The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden

"Science," the Greek word for knowledge, when appended to the word "political," creates what seems like an oxymoron. For who could claim to know politics? More complicated than any game, most people who play it become addicts and die without understanding what they were addicted to. The rest of us suffer under their malpractice as our "leaders." A truer case of the blind leading the blind could not be found. Plumb the depths of confusion here.

The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden

Postby admin » Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:29 pm

The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden
by Carroll Quigley
Professor of Foreign Service
Georgetown University
© 1981 by Books in Focus, Inc.

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Table of Contents:

Inside Cover
Publisher's Note
Preface
Chapter 1 — Introduction
Chapter 2 — The Cecil Bloc
Chapter 3 — The Secret Society of Cecil Rhodes (1)
Chapter 4— Milner' s Kindergarten, 1897-1910
Chapter 5— Milner Group, Rhodes, and Oxford, 1901-1925
Chapter 6 — The Times
Chapter 7 — The Round Table
Chapter 8— War and Peace, 1915-1920
Chapter 9 — Creation of the Commonwealth
Chapter 10 — The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Chapter 11— India, 1911-1945
Chapter 12— Foreign Policy, 1919-1940
Chapter 13— The Second World War, 1939-1945
Appendix — A Tentative Roster of the Milner Group
Notes
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Re: The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Clivede

Postby admin » Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:30 pm

Inside Cover

On rare occasions a book is published which must forever alter the way in which we view the world around us. Within a short while, it becomes difficult to understand how we could have functioned without the knowledge gained from it. The Anglo-American Establishment is such a book. In it Professor Carroll Quigley presents crucial "keys" without which 20th century political, economic, and military events can never be fully understood. The reader will see that this applies to events past, present, and future.

While the notion of conspiratorial influence on world events has gained credence with both extremities of the American political spectrum, and to a degree with the general public, the more academically-oriented person has tended to downplay such influence, largely back of the lack of scholarship in the presentation and analysis of the facts by those supporting the conspiracy theories. In addition, many such supporters have made themselves easy to ignore and, in fact, have themselves always assumed that they would be ignored. Professor Quigley's work does not suffer from these defects. The evidence he presents here appears irrefutable; the analysis -- brilliant. In his own words:

"It is not easy for an outsider to write the history of a secret group of this kind, but ... it should be done, for this group is, as I shall show, one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century ... I suppose in the long view my attitude would not be far different from that of the (society)... but agreeing with the group on goals, I cannot agree with them on methods ... In this group were persons who must command the admiration and affection of all who know of them. On the other hand, in this group were persons whose lives have been a disaster to our way of life. Unfortunately ... the influence of the latter kind has been stronger ... I have been told that the story I relate here would be better left untold ... the last thing I should wish is that anything I write could be used by the anglophobes ... but I feel the truth ... once told ... can be of injury to no men of good will."

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

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[Carroll Quigley (1910-1977)[/i]

"No country that values its safety should allow what the Milner group accomplished -- that is, that a small number of men would be able to wield such power in administration and politics, should be given almost complete control over the publication of documents relating to their actions, should be able to exercise such influence over the avenues of information that create public opinion, and should be able to monopolize so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period."

-- Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment
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Re: The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Clivede

Postby admin » Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:30 pm

Publisher's Note

On very rare occasions a book appears which forever changes the way in which we perceive the world around us. Within a short while it becomes hard to understand how we could have functioned without the knowledge gained from it. The Anglo-American Establishment is such a book. In it Professor Carroll Quigley presents certain "keys" crucial to the understanding of 20th century political, economic and military events -- events of the past, present, and future. That the narrative ends in 1949 does not detract in any way from what is presented, and its great value. It does, however, break open the way for current writers and students to work more effectively in their areas.

The fact that Carroll Quigley, a highly respected professor at Georgetown University and an instructor at Princeton and Harvard, could not find a publisher for this work, is in itself significant.

How Books in Focus came to discover the existence of the manuscript is a story in itself, which began on a beach in Lindos on the Mediterranean island of Rhodes, in 1967, eight years before the company was formed; but that story will have to be told at a later time.

Stephen A. Zarlenga
Publisher
January 8, 1981
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Re: The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Clivede

Postby admin » Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:31 pm

Preface

The Rhodes Scholarships, established by the terms of Cecil Rhodes's seventh will, are known to everyone. What is not so widely known is that Rhodes in five previous wills left his fortune to form a secret society, which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. And what does not seem to be known to anyone is that this secret society was created by Rhodes and his principal trustee, Lord Milner, and continues to exist to this day. To be sure, this secret society is not a childish thing like the Ku Klux Klan, and it does not have any secret robes, secret handclasps, or secret passwords. It does not need any of these, since its members know each other intimately. It probably has no oaths of secrecy nor any formal procedure of initiation. It does, however, exist and holds secret meetings, over which the senior member present presides. At various times since 1891, these meetings have been presided over by Rhodes, Lord Milner, Lord Selborne, Sir Patrick Duncan, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Lord Lothian, and Lord Brand. They have been held in all the British Dominions, starting in South Africa about 1903; in various places in London, chiefly 175 Piccadilly; at various colleges at Oxford, chiefly All Souls; and at many English country houses such as Tring Park, Blickling Hall, Cliveden, and others.

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

It is not easy for an outsider to write the history of a secret group of this kind, but, since no insider is going to do it, an outsider must attempt it. It should be done, for this Group is, as I shall show, one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century. Indeed, the Group is of such significance that evidence of its existence is not hard to find, if one knows where to look. This evidence I have sought to point out without overly burdening this volume with footnotes and bibliographical references. While such evidences of scholarship are kept at a minimum, I believe I have given the source of every fact which I mention. Some of these facts came to me from sources which I am not permitted to name, and I have mentioned them only where I can produce documentary evidence available to everyone. Nevertheless, it would have been very difficult to write this book if I had not received a certain amount of assistance of a personal nature from persons close to the Group. For obvious reasons, I cannot reveal the names of such persons, so I have not made reference to any information derived from them unless it was information readily available from other sources.

Naturally, it is not possible for an outsider to write about a secret group without falling into errors. There are undoubtedly errors in what follows. I have tried to keep these at a minimum by keeping the interpretation at a minimum and allowing the facts to speak for themselves. This will serve as an excuse for the somewhat excessive use of quotations. I feel that there is no doubt at all about my general interpretation. I also feel that there are few misstatements of fact, except in one most difficult matter. This difficulty arises from the problem of knowing just who is and who is not a member of the Group. Since membership may not be a formal matter but based rather on frequent social association, and since the frequency of such association varies from time to time and from person to person, it is not always easy to say who is in the Group and who is not. I have tried to solve this difficulty by dividing the Group into two concentric circles: an inner core of intimate associates, who unquestionably knew that they were members of a group devoted to a common purpose; and an outer circle of a larger number, on whom the inner circle acted by personal persuasion, patronage distribution, and social pressure. It is probable that most members of the outer circle were not conscious that they were being used by a secret society. More likely they knew it, but, English fashion, felt it discreet to ask no questions. The ability of Englishmen of this class and background to leave the obvious unstated, except perhaps in obituaries, is puzzling and sometimes irritating to an outsider. In general, I have undoubtedly made mistakes in my lists of members, but the mistakes, such as they are, are to be found rather in my attribution of any particular person to the outer circle instead of the inner core, rather than in my connecting him to the Group at all. In general, I have attributed no one to the inner core for whom I do not have evidence, convincing to me, that he attended the secret meetings of the Group. As a result, several persons whom I place in the outer circle, such as Lord Halifax, should probably be placed in the inner core.

I should say a few words about my general attitude toward this subject. I approached the subject as a historian. This attitude I have kept. I have tried to describe or to analyze, not to praise or to condemn. I hope that in the book itself this attitude is maintained. Of course I have an attitude, and it would be only fair to state it here. In general, I agree with the goals and aims of the Milner Group. I feel that the British way of life and the British Commonwealth of Nations are among the great achievements of all history. I feel that the destruction of either of them would be a terrible disaster to mankind. I feel that the withdrawal of Ireland, of Burma, of India, or of Palestine from the Commonwealth is regrettable and attributable to the fact that the persons in control of these areas failed to absorb the British way of life while they were parts of the Commonwealth. I suppose, in the long view, my attitude would not be far different from that of the members of the Milner Group. But, agreeing with the Group on goals, I cannot agree with them on methods. To be sure, I realize that some of their methods were based on nothing but good intentions and high ideals — higher ideals than mine, perhaps. But their lack of perspective in critical moments, their failure to use intelligence and common sense, their tendency to fall back on standardized social reactions and verbal cliches in a crisis, their tendency to place power and influence into hands chosen by friendship rather than merit, their oblivion to the consequences of their actions, their ignorance of the point of view of persons in other countries or of persons in other classes in their own country — these things, it seems to me, have brought many of the things which they and I hold dear close to disaster. In this Group were persons like Esher, Grey, Milner, Hankey, and Zimmern, who must command the admiration and affection of all who know of them. On the other hand, in this Group were persons whose lives have been a disaster to our way of life. Unfortunately, in the long run, both in the Group and in the world, the influence of the latter kind has been stronger than the influence of the former.

This has been my personal attitude. Little of it, I hope, has penetrated to the pages which follow. I have been told that the story I relate here would be better left untold, since it would provide ammunition for the enemies of what I admire. I do not share this view. The last thing I should wish is that anything I write could be used by the Anglophobes and isolationists of the Chicago Tribune. But I feel that the truth has a right to be told, and, once told, can be an injury to no men of good will. Only by a knowledge of the errors of the past is it possible to correct the tactics of the future.

Carroll Quigley 1949
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Re: The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Clivede

Postby admin » Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:32 pm

Chapter 1: Introduction

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

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

The details of this important conversation will be examined later. At present we need only point out that the three drew up a plan of organization for their secret society and a list of original members. The plan of organization provided for an inner circle, to be known as "The Society of the Elect," and an outer circle, to be known as "The Association of Helpers." Within The Society of the Elect, the real power was to be exercised by the leader, and a "Junta of Three." The leader was to be Rhodes, and the Junta was to be Stead, Brett, and Alfred Milner. In accordance with this decision, Milner was added to the society by Stead shortly after the meeting we have described. (1)

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

During this period of almost sixty years, this society has been called by various names. During the first decade or so it was called "the secret society of Cecil Rhodes" or "the dream of Cecil Rhodes." In the second and third decades of its existence it was known as "Milner's Kindergarten" (1901-1910) and as "the Round Table Group" (1910-1920). Since 1920 it has been called by various names, depending on which phase of its activities was being examined. It has been called "The Times crowd," "the Rhodes crowd," the "Chatham House crowd," the "All Souls group," and the "Cliveden set." All of these terms were more or less inadequate, because they focused attention on only part of the society or on only one of its activities. The Milner Kindergarten and the Round Table Group, for example, were two different names for The Association of Helpers and were thus only part of the society, since the real center of the organization, The Society of the Elect, continued to exist and recruited new members from the outer circle as seemed necessary. Since 1920, this Group has been increasingly dominated by the associates of Viscount Astor. In the 1930s, the misnamed "Cliveden set" was close to the center of the society, but it would be entirely unfair to believe that the connotations of superficiality and conspiracy popularly associated with the expression "Cliveden set" are a just description of the Milner Group as a whole. In fact, Viscount Astor was, relatively speaking, a late addition to the society, and the society should rather be pictured as utilizing the Astor money to further their own ideals rather than as being used for any purpose by the master of Cliveden.

Even the expression "Rhodes secret society," which would be perfectly accurate in reference to the period 1891-1899, would hardly be accurate for the period after 1899. The organization was so modified and so expanded by Milner after the eclipse of Stead in 1899, and especially after the death of Rhodes in 1902, that it took on quite a different organization and character, although it continued to pursue the same goals. To avoid this difficulty, we shall generally call the organization the "Rhodes secret society" before 1901 and "the Milner Group" after this date, but it must be understood that both terms refer to the same organization.

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

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

This Group, held together, as it is, by the tenuous links of friendship, personal association, and common ideals is so indefinite in its outlines (especially in recent years) that it is not always possible to say who is a member and who is not. Indeed, there is no sharp line of demarcation between those who are members and those who are not, since "membership" is possessed in varying degrees, and the degree changes at different times. Sir Alfred Zimmern, for example, while always close to the Group, was in its inner circle only for a brief period in 1910-1922, thereafter slowly drifting away into the outer orbits of the Group. Lord Halifax, on the other hand, while close to it from 1903, did not really become a member until after 1920. Viscount Astor, also close to the Group from its first beginnings (and much closer than Halifax), moved rapidly to the center of the Group after 1916, and especially after 1922, and in later years became increasingly a decisive voice in the Group.

Although the membership of the Milner Group has slowly shifted with the passing years, the Group still reflects the characteristics of its chief leader and, through him, the ideological orientation of Balliol in the 1870s. Although the Group did not actually come into existence until 1891, its history covers a much longer period, since its origins go back to about 1873. This history can be divided into four periods, of which the first, from 1873 to 1891, could be called the preparatory period and centers about the figures of W. T. Stead and Alfred Milner. The second period, from 1891 to 1901, could be called the Rhodes period, although Stead was the chief figure for most of it. The third period, from 1901 to 1922, could be called the New College period and centers about Alfred Milner. The fourth period, from about 1922 to the present, could be called the All Souls period and centers about Lord Lothian, Lord Brand, and Lionel Curtis. During these four periods, the Group grew steadily in power and influence, until about 1939. It was badly split on the policy of appeasement after 16 March 1939, and received a rude jolt from the General Election of 1945. Until 1939, however, the expansion in power of the Group was fairly consistent. This growth was based on the possession by its members of ability, social connections, and wealth. It is not possible to distinguish the relationship of these three qualities — a not uncommon situation in England. Milner was able to dominate this Group because he became the focus or rather the intersection point of three influences. These we shall call "the Toynbee group," "the Cecil Bloc," and the "Rhodes secret society." The Toynbee group was a group of political intellectuals formed at Balliol about 1873 and dominated by Arnold Toynbee and Milner himself. It was really the group of Milner's personal friends. The Cecil Bloc was a nexus of political and social power formed by Lord Salisbury and extending from the great sphere of politics into the fields of education and publicity. In the field of education, its influence was chiefly visible at Eton and Harrow and at All Souls College, Oxford. In the field of publicity, its influence was chiefly visible in The Quarterly Review and The Times. The "Rhodes secret society" was a group of imperial federalists, formed in the period after 1889 and using the economic resources of South Africa to extend and perpetuate the British Empire.

