted to

perpetuate an impossible inequality.... The terms of the Versailles Treaty might have been

upheld for some time longer by the consistent use of military power—notably when

Germany remilitarized the Rhineland zone—but it was illogical to expect a defeated and

humiliated foe to accept inferiority as the immutable concomitant of a nobler world, and

it was immoral to try to build the City of God on lopsided foundations."

As late as the March 1939 issue, The Round Table point of view remained unchanged.

At that time it said: "The policy of appeasement, which Mr. Chamberlain represents and

which he brought to what seemed to be its most triumphant moment at Munich, was the

only possible policy on which the public opinion of the different nations of the

Commonwealth could have been unified. It had already been unanimously approved in

general terms at the Imperial Conference of 1937."

The German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939 marked the turning

point for the Milner Croup, but not for the Chamberlain group. In the June 1939 issue,

the leading article of The Round Table was entitled "From Appeasement to Grand

Alliance." Without expressing any regrets about the past, which it regarded as embodying

the only possible policy, it rejected appeasement in the future. It demanded a "grand

alliance" of Poland, Rumania, France, Britain, and others. Only one sentence referred to

Russia; it said: "Negotiations to include Soviet Russia in the system are continuing."

Most of the article justified the previous policy as inevitable in a world of sovereign

states. Until federation abolishes sovereignty and creates a true world government

amenable to public opinion, the nations will continue to live in anarchy, whatever

their contractual obligations may be; and under conditions of anarchy it is power

and not public opinion that counts.... The fundamental, though not the only, explanation

of the tragic history of the last eight years is to be found in the failure of the English-

speaking democracies to realize that they could prevent aggression only by unity and by

being strongly armed enough to resist it wherever it was attempted."

This point of view had been expressed earlier, in the House of Lords, by Lothian and

Astor. On 12 April 1939, the former said:

“One of Herr Hitler's great advantages has been that, for very long, what he sought a

great many people all over the world felt was not unreasonable, whatever they may have

thought of his methods. But that justification has completely and absolutely disappeared

in the last three months. It began to disappear in my mind at the Godesberg Conference....

I think the right answer to the situation is what Mr. Churchill has advocated elsewhere, a

grand alliance of all those nations whose interest is paramountly concerned with the

maintenance of their own status-quo. But in my view if you are going to do that you have

got to have a grand alliance which will function not only in the West of Europe but also

in the East. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Snell has just said that in that Eastern

alliance Russia may be absolutely vital.... Nobody will suspect me of any ideological

sympathy with Russia or Communism. I have even less ideological sympathy with Soviet

Russia than I had with the Czarist Russia. But in resisting aggression it is power alone

that counts.”

He then went on to advocate national service and was vigorously supported by Lord

Astor, both in regard to this and in regard to the necessity of bringing Russia into the

"grand alliance."

From this point onward, the course of the Milner Group was more rigid against

Germany. This appeared chiefly as an increased emphasis on rearmament and national

service, policies which the Group had been supporting for a long time. Unlike the

Chamberlain group, they learned a lesson from the events of 15 March 1939. It would be

a mistake, however, to believe that they were determined to resist any further acquisition

of territory or economic advantage by Germany. Not at all. They would undoubtedly

have been willing to allow frontier rectifications in the Polish Corridor or elsewhere in

favor of Germany, if these were accomplished by a real process of negotiation and

included areas inhabited by Germans, and if the economic interests of Poland, such as her

trade outlet to the Baltic, were protected. In this the Milner Group were still motivated by

ideas of fairness and justice and by a desire to avoid a war. The chief changes were two:

(1) they now felt, as they (in contrast to Chamberlain's group) had long suspected, that

peace could be preserved better by strength than by weakness; and (2) they now felt that

Hitler would not stop at any point based only on justice but was seeking world

domination. The short-run goal of the Milner Group still remained a Continent dominated

by Hitler between an Oceanic Bloc on the west and the Soviet Union on the east. That

they assumed such a solution could keep the peace, even on a short-term basis, shows the

fundamental naivete of the Milner Group. The important point is that this view did not

prohibit any modification of the Polish frontiers;, not did it require any airtight

understanding with the Soviet Union. It did involve an immediate rearming of Britain and

a determination to stop Hitler if he moved by force again. Of these three points, the first

two were shared with the Chamberlain group; the third was not. The difference rested on

the fact that the Chamberlain group hoped to permit Britain to escape from the necessity

of fighting Germany by getting Russia to fight Germany. The Chamberlain group did not

share the Milner Group's naive belief in the possibility of three great power blocs

standing side by side in peace. Lacking that belief, they preferred a German-Russian war

to a British-German war. And, having that preference, they differed from the Milner

Group in their willingness to accept the partition of Poland by Germany. The Milner

Group would have yielded parts of Poland to Germany if done by fair negotiation. The

Chamberlain group was quite prepared to liquidate Poland entirely, if it could be

presented to the British people in terms which they would accept without demanding war.

Here again appeared the difference we have already mentioned between the Milner

Group and Lloyd George in 1918 and between the Group and Baldwin in 1923, namely

that the Milner Group tended to neglect the electoral considerations so important to a

party politician. In 1939 Chamberlain was primarily interested in building up to a

victorious electoral campaign for November, and, as Sir Horace Wilson told German

Special Representative Wohl in June, "it was all one to the Government whether the

elections were held under the cry 'Be Ready for a Coming War' or under a cry 'A Lasting

Understanding with Germany.'"

These distinctions between the point of view of the Milner Group and that of the

Chamberlain group are very subtle and have nothing in common with the generally

accepted idea of a contrast between appeasement and resistance. There were still

appeasers to be found, chiefly in those ranks of the Conservative Party most remote from

the Milner Group; British public opinion was quite clearly committed to resistance after

March 1939. The two government groups between these, with the Chamberlain group

closer to the former and the Milner Group closer to the latter. It is a complete error to say,

as most students of the period have said, that before 15 March the government was

solidly appeasement and afterwards solidly resistant. The Chamberlain group, after 17

March 1939, was just as partial to appeasement as before, perhaps more so, but it had to

adopt a pretense of resistance to satisfy public opinion and keep a way open to wage the

November election on either side of the issue. The Milner Group was anti-appeasement

after March, but in a limited way that did not involve any commitment to defend the

territorial integrity of Poland or to ally with Russia.

This complicated situation is made more so by the fact that the Milner Group itself

was disintegrating. Some members, chiefly in the second circle, like Hoare or Simon,

continued as wholehearted, if secret, appeasers and became closer to Chamberlain.

Halifax, who did not have to run for office, could speak his mind more honestly and

probably had a more honest mind. He was closer to the Milner Croup, although he

continued to cooperate so closely with Chamberlain that he undoubtedly lost the prime

minister's post in May 1940 as a result. Amery, closer than Halifax to the inner core of

the Group, was also more of a resister and by the middle of 1939 was finished with

appeasement. Lothian was in a position between Halifax and Amery.

The point of view of the inner core can be found, as usual, in the pages of The Round

Table. In the issue of September 1939, the leading article confessed that Hitler's aim was

mastery of the world. It continued: "In this light, any further accretion of German

strength—for instance through control of Danzig, which is the key to subjection of all

Poland—appears as a retreat from the ramparts of the British Commonwealth itself.

Perhaps our slowness to realize these facts, or at least to act accordingly in building an

impregnable defence against aggression in earlier years, accounts for our present

troubles." For the Milner Group, this constitutes a magnificent confession of culpability.

In the December 1939 issue of The Round Table, the whole tone has reverted to that of

1911-1918. Gone is the idea that modern Germany was the creation of the United States

and Britain or that Nazism was merely a temporary and insignificant aberration resulting

from Versailles. Instead the issue is "Commonwealth or Weltreich?" Nazism "is only

Prussianism in more brutal shape." It quotes Lord Lothian's speech of 25 October 1939,

made in New York, that "The establishment of a true reign of law between nations is the

only remedy for war." And we are told once again that such a reign of law must be sought

in federation. In the same issue, the whole of Lothian's speech was reprinted as a

"document." In the March 1940 issue, The Round Table harked back even further than

1914. It quoted an extensive passage from Pericles's funeral oration in a leading article

entitled "The Issue," and added: "That also is our creed, but it is not Hitler's."

The same point of view of the Group is reflected in other places. On 16 March 1939,

in the Commons, when Chamberlain was still defending the appeasement policy and

refusing to criticize Germany's policy of aggression, Lady Astor cried out to him, "Will

the Prime Minister lose no time in letting the German Government know with what

horror the whole of this country regards Germany's action?"