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

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


Although the outlines of the Milner Group existed long before 1891, the Group did not take full form until after that date. Earlier, Milner and Stead had become part of a group of neo-imperialists who justified the British Empire's existence on moral rather than on economic or political grounds and who sought to make this justification a reality by advocating self-government and federation within the Empire. This group formed at Oxford in the early 1870s and was extended in the early 1880s. At Balliol it included Milner, Arnold Toynbee, Thomas Raleigh, Michael Glazebrook, Philip Lyttelton Gell, and George R. Parkin. Toynbee was Milner's closest friend. After his early death in 1883, Milner was active in establishing Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in London, in his memory. Milner was chairman of the governing board of this establishment from 1911 to his death in 1925. In 1931 plaques to both Toynbee and Milner were unveiled there by members of the Milner Group. In 1894 Milner delivered a eulogy of his dead friend at Toynbee Hall, and published it the next year as Arnold Toynbee: A Reminiscence. He also wrote the sketch of Toynbee in the Dictionary of National Biography. The connection is important because it undoubtedly gave Toynbee's nephew, Arnold J. Toynbee, his entree into government service in 1915 and into the Royal Institute of International Affairs after the war.

George R. Parkin (later Sir George, 1846-1922) was a Canadian who spent only one year in England before 1889. But during that year (1873-1874) he was a member of Milner's circle at Balliol and became known as a fanatical supporter of imperial federation. As a result of this, he became a charter member of the Canadian branch of the Imperial Federation League in 1885 and was sent, four years later, to New Zealand and Australia by the League to try to build up imperial sentiment. On his return, he toured around England, giving speeches to the same purpose. This brought him into close contact with the Cecil Bloc, especially George E. Buckle of The Times, G. W. Prothero, J. R. Seeley, Lord Rosebery, Sir Thomas (later Lord) Brassey, and Milner. For Buckle, and in support of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he made a survey of the resources and problems of Canada in 1892. This was published by Macmillan under the title The Great Dominion the following year. On a subsidy from Brassey and Rosebery he wrote and published his best-known book, Imperial Federation, in 1892. This kind of work as a propagandist for the Cecil Bloc did not provide a very adequate living, so on 24 April 1893 Milner offered to form a group of imperialists who would finance this work of Parkin's on a more stable basis. Accordingly, Parkin, Milner, and Brassey, on 1 June 1893, signed a contract by which Parkin was to be paid £450 a year for three years. During this period he was to propagandize as he saw fit for imperial solidarity. As a result of this agreement, Parkin began a steady correspondence with Milner, which continued for the rest of his life.

When the Imperial Federation League dissolved in 1894, Parkin became one of a group of propagandists known as the "Seeley lecturers" after Professor J. R. Seeley of Cambridge University, a famous imperialist. Parkin still found his income insufficient, however, although it was being supplemented from various sources, chiefly The Times. In 1894 he went to the Colonial Conference at Ottawa as special correspondent of The Times. The following year, when he was offered the position of Principal of Upper Canada College, Toronto, he consulted with Buckle and Moberly Bell, the editors of The Times, hoping to get a full-time position on The Times. There was none vacant, so he accepted the academic post in Toronto, combining with it the position of Canadian correspondent of The Times. This relationship with The Times continued even after he became organizing secretary of the Rhodes Trust in 1902. In 1908, for example, he was The Times' s correspondent at the Quebec tercentenary celebration. Later, in behalf of The Times and with the permission of Marconi, he sent the first press dispatch ever transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean by radio.

In 1902, Parkin became the first secretary of the Rhodes Trust, and he assisted Milner in the next twenty years in setting up the methods by which the Rhodes Scholars would be chosen. To this day, more than a quarter-century after his death, his influence is still potent in the Milner Group in Canada. His son-in-law, Vincent Massey, and his namesake, George Parkin de T. Glazebrook, are the leaders of the Milner Group in the Dominion. (2)

Another member of this Balliol group of 1875 was Thomas Raleigh (later Sir Thomas, 1850-1922), close friend of Parkin and Milner, Fellow of All Souls (1876-1922), later registrar of the Privy Council (1896-1899), legal member of the Council of the Viceroy of India (1899-1904), and member of the Council of India in London (1909-1913). Raleigh's friendship with Milner was not based only on association at Balliol, for he had lived in Milner's house in Tubingen, Germany, when they were both studying there before 1868.

Another student, who stayed only briefly at Balliol but remained as Milner's intimate friend for the rest of his life, was Philip Lyttelton Gell (1852-1926). Gell was a close friend of Milner's mother's family and had been with Milner at King's College, London, before they both came up to Balliol. In fact, it is extremely likely that it was because of Gell, two years his senior, that Milner transferred to Balliol from London. Gell was made first chairman of Toynbee Hall by Milner when it was opened in 1884, and held that post for twelve years. He was still chairman of it when Milner delivered his eulogy of Toynbee there in 1894. In 1899 Milner made Gell a director of the British South Africa Company, a position he held for twenty-six years (three of them as president).

Another intimate friend, with whom Milner spent most of his college vacations, was Michael Glazebrook (1853-1926). Glazebrook was the heir of Toynbee in the religious field, as Milner was in the political field. He became Headmaster of Clifton College (1891-1905) and Canon of Ely (1905-1926) and frequently got into conflict with his ecclesiastical superiors because of his liberal views. This occurred in its most acute form after his publication of The Faith of a Modern Churchman in 1918. His younger brother, Arthur James Glazebrook, was the founder and chief leader of the Canadian branch of the Milner Group until succeeded by Massey about 1935.

While Milner was at Balliol, Cecil Rhodes was at Oriel, George E. Buckle was at New College, and H. E. Egerton was at Corpus. It is not clear if Milner knew these young men at the time, but all three played roles in the Milner Group later. Among his contemporaries at Balliol itself, we should list nine names, six of whom were later Fellows of All Souls: H. H. Asquith, St. John Brodrick, Charles Firth, W. P. Ker, Charles Lucas, Robert Mowbray, Rowland E. Prothero, A. L. Smith, and Charles A. Whitmore. Six of these later received titles from a grateful government, and all of them enter into any history of the Milner Group.

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

Among the ideas of Toynbee which influenced the Milner Group we should mention three: (a) a conviction that the history of the British Empire represents the unfolding of a great moral idea — the idea of freedom — and that the unity of the Empire could best be preserved by the cement of this idea; (b) a conviction that the first call on the attention of any man should be a sense of duty and obligation to serve the state; and (c) a feeling of the necessity to do social service work (especially educational work) among the working classes of English society.(3) These ideas were accepted by most of the men whose names we have already mentioned and became dominant principles of the Milner Group later. Toynbee can also be regarded as the founder of the method used by the Group later, especially in the Round Table Groups and in the Royal Institute of International Affairs. As described by Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, in his preface to the 1884 edition of Toynbee's Lectures on the Industrial Revolution, this method was as follows: "He would gather his friends around him; they would form an organization; they would work on quietly for a time, some at Oxford, some in London; they would prepare themselves in different parts of the subject until they were ready to strike in public." In a prefatory note to this same edition, Toynbee's widow wrote: "The whole has been revised by the friend who shared my husband's entire intellectual life, Mr. Alfred Milner, without whose help the volume would have been far more imperfect than it is, but whose friendship was too close and tender to allow now of a word of thanks." After Milner published his Reminiscence of Arnold Toynbee, it was reprinted in subsequent editions of the Industrial Revolution as a memoir, replacing Jowett's.

After leaving Oxford in 1877, Milner studied law for several years but continued to remain in close contact with his friends, through a club organized by Toynbee. This group, which met at the Temple in London as well as at Oxford, worked closely with the famous social reformer and curate of St. Jude's, Whitechapel, Samuel A. Barnett. The group lectured to working-class audiences in Whitechapel, Milner giving a course of speeches on "The State and the Duties of Rulers" in 1880 and another on "Socialism" in 1882. The latter series was published in the National Review in 1931 by Lady Milner.

In this group of Toynbee's was Albert Grey (later Earl Grey, 1851-1917), who became an ardent advocate of imperial federation. Later a loyal supporter of Milner's, as we shall see, he remained a member of the Milner Group until his death. Another member of the group, Ernest Iwan-Muller, had been at King's College, London, with Milner and Gell, and at New College while Milner was at Balliol. A close friend of Milner's, he became a journalist, was with Milner in South Africa during the Boer War, and wrote a valuable work on this experience called Lord Milner in South Africa (1903). Milner reciprocated by writing his sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography when he died in 1910.

At the end of 1881 Milner determined to abandon the law and devote himself to work of more social benefit. On 16 December he wrote in his diary: "One cannot have everything. I am a poor man and must choose between public usefulness and private happiness. I choose the former, or rather, I choose to strive for it." (4)

The opportunity to carry out this purpose came to him through his social work with Barnett, for it was by this connection that he met George J. (later Lord) Goschen, Member of Parliament and director of the Bank of England, who in the space of three years (1880-1883) refused the posts of Viceroy of India, Secretary of State for War, and Speaker of the House of Commons. Goschen became, as we shall see, one of the instruments by which Milner obtained political influence. For one year (1884-1885) Milner served as Goschen's private secretary, leaving the post only because he stood for Parliament himself in 1885.

It was probably as a result of Goschen's influence that Milner entered journalism, beginning to write for the Pall Mall Gazette in 1881. On this paper he established a number of personal relationships of later significance. At the time, the editor was John Morley, with William T. Stead as assistant. Stead was assistant editor in 1880-1883, and editor in 1883-1890. In the last year, he founded The Review of Reviews. An ardent imperialist, at the same time that he was a violent reformer in domestic matters, he was "one of the strongest champions in England of Cecil Rhodes." He introduced Albert Grey to Rhodes and, as a result, Grey became one of the original directors of the British South Africa Company when it was established by royal charter in 1889. Grey became administrator of Rhodesia when Dr. Jameson was forced to resign from that post in 1896 as an aftermath of his famous raid into the Transvaal. He was Governor-General of Canada in 1904-1911 and unveiled the Rhodes Memorial in South Africa in 1912. A Liberal member of the House of Commons from 1880 to 1886, he was defeated as a Unionist in the latter year. In 1894 he entered the House of Lords as the fourth Earl Grey, having inherited the title and 17,600 acres from an uncle. Throughout this period he was close to Milner and later was very useful in providing practical experience for various members of the Milner Group. His son, the future fifth Earl Grey, married the daughter of the second Earl of Selborne, a member of the Milner Group.

During the period in which Milner was working with the Pall Mall Gazette he became associated with three persons of some importance later. One of these was Edward T. Cook (later Sir Edward, 1857-1919), who became a member of the Toynbee-Milner circle in 1879 while still an undergraduate at New College. Milner had become a Fellow of New College in 1878 and held the appointment until he was elected Chancellor of the University in 1925. With Edward Cook he began a practice which he was to repeat many times in his life later. That is, as Fellow of New College, he became familiar with undergraduates whom he later placed in positions of opportunity and responsibility to test their abilities. Cook was made secretary of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching (1882) and invited to contribute to the Pall Mall Gazette. He succeeded Milner as assistant editor to Stead in 1885 and succeeded Stead as editor in 1890. He resigned as editor in 1892, when Waldorf Astor bought the Gazette, and founded the new Westminister Gazette, of which he was editor for three years (1893- 1896). Subsequently editor of the Daily News for five years (1896-1901), he lost this post because of the proprietors' objections to his unqualified support of Rhodes, Milner, and the Boer War. During the rest of his life (1901-1919) he was leader-writer for the Daily Chronicle, edited Ruskin's works in thirty-eight volumes, wrote the standard biography of Ruskin and a life of John Delane, the great editor of The Times.

Also associated with Milner in this period was Edmund Garrett (1865-1907), who was Stead's and Cook's assistant on the Pall Mall Gazette for several years (1887-1892) and went with Cook to the Westminister Gazette (1893-1895). In 1889 he was sent by Stead to South Africa for his health and became a great friend of Cecil Rhodes. He wrote a series of articles for the Gazette, which were published in book form in 1891 as In Afrikander land and the Land of Ophir. He returned to South Africa in 1895 as editor of the Cape Times, the most important English-language paper in South Africa. Both as editor (1895-1900) and later as a member of the Cape Parliament (1898-1902), he strongly supported Rhodes and Milner and warmly advocated a union of all South Africa. His health broke down completely in 1900, but he wrote a character analysis of Rhodes for the Contemporary Review (June 1902) and a chapter called "Rhodes and Milner" for The Empire and the Century (1905). Edward Cook wrote a full biography of Garrett in 1909, while Milner wrote Garrett's sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography, pointing out "as his chief title to remembrance" his advocacy "of a United South Africa absolutely autonomous in its own affairs but remaining part of the British Empire. "

During the period in which he was assistant editor of the Gazette, Milner had as roommate Henry Birchenough (later Sir Henry, 1853-1937). Birchenough went into the silk-manufacturing business, but his chief opportunities for fame came from his contacts with Milner. In 1903 he was made special British Trade Commissioner to South Africa, in 1906 a member of the Royal Commission on Shipping Rings (a controversial South African subject), in 1905 a director of the British South Africa Company (president in 1925), and in 1920 a trustee of the Beit Fund. During the First World War, he was a member of various governmental committees concerned with subjects in which Milner was especially interested. He was chairman of the Board of Trade's Committee on Textiles after the war; chairman of the Royal Commission of Paper; chairman of the Committee on Cotton Growing in the Empire; and chairman of the Advisory Council to the Ministry of Reconstruction.

In 1885, as a result of his contact with such famous Liberals as Goschen, Morley, and Stead, and at the direct invitation of Michael Glazebrook, Milner stood for Parliament but was defeated. In the following year he supported the Unionists in the critical election on Home Rule for Ireland and acted as head of the "Literature Committee" of the new party. Goschen made him his private secretary when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Salisbury's government in 1887. The two men were similar in many ways: both had been educated in Germany, and both had mathematical minds. It was Goschen's influence which gave Milner the opportunity to form the Milner Group, because it was Goschen who introduced him to the Cecil Bloc. While Milner was Goschen's private secretary, his parliamentary private secretary was Sir Robert Mowbray, an older contemporary of Milner's at Balliol and a Fellow of All Souls for forty-six years (1873-1919).

As a result of Goschen's influence, Milner was appointed successively Under Secretary of Finance in Egypt (1887-1892), chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue (1892-1897), and High Commissioner to South Africa (1897-1905). With the last position he combined several other posts, notably Governor of the Cape of Good Hope (1897-1901) and Governor of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony (1901-1905). But Goschen's influence on Milner was greater than this, both in specific matters and in general. Specifically, as Chancellor of Oxford University in succession to Lord Salisbury (1903-1907) and as an intimate friend of the Warden of All Souls, Sir William Anson, Goschen became one of the instruments by which the Milner Group merged with All Souls. But more important than this, Goschen introduced Milner, in the period 1886-1905, into that extraordinary circle which rotated about the Cecil family.
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Re: The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Clivede

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Chapter 2: The Cecil Bloc

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

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

Lord Salisbury's practice of nepotism was aided by the fact that he had two brothers and two sisters and had five sons and three daughters of his own. One of his sisters was the mother of Arthur J. Balfour and Gerald W. Balfour. Of his own daughters, one married the Second Earl of Selborne and had a son, Lord Wolmer, and a daughter, Lady Mabel Laura Palmer. The daughter married the son of Earl Grey, while the son married the daughter of Viscount Ridley. The son, known as Lord Wolmer until 1942 and Lord Selborne since that date, was an M.P. for thirty years (1910-1940), a figure in various Conservative governments since 1916, and Minister of Economic Warfare in 1942-1945.

Of Lord Salisbury's five sons, the oldest (now fourth Marquess of Salisbury), was in almost every Conservative government from 1900 to 1929. He had four children, of whom two married into the Cavendish family. Of these, a daughter, Lady Mary Cecil, married in 1917 the Marquess of Hartington, later tenth Duke of Devonshire; the older son, Viscount Cranborne, married Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, niece of the ninth Duke of Devonshire. The younger son, Lord David Cecil, a well-known writer of biographical works, was for years a Fellow of Wadham and for the last decade has been a Fellow of New College. The other daughter, Lady Beatrice Cecil, married W. G. A. Ormsby Gore (now Lord Harlech), who became a member of the Milner Group. It should perhaps be mentioned that Viscount Cranborne was in the House of Commons from 1929 to 1941 and has been in the House of Lords since. He was Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs in 1935-1938, resigned in protest at the Munich agreement, but returned to office in 1940 as Paymaster General (1940), Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs (1940-1942), and Colonial Secretary (1942). He was later Lord Privy Seal (1942-1943), Secretary for Dominion Affairs again (1943-1945), and Leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords (1942-1945).

Lord Salisbury's second son, Lord William Cecil (1863- ), was Rural Dean of Hertford (1904-1916) and Bishop of Exeter (1916-1936), as well as chaplain to King Edward VII.

Lord Salisbury's third son, Lord Robert Cecil (Viscount Cecil of Chelwood since 1923), was an M.P. from 1906 to 1923 as well as Parliamentary Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1915-1916), Assistant Secretary in the same department (1918), Minister of Blockade (1916-1918), Lord Privy Seal (1923-1924), and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1924-1927). He was one of the original drafters of the Covenant of the League of Nations and was the Englishman most closely associated in the public mind with the work of the League. For this work he received the Nobel Prize in 1937.

Lord Salisbury's fourth son, Lord Edward Cecil (1867-1918), was the one most closely associated with Milner, and, in 1921, his widow married Milner. While Lord Edward was besieged with Rhodes in Mafeking in 1900, Lady Cecil lived in close contact with Milner and his Kindergarten. After the war, Lord Edward was Agent-General of the Sudan (1903-1905), Under Secretary of Finance in Egypt (1905-1912), and financial adviser to the Egyptian government (1912-1918). He was in complete control of the Egyptian government during the interval between Kitchener's departure and the arrival of Sir Henry McMahon as High Commissioner, and was the real power in McMahon's administration (1914-1916). In 1894 he had married Violet Maxse, daughter of Admiral Frederick Maxse and sister of General Sir Ivor Maxse. Sir Ivor, a good friend of Milner's, was the husband of Mary Caroline Wyndham, daughter of Baron Leconfield and niece of Lord Rosebery.

Lord Edward Cecil had a son and a daughter. The daughter, Helen Mary Cecil, married Captain Alexander Hardinge in the same year (1921) in which she became Milner's stepdaughter. Her husband was the heir of Baron Hardinge of Penshurst and a cousin of Sir Arthur Hardinge. Both Hardinges were proteges of Lord Salisbury, as we shall see.

The fifth son of Lord Salisbury was Lord Hugh Cecil (Baron Quickswood since 1941). He was a Member of Parliament for Greenwich (1895-1906) and for Oxford University (1910-1937). He is now a Fellow of New College, after having been a Fellow of Hertford for over fifty years.

The degree to which Lord Salisbury practiced nepotism can be seen by a look at his third government (1895-1902) or its successor, Balfour's first government (1902-1905). The Balfour government was nothing but a continuation of Salisbury's government, since, as we have seen, Balfour was Salisbury's nephew and chief assistant and was made premier in 1902 by his uncle. Salisbury was Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary; Balfour was First Lord of the Treasury and Party Leader in Commons (1895-1902); his brother, Gerald Balfour, was Chief Secretary for Ireland (1895-1900) and President of the Board of Trade (1900-1905); their cousin-in-law Lord Selborne was Under Secretary for the Colonies (1895-1900) and First Lord of the Admiralty (1905-1910). Arthur Balfour's most intimate friend, and the man who would have been his brother-in-law except for his sister's premature death in 1875 (an event which kept Balfour a bachelor for the rest of his life), Alfred Lyttelton, was chairman of a mission to the Transvaal in 1900 and Colonial Secretary (1903-1906). His older brother, Neville, was Assistant Military Secretary in the War Office (1897-1898), Commander-in-Chief in South Africa under Milner (1902-1904), and Chief of the General Staff (1904-1908). Another intimate friend of Balfour's, George Wyndham, was Parliamentary Under Secretary for War (1898-1900) and Chief Secretary for Ireland (1900-1905). St. John Brodrick (later Lord Midleton), a classmate of Milner's, brother-in-law of P. L. Gell and son-in-law of the Earl of Wemyss, was Under Secretary for War (1895-1898), Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1898-1900), Secretary of State for War (1900-1903), and Secretary of State for India (1903-1905). James Cecil, Viscount Cranborne, Lord Salisbury's heir, was Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1900-1903) and Lord Privy Seal (1903-1905). Evelyn Cecil (Sir Evelyn since 1922), nephew of Lord Salisbury, was private secretary to his uncle (1895-1902). Walter Long (later Lord Long), a creation of Salisbury's, was President of the Board of Agriculture (1895-1900), President of the Local Government Board (1900-1905), and Chief Secretary for Ireland (1905-1906). George N. Curzon, (later Lord Curzon) a Fellow of All Souls, ex-secretary and protege of Lord Salisbury, was Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1895-1898) and Viceroy of India (1899-1905).

In addition to these personal appointees of Lord Salisbury, this government had the leaders of the Unionist Party, which had split off from the Liberal Party in the fight over Home Rule in 1886. These included the eighth Duke of Devonshire and his nephew, the Marquess of Hartington (the Cavendish family), the latter's father-in-law (Lord Lansdowne), Goschen, and Joseph Chamberlain. The Duke of Devonshire was Lord President of the Council (1895-1903); his nephew and heir was Treasurer of H.M. Household (1900-1903) and Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1903-1905). The latter's father-in-law, Lord Lansdowne, was Secretary for War (1895-1900) and Foreign Secretary (1900-1905); Goschen was First Lord of the Admiralty (1895-1900) and rewarded with a viscounty (1900). Joseph Chamberlain was Secretary for the Colonies (1895-1903).

Most of these persons were related by numerous family and marital connections which have not yet been mentioned. We should point out some of these connections, since they form the background of the Milner Group.

George W. Lyttelton, fourth Baron Lyttelton, married a sister of Mrs. William E. Gladstone and had eight sons. Of these, Neville and Alfred have been mentioned; Spencer was secretary to his uncle, W. E. Gladstone, for three extended periods between 1871 and 1894, and was an intimate friend of Arthur Balfour (world tour together in 1875); Edward was Headmaster of Haileybury [East-India Company College] (1890-1905) and of Eton (1905-1916); Arthur was chaplain to the Queen (1896-1898) and Bishop of Southampton (1898-1903). Charles, the oldest son, fifth Baron Lyttelton and eighth Viscount Cobham (1842-1922), married Mary Cavendish and had four sons and three daughters. The oldest son, now ninth Viscount Cobham, was private secretary to Lord Selborne in South Africa (1905-1908) and Parliamentary Under Secretary of War (1939-1940). His brother George was assistant master at Eton. His sister Frances married the nephew of Lady Chelmsford.

The youngest son of the fourth Baron Lyttelton, Alfred, whom we have already mentioned, married twice. His first wife was Laura Tennant, whose sister Margot married Herbert Asquith and whose brother Baron Glenconner married Pamela Wyndham. Pamela married, for a second husband, Viscount Grey of Fallodon. For his second wife, Alfred Lyttelton married Edith Balfour. She survived him by many years and was later deputy director of the women's branch of the Ministry of Agriculture (1917-1919), a substitute delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations for five sessions (1923-1931), and a member of the council of the Royal institute of International Affairs. Her son, Captain Oliver Lyttelton, has been an M.P. since 1940, was managing director of the British Metals Corporation, Controller of Non-ferrous Metals (1939-1940), President of the Board of Trade (1940-1941, 1945), a member of the War Cabinet (1941-1945), and Minister of Production (1942-1945).

Almost as ramified as the Lyttelton clan were the Wyndhams, descendants of the first Baron Leconfield. The Baron had three sons. Of these, the oldest married Constance Primrose, sister of Lord Rosebery, daughter of Lord Dalmeny and his wife, Dorothy Grosvenor (later Lady Brassey), and granddaughter of Lord Henry Grosvenor and his wife, Dora Wemyss. They had four children. Of these, one, Hugh A. Wyndham, married Maud Lyttelton and was a member of Milner's Kindergarten. His sister Mary married General Sir Ivor Maxse and was thus the sister-in-law of Lady Edward Cecil (later Lady Milner). Another son of Baron Leconfield, Percy Scawen Wyndham, was the father of Pamela (Lady Glenconner and later Lady Grey), of George Wyndham (already mentioned), who married Countess Grosvenor, and of Mary Wyndham, who married the eleventh Earl of Wemyss. It should perhaps be mentioned that Countess Grosvenor's daughter Lettice Grosvenor married the seventh Earl of Beauchamp, brother-in-law of Samuel Hoare. Countess Grosvenor (Mrs. George Wyndham) had two nephews who must be mentioned. One, Lawrence John Lumley Dundas (Earl of Ronaldshay and Marquess of Zetland), was sent as military aide to Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1900. He was an M.P. (1907-1916), a member of the Royal Commission on Public Services in India (1912-1914), Governor of Bengal (1917-1922), a member of the Indian Round Table Conference of 1930-1931 and of the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on India in 1933. He was Secretary of State for India (1935-1940) and for Burma (1937-1940), as well as the official biographer of Lord Curzon and Lord Cromer.

The other nephew of Countess Grosvenor, Laurence Roger Lumley (Earl of Scarbrough since 1945), a cousin of the Marquess of Zetland, was an M.P. as soon as he graduated from Magdalen (1922-1929, 1931-1937), and later Governor of Bombay (1937-1943) and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for India and Burma (1945).

Countess Grosvenor's sister-in-law Mary Wyndham (who married the Earl of Wemyss) had three children. The younger son, Guy Charteris, married a Tennant of the same family as the first Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, the second Mrs. Herbert Asquith, and Baron Glenconner. His sister, Cynthia Charteris, married Herbert Asquith's son Herbert. In an earlier generation, Francis Charteris, tenth Earl of Wemyss, married Anne Anson, while his sister Lady Hilda Charteris married St. John Brodrick, eighth Viscount Midleton of first Earl Midleton. Lord Midleton's sister Edith married Philip Lyttelton Gell.

This complicated interrelationship of family connections by no means exhausts the links between the families that made up the Cecil Bloc as it existed in the period 1886-1900, when Milner was brought into it by Goschen. Nor would any picture of this Bloc be complete without some mention of the persons without family connections who were brought into the Bloc by Lord Salisbury. Most of these persons were recruited from All Souls and, like Arthur Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, Baron Quickswood, Sir Evelyn Cecil, and others, frequently served an apprenticeship in a secretarial capacity to Lord Salisbury. Many of these persons later married into the Cecil Bloc. In recruiting his proteges from All Souls, Salisbury created a precedent that was followed later by the Milner Group, although the latter went much further than the former in the degree of its influence on All Souls.

All Souls is the most peculiar of Oxford Colleges. It has no undergraduates, and its postgraduate members are not generally in pursuit of a higher degree. Essentially, it consists of a substantial endowment originally set up in 1437 by Henry Chichele, sometime Fellow of New College and later Archbishop of Canterbury, from revenues of suppressed priories. From this foundation incomes were established originally for a warden, forty fellows, and two chaplains. This has been modified at various times, until at present twenty-one fellowships worth £300 a year for seven years are filled from candidates who have passed a qualifying examination. This group usually join within a year or two of receiving the bachelor's degree. In addition, there are eleven fellowships without emolument, to be held by the incumbents of various professorial chairs at Oxford. These include the Chichele Chairs of International Law, of Modern History, of Economic History, of Social and Political Theory, and of the History of War; the Drummond Chair of Political Economy; the Gladstone Chair of Government; the Regius Chair of Civil Law; the Vinerian Chair of English Law; the Marshal Foch Professorship of French Literature; and the Chair of Social Anthropology. There are ten Distinguished Persons fellowships without emolument, to be held for seven years by persons who have attained fame in law, humanities, science, or public affairs. These are usually held by past Fellows. There are a varying number of research fellowships and teaching fellowships, good for five to seven years, with annual emoluments of £300 to £600. There are also twelve seven-year fellowships with annual emoluments of £50 for past Fellows. And lastly, there are six fellowships to be held by incumbents of certain college or university offices.