The Prime Minister did not answer, but a Conservative Member, Major Vyvyan

Adams, hurled at the lady the remark, "You caused it yourself."

Major Adams was not a man to be lightly dismissed. A graduate of Haileybury and

Cambridge, past president of the Cambridge Union, member of the Inner Temple Bar, an

executive of the League of Nations Union, and a vice-president of Lord Davies's New

Commonwealth Society, he was not a man who did not know what was going on. He

subsequently published two books against appeasement under the pseudonym

"Watchman."

Most of the members of the inner core of the Group who took any public stand on

these issues refused to rake over the dead embers of past policy and devoted themselves

to a program of preparedness and national service. The names of Amery, Grigg, Lothian,

and The Times became inseparably associated with the campaign for conscription, which

ultimately resulted in the National Service Act of 26 April 1939. The more aloof and

more conciliatory point of view of Halifax can be seen in his speech of 9 June in the

House of Lords and the famous speech of 29 June before the Royal Institute of

International Affairs. The lingering overtones of appeasement in the former resulted in a

spirited attack by Lord Davies, while Arthur Salter, who had earlier been plumping for a

Ministry of All the Talents with Halifax as Premier, by the middle of the year was

begging him, at All Souls, to meet Stalin face to face in order to get an alliance.(17)

The events of 1939 do not require our extended attention here, although they have

never yet been narrated in any adequate fashion. The German seizure of Bohemia and

Moravia was not much of a surprise to either the Milner or Chamberlain groups; both

accepted it, but the former tried to use it as a propaganda device to help get conscription,

while the latter soon discovered that, whatever their real thoughts, they must publicly

condemn it in order to satisfy the outraged moral feelings of the British electorate. It is

this which explains the change in tone between Chamberlain's speech of 15 March in

Commons and his speech of 17 March in Birmingham. The former was what he thought;

the latter was what he thought the voters warred.

The unilateral guarantee to Poland given by Chamberlain on 31 March 1939 was also

a reflection of what he believed the voters wanted. He had no intention of ever fulfilling

the guarantee if it could possibly be evaded and, for this reason, refused the Polish

requests for a small rearmament loan and to open immediate staff discussions to

implement the guarantee. The Milner Group, less susceptible to public opinion, did not

want the guarantee to Poland at all. As a result, the guarantee was worded to cover Polish

"independence" and not her "territorial integrity." This was interpreted by the leading

article of The Times for 1 April to leave the way open to territorial revision without

revoking the guarantee. This interpretation was accepted by Chamberlain in Commons on

3 April. Apparently the government believed that it was making no real commitment

because, if war broke out in eastern Europe, British public opinion would force the

government to declare war on Germany, no matter what the government itself wanted,

and regardless whether the guarantee existed or not. On the other hand, a guarantee to

Poland might deter Hitler from precipitating a war and give the government time to

persuade the Polish government to yield the Corridor to Germany. If the Poles could not

be persuaded, or if Germany marched, the fat was in the fire anyway; if the Poles could

be persuaded to yield, the guarantee was so worded that Britain could not act under it to

prevent such yielding. This was to block any possibility that British public opinion might

refuse to accept a Polish Munich. That this line of thought was not far distant from

British government circles is indicated by a Reuters news dispatch released on the same

day that Chamberlain gave the guarantee to Poland. This dispatch indicated that, under

cover of the guarantee, Britain would put pressure on Poland to make substantial

concessions to Hitler through negotiations. According to Hugh Dalton, Labour M.P.,

speaking in Commons on 3 April, this dispatch was inspired by the government and was

issued through either the Foreign Office, Sir Horace Wilson, John Simon, or Samuel

Hoare. Three of these four were of the Milner Group, the fourth being the personal agent

of Chamberlain. Dalton's charge was not denied by any government spokesman, Hoare

contenting himself with a request to Dalton "to justify that statement." Another M.P. of

Churchill's group suggested that Geoffrey Dawson was the source, but Dalton rejected

this.

It is quite clear that neither the Chamberlain group nor the Milner Group wanted an

alliance with the Soviet Union to stop Hitler in 1939, and that the negotiations were not

sincere or vigorously pursued. The Milner Group was not so opposed to such an

agreement as the Chamberlain group. Both were committed to the four-power pact. In the

case of the Chamberlain group, this pact could easily have developed into an anti-Russian

alliance, but in the case of the Milner Group it was regarded merely as a link between the

Oceanic Bloc and a Germanic Mitteleuropa. Both groups hated and despised the Soviet

Union, but the Milner Group did not fear it as the Chamberlain group did. This fear was

based on the Marxist threat to the British economic system, and the Milner Croup was not

wedded nearly as closely to that system as Chamberlain and his friends. The Toynbee-

Milner tradition, however weak it had become by 1939, was enough to prevent the two

groups from seeing eye to eye on this issue.

The efforts of the Chamberlain group to continue the policy of appeasement by

making economic and other concessions to Germany and their efforts to get Hitler

to agree to a four-power pact form one of the most shameful episodes in the history

of recent British diplomacy. These negotiations were chiefly conducted through Sir

Horace Wilson and consisted chiefly of offers of colonial bribes and other concessions to

Germany. These offers were either rejected or ignored by the Nazis.

One of these offers revolved around a semi-official economic agreement under

which British and German industrialists would form cartel agreements in all fields

to fix prices of their products and divide up the world's market. The Milner Group

apparently objected to this on the grounds that it was aimed, or could be aimed, at

the United States. Nevertheless, the agreements continued; a master agreement,

negotiated at Dusseldorf between representatives of British and German industry, was

signed in London on 16 March 1939. A British government mission to Berlin to help

Germany exploit the newly acquired areas of eastern Europe was postponed the same day

because of the strength of public feeling against Germany. As soon as this had died

down, secret efforts were made through R. S. Hudson, secretary to the Department of

Overseas Trade, to negotiate with Helmuth Wholthat, Reich Commissioner for the Four

Year Plan, who was in London to negotiate an international whaling agreement. Although

Wholthat had no powers, he listened to Hudson and later to Sir Horace Wilson, but

refused to discuss the matter with Chamberlain. Wilson offered: (1) a nonaggression pact

with Germany; (2) a delimitation of spheres among the Great Powers; (3) colonial

concessions in Africa along the lines previously mentioned; (4) an economic agreement.

These conversations, reported to Berlin by Ambassador Dirksen in a dispatch of 21 July

1939, would have involved giving Germany a free hand in eastern Europe and bringing

her into collision with Russia. One sentence of Dirksen's says: "Sir Horace Wilson

definitely told Herr Wohlthat that the conclusion of a non-aggression pact would enable

Britain to rid herself of her commitments vis-a-vis Poland." In another report, three days

later, Dirksen said: "Public opinion is so inflamed, and the warmongers and intriguers are

so much in the ascendancy, that if these plans of negotiations with Germany were to

become public they would immediately be torpedoed by Churchill and other incendiaries

with the cry 'No second Munich!'"

The truth of this statement was seen when news of the Hudson-Wohlthat

conversations did leak out and resulted in a violent controversy in the House of

Commons, in which the Speaker of the House repeatedly broke off the debate to protect

the government. According to Press Adviser Hesse in the German Embassy in London,

the leak was made by the French Embassy to force a break in the negotiations. The

negotiations, however, were already bogging down because of the refusal of the Germans

to become very interested in them. Hitler and Ribbentrop by this time despised the British

so thoroughly that they paid no attention to them at all, and the German Ambassador in

London found it impossible to reach Ribbentrop, his official superior, either by dispatch

or personally. Chamberlain, however, in his eagerness to make economic concessions to

Germany, gave to Hitler £6 million in Czechoslovak gold in the Bank of England, and

kept Lord Runciman busy training to be chief economic negotiator in the great agreement

which he envisaged. On 29 July 1939, Kordt, the German charge d'affaires in London,

had a long talk with Charles Roden Buxton, brother of the Labour Peer Lord Noel-

Buxton, about the terms of this agreement, which was to be patterned on the agreement of

1907 between Britain and Russia. Buxton insisted that his visit was quite unofficial, but

Kordt was inclined to believe that his visit was a feeler from the Chamberlain group. In

view of the close parallel between Buxton's views and Chamberlain's, this seems very

likely. This was corroborated when Sir Horace Wilson repeated these views in a highly

secret conversation with Dirksen at Wilson's home from 4 to 6 p.m. on 3 August 1939.

Dirksen's minute of the same day shows that Wilson's aims had not changed. He wanted a

four-power pact, a free hand for Germany in eastern Europe, a colonial agreement, an

economic agreement, etc. The memorandum reads, in part: "After recapitulating his

conversation with Wohlthat, Sir Horace Wilson expatiated at length on the great risk

Chamberlain would incur by starting confidential negotiations with the German

Government. If anything about them were to leak out there would be a grand scandal, and

Chamberlain would probably be forced to resign." Dirksen did not see how any binding

agreement could be reached under conditions such as this; "for example, owing to

Hudson's indiscretion, another visit of Herr Wohlthat to London was out of the question."

To this, Wilson suggested that"the two emissaries could meet in Switzerland or

elsewhere." The political portions of this conversation were largely repeated in an

interview that Dirksen had with Lord Halifax on 9 August 1939.(18)

It was not possible to conceal these activities completely from the public, and, indeed,

government spokesmen referred to them occasionally in trial balloons. On 3 May,

Chamberlain suggested an Anglo-German nonaggression pact, although only five days

earlier Hitler had denounced the Anglo-German naval agreement of 1935 and the Polish-

German nonaggression pact of 1934. As late as 28 August, Sir Nevile Henderson offered

Germany a British alliance if she were successful in direct negotiations with the

Poles.(19) This, however, was a personal statement and probably went further than

Halifax would have been willing to go by 1939. Halifax apparently had little faith in

Chamberlain's ability to obtain any settlement with the Germans. If, by means of another

Munich, he could have obtained a German-Polish settlement that would satisfy Germany

and avoid war, he would have taken it. It was the hope of such an agreement that

prevented him from making any real agreement with Russia, for it was, apparently, the

expectation of the British government that if the Germans could get the Polish Corridor

by negotiation, they could then drive into Russia across the Baltic States. For this reason,

in the negotiations with Russia, Halifax refused any multilateral pact against aggression,

any guarantee of the Baltic States, or any tripartite guarantee of Poland. Instead, he

sought to get nothing more than a unilateral Russian guarantee to Poland to match the

British guarantee to the same country. This was much too dangerous for Russia to

swallow, since it would leave her with a commitment which could lead to war and with

no promise of British aid to her if she were attacked directly, after a Polish settlement, or

indirectly across the Baltic States. Only after the German Soviet Nonaggression Pact of

21 August 1939 did Halifax implement the unilateral guarantee to Poland with a more

formal mutual assistance pact between Britain and Poland. This was done to warn Hitler

that an attack on Poland would bring Britain into the war under pressure of British public

opinion. Hitler, as usual, paid no attention to Britain. Even after the German attack on

Poland, the British government was reluctant to fulfill this pact and spent almost three

days asking the Germans to return to negotiation. Even after the British were forced to

declare war on Germany, they made no effort to fight, contenting themselves with

dropping leaflets on Germany. We now know that the German generals had moved so

much of their forces to the east that they were gravely worried at the effects which might

follow an Allied attack on western Germany or even an aerial bombing of the Ruhr.

In these events of 1939, the Milner Group took little part. They must have known of

the negotiations with Germany and probably did not disapprove of them, but they had

little faith in them and by the early summer of 1939 were probably convinced that war

with Germany was inevitable in the long run. In this view Halifax probably shared, but

other former members of the Group, such as Hoare and Simon, by now were completely

in the Chamberlain group and can no longer be regarded as members of the Milner

Group. From June 1939 to May 1940, the fissure between the Milner Group and the

Chamberlain government became wider.

From the outbreak of war, the Milner Group were determined to fight the war

against Germany; the Chamberlain group, on the other hand, were very reluctant to

fight Germany, preferring to combine a declared but un-fought war with Germany

with a fought but undeclared war with Russia. The excuse for this last arose from the

Russian pressure on Finland for bases to resist a future German attack. The Russian

attack on Finland began on the last day of November 1939; by 27 December, the British

and French were putting pressure on Sweden to join them in action to support the Finns.

In these notes, which have been published by the Swedish Foreign Ministry, the Western

Powers stated that they intended to send men, equipment, and money to Finland. By

February 1940, the Western Powers had plans for a force of 30,000 to 40,000 men for

Finland and were putting pressure on Sweden to allow passage for this force across

Scandinavia. By 2 March 1940, the British had a force of 100,000 men ready and

informed the Swedish and Norwegian governments that "the force with its full equipment

is available and could sail at short notice." They invited the Scandinavian countries to

receive Allied missions to make all the necessary preparations for the transit. The note to

Norway, in an additional passage, said that forces would be sent to the Norwegian ports

within four days of receiving permission, and the transit itself could begin on 20 March.

On 12 March the Allies sent to the Scandinavian countries a formal request for right of

transit. It was refused. Before anything further could be done, Finland collapsed and

made peace with Russia. On 5 April, Halifax sent a very threatening note to the

Scandinavian countries. It said in part:

“. . . considering, in consultation with the French Government, the circumstances

attending the termination of the war between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and

Finland and the attitude adopted by the Swedish Government at that time . . . they feel

therefore that the time has come to notify the Swedish Government frankly of certain

vital interests and requirements which the Allied Governments intend to assert and

defend by whatever measure they may think necessary. The vital interests and the

requirements which the Allied Governments wish to bring to the notice of the Swedish

Government are the following: (a) The Allied Governments cannot acquiesce in any

further attack on Finland by either the Soviet or German Governments. In the event

therefore, of such an attack taking place, any refusal by the Swedish Government to

facilitate the efforts of the Allied Governments to come to the assistance of Finland in

whatever manner they may think fit, and still more any attempt to prevent such assistance

would be considered by the Allied Governments as endangering their vital interests.... (c)

Any attempt by the Soviet Government to obtain from Norway a footing on the Atlantic

sea-board would be contrary to the vital interests of the Allied Governments."

The Swedish Foreign Minister expressed his government's astonishment at this note

and its determination to decide such questions for itself and to preserve Sweden's

neutrality in the future as it had been preserved in the past.(20)

It is not clear what was the attitude of the Milner Group toward this effort to open

active hostilities against the Soviet Union while remaining technically in a state of war

with Germany. Halifax was still at the Foreign Office and apparently actively concerned

in this project. The Times was wholeheartedly in favor of the plan. On 5 March, for

example, it said of the Finnish war: "It is becoming clearer every day that this war is no

side issue. Finland is defending more than the cause of liberty and more than her own

soil.... Our own cause is being buttressed by her resistance to the evil of tyranny.... Our

interest is clear and there is a moral issue involved as well as the material. The whole

sentiment of this country demands that Finland should not be allowed to fall."

The Round Table, in the only issue which appeared during the Finnish troubles, had a

propagandist article on "The Civilization of Finland." It called Finland "one of the most

democratic nations, on any definition, in all Europe." The rest of the article was a paean

of praise for the kind and magnanimous conduct of the Finnish government in every

crisis of its history from 1917, but nothing was said about the Finnish war, nor was there

any mention of Allied aid.

During this period the Milner Group became increasingly impatient with the

Chamberlain group. This was clear from the June 1940 issue of The Round Table, which

criticized the Cabinet reshuffle of April as evoking"almost universal derision." It also

criticized Chamberlain's failure to include able members of his own party in the Cabinet.

This may have been a reference to Amery's continued exclusion. The article said: "This

lack of imagination and courage could be seen in almost every aspect of the Chamberlain

Government's conduct of the war." It excluded Simon and Hoare as possible prime

ministers, on the ground that they were too close to Chamberlain. It was probably

thinking of Halifax as prime minister, but, when the time came, others thought him, also,

to be too closely associated with appeasement. On the crucial day, 8 May 1940, the

Group was badly split. In fact, on the division that preceded Chamberlain's resignation,

Lady Astor voted against the government, while her brother-in-law, John Jacob Astor,

voted with the government. The debate was one of the most bitter in recent history and

reached its high point when Amery cried out to the Government benches the words of

Cromwell: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say,

and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" In the ensuing division, the

whips were on with a vengeance, but the government's majority was only 81, more than a

hundred Conservatives abstaining from voting. Most of the Milner Group members, since

they held offices in the government, had to vote with it. Of the inner core, only Amery

and Lady Astor broke away. In the majority, still supporting Chamberlain, were J. J.

Astor, Grigg, Hoare, Malcolm MacDonald, Salter, Simon' and Somervell. But the fight

had been too bitter. Chamberlain was replaced by Churchill, and Amery came to office

(as Secretary of State for India). Once again the Milner Group and the government were

united on the issues. Both, from 8 May 1940, had only one aim: to win the war with

Germany.