The total number of Fellows at any one time is generally no more than fifty and frequently considerably fewer. Until 1910 there were usually fewer than thirty-five, but the number has slowly increased in the twentieth century, until by 1947 there were fifty-one. In the whole period of the twentieth century from 1900 to 1947, there was a total of 149 Fellows. This number, although small, was illustrious and influential. It includes such names as Lord Acton, Leopold Amery, Sir William Anson, Sir Harold Butler, G. N. Clark, G. D. H. Cole, H. W. C. Davis, A. V. Dicey, Geoffrey Faber, Keith Feiling, Lord Chelmsford, Sir Maurice Gwyer, Lord Halifax, W. K. Hancock, Sir Arthur Hardinge, Sir William Holdsworth, T. E. Lawrence, C. A. Macartney, Friedrich Max Muller, Viscount Morley of Blackburn, Sir Charles Oman, A. F. Pollard, Sir Charles Grant Robertson, Sir James Arthur Salter, Viscount Simon, Sir Donald Somervell, Sir Arthur Ramsay Steel-Maitland, Sir Ernest Swinton, K. C. Wheare, E. L. Woodward, Francis de Zulueta, etc. In addition, there were to be numbered among those who were fellows before 1900 such illustrious persons as Lord Curzon, Lord Ernie, Sir Robert Herbert, Sir Edmund Monson, Lord Phillimore, Viscount Ridley, and Lord Salisbury. Most of these persons were elected to fellowships in All Souls at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three years, at a time when their great exploits were yet in the future. There is some question whether this ability of the Fellows of All Souls to elect as their younger colleagues men with brilliant futures is to be explained by their ability to discern greatness at an early age or by the fact that election to the fellowship opens the door to achievement in public affairs. There is some reason to believe that the second of these two alternatives is of greater weight. As the biographer of Viscount Halifax has put it, "It is safe to assert that the Fellow of All Souls is a man marked out for a position of authority in public life, and there is no surprise if he reaches the summit of power, but only disappointment if he falls short of the opportunities that are set out before him. (1)

One Fellow of All Souls has confessed in a published work that his career was based on his membership in this college. The Right Reverend Herbert Hensley Henson, who rose from humble origins to become Bishop of Durham, wrote in his memoirs: "My election to a fellowship, against all probability, and certainly against all expectation, had decisive influence on my subsequent career. It brought me within the knowledge of the late Lord Salisbury, who subsequently recommended me to the Crown for appointment to a Canonry of Westminister.... It is to All Souls College that all the 'success' [!] of my career is mainly due." (2)

It would appear that the College of All Souls is largely influenced not by the illustrious persons whose names we have listed above (since they are generally busy elsewhere) but by another group within the college. This appears when we realize that the Fellows whose fellowships are renewed for one appointment after another are not generally the ones with famous names. The realization is increased when we see that these persons with the power to obtain renewing appointments are members of a shadowy group with common undergraduate associations, close personal relationships, similar interests and ideas, and surprisingly similar biographical experience. It is this shadowy group which includes the All Souls members of the Milner Group.

In the nineteenth century, Lord Salisbury made little effort to influence All Souls, although it was a period when influence (especially in elections to fellowships) was more important than later. He contented himself with recruiting proteges from the college and apparently left the wielding of influence to others, especially to Sir William Anson. In the twentieth century, the Milner Group has recruited from and influenced All Souls. This influence has not extended to the elections to the twenty-one competitive fellowships. There, merit has unquestionably been the decisive factor. But it has been exercised in regard to the seventeen ex-officio fellowships, the ten Distinguished Persons fellowships, and the twelve re-elective fellowships. And it has also been important in contributing to the general direction and policy of the college.

This does not mean that the Milner Group is identical with All Souls, but merely that it is the chief, if not the controlling, influence in it, especially in recent years. Many members of the Milner Group are not members of All Souls, and many members of All Souls are not members of the Milner Group.

The fact that All Souls is influenced by some outside power has been recognized by others, but no one so far as I know has succeeded in identifying this influence. The erratic Christopher Hobhouse, in his recent book on Oxford, has come closer than most when he wrote: "The senior common room at All Souls is distinguished above all others by the great brains which meet there and by the singular unfruitfulness of their collaboration.... But it is not these who make the running. Rather is it the Editor of The Times and his circle of associates — men whom the public voice has called to no office and entrusted with no responsibility. These individuals elect to consider themselves the powers behind the scenes. The duty of purveying honest news is elevated in their eyes into the prerogative of dictating opinion. It is at All Souls that they meet to decide just how little they will let their readers know; and their newspaper has been called the All Souls Parish Magazine." (3) The inaccuracy and bitterness of this statement is caused by the scorn which a devotee of the humanities feels toward the practitioners of the social sciences, but the writer was shrewd enough to see that an outside group dominates All Souls. He was also able to see the link between All Souls and The Times, although quite mistaken in his conclusion that the latter controls the former. As we shall see, the Milner Group dominates both.

In the present chapter we are concerned only with the relationship between the Cecil Bloc and All Souls and shall reserve our consideration of the relationships between the Milner Group and the college to a later chapter. The former relationship can be observed in the following list of names, a list which is by no means complete:

Name / College / Fellow of All Souls

C. A. Alington, 1872- / Trinity, Oxford 1891-1895 / 1896-1903
W. R. Anson, 1843-1914 / Balliol 1862-1866 / 1867-1914; Warden 1881-1914
G. N. Curzon, 1859-1925 / Balliol 1878-1822 / 1883-1890
A. H. Hardinge, 1859-1933 / Balliol 1878-1881 / 1881-
A. C. Headlam, 1862- / New College 1881-1885 / 1885-1897, 1924-
H. H. Henson, 1863- / Non-Collegiate 1881-1884 / 1884-1891, 1896-1903; 1939
C. G. Lang, 1864-1945 / Balliol 1882-1886 / 1888-1928
F. W. Pember, 1862- / Balliol 1880-1884 / 1884-1910- Warden, 1914-1932
W. G. F. Phillimore, 1845-1929 / Christ Church 1863-1867 / -
R. E. Prothero, 1852-1937 / Balliol 1871-1875 / 1875-1891
E. Ridley, 1843-1928 / Corpus Christi 1862-1866 / 1866-1882
M. W. Ridley, 1842-1904 / Balliol 1861-1865 / 1865-1874
J. Simon, 1873- / Wadham 1892-1896 / 1897-
F. J. N. Thesiger, 1868-1933 / Magdalen 1887-1891 / 1892-1899, 1929-1933


The Reverend Cyril A. Alington married Hester Lyttelton, daughter of the fourth Baron Lyttelton and sister of the famous eight brothers whom we have mentioned. He was Headmaster of Eton (1916-1933) in succession to his brother-in-law Edward Lyttelton, and at the same time chaplain to King George V (1921-1933). Since 1933 he has been Dean of Durham.

Sir William Anson can best be discussed later. He, Lord Goschen, and H. A. L. Fisher were the chief instruments by which the Milner Group entered into All Souls.

George Nathaniel Curzon (Lord Curzon after 1898, 1859-1925) studied at Eton and Balliol (1872-1882). At the latter he was intimate with the future Lords Midleton, Selborne, and Salisbury. On graduating, he went on a trip to the Near East with Edward Lyttelton. Elected a Fellow of All Souls in 1883, he became assistant private secretary to Lord Salisbury two years later. This set his future career. As Harold Nicolson says of him in the Dictionary of National Biography, "His activities centered from that moment on obedience to Lord Salisbury, an intense interest in foreign and colonial policy, and the enjoyment of the social amenities." A Member of Parliament from 1886 to 1898, he traveled widely, chiefly in Asia (1887-1894), financing his trips by writing for The Times. He was Under Secretary in the India Office (1891-1892), Under Secretary in the Foreign Office (1895-1898), and Viceroy of India (1899-1905) by Lord Salisbury's appointment. In the last-named post he had many controversies with the "Balfour-Brodrick combination" (as Nicolson calls it), and his career was more difficult thereafter, for, although he did achieve high office again, he failed to obtain the premiership, and the offices he did obtain always gave him the appearance rather than the reality of power. These offices included Lord Privy Seal (1915-1916, 1924-1925), Leader in Lords (1916-1924), Lord President of the Council (1916-1919), member of the Imperial War Cabinet (1916-1918), and Foreign Secretary (1919-1924). Throughout this later period, he was generally in opposition to what was being supported by the Cecil Bloc and the Milner Group, but his desire for high office led him to make constant compromises with his convictions.

Arthur Henry Hardinge (Sir Arthur after 1904) and his cousin, Charles Hardinge (Baron Hardinge of Penshurst after 1910), were both aided in their careers by Lord Salisbury. The former, a Fellow of All Souls in 1881 and an assistant secretary to Lord Salisbury four years later, rose to be Minister to Persia, Belgium, and Portugal (1900-1913) and Ambassador to Spain (1913-1919). The latter worked up in the diplomatic service to be First Secretary at the Embassy in St. Petersburg (1898-1903), then was Assistant Under Secretary and Permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1903-1904, 1906-1910, 1916-1920), Ambassador at St. Petersburg (1904-1906), Viceroy of India (1910-1916), and Ambassador at Paris (1920-1922). Charles Hardinge, although almost unknown to many people, is one of the most significant figures in the formation of British foreign policy in the twentieth century. He was the close personal friend and most important adviser on foreign policy of King Edward VII and accompanied the King on all his foreign diplomatic tours. His post as Under Secretary was kept available for him during these trips and in later life during his service as Ambassador and Viceroy. He presents the only case in British history where an ax-Ambassador and ax-Viceroy was to be found in the position of Under Secretary. He was probably the most important single person in the formation of the Entente Cordiale in 1904 and was very influential in the formation of the understanding with Russia in 1907. His son, Captain Alexander Hardinge, married Milner's stepdaughter, Helen Mary Cecil, in 1921 and succeeded his father as Baron Hardinge of Penshurst in 1944. He was equerry and assistant private secretary to King George V (1920-1936) and private secretary and extra equerry to both Edward VIII and George VI (1936-1943). He had a son, George Edward Hardinge (born 1921), who married Janet Christian Goschen, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel F. C. C. Balfour, granddaughter of the second Viscount Goschen and of Lady Goschen, the former Lady Evelyn Gathorne-Hardy (fifth daughter of the first Earl of Cranbrook). Thus a grandchild of Milner was united with a great-grandchild of his old benefactor, Lord Goschen. (4)

Among the persons recruited from All Souls by Lord Salisbury were two future prelates of the Anglican Church. These were Cosmo Gordon Lang, Fellow for forty years, and Herbert Hensley Henson, Fellow for twenty-four years. Lang was Bishop of Stepney (1901-1908), Archbishop of York (1908-1928), and Archbishop of Canterbury (1928-1942). Henson was Canon of Westminister Abbey (1900-1912), Dean of Durham (1912-1918), and Bishop of Hereford and of Durham (1918-1939).

The Right Reverend Arthur Cayley Headlam was a Fellow of All Souls for about forty years and, in addition, was editor of the Church Quarterly Review, Regius Professor of Divinity, and Bishop of Gloucester. He is chiefly of interest to us because his younger brother, James W. Headlam-Morley (1863-1929), was a member of the Milner Group. James (Sir James in 1929) was put by the Group into the Department of Information (under John Buchan, 1917-1918), and the Foreign Office (under Milner and Curzon, 1918-1928), went to the Peace Conference in 1919, edited the first published volume of British Documents on the Origin of the War (1926), and was a mainstay of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, where his portrait still hangs. His daughter, Agnes, was made Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford in 1948. This was a position strongly influenced by the Milner Group.

Francis W. Pember was used by Lord Salisbury from time to time as assistant legal adviser to the Foreign Office. He was Warden of All Souls in succession to Anson (1914-1932).

Walter Phillimore (Lord Phillimore after 1918) was admitted to All Souls with Anson in 1867. He was a lifelong friend and associate of the second Viscount Halifax (1839-1934). The latter devoted his life to the cause of church union and was for fifty-two years (1868-1919, 1934) president of the English Church Union. In this post he was succeeded in 1919 by Lord Phillimore, who had been serving as vice-president for many years and who was an intimate friend of the Halifax family. It was undoubtedly through Phillimore that the present Earl of Halifax, then simple Edward Wood, was elected to All Souls in 1903 and became an important member of the Milner Group. Phillimore was a specialist in ecclesiastical law, and it created a shock when Lord Salisbury made him a judge of the Queen's Bench in 1897, along with Edward Ridley, who had entered All Souls as a Fellow the year before Phillimore. The echoes of this shock can still be discerned in Lord Sankey's brief sketch of Phillimore in the Dictionary of National Biography. Phillimore became a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1913 and in 1918 drew up one of the two British drafts for the Covenant of the League of Nations. The other draft, known as the Cecil Draft, was attributed to Lord Robert Cecil but was largely the work of Alfred Zimmern, a member of the Milner Group.

Rowland Edmund Prothero (Lord Ernie after 1919) and his brother, George W. Prothero (Sir George after 1920), are two of the most important links between the Cecil Bloc and the Milner Group. They grew up on the Isle of Wight in close contact with Queen Victoria, who was a family friend. Through the connection, the elder Prothero was asked to tutor the Duke of Bedford in 1878, a position which led to his appointment in 1899 as agent-in-chief of the Duke. In the interval he was a Fellow of All Souls for sixteen years and engaged in literary work, writing unsigned articles for the Edinburgh Review, the Church Quarterly Review and The Quarterly Review. Of the last, possibly through the influence of Lord Salisbury, he became editor for five years (1894-1899), being succeeded in the position by his brother for twenty-three years (1899-1922).