Chapter 13—The Second World War, 1939-1945

The Milner Group played a considerable role in the Second World War, not scattered

throughout the various agencies associated with the great struggle, but concentrated in

four or five chief fiefs. Among these were: (1) the Research and Intelligence Department

of the Foreign Office; (2) the British Embassy in Washington; (3) the Ministry of

Information; and (4) those agencies concerned with economic mobilization and economic

reconstruction. Considering the age of most of the inner core of the Milner Group during

the Second World War (the youngest, Lothian, was 57 in 1939; Hichens was 65; Brand

was 61; Dawson was 65; and Curtis was 67), they accomplished a great deal. Unable, in

most cases, to serve themselves, except in an advisory capacity, they filled their chief

fiefs with their younger associates. In most cases, these were recruited from All Souls,

but occasionally they were obtained elsewhere.

We have already indicated how the Research and Press Department of Chatham

House was made into the Research and Intelligence Department bf the Foreign Office, at

first unofficially and then officially. This was dominated by Lionel Curtis and Arnold

Toynbee, the latter as director of the department for the whole period 1939-1946. Others

who were associated with this activity were B. H. Sumner (Warden of All Souls), C. A.

Macartney, A. E. Zimmern, J. W. Wheeler-Bennett, and most of the paid staff from

Chatham House. Zimmern was deputy director in 1943-1945, and Wheeler-Bennett was

deputy director in 1945.

Of even greater significance was the gathering of Milner Group members and their

recruits in Washington. The Group had based most of their foreign policy since 1920 on

the hope of "closer union" with the United States, and they realized that American

intervention in the war was absolutely essential to insure a British victory. Accordingly,

more than a dozen members of the Group were in Washington during the war, seeking to

carry on this policy.

Lord Lothian was named Ambassador to the United States as soon as the war began. It

was felt that his long acquaintance with the country and the personal connections built up

during almost fifteen years as Rhodes Secretary more than counteracted his intimate

relationship with the notorious Cliveden Set, especially as this latter relationship was

unknown to most Americans. On Lothian's unexpected and lamented death in December

1940, the position in Washington was considered to be of such crucial importance that

Lord Halifax was shifted to the vacant post from the Foreign Office. He retained his

position in the War Cabinet. Thus the post at Washington was raised to a position which

no foreign legation had ever had before. Lord Halifax continued to hold the post until

1946, a year after the war was actually finished. During most of the period, he was

surrounded by members of the Milner Group, chiefly Fellows of All Souls, so that it was

almost impossible to turn around in the British Embassy without running into a member

of that select academic circle. The most important of these were Lord Brand, Harold

Butler, and Arthur Salter.

Lord Brand was in America from March 1941 to May 1946, as head of the British

Food Mission for three years and as representative of the British Treasury for two years.

He was also chairman of the British Supply Council in North America in 1942 and again

in 1945-1946. He did not resign his position as managing director of Lazard Brothers

until May 1944. Closely associated with Brand was his protege, Adam D. Marris, son of

Sir William Marris of the Kindergarten, who was employed at Lazard Brothers from

1929 to the outbreak of war, then spent a brief period in the Ministry of Economic

Warfare in London. In 1940 he came to the Embassy in Washington, originally as First

Secretary, later as Counselor. After the war he was, for six months, secretary general of

the Emergency Economic Committee for Europe. In February 1946 he returned to Lazard

Brothers.

Harold Butler (Sir Harold since 1946) came to Washington in 1942 with the rank of

minister. He stayed for four years, being chiefly concerned with public relations. Sir

Arthur Salter, who married a Washington lady in 1940, came to America in 1941 as head

of the British Merchant Shipping Mission. He stayed until UNRRA was set up early in

1944, when he joined the new organization as Senior Deputy Director General. A year

later he joined the Cabinet as Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir Arthur was well

qualified as a shipping expert, having been engaged intermittently in government

shipping problems since he left Brasenose College in 1904. His close personal relations

with Lord Halifax went back to an even earlier period, when they both were students at

Oxford.

Among the lesser persons who came to Washington during the war, we should

mention four members of All Souls: I. Berlin, J. G. Foster, R. M. Makins, and J. H. A.

Sparrow. Isaiah Berlin, one of the newer recruits to the Milner Group, made his way into

this select circle by winning a Fellowship to All Souls in 1932, the year after he

graduated from Corpus Christi. Through this connection, he became a close friend of Mr.

and Mrs. H. A. L. Fisher and has been a Fellow and Tutor of New College since 1938. In

1941 he came to New York to work with J. W. Wheeler-Bennett in the Ministry of

Information's American branch but stayed for no more than a year. In 1942 he became

First Secretary in the Embassy in Washington, a position but recently vacated by Adam

Marris. After the war he went for a brief period of four months to a similar post in the

British Embassy in Moscow. In 1949 he came to Harvard University as visiting lecturer

on Russia.

John Galway Foster is another recent recruit to the Milner Group and, like Berlin, won

his entry by way of All Souls (1924). He is also a graduate of New College and from

1935 to 1939 was lecturer in Private International Law at Oxford. In 1939 he went to the

Embassy in Washington as First Secretary and stayed for almost five years. In 1944 he

was commissioned a brigadier on special service and the following year gained

considerable prestige by winning a Conservative seat in Parliament in the face of the

Labour tidal wave. He is still a Fellow of All Souls, after twenty-five years, and this fact

alone would indicate he has a position as an important member of the Group.

Roger Mellor Makins, son of a Conservative M.P., was elected a Fellow of All Souls

immediately after graduation from Christ Church in 1925. He joined the diplomatic

service in 1928 and spent time in London, Washington, and (briefly) Oslo in the next

nine years. In 1937 he became assistant adviser on League of Nations affairs to the

Foreign Office. He was secretary to the British delegation to the Evian Conference on

Refugees from Germany in 1938 and became secretary to the Intergovernmental

Committee on Refugees set up at that meeting. In 1939 he returned to the Foreign Office

as adviser on League of Nations Affairs but soon became a First Secretary; he was

adviser to the British delegation at the New York meeting of the International Labour

Conference in 1941 and the following year joined the staff of the Resident Minister in

West Africa. When the Allied Headquarters in the Mediterranean area was set up in 1943,

he joined the staff of the Resident British Minister with that unit. At the end of the war, in

1945, he went to the Embassy in Washington with the rank of Minister. In this post he

had the inestimable advantage that his wife, whom he married in 1934, was the daughter

of the late Dwight F. Davis, Secretary of War in the Hoover Administration. During this

period Makins played an important role at various international organizations. He was the

United Kingdom representative on the Interim Commission for Food and Agriculture of

the United Nations in 1945; he was adviser to the United Kingdom delegation to the first

FAO Conference at Quebec the same year; he was a delegate to the Atlantic City meeting

of UNRRA in the following year. In 1947 he left Washington to become Assistant Under

Secretary of State in the Foreign Office in London.

Another important member of All Souls who appeared briefly in Washington during

the war was John H. A. Sparrow. Graduated from Winchester School and New College

by 1927, he became an Eldon Law Scholar and a Fellow of All Souls in 1929. He is still a

Fellow of the latter after twenty years. Commissioned in the Coldstream Guards in 1940,

he was in Washington on a confidential military mission during most of 1940 and was

attached to the War Office from 1942 to the end of the war.

Certain other members of the Group were to be found in the United States during the

period under discussion. We have already mentioned the services rendered to the

Ministry of Information by J. W. Wheeler-Bennett in New York from 1939 to 1944.

Robert J. Stopford was Financial Counselor to the British Embassy in 1940-1943. We

should also mention that F. W. Eggleston, chief Australian member of the Group, was

Australian Minister in Washington from 1944 to 1946. And the story of the Milner

Group's activities in Washington would not be complete without at least mentioning

Percy E. Corbett

Percy Corbett of Prince Edward Island, Canada, took a M.A. degree at McGill

University in 1915 and went to Balliol as a Rhodes Scholar. He was a Fellow of All Souls

in 1920-1928 and a member of the staff of the League of Nations in 1920-1924. He was

Professor of Roman Law at McGill University from 1924 to 1937 and had been Professor

of Government and Jurisprudence and chairman of the Department of Political Science at

Yale since 1944. He has always been close to the Milner Group, participating in many of

their Canadian activities, such as the Canadian Royal Institute of International Affairs,

the unofficial British Commonwealth relations conferences, and the Institute of Pacific

Relations. He was chairman of the Pacific Council of the last organization in 1942.

During the war he spent much of his time in the United States, especially in Washington,

engaged in lobbying activities for the British Embassy, chiefly in Rhodes Scholarship and

academic circles but also in government agencies. Since the war ended, he has obtained,

by his position at Yale, a place of considerable influence, especially since Yale began, in

1948, to publish its new quarterly review called World Politics. On this review, Professor

Corbett is one of the more influential members. At present he must be numbered among

the three most important Canadian members of the Milner Group, the other two being

Vincent Massey and George Parkin Glazebrook.

In view of the emphasis which the Milner Group has always placed on publicity and

the need to control the chief avenues by which the general public obtains information on

public affairs, it is not surprising to find that the Ministry of Information was one of the

fiefs of the Group from its establishment in 1939.

At the outbreak of war, H. A. L. Fisher had been Governor of the BBC for four years.

It was probably as a result of this connection that L. F. Rushbrook Williams, whom we

have already mentioned in connection with Indian affairs and as a member of All Souls

since 1914, became Eastern Service Director of the BBC. He was later adviser on Middle

East affairs to the Ministry of Information but left this, in 1944, to become an editor of

The Times. Edward Griggs, now Lord Altrincham, was Parliamentary Secretary to the

Ministry of Information from its creation to the Cabinet revision of 1940, when he shifted

to the War Office. J. W. Wheeler-Bennett and Isaiah Berlin were with the New York

office of the Ministry of Information, as we have seen, the former throughout the war and

the latter in 1941-1942. H. V. Hodson, Fellow of All Souls and probably the most

important of the newer recruits to the Milner Group, was Director of the Empire Division

of the Ministry of Information from its creation in 1939 until he went to India as Reforms

Commissioner in 1941-1942. And finally, Cyril John Radcliffe (Sir Cyril after 1944), a

graduate of New College in 1922 and a Fellow of All Souls for fifteen years (1922-1937),

son-in-law of Lord Charnwood since 1939, was in the Ministry of Information for the

whole period of the war, more than four years of it as Director General of the whole

organization.(1)

In addition to these three great fiefs (the Research and Intelligence Department of the

Foreign Office, the Embassy in Washington, and the Ministry of Information), the Milner

Group exercised considerable influence in those branches of the administration concerned

with emergency economic regulations, although here the highest positions were reserved

to those members of the Cecil Bloc closest to the Milner Group. Oliver Lyttelton, whose

mother was a member of the Group, was Controller of Non-Ferrous Metals in 1939-1940,

was President of the Board of Trade in 1940-1941, and was Minister of Production in

1942-1945. Lord Wolmer (Lord Selborne since 1942) was Director of Cement in the

Ministry of Works in 1940-1942 and Minister of Economic Warfare in 1942-1945. In this

connection, it should be mentioned that the Milner Group had developed certain

economic interests in non-ferrous metals and in cement in the period of the 1920s and

1930s. The former developed both from their interest in colonial mines, which were the

source of the ores, and from their control of electrical utilities, wl1ich supplied much of

the power needed to reduce these ores. The center of these interests was to be found, on

the one hand, in the Rhodes Trust and the economic holdings of the associates of Milner

and Rhodes like R. S. Holland, Abe Bailey, P. L. Gell, etc., and, on the other hand, in the

utility interests of Lazard Brothers and of the Hoare family. The ramifications of these

interests are too complicated, and too well concealed, to be described in any detail here,

but we might point out that Lord Milner was a director of Rio Tinto, that Dougal

Malcolm was a director of Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines, that Samuel Hoare was

a director of Birmingham Aluminum Casting Company until he took public office, that

the Hoare family had extensive holdings in Associated Tin Mines of Nigeria, in British-

American Tin Corporation, in London Tin Corporation, etc.; that R. S. Holland was an

Anglo-Spanish Construction Company, on British Copper Manufacturers, and on the

British Metal Corporation; that Lyttelton Gell was a director of Huelva Copper and of the

Zinc Corporation; that Oliver Lyttelton was managing director of the British Metal

Corporation and a director of Metallgesellschaft, the German light-metals monopoly. The

chief member of the Group in the cement industry was Lord Meston, who was placed on

many important corporations after his return from India, including the Associated

Portland Cement Manufacturers and the British Portland Cement Manufacturers. The

third Lord Selborne was chairman of the Cement Makers Federation from 1934 to 1940,

resigning to take charge of the government's cement-regulation program.

In lesser posts in these activities, we might mention the following. Charles R. S.

Harris, whom we have already mentioned as an associate of Brand, a Fellow of All Souls

for fifteen years, a leader-writer on The Times for ten years, the authority on Duns Scotus

who wrote a book on Germany's foreign indebtedness for Chatham House, was in the

Ministry of Economic Warfare in 1939-1940. He then spent two years in Iceland for the

Foreign Office, and three years with the War Office, ending up in 1944-1945 as a

member of the Allied Control Commission for Italy. H. V. Hodson was principal assistant

secretary and later head of the Non-Munitions Division of the Ministry of Production

from his return from India to the end of the war (1942-1945). Douglas P. T. Jay, a

graduate of New College in 1930 and a Fellow of All Souls in the next seven years, was

on the staff of The Times and The Economist in the period 1929-1937 and was city editor

of The Daily Herald in 19371941. He was assistant secretary to the Ministry of Supply in

1941-1943 and principal assistant secretary to the Board of Trade in 1943-1945. After the

Labour government came to power in the summer of 1945, he was personal assistant to

the Prime Minister (Clement Attlee) until he became a Labour M.P. in 1946. Richard

Pares, son of the famous authority on Russia, the late Sir Bernard Pares, and son-in-law

of the famous historian Sir Maurice Powicke, was a Fellow of All Souls for twenty-one

years after he graduated from Balliol in 1924. He was a lecturer at New College for

eleven years, 1929-1940 and then was with the Board of Trade for the duration of the

war, 1940-1945. Since the war, he has been Professor of History at Edinburgh. During

most of the war his father, Sir Bernard Pares, lectured in the United States as a pro-

Russian propagandist in the pay of the Ministry of Information. We have already

mentioned the brief period in which Adam Marris worked for the Ministry of Economic

Warfare in 1939-1940.

As the war went on, the Milner Group shifted their attention increasingly to the

subject of postwar planning and reconstruction. Much of this was conducted through

Chatham House. When the war began, Toynbee wrote a letter to the Council of the RIIA,

in which he said: "If we get through the present crisis and are given a further chance to

try and put the world in order, we shall then feel a need to take a broader and deeper view

of our problems than we were inclined to take after the War of 1914-1918.... I believe this

possibility has been in Mr. Lionel Curtis's mind since the time when he first conceived

the idea of the Institute; his Civitas Dei and my Study of History are two reconnaissances

of this historical background to the study of contemporary international affairs." (2) At

the end of 1942 the Group founded a quarterly journal devoted to reconstruction. It was

founded technically under the auspices of the London School of Economics, but the

editor was G. N. Clark, a member of All Souls since 1912 and Chichele Professor of

Economic History from 1931 to 1943. The title of this journal was Agenda, and its

editorial offices were in Chatham House. These tentative plans to dominate the postwar

reconstruction efforts received a rude jolt in August 1945, when the General Election

removed the Conservative government from power and brought to office a Labour

government. The influence of the Group in Labour circles has always been rather slight.

Since this blow, the Milner Group has been in eclipse, and it is not clear what has been

happening.(3) Its control of The Times, of The Round Table, of Chatham House, of the

Rhodes Trust, of All Souls, and of Oxford generally has continued but has been used

without centralized purpose or conviction. Most of the original members of the Group

have retired from active affairs; the newer recruits have not the experience or the

intellectual conviction, or the social contacts, which allowed the older members to wield

such great power. The disasters into which the Group directed British policy in the years

before 1940 are not such as to allow their prestige to continue undiminished. In imperial

affairs, their policies have been largely a failure, with Ireland gone, India divided and

going, Burma drifting away, and even South Africa more distant than at any time since

1910. In foreign policy their actions almost destroyed western civilization, or at least the

European center of it. The Times has lost its influence; The Round Table seems lifeless.

Far worse than this, those parts of Oxford where the Group's influence was strongest have

suffered a disastrous decline. The Montague Burton Professorship of International

Relations, to which Professor Zimmern and later Professor Woodward brought such great

talents, was given in 1948 to a middle-aged spinster, daughter of Sir James Headlam-

Morley, with one published work to her credit. The Chichele Professorship of

International Law and Diplomacy, held with distinction for twenty-five years by

Professor James L. Briefly, was filled in 1947 by a common-law lawyer, a specialist in

the law of real property, who, by his own confession, is largely ignorant of international

law and whose sole published work, written with the collaboration of a specialist on

equity, is a treatise on the Law of Mortgages. These appointments, which gave a shock to

academic circles in the United States, do not allow an outside observer to feel any great

optimism for the future either of the Milner Group or of the great institutions which it has

influenced. It would seem that the great idealistic adventure which began with Toynbee

and Milner in 1875 had slowly ground its way to a finish of bitterness and ashes.