As agent of the extensive agricultural holdings of the Duke of Bedford, Prothero became familiar with agricultural problems and began to write on the subject. He ran for Parliament from Bedfordshire as a Unionist, on a platform advocating tariff reform, in 1907 and again in 1910, but in spite of his influential friends, he was not successful. He wrote of these efforts: "I was a stranger to the political world, without friends in the House of Commons. The only men prominent in public life whom I knew with any degree of real intimacy were Curzon and Milner." (5) In 1914, at Anson's death, he was elected to succeed him as one of Oxford's representatives in Parliament. Almost immediately he was named a member of Milner's Committee on Home Production of Food (1915), and the following year was on Lord Selborne's committee concerned with the same problem. At this point in his autobiography, Prothero wrote: "Milner and I were old friends. We had been undergraduates together at Balliol College.... The outside world thought him cold and reserved.... But between Milner and myself there was no barrier, mainly, I think, because we were both extremely shy men." The interim report of the Selborne Committee repeated the recommendations of the Milner Committee in December 1916. At the same time came the Cabinet crisis, and Prothero was named President of the Board of Agriculture with a seat in the new Cabinet. Several persons close to the Milner Group were put into the department, among them Sir Sothern Holland, Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, Lady Evelyn Cecil, and Lord Goschen (son of Milner's old friend). Prothero retired from the cabinet and Parliament in 1919, was made a baron in the same year, and a Fellow of Balliol in 1922.

Sir George W. Prothero (1848-1922), brother of Lord Ernie, had been lecturer in history at his own college at Cambridge University and the first professor in the new Chair of Modern History at Edinburgh before he became editor of The Quarterly Review in 1899. He was editor of the Cambridge Modern History (1902-1912), Chichele Lecturer in History (1915), and director of the Historical Section of the Foreign Office and general editor of the Peace Handbooks, 155 volumes of studies preparatory to the Peace Conference (1917-1919). Besides his strictly historical works, he wrote a Memoir ofJ.R. Seeley and edited and published Seeley's posthumous Growth of British Polity. He also w rote the sketch of Lord Selborne in the Dictionary of National Biography. His own sketch in the same work was written by Algernon Cecil, nephew of Lord Salisbury, who had worked with Prothero in the Historical Section of the Foreign Office. The same writer also wrote the sketches of Arthur Balfour and Lord Salisbury in the same collective work. All three are very revealing sources for this present study.

G. W. Prothero's work on the literary remains of Seeley must have endeared him to the Milner Group, for Seeley was regarded as a precursor by the inner circle of the Group. For example, Lionel Curtis, in a letter to Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian) in November 1916, wrote: "Seeley's results were necessarily limited by his lack of any knowledge at first hand either of the Dominions or of India. With the Round Table organization behind him Seeley by his own knowledge and insight might have gone further than us. If we have been able to go further than him it is not merely that we followed in his train, but also because we have so far based our study of the relations of these countries on a preliminary field-study of the countries concerned, conducted in close cooperation with people in those countries. "(6)

Matthew White Ridley (Viscount Ridley after 1900) and his younger brother, Edward Ridley (Sir Edward after 1897), were both proteges of Lord Salisbury and married into the Cecil Bloc. Matthew was a Member of Parliament (1868-1885, 1886-1900) and held the offices of Under Secretary of the Home Department (1878-1880), Financial Secretary of the Treasury in Salisbury's first government (1885-1886), and Home Secretary in Salisbury's third government (1895-1900). He was made a Privy Councillor during Salisbury's second government. His daughter, Grace, married the future third Earl of Selborne in 1910, while his son married Rosamond Guest, sister of Lady Chelmsford and future sister-in-law of Frances Lyttelton (daughter of the eighth Viscount Cobham and the former Mary Cavendish).

Edward Ridley beat out Anson for the fellowship to All Souls in 1866, but in the following year both Anson and Phillimore were admitted. Ridley and Phillimore were appointed to the Queen's Bench of the High Court of Justice in 1897 by Lord Salisbury. The former held the post for twenty years (1897-1917).

John Simon (Viscount Simon since 1940) came into the Cecil Bloc and the Milner Group through All Souls. He received his first governmental task as junior counsel for Britain in the Alaska Boundary Arbitration of 1903. A Member of Parliament as a Liberal and National Liberal (except for a brief interval of four years) from the great electoral overturn of 1906 to his elevation to the upper house in 1940, he held governmental posts for a large portion of that period. He was Solicitor General (1910-1913), Attorney General (1913-1915), Home Secretary (1915-1916), Foreign Secretary (1931-1935), Home Secretary again (1935-1937), Chancellor of the Exchequer (1937-1940), and, finally, Lord Chancellor (1940-1945). He was also chairman of the Indian Statutory Commission (1927-1930).

Frederic John Napier Thesiger (Lord Chelmsford after 1905) was taken by Balfour from the London County Council in 1905 to be Governor of Queensland (1905-1909) and later Governor of New South Wales (1907-1913). In the latter post he established a contact with the inner circle of the Milner Group, which v\as useful to both parties later. He was Viceroy of India in 1916-1921 and First Lord of the Admiralty in the brief Labour government of 1924. He married Frances Guest in 1894 while still at All Souls and may have been the contact by which her sister married Matthew Ridley in 1899 and her brother married Frances Lyttelton in 1911.

The Cecil Bloc did not disappear with the death of Lord Salisbury in 1903 but was continued for a considerable period by Balfour. It did not, however, continue to grow but, on the contrary, became looser and less disciplined, for Balfour lacked the qualities of ambition and determination necessary to control or develop such a group. Accordingly, the Cecil Bloc, while still in existence as a political and social power, has largely been replaced by the Milner Croup. This Group, which began as a dependent fief of the Cecil Bloc, has since 1916 become increasingly the active portion of the Bloc and in fact its real center. Milner possessed those qualities of determination and ambition which Balfour lacked, and was willing to sacrifice all personal happiness and social life to his political goals, something which was quite unacceptable to the pleasure-loving Balfour. Moreover, Milner was intelligent enough to see that it was not possible to continue a political group organized in the casual and familiar way in which it had been done by Lord Salisbury. Milner shifted the emphasis from family connection to ideological agreement. The former had become less useful with the rise of a class society based on economic conflicts and with the extension of democracy. Salisbury was fundamentally a conservative, while Milner was not. Where Salisbury sought to build up a bloc of friends and relatives to exercise the game of politics and to maintain the Old England that they all loved, Milner was not really a conservative at all. Milner had an idea — the idea he had obtained from Toynbee and that he found also in Rhodes and in all the members of his Group. This idea had two parts: that the extension and integration of the Empire and the development of social welfare were essential to the continued existence of the British way of life; and that this British way of life was an instrument which unfolded all the best and highest capabilities of mankind. Working with this ideology derived from Toynbee and Balliol, Milner used the power and the general strategic methods of the Cecil Bloc to build up his own Group. But, realizing that conditions had changed, he put much greater emphasis on propaganda activities and on ideological unity within the Group. These were both made necessary by the extension of political democracy and the rise of economic democracy as a practical political issue. These new developments had made it impossible to be satisfied with a group held together by no more than family and social connections and animated by no more far-sighted goal than the preservation of the existing social structure.

The Cecil Bloc did not resist this change by Milner of the aims and tactics of their older leader. The times made it clear to all that methods must be changed. However, it is possible that the split which appeared within the Conservative Party in England after 1923 followed roughly the lines between the Milner Group and the Cecil Bloc.

It should perhaps be pointed out that the Cecil Bloc was a social rather than a partisan group — at first, at least. Until 1890 or so it contained members of both political parties, including the leaders, Salisbury and Gladstone. The relationship between the two parties on the topmost level could be symbolized by the tragic romance between Salisbury's nephew and Gladstone's niece, ending in the death of the latter in 1875. After the split in the Liberal Party in 1886, it was the members of the Cecil Bloc who became Unionists — that is, the Lytteltons, the Wyndhams, the Cavendishes. As a result, the Cecil Bloc became increasingly a political force. Gladstone remained socially a member of it, and so did his protege, John Morley, but almost all the other members of the Bloc were Unionists or Conservatives. The chief exceptions were the four leaders of the Liberal Party after Gladstone, who were strong imperialists: Rosebery, Asquith, Edward Grey, and Haldane. These four supported the Boer War, grew increasingly anti-German, supported the World War in 1914, and were close to the Milner Group politically, intellectually, and socially. (7)

Socially, the Cecil Bloc could be divided into three generations. The first (including Salisbury, Gladstone, the seventh Duke of Devonshire, the eighth Viscount Midleton, Goschen, the fourth Baron Lyttelton, the first Earl of Cranbrook, the first Duke of Westminster, the first Baron Leconfield, the tenth Earl of Wemyss, etc.) was not as "social" (in the frivolous sense) as the second. This first generation was born in the first third of the nineteenth century, went to both Oxford and Cambridge in the period 1830-1855, and died in the period 1890-1915. The second generation was born in the second third of the nineteenth century, went almost exclusively to Oxford (chiefly Balliol) in the period 1860-1880, and died in the period 1920-1930. This second generation was much more social in a spectacularly frivolous sense, much more intellectual (in the sense that they read books and talked philosophy or social problems) and centered on a social group known at the time as "The Souls." The third generation of the Cecil Bloc, consisting of persons born in the last third of the nineteenth century, went to Oxford almost exclusively (New College or Balliol) in the period 1890-1905 and began to die off about 1940. This third generation of the Cecil Bloc was dominated and organized about the Milner Group. It was very serious-minded, very political, and very secretive.

The first two generations did not regard themselves as an organized group but rather as "Society." The Bloc was symbolized in the first two generations in two exclusive dining clubs called "The Club" and "Grillion's." The membership of the two was very similar, with about forty persons in each and a total of not over sixty in both together. Both organizations had illustrious pasts. The Club, founded in 1764, had as past members Joshua Reynolds (founder), Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, James Boswell, Edward Gibbon, Charles Fox, David Garrick, Adam Smith, Richard B. Sheridan, George Canning, Humphry Davy, Walter Scott, Lord Liverpool, Henry Hallam, Lord Brougham, T. B. Macauley, Lord John Russell, George Grote, Dean Stanley, W. E. H. Lecky, Lord Kelvin, Matthew Arnold, T. H. Huxley, Bishop Wilberforce, Bishop Stubbs, Bishop Creighton, Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Balfour, John Morley, Richard Jebb, Lord Goschen, Lord Acton, Lord Rosebery, Archbishop Lang, F. W. Pember (Warden of All Souls), Lord Asquith, Edward Grey, Lord Haldane, Hugh Cecil, John Simon, Charles Oman, Lord Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling, Gilbert Murray, H. A. L. Fisher, John Buchan, Maurice Hankey, the fourth Marquess of Salisbury, Lord Lansdowne, Bishop Henson, Halifax, Stanley Baldwin, Austen Chamberlain, Lord Carnock, and Lord Hew art. This list includes only members up to 1925. There were, as we have said, only forty members at any one time, and at meetings (dinner every fortnight while Parliament was in session) usually only about a dozen were present.

Grillion's was very similar to The Club. Founded in 1812, it had the same members and met under the same conditions, except weekly (dinner when Parliament was in session). The following list includes the names I can find of those who were members up to 1925: Gladstone, Salisbury, Lecky, Balfour, Asquith, Edward Grey, Haldane, Lord Bryce, Hugh Cecil, Robert Cecil, Curzon, Neville Lyttelton, Eustace Percy, John Simon, Geoffrey Dawson, Walter Raleigh, Balfour of Burleigh, and. Gilbert Murray.(8)

The second generation of the Cecil Bloc was famous at the time that it was growing up (and political power was still in the hands of the first generation) as "The Souls," a term applied to them partly in derision and partly in envy but used by themselves later. This group, flitting about from one great country house to another or from one spectacular social event to another in the town houses of their elders, has been preserved for posterity in the autobiographical volumes of Margot Tennant Asquith and has been caricatured in the writings of Oscar Wilde. The frivolity of this group can be seen in Margot Tennant's statement that she obtained for Milner his appointment to the chairmanship of the Board of Inland Revenue in 1892 merely by writing to Balfour and asking for it after she had a too brief romantic interlude with Milner in Egypt. As a respected scholar of my acquaintance has said, this group did everything in a frivolous fashion, including entering the Boer War and the First World War.

One of the enduring creations of the Cecil Bloc is the Society for Psychical Research, which holds a position in the history of the Cecil Bloc similar to that held by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the Milner Group. The Society was founded in 1882 by the Balfour family and their in-laws, Lord Rayleigh and Professor Sidgwick. In the twentieth century it was dominated by those members of the Cecil Bloc who became most readily members of the Milner Group. Among these we might mention Gilbert Murray, who performed a notable series of experiments with his daughter, Mrs. Arnold J. Toynbee, in the years before 1914, and Dame Edith Lyttelton, herself a Balfour and widow of Arthur Balfour's closest friend, who was president of the Society in 1933-1934.


The third generation was quite different, partly because it was dominated by Milner, one of the few completely serious members of the second generation. This third generation was serious if not profound, studious if not broadly educated, and haunted consistently by the need to act quickly to avoid impending disaster. This fear of disaster they shared with Rhodes and Milner, but they still had the basic weakness of the second generation (except Milner and a few other adopted members of that Group), namely that they got everything too easily. Political power, wealth, and social position came to this third generation as a gift from the second, without the need to struggle for what they got or to analyze the foundations of their beliefs. As a result, while awake to the impending disaster, they were not able to avoid it, but instead tinkered and tampered until the whole system blew up in their faces.

This third generation, especially the Milner Group, which formed its core, differed from its two predecessors in its realization that it formed a group. The first generation had regarded itself as "England," the second regarded itself as "Society," but the third realized it was a secret group — or at least its inner circles did. From Milner and Rhodes they got this idea of a secret group of able and determined men, but they never found a name for it, contenting themselves with calling it "the Group," or "the Band," or even "Us." (9)
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Re: The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Clivede

Postby admin » Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:35 pm

Chapter 3: The Secret Society of Cecil Rhodes (1)

When Milner went to South Africa in 1897, Rhodes and he were already old acquaintances of many years' standing. We have already indicated that they were contemporaries at Oxford, but, more than that, they were members of a secret society which had been founded in 1891. Moreover, Milner was, if not in 1897, at least by 1901, Rhodes's chosen successor in the leadership of that society.