Appendix—A Tentative Roster of the Milner Group

The following lists are tentative in the sense that they are incomplete and erroneous.

The errors are more likely in the attribution of persons to one circle of the Group rather

than another, and are less likely in the attribution to the Group of persons who are not

members at all. For the names given I have sufficient evidence to convince me that they

are members of the Croup, although I would not in many cases feel competent to insist

that the persons concerned knew that they were members of a secret group. The evidence

on which this list is based is derived from documentary evidence, from private

information, and from circumstantial evidence.

Persons are listed in each group on the basis of general impression rather than exact

demarcation, because the distinction between the two is rather vague and varies from

time to time. For example, I know for a fact that Sir Alfred Zimmern and Lord Cecil of

Chelwood attended meetings of the inner circle in the period before 1920, but I have

attributed them to the outer circle because this appears to be the more accurate

designation for the long period since 1920.

Within each list I have placed the names of the various individuals in order of

chronology and of importance. In some cases where I suspected a person of being a

member without having any very convincing evidence, I have enclosed the name in

brackets.

A. The Society of the Elect

Cecil John Rhodes

Nathan Rothschild, Baron Rothschild

Sir Harry Johnston

William T. Stead

Reginald Brett, Viscount Esher

Alfred Milner, Viscount Milner

B. F. Hawksley

Thomas Brassey, Lord Brassey

Edmund Garrett

[Sir Edward Cook]

Alfred Beit

Sir Abe Bailey

Albert Grey, Earl Grey

Archibald Primrose, Earl of Rosebery

Arthur James Balfour

Sir George R. Parkin

Philip Lyttelton Gell

Sir Henry Birchenough

Sir Reginald Sothern Holland

Arthur Lionel Smith

Herbert A. L. Fisher

William Waldegrave Palmer, Earl of Selborne

[Sir Alfred Lyttelton]

Sir Patrick Duncan

Robert Henry Brand, Baron Brand

Philip Kerr, Marquess of Lothian

Lionel Curtis

Geoffrey Dawson

Edward Grigg, Baron Altrincham

Jan C. Smuts

Leopold Amery

Waldorf Astor, Viscount Astor

Nancy Astor, Lady Astor

B. The Association of Helpers

1. The Inner Circle

Sir Patrick Duncan

Robert Henry Brand, Baron Brand

Philip Kerr, Marquess of Lothian

Lionel Curtis

William L. Hichens

Geoffrey Dawson

Edward Grigg, Baron Altrincham

Herbert A. L. Fisher

Leopold Amery

Richard Feetham

Hugh A. Wyndham

Sir Dougal Malcolm

Basil Williams

Basil Kellett Long

Sir Abe Bailey

Jan C. Smuts

Sir William Marris

James S. Meston

Baron Meston

Malcolm Hailey

Baron Hailey

Flora Shaw

Lady Lugard

Sir Reginald Coupland

Waldorf Astor, Viscount Astor

Nancy Astor, Lady Astor

Maurice Hankey, Baron Hankey

Arnold J. Toynbee

Laurence F. Rushbrook Williams

Henry Vincent Hodson

Vincent Todd Harlow

2. The Outer Circle

John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir

Sir Fabian Ware

Sir Alfred Zimmern

Gilbert Murray

Robert Cecil, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood

Sir James W. Headlam-Morley

Frederick J. N. Thesiger, Viscount Chelmsford

Sir Valentine Chirol

Edward F. L. Wood, Earl of Halifax

Sir [James] Arthur Salter

Sir Arthur H. D. R. Steel-Maitland

William G. A. Ormsby-Gore, Baron Harlech

Dame Edith Lyttelton, Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton

Frederick Lugard, Baron Lugard

Sir [Leander] Starr Jameson

Henry W. C. Davis

John A. Simon, Viscount Simon

Samuel J. G. Hoare, Viscount Templewood

Maurice P. A. Hankey, Baron Hankey

Wilson Harris

[Francis Clarke]

William G. S. Adams

[William K. Hancock]

Ernest L. Woodward

Sir Harold Butler

Kenneth N. Bell

Sir Donald B. Somervell

Sir Maurice L. Gwyer

Charles R. S. Harris

Sir Edward R. Peacock

Sir Cyril J. Radcliffe

John W. Wheeler-Bennett

Robert J. Stopford

Robert M. Barrington-Ward

[Kenneth C. Wheare]

Edward H. Carr

Malcolm MacDonald

Godfrey Elton, Baron Elton

Sir Neill Malcolm

Freeman Freeman-Thomas, Viscount Willingdon

Isaiah Berlin

Roger M. Makins

Sir Arthur Willert

Ivison S. Macadam

3. Members in other countries

a. Canada

Arthur J. Glazebrook

Sir George Parkin

Vincent Massey

George P. de T. Glazebrook

Percy Corbett [Sir Joseph Flavelle]

b. United States

George Louis Beer

Frank Aydelotte

Jerome Greene

[Clarence Steit]

c. South Africa

Jan C. Smuts

Sir Patrick Duncan

Sir Abe Bailey

Basil K. Long

Richard Feetham

[Sir James Rose-Innes]

d. Australia

Sir Thomas Bavin

Sir Frederic Eggleston

[Dudley D. Braham]

e. New Zealand

James Allen

William Downie Stewart

Arthur R. Atkinson

f. Germany

Helmuth James von Moltke

Adam von Trott zu Solz

Notes

Chapter 1

1. The sources of this information and a more detailed examination of the organization

and personnel of the Rhodes secret society will be found in Chapter 3 below.

2. On Parkin, see the biography (1929) started by Sir John Willison and finished by

Parkin's son-in-law, William L. Grant. Also see the sketches of both Parkin and Milner in

the Dictionary of National Biography. The debate in the Oxford Union which first

brought Parkin to Milner's attention is mentioned in Herbert Asquith's (Lord Oxford and

Asquith) Memories and Reflections (2 vols., Boston, 1928), 1, 26.

3. The ideas for social service work among the poor and certain other ideas held by

Toynbee and Milner were derived from the teachings of John Ruskin, who first came to

Oxford as a professor during their undergraduate days. The two young men became

ardent disciples of Ruskin and were members of his road-building group in the summer

of 1870. The standard biography of Ruskin was written by a protege of Milner's, Edward

Cook. The same man edited the complete collection of Ruskin's works in thirty-eight

volumes. See Lord Oxford and Asquith, Memories and Reflections (2 vols., Boston,

1928), 1, 48. Cook's sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography was written by

Asquith's intimate friend and biographer, J. A. Spender.

4. The quotation is from Cecil Headlam, ed., The Milner Papers (2 vols., London,

1931-1933), I, 15. There exists no biography of Milner, and all of the works concerned

with his career have been written by members of the Milner Group and conceal more

than they reveal. The most important general sketches of his life are the sketch in the

Dictionary of National Biography, the obituary in The Times (May 1925), and the

obituary in The Round Table (June 1925, XV, 427-430). His own point of view must be

sought in his speeches and essays. Of these, the chief collections are The Nation and the

Empire (Boston, 1913) and Questions of the flour (London, 1923). Unfortunately, the

speeches after 1913 and all the essays which appeared in periodicals are still uncollected.

This neglect of one of the most important figures of the twentieth century is probably

deliberate, part of the policy of secrecy practiced by the Milner Group.

Chapter 2

1. A. C. Johnson, Viscount Halifax (New York, 1941), 54. Inasmuch as Lord Halifax

assisted the author of this biography and gave to him previously unpublished material to

insert in it, we are justified in considering this an "authorized" biography and giving its

statements considerable weight. The author is aware of the existence of the Milner Group

and attributes much of Lord Halifax's spectacular career to his connection with the

Croup.

2. H. H. Henson, Retrospect of an Unimportant Life (2 vols., London, 1942-1943), II,

66.

3. C. Hobhouse, Oxford as It Was and as It Is Today (London, 1939), 18.

4. On the role of Charles Hardinge in foreign policy, see A. L. Kennedy, "Lord

Hardinge of Penshurst," in The Quarterly Review (January 1945), CCLXXXIII, 97-104,

and Charles Hardinge, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penshurst, Old Diplomacy; Reminiscences

(London, 1947). Although not mentioned again in this work, A. I.. Kennedy appears to be

a member of the Milner Group.