The secret society of Cecil Rhodes is mentioned in the first five of his seven wills. In the fifth it was supplemented by the idea of an educational institution with scholarships, whose alumni would be bound together by common ideals — Rhodes's ideals. In the sixth and seventh wills the secret society was not mentioned, and the scholarships monopolized the estate. But Rhodes still had the same ideals and still believed that they could be carried out best by a secret society of men devoted to a common cause. The scholarships were merely a facade to conceal the secret society, or, more accurately, they were to be one of the instruments by which the members of the secret society could carry out his purpose. This purpose, as expressed in the first will (1877), was:

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


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

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

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


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

Dr. Frank Aydelotte, the best-known American authority on Rhodes's wills, claims that Rhodes made no reference to the secret society in his last two wills because he had abandoned the idea. The first chapter of his recent book, The American Rhodes Scholarships, states and reiterates that between 1891 and 1893 Rhodes underwent a great change in his point of view and matured in his judgment to the point that in his sixth will "he abandons forever his youthful idea of a secret society." This is completely untrue, and there is no evidence to support such a statement. (2) On the contrary, all the evidence, both direct and circumstantial, indicates that Rhodes wanted the secret society from 1875 to his death in 1902. By Dr. Aydelotte's own admission, Rhodes wanted the society from 1877 to 1893, a period of sixteen years. Accepted practice in the use of historical evidence requires us to believe that Rhodes persisted in this idea for the remaining nine years of his life, unless there exists evidence to the contrary. There is no such evidence. On the other hand, there is direct evidence that he did not change his ideas. Two examples of this evidence can be mentioned here. On 5 February 1896, three years after his sixth will, Rhodes ended a long conversation with R. B. Brett (later Lord Esher) by saying, "Wish we could get our secret society." And in April 1900, a year after he wrote his seventh and last will, Rhodes was reprimanding Stead for his opposition to the Boer War, on the grounds that in this case he should have been willing to accept the judgment of the men on the spot who had made the war. Rhodes said to Stead, "That is the curse which will be fatal to our ideas — insubordination. Do not you think it is very disobedient of you? How can our Society be worked if each one sets himself up as the sole judge of what ought to be done? Just look at the position here. We three are in South Africa, all of us your boys ... I myself, Milner, and Garrett, all of whom learned their politics from you. We are on the spot, and we are unanimous in declaring this war to be necessary. You have never been in South Africa, and yet, instead of deferring to the judgment of your own boys, you fling yourself into a violent opposition to the war."(3)

Dr. Aydelotte's assumption that the scholarships were an alternative to the secret society is quite untenable, for all the evidence indicates that the scholarships were but one of several instruments through which the society would work. In 1894 Stead discussed with Rhodes how the secret society would work and wrote about it after Rhodes's death as follows: "We also discussed together various projects for propaganda, the formation of libraries, the creation of lectureships, the dispatch of emissaries on missions of propaganda throughout the Empire, and the steps to be taken to pave the way for the foundation and the acquisition of a newspaper which was to be devoted to the service of the cause." This is an exact description of the way in which the society, that is the Milner Group, has functioned. Moreover, when Rhodes talked with Stead, in January 1895, about the scholarships at Oxford, he did not abandon the society but continued to speak of it as the real power behind the scholarships. It is perfectly clear that Rhodes omitted mentioning the secret society in his last two wills because he knew that by that time he was so famous that the one way to keep a society from being secret would be to mention it in his will. Obviously, if Rhodes wanted the secret society after 1893, he would have made no mention of it in his will but would have left his money in trust for a legitimate public purpose and arranged for the creation of the secret society by a private understanding with his trustees. This is clearly what happened, because the secret society was established, and Milner used Rhodes's money to finance it, just as Rhodes had intended. (4)

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

This idea of a society throughout the world working for federal union fascinated Milner as it had fascinated Rhodes. We have already mentioned the agreement which he signed with George Parkin in 1893, to propagandize for this purpose. Eight years later, in a letter to Parkin from South Africa, Milner wrote at length on the subject of imperial union and ended: "Good-bye for today. Keep up the touch. I wish we had some like-minded persons in New Zealand and Australia, who were personal friends. More power to your elbow. "(5) Moreover, there were several occasions after 1902 when Milner referred to his desire to see "a powerful body of men" working "outside the existing political parties" for imperial unity. He referred to this desire in his letter to Congdon in 1904 and referred to it again in his "farewell speech" to the Kindergarten in 1905. There is also a piece of negative evidence which seems to me to be of considerable significance. In 1912 Parkin wrote a book called The Rhodes Scholarships, in which he devoted several pages to Rhodes's wills. Although he said something about each will and gave the date of each will, he said nothing about the secret society. Now this secret society, which is found in five out of the seven wills, is so astonishing that Parkin's failure to mention it must be deliberate. He would have no reason to pass it by in silence unless the society had been formed. If the existing Rhodes Trust were a more mature alternative for the secret society rather than a screen for it, there would be no reason to pass it by, but, on the contrary, an urgent need to mention it as a matter of great intrinsic interest and as an example of how Rhodes's ideas matured.

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

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

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

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


The day following this sensational conversation Stead lost a libel action to the amount of £2000 damages. Rhodes at once sent a check to cover it and said: "You must keep my confidence secret. The idea is right, but until sure of the lines would be ruined in too many hands. Your subsidiary press idea can be discussed without risk, but the inner circle behind would never be many, perhaps three or four." (6)

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

This society took another step forward during Rhodes's visit to England in February 1890. The evidence for this is to be found in the Journals of Lord Esher (at that time R. B. Brett), who had obviously been let in on the plan by Stead. Under date of 3 February 1890, we read in these Journals: "Cecil Rhodes arrived last night from South Africa. I was at Stead's today when he called. I left them together. Tonight I saw Stead again. Rhodes had talked for three hours of all his great schemes.... Rhodes is a splendid enthusiast. But he looks upon men as 'machines.' This is not very penetrating." Twelve days after this, on 15 February, at Lord Rothschild's country house, Brett wrote in his journal: 'Came here last night. Cecil Rhodes, Arthur Balfour, Harcourts, Albert Grey, Alfred Lyttelton. A long talk with Rhodes today. He has vast ideas. Imperial notions. He seems disinterested. But he is very ruse and, I suspect, quite unscrupulous as to the means he employs."(7)

The secret society, after so much preliminary talk, took form in 1891, the same year in which Rhodes drew up his fourth will and made Stead as well as Lord Rothschild the trustee of his fortune. It is perfectly clear from the evidence that he expected Rothschild to handle the financial investments associated with the trust, while Stead was to have full charge of the methods by which the funds were used. About the same time, in February 1891, Stead and Rhodes had another long discussion about the secret society. First they discussed their goals and agreed that, if necessary in order to achieve Anglo-American unity, Britain should join the United States. Then they discussed the organization of the secret society and divided it into two circles: an inner circle, "The Society of the Elect", and an outer circle to include "The Association of Helpers" and The Review of Reviews (Stead's magazine, founded 1890). Rhodes said that he had already revealed the plan for "The Society of the Elect" to Rothschild and "little Johnston." By "little Johnston" he meant Harry H. Johnston (Sir Harry after 1896), African explorer and administrator, who had laid the basis for the British claims to Nyasaland, Kenya, and Uganda. Johnston was, according to Sir Frederick Whyte, the biographer of Stead, virtually unknown in England before Stead published his portrait as the frontispiece to the first issue of The Review of Reviews in 1890.(8) This was undoubtedly done on behalf of Rhodes. Continuing their discussion of the membership of "The Society of the Elect," Stead asked permission to bring in Milner and Brett. Rhodes agreed, so they telegraphed at once to Brett, who arrived in two hours. They then drew up the following "ideal arrangement' for the society:

1. General of the Society: Rhodes
2. Junta of Three: (1)Stead, (2) Brett, (3) Milner
3. Circle of Initiates: (1) Cardinal Manning, (2) General Booth, (3) Bramwell Booth, (4) "Little" [Harry] Johnston, (5) Albert Grey, (6) Arthur Balfour
4. The Association of Helpers
5. A College, under Professor Seeley, to be established to train people in the English-speaking idea."

Within the next few weeks Stead had another talk with Rhodes and a talk with Milner, who was "filled with admiration" for the scheme, according to Stead's notes as published by Sir Frederick Whyte.

The "ideal arrangement" for the secret society, as drawn up in 1891, never came into effect in all its details. The organization as drawn on paper reflected the romantic and melodramatic ideas of Cecil Rhodes and Stead, and doubtless they envisioned formal initiations, oaths, secret signs of recognition, etc. Once Milner and Brett were made initiates, the atmosphere changed. To them secret signs or oaths were so much claptrap and neither necessary nor desirable, for the initiates knew each other intimately and had implicit trust in each other without the necessity of signs or oaths. Thus the melodrama envisioned by Rhodes was watered down without in any way reducing the seriousness with which the initiates determined to use their own personal influence and Rhodes's wealth and power to achieve the consolidation of the British Empire, which they shared as an ideal with Rhodes.

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

Of the persons so far named, we can be certain that six were initiates. These were Rhodes, Lord Rothschild, Johnston, Stead, Brett, and Milner. Of these, Rothschild was largely indifferent and participated in the work of the group only casually. Of the others, Johnston received from £10,000 to £17,000 a year from Rhodes for several years after 1889, during which period he was trying to eliminate the influence of slave-traders and the Portuguese from Nyasaland. About 1894 he became alienated from Rhodes because of Johnston's refusal to cooperate with him in an attack on the Portuguese in Manikaland. As a result Johnston ceased to be an active member of the society. Lord Grey's efforts to heal the breach were only nominally successful. (9)

Stead was also eliminated in an informal fashion in the period 1899-1904, at first by Rhodes's removing him from his trusteeship and later by Milner's refusal to use him, confide in him, or even see him, although continuing to protest his personal affection for him. Since Milner was the real leader of the society after 1902, this had the effect of eliminating Stead from the society. (10)

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

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

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

This assistance was so highly esteemed by Stead that he regarded Brett as an important part of the Pall Mall Gazette organization. Writing in 1902 of Milner and Brett, Stead spoke of them, without mentioning their names, as "two friends, now members of the Upper House, who were thoroughly in sympathy with the gospel according to the Pall Mall Gazette and who had been as my right and left hands during my editorship of the paper." In return Stead informed Brett of Rhodes's secret schemes as early as February 1890 and brought him into the society when it was organized the following year.

The official positions held by Brett in the period after 1895 were secretary of the Office of Works (1895-1902), Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Windsor Castle (1901-1930), member of the Royal Commission on the South African War (1902-1903), permanent member of the Committee of Imperial Defence (1905-1930), chairman and later president of the London County Territorial Force Association (1909-1921), and chief British member of the Temporary Mixed Commission on Disarmament of the League of Nations (1922-1923). Although some of these posts, especially the one on the Committee of Imperial Defence, play an important role in the history of the Milner Group, none of them gives any indication of the significant position which Esher held in British political life. The same thing could be said of the positions which he refused, although they, if accepted, would have made him one of the greatest names in recent British history. Among the positions which he refused we might mention the following: Permanent Under Secretary in the Colonial Office (1899), Governor of Cape Colony (1900), Permanent Under Secretary in the War Office (1900), Secretary of State for War (1903), Director of The Times (1908), Viceroy of India (1908), and an earldom (date unknown). Esher's reasons for refusing these positions were twofold: he wanted to work behind the scenes rather than in the public view, and his work in secret was so important and so influential that any public post would have meant a reduction in his power. When he refused the exalted position of viceroy in 1908, he wrote frankly that, with his opportunity of influencing vital decisions at the center, India for him "would be (it sounds vain, but it isn't) parochial."(11) This opportunity for influencing decisions at the center came from his relationship to the monarchy. For at least twenty-five years (from 1895 to after 1920) Esher was probably the most important adviser on political matters to Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, and King George V. This position arose originally from his personal friendship with Victoria, established in the period 1885-1887, and was solidified later when, as secretary to the Office of Works and Lieutenant Governor of Windsor Castle, he was in charge of the physical properties of all the royal residences. These opportunities were not neglected. He organized the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, the royal funeral of 1901, and the coronation of the same year. In the latter case he proved to be indispensable, for in the sixty-four years without a coronation the precedents had been forgotten. In this way Esher reached a point where he was the chief unofficial representative of the King and the "liaison between King and ministers." As an example of the former role, we might mention that in 1908, when a purchaser known only as "X" acquired control of The Times, Esher visited Lord Northcliffe on behalf of "a very high quarter" to seek assurance that the policy of the paper would not be changed. Northcliffe, who was "X," hastened to give the necessary assurances, according to the official History of The Times. Northcliffe and the historian of The Times regarded Esher on this occasion as the emissary of King Edward, but we, who know of his relationship with the Rhodes secret society, are justified in asking if he were not equally the agent of the Milner Group, since it was as vital to the Group as to the King that the policy of The Times remain unchanged. As we shall see in a later chapter, when Northcliffe did adopt a policy contrary to that of the Group, in the period 1917-1919, the Group broke with him personally and within three years bought his controlling interest in the paper.

Certain other persons were probably taken into "The Society of the Elect" in the next few years. Hawksley, Rhodes's lawyer, was one. He obviously knew about the secret society, since he drew up the wills in which it was mentioned. This, combined with the fact that he was an intimate confidant of Rhodes in all the activities of the society and was made a trustee of the last three wills (1892), makes it probable that he should be regarded as an initiate.