5. Lord Ernle, Whippingham to Westminster (London, 1938), 248.

6. Lionel Curtis, Dyarchy (Oxford, 1920), 54.

7. Another exception was "Bron" Lucas (Auberon Herbert, Lord Lucas and Dingwall),

son of Auberon Herbert, the brother of Lord Carnavon. "Bron" went from Balliol to

South Africa as a Times correspondent in the Boer War and lost a leg from overzealous

devotion to the task. A close friend of John Buchan and Raymond Asquith, he became a

Liberal M.P. through the latter's influence but had to go to the Upper l louse in 1905,

when he inherited two titles from his mother's brother. He was subsequently private

secretary to Haldane (1908), Under Secretary for War (1908-1911), Under Secretary for

the Colonies (1911), Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture (1911-1914),

and President of the Board of Agriculture (1914-1915). He thus became a member of the

Cabinet while only thirty-eight years old. He resigned to join the Royal Flying Corps and

was killed in 1916, about the same time as Raymond Asquith. Both of these, had they

lived, would probably have become members of the Milner Group. Asquith was already a

Fellow of All Souls (1901-1916). On "Bron" Lucas, see the autobiographies of Lords

Asquith and Tweedsmuir and the article in the memorial volume to Balliol's dead in the

First World War.

8. On these clubs, see Lord Oxford and Asquith, Memories and Reflections (2 vols.,

Boston, 1928), 1, 311-325.

9. The chief published references to the existence of the Milner Group from the pens

of members will be found in the obituary notes on deceased members in The Round Table

and in the sketches in the Dictionary of National Biography. In the former, see the notes

on Milner, Hickens, Lord Lothian, A. J. Glazebrook, Sir Thomas Bavin, Sir Patrick

Duncan, Sir Abe Bailey, etc. See also the references in the published works of Lionel

Curtis, John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir), John Dove, etc. Quotations to this effect from

John Buchan and from Lord Asquith will be found at the end of Chapter 3 below. The

best published reference to the Milner Group is in M. S. Geen, The Making of the Union

of South Africa (London, 1946), 150-152. The best account originating in the Group itself

is in the article "Twenty-five Years' in The Round Table for September 1935, XV, 653-

659.

Chapter 3

1. This section is based on W. T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John

Rhodes (London, 1902); Sir Francis Wylie's three articles in the American Oxonian

(April 1944), XXXI, 65-69; July 1944), XXXI, 129-138; and January 1945), XXXII, 1-

11; F. Aydelotte, The American Rhodes Scholars (Princeton, 1946); and the biographies

and memoirs of the men mentioned.

2. No such claim is made by Sir Francis Wylie, from whose articles Dr. Aydelotte

derived most of the material for his first chapter. Sir Francis merely mentions the secret

society in connection with the early wills and then drops the whole subject.

3. W. T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes (London, 1902),

110-111. The statement of 1896 to Brett is in Journals and Letters of Reginald, Viscount

Esher (4 vols., London, 1934-1938), 1, 197.

4. Dr. Aydelotte quotes at length from a letter which Rhodes sent to Stead in 1891, but

he does not quote the statements which Stead made about it when he published it in 1902.

In this letter he spoke about the project of federal union with the United States and said,

"The only feasible [way] to carry this idea out is a secret one (society) gradually

absorbing the wealth of the world to be devoted to such an object." At the end of this

document Stead wrote: "Mr. Rhodes has never to my knowledge said a word nor has he

ever written a syllable, that justifies the suggestion that he surrendered the aspirations

which were expressed in this letter of 1891. So far from this being the case, in the long

discussions which took place between us in the last years of his life, he reaffirmed as

emphatically as at first his unshaken conviction as to the dream—if you like to call it

so—a vision, which had ever been the guiding star of his life." See W. T. Stead, The Last

Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes (London, 1902), 73-77.

5. Sir John Willison, Sir George Parkin (London, 1929), 234.

6. This paragraph and the two preceding it are from Sir Frederick Whyte, The Life of

W. T. Stead (2 vols., Boston 1925), 270-272 and 39.

7. See Journals and Letters of Reginald, Viscount Esher (4 vols., London, 1938), 1,

149-150. It should be noted that the excision in the entry for 3 February marked by three

points (. . .) was made by Lord Esher's son when he edited the journals for publication.

8. See F. Whyte, Life of W. T. Stead (2 vols., Boston, 1925), 199-212.

9. No mention of the secret society is to be found in either Sir Harry Johnston, The

Story of My Life (London, 1923), or in Alex. Johnston, Life and Letters of Sir Harry

Johnston (London, 1929). The former work does contain an account of Johnston's break

with Rhodes on page 497. More details are on pages 145-148 of the later work, including

a record of Rhodes's saying, "I will smash you Johnston, for this." Johnston was

convinced that it was a result of this enmity that Milner rather than he was chosen to be

High Commissioner of South Africa in 1897. See pages 338-339.

10. Rhodes's reason for eliminating him (given in the January 1901 codicil to his will)

was"on account of the extraordinary eccentricity of Mr. Stead, though having always a

great respect for him, but feeling the objects of my Will would be embarrassed by his

views." Milner's reasons (given in the "Stead Memorial" number of The Review of

Reviews, May 1912) were his "lack of balance," which was "his Achilles heel.' See also

the letter of 12 April 1902 from Edmund Garrett to Stead, quoted below, from F. Whyte,

The Life of W. T. Stead (2 vols., Boston, 1925), 211.

11. The quotation is from the sketch of Lord Esher in the Dictionary of National

Biography. The other quotations from Brett are from The Journals and Letters of

Reginald, Viscount Esher (4 vols., London, 1934-1938).

12. E. T. Cook, Edmund Garrett (London, 1909), 158. The excision in this letter

marked by three points (. . .) was made by Cook. Cook was a protege of Milner's, found

in New College, invited to contribute to the Pall Mall Gazette in 1881, and added to the

staff as an editor in August 1883, when Milner was acting as editor-in-chief, during the

absence of Morley and Stead. See F. Whyte, The Life of W. T. Stead (2 vols., Boston,

1925), I, 94. Cook remained close to Milner for many years. On 4 October 1899 Lord

Esher wrote to his son a letter in which he said: "Cook is the Editor of the Daily News

and is in close touch with Milner and his friends"— Journals and Letters of Reginald,

Viscount Esher (4 vols., London, 1938), I, 240.

13. F. Whyte, Life of W. T. Stead (2 vols., Boston, 1925), 211. The quotation in the

next paragraph is from the same place.

14. As an example of this and an example of the way in which the secret society

functioned in the early period, see the following passage from the Journals and Letters of

Reginald, Viscount Esher (4 vols., London, 1938), under the date 21 November 1892: "I

went to London on Friday and called on Rhodes. He had asked me to do so.... Rhodes

asked for the Government carriage of his telegraph poles and 200 Sikhs at Blantyre. Then

he will make the telegraph. He would like a gunboat on Tanganyika. I stayed there to

lunch. Then saw Rosebery. He was in good spirits." From Sir Harry Johnston's

autobiography, it is clear that the 200 Sikhs were for him.

15. S. G. Millen, Rhodes (London, 1934), 341-342.

16. In the House of Commons, Maguire was a supporter of Parnell, acting on orders

from Rhodes, who had given £10,000 to Parnell's cause in 1888. Rhodes's own

explanation of why he supported Parnell is a typical Milner Group statement. He said that

he gave the money "since in Mr. Parnell's cause.... I believe he's the key to the Federal

System, on the basis of perfect Home Rule in every part of the Empire." This quotation is

from S. G. Millin, Rhodes (London, 1934), 112, and is based on W. T. Stead, The Last

Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes (London, 1902).

17. The first quotation is from Edmund Garrett, "Milner and Rhodes," in The Empire

and the Century (London, 1905), 478. According to The Times obituary of Milner, 14

May 1925, Rhodes repeated these sentiments in different words on his deathbed, 26

March 1902. The statement to Stead will be found in W. T. Stead, The Last Will and

Testament of Cecil John Rhodes (London, 1902), 108.

18. See Cecil Headlam, ed., The Milner Papers, 1897-1905 (2 vols., London, 1931-

1933),11,412-413; the unpublished material is at New College, Oxford, in Milner Papers,

XXXVIII, ii, 200.

Chapter 4

1. The obituary of Patrick Duncan in The Round Table (September 1943), XXXIII,

303-305, reads in part: "Duncan became the doyen of the band of brothers, Milner's

young men, who were nicknamed . . . The Kindergarten,' then in the first flush of

youthful enthusiasm. It is a fast ageing and dwindling band now; but it has played a part

in the Union of South Africa colonies, and it is responsible for the foundation and

conduct of The Round Table. For forty years and more, so far as the vicissitudes of life

have allowed, it has kept together; and always, while looking up to Lord Milner and to

his successor in South Africa, the late Lord Selborne, as its political Chief, has revered

Patrick Duncan as the Captain of the band." According to R. H. Brand, ed., The Letters of

John Dove (London, 1938), Duncan was coming to England to the meetings of the Group

as late was 1932.