Likewise it is almost certain that Milner brought in Sir Thomas Brassey (later Lord Brassey), the wealthy naval enthusiast whose name is preserved in Brassey's Naval Annual. Brassey was treasurer and most active figure in the Imperial Federation League during its ten years' existence. In 1889, as we have mentioned, he hired George Parkin to go to Australia on behalf of the League to make speeches in support of imperial federation. We have already indicated that Milner in 1893 approached Parkin in behalf of a mysterious and unnamed group of wealthy imperialists, and, some time later, Milner and Brassey signed a contract with Parkin to pay him £450 a year for three years to propagandize for imperial federation. Since this project was first broached to Parkin by Milner alone and since the Imperial Federation League was, by 1893, in process of dissolution, I think we have the right to assume that the unnamed group for which Milner was acting was the Rhodes secret society. If so, Brassey must have been introduced to the scheme sometime between 1891 and 1893. This last interpretation is substantiated by the numerous and confidential letters which passed between Milner and Brassey in the years which followed. Some of these will be mentioned later. It is worth mentioning here that Brassey was appointed Governor of Victoria in 1895 and played an important role in the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1900.

The propaganda work which Parkin did in the period 1893-1895 in fulfillment of this agreement was part of a movement that was known at the time as "Seeley's lecturers." This movement was probably all that ensued from the fifth portion of the "ideal arrangement" — that is, from the projected college under Professor Seeley.

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

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

Garrett was also on intimate terms with Milner during his period as High Commissioner after 1897. In fact, when Rhodes spoke of political issues in South Africa, he frequently spoke of "I myself, Milner, and Garrett." We have already quoted an occasion on which he used this expression to Stead in 1900. Milner's relationship with Garrett can be gathered from a letter which he wrote to Garrett in 1899, after Garrett had to leave South Africa to go to a sanatorium in Germany: "It is no use protesting against the decrees of fate, nor do I want to say too much on what Rhodes calls 'the personal.' But this really was a great blow to me, and I have never quite got over your breakdown and departure, never quite felt the same man since, either politically or privately. . . . Dear Friend, I miss you fearfully, always shall miss you. So does this young country."' (12)

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

We have said that Garrett was used by Milner as an intermediary with both Rhodes and Stead. The need for such an intermediary with Rhodes arose from Milner's feeling that it was politically necessary to conceal the intimacy of their relationship. As Rhodes told Stead, speaking of Milner, on 10 April 1900, "I have seen very little of him. He said to me, 'The less you and I are seen together the better.' Hence, I never invited him to Groote Schuur." (13)

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

Another prominent political figure who may have been an initiate in the period before 1902 is Lord Rosebery. Like his father-in-law, Lord Rothschild, who was an initiate, Rosebery was probably not a very active member of The Society of the Elect, although for quite different reasons. Lord Rothschild held aloof because to him the whole project was incomprehensible and unbusinesslike; Lord Rosebery held aloof because of his own diffident personality and his bad physical health. However, he cooperated with the members of the society and was on such close personal relationships with them that he probably knew of the secret society. Brett was one of his most intimate associates and introduced him to Milner in 1885. As for Rhodes, Rosebery's official biographer, the Marquess of Crewe, says that he "both liked and admired Cecil Rhodes who was often his guest." He made Rhodes a Privy Councillor, and Rhodes made him a trustee of his will. These things, and the fact that the initiates generally assumed that Rosebery would grant their requests, give certain grounds for believing that he was a member of their society.(14) If he was, he played little role in it after 1900.

Two other men, both fabulously wealthy South Africans, may be regarded as members of the society and probably initiates. These were Abe Bailey and Alfred Beit.

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

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

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

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

Leander Starr Jameson (later Sir Starr, 1853-1917) was Rhodes's doctor, roommate, and closest friend, and had more to do with the opening up of Rhodesia than any other single man. His famous raid into the Transvaal with Rhodesian police in 1895 was one of the chief events leading up to the Boer War. After Rhodes's death, Jameson was leader of his party in Cape Colony and served as Premier in 1904-1908. A member of the National Convention of 1908-1909, he was also director of the British South Africa Company and a Rhodes Trustee. He was a great admirer of Milner and, even before the death of Rhodes, had given evidence of a desire to shift his allegiance from Rhodes to Milner. In 1898 he wrote to his brother: "Rhodes had done absolutely nothing but go backwards.... I hate it all and hate the people more than ever; would clear out by the next boat, but have not pluck enough to acknowledge myself beaten.... Milner is the only really healthy personality in the whole crowd."(15) This feeling may have been only a temporary reaction, resulting from the way in which Rhodes received news of the Jameson Raid, but it is likely that more basic issues were concerned, since more than two years had elapsed between the raid and these statements. At any rate, Milner and Jameson were able to cooperate loyally thereafter. Jameson's biographical sketch in The Dictionary of National Biography was written by Dougal Malcolm of Milner's Kindergarten.

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

Lewis Loyd Michell (later Sir Lewis, 1842-1928) was Rhodes's banker in South Africa and after his death took over many of his interests. A Minister without Portfolio in Jameson's Cabinet in the Cape Colony (1904-1905), he was also a director of the British South Africa Company and a Rhodes Trustee. He published a two-volume Life of Rhodes in 1910.

J. Rochfort Maguire (1855-1925), Fellow of All Souls, was an exact contemporary of Milner's at Oxford (1873-1877) and Rhodes's most intimate friend in college. He worked for Rhodes for the rest of his life. He obtained the original mining concession (which became the basis of the British South Africa Company) from Lobengula in 1883, was Rhodes's representative in the House of Commons for five years (1890-1895), (16) and his personal representative in Rhodesia or London during Rhodes's absences from either place. Director of the British South Africa Company for twenty-seven years (1898-1925), he was president for the last two. His sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography was written by Dougal Malcolm.

Of these six men whom Milner inherited from Rhodes, only one was young enough to become an active member of the Milner Group. This was Sothern Holland, born 1876, who did become a member, although perhaps not of the inner circle. The other five were Milner's own age, with established positions and power of their own. They all knew Milner well and cooperated with him. Even if they were initiates, they played no vital role in the history of the Milner Group after 1905.

As we have indicated, the character of the secret society and its personnel were changed after 1902. This was the result of the activities of Lord Milner. The death of Rhodes and the elimination of Stead gave the organization a much less melodramatic form while making it a much more potent political instrument. Moreover, as a result of the personal ascendancy of Milner, the membership of the organization was drastically changed. Of the initiates or probable initiates whom we have mentioned, Rothschild, Johnston, Hawksley, Rosebery, Jameson, Michell, and Maguire played little or no role in the society after 1902. Beit died in 1906, and Garrett the following year. Of the others, Grey, Brassey, Esher, and Balfour continued in active cooperation with the members of the Group. The real circle of initiates in the twentieth century, however, would appear to include the following names: Milner, Abe Bailey, George Parkin, Lord Selborne, Jan Smuts, A. J. Glazebrook, R. H. Brand (Lord Brand), Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), Lionel Curtis, Geoffrey Dawson, H. A. L. Fisher, Edward Grigg, Leopold Amery, and Lord Astor. Since 1925, when Milner died, others have undoubtedly been added. This circle, with certain additional names, we shall call the "inner core" or the "inner circle" of the Milner Group. The history of these men's activities and the evidence which entitles us to attribute them to the circle of initiates will occupy most of the remainder of this volume.

The changes which Milner made in the Rhodes secret society were not important. There was no change in goals, and there was very little change in methods. In fact, both of these were modified more by Lord Lothian and his friends after Milner's death than they were by Milner after Rhodes's death.

Rhodes and Milner were aiming at the same goals, and had been for twenty-five years, in 1902. They differed slightly on how these goals could be obtained, a difference based on different personalities. To Rhodes it seemed that the ends could be won by amassing great wealth, to Milner it seemed that they could be won by quiet propaganda, hard work, and personal relationships (as he had learned from Toynbee). Neither rejected the other's methods, and each was willing to use the other and his methods to achieve their common dream as the occasion arose. With the death of Rhodes in 1902, Milner obtained control of Rhodes's money and was able to use it to lubricate the workings of his propaganda machine. This is exactly as Rhodes had wanted and had intended. Milner was Rhodes's heir, and both men knew it. Rhodes himself said before his death, "They tell me I can only live five years. I don't mean to die. I want to live. But if I go, there is one man — Sir Alfred Milner. Always trust Milner. You don't know yet what you have got in him." In 1898, in conversation with Stead, Rhodes said, "You will support Milner in any measure that he may take short of war. I make no such limitation. I support Milner absolutely without reserve. If he says peace, I say peace; if he says war, I say war. Whatever happens, I say ditto to Milner." (17)

The goals which Rhodes and Milner sought and the methods by which they hoped to achieve them were so similar by 1902 that the two are almost indistinguishable. Both sought to unite the world, and above all the English-speaking world, in a federal structure around Britain. Both felt that this goal could best be achieved by a secret band of men united to one another by devotion to the common cause and by personal loyalty to one another. Both felt that this band should pursue its goal by secret political and economic influence behind the scenes and by the control of journalistic, educational, and propaganda agencies. Milner's intention to work for this goal, and to use Rhodes's money and influence to do it, is clearly implied in all his actions (both before and after 1902), in his correspondence with Rhodes (some of it unpublished), and in letters to Parkin in September 1901 and to Lord Grey in May 1902. (18)

It is very likely that, long before Rhodes died, this plan was discussed in private conversations of which no record was kept. For example, three of the Rhodes Trustees under the last will — Grey, Milner, and Beit — with Lyttelton Gell had dinner at Beit's house and talked over important matters far into the night of 30 November 1898. It is quite clear that Rhodes talked over with his associates the ways in which his ideals would be carried out after his death. He lived constantly under the fear of death and regarded his whole life as a race in which he must achieve as much of his purpose as possible before he died. The biographer of Alfred Beit is quite confident that Rhodes discussed with Beit a plan by which Rhodes would omit from his will all mention of a project close to his heart — the Cape to Cairo Railway — leaving this project to be covered, as it was, by Beit's own will. There can be little doubt that Rhodes would have discussed a project even closer to his heart — the worldwide group of Anglo-Saxon sympathizers — with the trustees of his own will, and, above all, with the one most clearly devoted to his ideas, Milner.
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Re: The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Clivede

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Part 1 of 2

Chapter 4: Milner's Kindergarten, 1897-1910

The appointment as High Commissioner of South Africa was the turning point in Milner's life. It was obtained, apparently, through his membership in Rhodes's secret society, through the influence of Stead, Brett, and Rhodes. Stead, in his book on Rhodes's wills, claims the chief credit for the nomination, while Brett was with Milner at Windsor when he received the appointment and returned with him to London. Sir Harry Johnston, who had already been offered the appointment for himself by a Foreign Office official, felt that it was Rhodes's influence which gave it to Milner. In his autobiography he wrote: "At last the decision was made — Sir Alfred Milner. I suspect very much on the personal pleadings of Cecil Rhodes, who professed himself delighted with the choice.... The non-selection of myself for a work that would have greatly interested me, was a disappointment, and I felt it was due to Rhodes' enmity more than to any other cause."

As High Commissioner, Milner was subordinate to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, a post held at that time by Joseph Chamberlain, who was already acquainted with Milner. They had fought Home Rule together in the election of 1886 and had both been in Egypt in 1889. They already agreed on most of the important issues of the day, combining, like other members of the Milner Group, advocacy of social welfare and imperialism. Moreover, both were strong believers in union with Ireland and a new tariff policy based on imperial preference. When Chamberlain joined Lord Salisbury's government as Secretary of State for the Colonies (1895-1903), he was eager to accept the suggestion that Milner be sent to South Africa. As Colonial Secretary, Chamberlain did a number of things that won the complete support of Milner. Among these we might mention the new constitution for Jamaica (1899), the federation of the Malay States (1895), and the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia (1900). When Chamberlain resigned from the Colonial Office in 1903 on the issue of tariff reform, the post was offered by Balfour to Milner. The latter refused in order to complete the work he had started in South Africa. When he was ready to retire from his post, he recommended that his successor be either Alfred Lyttelton or Lord Selborne. The latter obtained the appointment and not only carried Milner's work to completion but did it with Milner's picked personnel. That personnel regarded Selborne as second leader to Milner in the Group. (1)

As High Commissioner, Milner built up a body of assistants known in history as "Milner's Kindergarten." The following list gives the chief members of the Kindergarten, their dates of birth and death (where possible), their undergraduate colleges (with dates), and the dates in which they were Fellows of All Souls.

Name / Dates / College / All Souls

Patrick Duncan (later Sir Patrick) / 1870-1946 / Balliol 1890-1894 / Never
Philip Kerr (later Lord Lothian) / 1882-1940 / New 1897-1901 / Never
Robert Henry Brand (later Lord Brand) / 1878-1963 / New 1897-1901 / 1901-
Lionel Curtis / 1872-1955 / New 1891-1905 / 1921-
Geoffrey Dawson (until 1917 Robinson) / 1874-1944 / Magdalen 1893-1897 / 1898-1905; 1915-1944
John Buchan (later Lord Tweedsmuir) / 1875-1940 / Brasenose 1895-1899 / Never
Dougal Orme Malcolm (later Sir Dougal) / 1877-1955 / New 1895-1899 / 1899-1955
William Lionel Hichens / 1874-1941 / New 1894-1898 / Never
Richard Feetham / 1874-1965 / New 1893-1898 / Never
John Dove / 1872-1934 / New 1891-1895 / Never
Basil Williams / 1867-1950 / New 1886-1891 / 1924-1925
Lord Basil Blackwood / 1870-1917 / Balliol 1891- / Never
Hugh A. Wyndham / 1877- / New 1896-1900 / Never
George V. Fiddes (later Sir George) / 1858-1925 / Brasenose 1880-1884 / Never
John Hanbury-Williams (later Sir John) / 1859-1946 / Wellington, N. Z. / Never
Main S. O. Walrond / 1870- / Balliol / Never
Fabian Ware (later Sir Fabian) / 1869-1949 / Univ. of Paris / Never
William Flavelle Monypenny / 1866-1912 / Balliol (1888-1890) / Never


To these eighteen names should be added five others who were present in South Africa between the Boer War and the creation of the Union and were members of the Milner Group but cannot be listed under the Kindergarten because they were not members of Milner's civil service. (2) These five are:

Name / Dates / College / All Souls

Leopold Amery / 1873-1955 / Balliol 1892-1896 / 1897-1911, 1938 -
Edward Grigg (later Lord Altrincham) / 1879-1955 / New 1898-1902 / Never
H. A. L. Fisher / 1865-1940 / New 1884-1888 / Never
Edward F. L. Wood (later Lord Irwin and Lord Halifax) / 1881-1959 / Christ Church 1899-1903 / 1903-1910
Basil K. Long / 1878-1944 / Brasenose 1897-1901 / Never


Of these twenty-three names, eleven were from New College. Seven were members of All Souls, six as Fellows. These six had held their fellowships by 1947 an aggregate of one hundred and sixty-nine years, or an average of over twenty-eight years each. Of the twenty-three, nine were in the group which founded, edited, and wrote The Round Table in the period after 1910, five were in close personal contact with Lloyd George (two in succession as private secretaries) in the period 1916-1922, and seven were in the group which controlled and edited The Times after 1912.