2. The above list of eighteen names does not contain all the members of the

Kindergarten. A complete list would include: (1) Harry Wilson (Sir Harry after 1908),

who was a "Seeley lecturer" with Parkin in the 1890s; was chief private secretary to

Joseph Chamberlain in 1895-1897; was legal adviser to the Colonial Office and to Milner

in 1897-1901; was Secretary and Colonial Secretary to the Orange River Colony in 1901-

1907; was a member of the Intercolonial Council and of the Railway Committee in 1903-

1907. (2) E. B. Sargant, who organized the school system of South Africa for Milner in

1900-1904 and was Director of Education for both the Transvaal and the Orange River

Colony in 1902-1904; he wrote a chapter for The Empire and the Century in 1905. (3)

Gerard Craig Sellar, who died in 1929, and on whom no information is available. There

was a Craig-Sellar Fellowship in his honor at Balliol in 1946. (4) Oscar Ferris Watkins, a

Bible Clerk at All Souls at the end of the nineteenth century, received a M.A. from this

college in 1910; he was in the South African Constabulary in 1902-1904, was in the

Transvaal Civil Service in 1904-1907; was in the East African Protectorate Service and

the E.A. Civil Service from 1908, being a District Commissioner in 1914, Acting Chief

Native Commissioner in 1920-1927, a member of the Legislative Council in 1920-1922,

Deputy Chief Native Commissioner of Kenya in 1921-1927; he was Director of Military

Labour under Smuts in German East Africa in 1914-1918. (5) Percy Girouard (later Sir

Percy) was chairman of the Egyptian Railway Board in 1898-1899; was Director of

Railways in the Boer War in 1899-1902; was Commissioner of Railways and Head of the

Central South African Railways in 1902-1904; was High Commissioner of Northern

Nigeria in 1907-1908 and Governor in 1908-1909; was Governor of the East African

Protectorate in 1909-1912; was director of Armstrong, Whitworth and Company in 1912-

1915; and was Director General of Munitions Supply in 1914-1915. He was fired by

Lloyd George for inefficiency in 1915.

3. Douglas Malcolm's sister in 1907 married Neill Malcolm (since 1919 Major

General Sir Neill Malcolm), who was a regular army officer from 1889 to his retirement

in 1924. He was on the British Military Mission to Berlin in 1919-1921; Commanding

General in Malaya, 1921-1924; a founder of the RIIA, of which he was chairman from

1926 (succeeding Lord Meston) to 1935 (succeeded by Lord Astor). He was High

Commissioner for German Refugees in 1936-1938, with R. M. Makins (member of All

Souls and the Milner Group and later British Minister in Washington) as his chief British

subordinate. He is president of the British North Borneo Company, of which Dougal

Malcolm is vice-president.

Ian Malcolm (Sir Ian since 1919), a brother of Neill Malcolm, was an attache at

Berlin, Paris, and Petersburg in 1891-1896; and M.P. in 1895-1906 and again 1910-1919;

assistant private secretary to Lord Salisbury (1895-1900); parliamentary private secretary

to the Chief Secretary for Ireland (George Wyndham) in 1901-1903; Secretary to the

Union Defence League, organized by Walter Long, in 1906-1910; a Red Cross officer in

Europe and North America (1914-1917); on Balfour's mission to the United States in

1917; private secretary to Balfour during the Peace Conference (1919); and British

representative on the Board of Directors of the Suez Canal Company. He wrote Walter

Long's biography in the Dictionary of National Biography.

4. See W. B. Worsfold, The Reconstruction of the New Colonies under Lord Milner (2

vols., London, 1913), II, 207-222 and 302-419.

5. The last quotation is from Dyarchy (Oxford, 1920), liii. The other are from The

Problem of the Commonwealth (London, 1915), 18, and 200-219.

6. Fisher was one of the most important members of the Milner Group, a fact which

would never be gathered from the recent biography written by David Ogg, Herbert

Fisher, 1865-1940 (London, 1947). He was associated with members of the Group, or

persons close to it all his life. At New College in the period 1884-1888, he was a student

of W. L. Courtney, whose widow, Dame Janet Courtney, was later close to the Group. He

became a Fellow of New College in 1888, along with Gilbert Murray, also a member of

the Group. His pupils at New College included Curtis, Kerr, Brand, Malcolm, and

Hichens in the first few years of teaching; the invitation to South Africa in 1908 came

through Curtis, his articles on the trip were published in The Times. He sailed to India in

1913 with Herbert Baker of the Group (Rhodes's architect). He refused the post of Chief

Secretary for Ireland in 1918, so it was given to Amery's brother-in-law; he refused the

post of Assistant Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in December 1918, when Robert

Cecil resigned. He played a certain role in drafting the Montagu-Chelmsford Report of

1919 and the Government of Ireland Bill of 1921, and piloted the latter through

Commons. He refused the post of Ambassador to Washington in 1919. Nevertheless, he

did not see eye to eye with the inner core of the Group on either religion or protection,

since he was an atheist and a free-trader to the end. His book on Christian Science almost

caused a break with some members of the Group.

7. H. H. Henson, Memoirs of Sir William Anson (Oxford, 1920), 212.

8. Cecil Headlam, ed., The Milner Papers, 1897-1905 (2 vols., London, 1931-1933),

II, 501.

9. R. H. Brand, The Union of South Africa (Oxford, 1909), 39.

10. Smuts was frequently used by the Milner Group to enunciate its policies in public

(as, for example, in his speeches of 15 May 1917 and 13 November 1934). The fact that

he was speaking for the Milner Group was generally recognized by the upper classes in

England, was largely ignored by the masses in England, and was virtually unknown to

Americans. Lord Davies assumed this as beyond the need of proof in an article which he

published in The Nineteenth Century in January 1935. He was attacking the Milner

Group's belief that British defense could be based on the Dominions and the United

States and especially on its efforts to reduce the League of Nations to a simple debating

society. He pointed out the need for an international police force, then asked, "Will the

Dominions and the United States volunteer as special constables? And, if they refuse,

does it mean that Great Britain is precluded from doing so? The reply of The Round

Table is 'yes,' and the most recent exposition of its policy is contained in the speech

delivered by General Smuts at the dinner given in his honor by the Royal Institute of

International Affairs on November 13"— The Nineteenth Century (January 1935), CXVII,

51.

Smuts's way in imperial affairs was much smoothed by the high opinion which Lord

Esher held of him; see, for example, The Journals and Letters of Reginald Viscount Esher

(4 vols., London, 1938), IV, 101, 224, and 254.

11. Lord Oxford and Asquith, Memories and Reflections 1852-1927 (2 vols., Boston,

1928), I, 213-214. Asquith was a member of the Cecil Bloc and of "The Souls." He was a

lifelong friend of both Balfour and Milner. It was the former who persuaded Asquith to

write his memoirs, after talking the matter over privately with Margot Asquith one

evening while Asquith himself was at Grillions. When Asquith married Margot Tennant

in 1894, the witnesses who signed the marriage certificates were A. J. Balfour, W. E.

Gladstone, Lord Rosebery, Charles Tennant, H. J. Tennant, and R. B. Haldane. Asquith's

friendship with Milner went back to their undergraduate days. In his autobiography

Asquith wrote (pp. 210-211): "We sat together at the Scholar's table in Hall for three

years. We then formed a close friendship, and were for many years on intimate terms and

in almost constant contact with one another. . . . At Oxford we both took an active part at

the Union in upholding the unfashionable Liberal cause.... In my early married days

[1877-1885] he used often to come to my house at Hampstead for a frugal Sunday supper

when we talked over political and literary matters, for the most part in general

agreement." For Milner's relationship with Margot Tennant before her marriage to

Asquith in 1894, see her second fling at autobiography, More or Less about Myself

(London, 1932). On 22 April 1908, W. T. Stead wrote to Lord Esher that Mrs. Asquith

had three portraits over her bed: Rosebery, Balfour, and Milner. See The Journals and

Letters of Reginald, Viscount Esher (4 vols., London, 1938), 11, 304.

Chapter 5

1. The Times's obituary on Milner (14 May 1925), obviously written by a person who

knew the situation well (probably either Dawson or Amery), said; "He would never in

any circumstances have accepted office again.... That he always disliked it, assumed it

with reluctance, and laid it down with infinite relief, is a fact about which in his case