Eleven of these twenty-three men, plus others whom we have mentioned, formed the central core of the Milner Group as it has existed from 1910 to the present. These others will be discussed in their proper place. At this point we should take a rapid glance at the biographies of some of the others.

Two members of the Kindergarten, Patrick Duncan and Richard Feetham, stayed in South Africa after the achievement of the Union in 1910. Both remained important members of the Milner Group and, as a result of this membership, rose to high positions in their adopted country. Patrick Duncan had been Milner's assistant on the Board of Internal Revenue from 1894 to 1897 and was taken with him to South Africa as private secretary. He was Treasurer of the Transvaal in 1901, Colonial Secretary of the Transvaal in 1903-1906, and Acting Lieutenant Governor in 1906. He remained in South Africa as a lieutenant to Jan Smuts, becoming an advocate of the Supreme Court there, a member of the South African Parliament, Minister of Interior, Public Health, and Education (1921-1924), Minister of Mines (1933-1936), and finally Governor-General of South Africa (1936-1946). He frequently returned to England to confer with the Group (in September 1932, for example, at Lord Lothian's country house, Blickling).

Richard Feetham was made Deputy Town Clerk and later Town Clerk of Johannesburg (1902-1905). He was legal adviser to Lord Selborne, the High Commissioner, in 1907 and a member of the Legislative Council of the Transvaal later (1907-1910). He was chairman of the Committee on Decentralization of Powers in India in 1918-1919; a King's Counsel in Transvaal (1919-1923); a judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa (1923-1930); chairman of the Irish Boundary Commission (1924-1925); chairman of the Local Government Commission in Kenya Colony (of which Edward Grigg was Governor) in 1926; adviser to the Shanghai Municipal Council (1930-1931); chairman of the Transvaal Asiatic Land Tenure Commission (1930-1935); Vice-Chancellor of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1938); and has been a judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa since 1939. Most of these positions, as we shall see, came to him as a member of the Milner Group.

Hugh A. Wyndham also remained in South Africa after 1910 and was a member of the Union Parliament for ten years (1910-1920). He had previously been secretary to Milner. In spite of the prominence of his family and his own position as heir presumptive to the third Baron Leconfield, it is difficult to obtain any adequate information about him. His biography in Who's Who does not mention his experiences in South Africa or his other connections with the Milner Group. This is obviously the result of a deliberate policy, since editions of Who's Who of thirty-five years ago do mention the South African connection. Wyndham wrote Problems of Imperial Trusteeship (1933); Britain and the World; and the chapter on "The Formation of the Union of South Africa, 1901-1910" in volume VIII of the Cambridge History of the British Empire (1936). He was, like all the members of the Milner Group, a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, wrote many book reviews for its Journal, and at the outbreak of war in 1939 became the usual presiding officer at its meetings (in the absence of Lord Astor). When publication of the Journal was resumed after the war, he became chairman of its editorial board, a position he still holds. Married to Maude Lyttelton, daughter of Viscount Cobham, he is also a brother-in-law of Sir Ivor Maxse (the brother of Lady Milner) and a nephew of Lord Rosebery.

Dougal Malcolm (Sir Dougal since 1938), a grandson of Lord Charles Wellesley, joined the Colonial Office in 1900 and served there under Chamberlain and Alfred Lyttelton for several years. In 1905 he went to South Africa as private secretary to Lord Selborne and remained there until Union was achieved. He was secretary to Lord Grey, Governor-General of Canada, during the last year of his tenure (1910-1911); an official of the British Treasury for a year; and, in 1913, became a director of the British South Africa Company (president since 1938). He is also vice-president of the British North Borneo Company, of which his brother-in-law, General Sir Neill Malcolm, is president.(3) Sir Dougal wrote the biographies of Otto Beit, of Dr. Jameson, and of J. Rochford Maguire for the Dictionary of National Biography.

William Lionel Hichens (1874-1940), on graduating from New College, served briefly as a cyclist messenger in the Boer War and then joined the Egyptian Ministry of Finance (1900). After only nine months' service, he was shifted by Milner to South Africa to join the Kindergarten as Treasurer of Johannesburg. He at once went to England to float a loan, and on his return (in 1902) was made Colonial Treasurer of the Transvaal and Treasurer of the Inter-colonial Council. Later he added to his responsibilities the role of Acting Commissioner of Railways. In 1907 he went to India as a member of the Royal Commission on Decentralization, following this with a stint as chairman of the Board of Inquiry into Public Service in Southern Rhodesia (1909). In 1910 he went into private business, becoming chairman of the board of a great steel firm, Cammell Laird and Company, but continued as a member of the Milner Group. In 1915, Lloyd George sent Hichens and Brand to organize the munitions industry of Canada. They set up the Imperial Munitions Board of Canada, on which Joseph Flavelle (Sir Joseph after 1917) was made chairman, Charles B. Gordon (Sir Charles after 1917) vice-chairman, and Brand a member. In later years Hichens was a prominent businessman, one of the great steel masters of England, director of the Commonwealth Trust Company (which sent John Dove to India in 1918), of the London Northwestern Railway and its successor, the London, Midlands and Scottish. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust for over twenty years (1919-1940), which may help to explain the extraordinary generosity of the Carnegie Foundation toward the Royal Institute of International Affairs (of which Hichens was a member). He was an enthusiastic supporter of adult education programs and spent years of effort on Birkbeck College, the graduate evening school of the University of London. He was chairman of the board of governors of this institution from 1927 until his death, by a German bomb, in December of 1940. From 1929 onwards, like most of the inner circle of the Milner Group, he lived close to Oxford (at North Aston). He married Hermione Lyttelton, daughter of Sir Neville Lyttelton, niece of Viscount Cobham, and cousin of the present Oliver Lyttelton.

George Vandeleur Fiddes (Sir George after 1912) had been private secretary to the Earl of Onslow, father of Lady Halifax, before he was secretary to Milner in South Africa (1897-1900). Later he was political secretary to the Commander-in-Chief in South Africa (1900), secretary to the Transvaal administration (1900-1902), Assistant Under Secretary of State for the Colonies (1909-1916), and Permanent Under Secretary for the Colonies (1916-1921).

John Hanbury-Williams (Sir John after 1908) had been in the regular army for nineteen years, chiefly as aide to various colonial administrators, when he was assigned to Milner as military secretary in 1897. After three years of that, he went to London as secretary to the Secretary of State for War (St. John Brodrick, 1900-1903), and to Canada as secretary and military secretary to the Governor-General, Earl Grey (1904-1909). Then he was brigadier general in charge of administration in Scotland (1909-1914) and on the General Staff (1914), Chief of the British Military Mission to Russia (1914-1917), in charge of the British Prisoners of War Department at The Hague (1917-1918) and in Switzerland (1918), and ended his career in a blaze of glory as a major general, marshal of the diplomatic corps (1920-1934), and extra equerry to three Kings of England (1934-1946).

John Buchan was not a member of the inner core of the Milner Group, but was close to it and was rewarded in 1935 by being raised to a barony as Lord Tweedsmuir and sent to Canada as Governor-General. He is important because he is (with Lionel Curtis) one of the few members of the inner circles of the Milner Group who have written about it in published work. In his autobiography, Pilgrim's Way (Boston, 1940), he gives a brief outline of the personnel of the Kindergarten and their subsequent achievements, and a brilliant analysis of Milner himself. He wrote:

"He (Milner) had received — chiefly from Arnold Toynbee — an inspiration which centered all his interests on the service of the state. He had the instincts of a radical reformer joined to a close-textured intellect which reformers rarely possess. He had a vision of the Good Life spread in a wide commonalty; and when his imagination apprehended the Empire, his field of vision was marvelously enlarged. So at the outset of his career he dedicated himself to a cause, putting things like leisure, domestic happiness, and money-making behind him. In Bacon's phrase he espoused the State. On the intellectual side he found that which wholly satisfied him in the problems of administration, when he confronted them as Goschen's secretary, and in Egypt, and at Somerset House. He had a mind remarkable both for its scope and its mastery over details — the most powerful administrative intelligence, I think, which Britain has produced in our day. If I may compare him with others, he was as infallible as Cromer in detecting the center of gravity in a situation, as brilliant as Alfred Beit in bringing order out of tangled finances, and he had Curzon's power of keeping a big organization steadily at work. He was no fanatic — his intelligence was too supreme for that — but in the noblest sense of the word, he was an enthusiast. He narrowed his interests of set purpose, and this absorption meant a certain rigidity. He had cut himself off from some of the emollients of life. Consequently, the perfect administrator was a less perfect diplomatist. . . [Later, Buchan adds,] I was brought into close touch with a great character. Milner was the most selfless man I have ever known. He thought of his work and his cause, much of his colleagues, never of himself. He simply was not interested in what attracts common ambition. He could not be bribed, for there was nothing on the globe wherewith to bribe him; or deterred by personal criticism, for he cared not at all for fame; and it would have been as easy to bully the solar system, since he did not know the meaning of fear."


The effect Milner had on Buchan was shared by the other members of the Kindergarten and provided that spiritual bond which animated the Milner Group. This spirit, found in Toynbee, in Goschen, in Milner, and later in Lionel Curtis, was the motivating force of the Milner Group until after 1922. Indeed, much of what Buchan says here about Milner could be applied with slight change to Lionel Curtis, and Curtis, as we shall see, was the motivating force of the Milner Group from 1910 to 1922. After 1922, as the influence of Lord Lothian, Lord Astor, and Lord Brand increased and that of Milner declined, the spirit of the Group became somewhat tarnished but not completely lost.

Buchan went to Brasenose College, but, as he says himself, "I lived a good deal at Balliol and my closest friends were of that college." He mentions as his closest friends Hilaire Belloc, F. E. Smith (the future Lord Birkenhead), John Simon, Leo Amery, T. A. Nelson, Arthur Salter, Bron Lucas, Edward Wood (the future Lord Halifax), and Raymond Asquith. Of this list, five were future Fellows of All Souls, and four of these were important members of the Milner Group.

Buchan went to South Africa in 1901, on Milner's personal invitation, to be his private secretary, but stayed only two years. Placed in charge of resettlement of displaced Boers and agricultural reform (both close to Milner's heart), he left in 1903 to take an important position in the administration of Egypt. This appointment was mysteriously canceled after his return to England because, according to Buchan, he was too young for the task. It is more than likely that Milner, who had obtained the appointment for him, changed his mind because of Buchan's rapidly declining enthusiasm for imperial federation. This was a subject on which Milner and other members of his Group were adamant for many years. By 1915 most members of the Group began to believe that federation was impossible, and, as a compromise, took what we know now as the Commonwealth of Nations — that is, a group of nations joined together by common ideals and allegiances rather than by fixed political organization. Lionel Curtis remains to this day a fanatical believer in federation, and some of the decline in his influence after 1922 may be attributed to inability to obtain federation in the face of world — and above all Dominion — opposition. The present Commonwealth is in reality the compromises worked out when the details of the Milner Group clashed with the reality of political facts.

As a result of Buchan's failure to obtain the appointment of Egypt, he continued to practice law in London for three years, finally abandoning it to become a partner in the publishing firm of his old classmate Thomas A. Nelson (1906-1916). In 1907 he married Susan Grosvenor, whose family (Dukes of Westminister) was allied, as we have seen, to the Wyndhams, Cavendishes, Lytteltons, and Primroses (Earls of Rosebery and Lords Dalmeny). As a result of this family connection, Buchan wrote a memoir on Lord Rosebery for Proceedings of the British Academy in 1930 and a book on the Grosvenor twins, who were killed in the war.

During the war, Buchan was a correspondent for The Times, wrote Nelson's History of the Great War in twenty-four volumes (1915-1919), was the military intelligence in France (1916-1917), and finally was Director of Information for the War Office (1917-1918). During this period and later, he was a prolific writer of travel, historical, and adventure stories, becoming eventually, by such works as Greenmantle, The Three Hostages, and The Thirty-nine Steps, the most famous writer of adventure stories in Britain. His connection with South Africa gained him the post of official historian of the South African forces in France. He was a close friend of Lord Haldane and Lord Rosebery, both of whom can be regarded as members of the Milner Group. Of Haldane, Buchan wrote: "What chiefly attracted me to him was his loyalty to Milner. Milner thought him the ablest man in public life, abler even than Arthur Balfour, and alone of his former Liberal allies Haldane stood by him on every count." Haldane, with Rosebery, Asquith, and Edward Grey, had formed the Liberal League to support liberal imperialism, with which Milner was closely associated.

Buchan was representative of the Scottish universities in the House of Commons for eight years (1927-1935), Lord High Commissioner for the Church of Scotland in 1933-1934, president of the Scottish Historical Society (1929-1933), and Chancellor of Edinburgh University, before he obtained his last post, Governor-General of Canada (1935-1940).


Basil Williams graduated from New College in 1891 and almost immediately became clerk in the House of Commons, holding this post for nine years before he went soldiering in the Boer War. He became Secretary of the Transvaal Education Department, wrote Volume IV of The Times History of the South African War, and was The Times special correspondent at the South African Convention of 1908-1919, which made the Union. A major on the General Staff in 1918-1909, he was later Ford Lecturer at Oxford (in 1921), Professor of History at McGill (1921-1925), and Professor of History at Edinburgh (1925-1937). He wrote the very revealing article on Milner in the Dictionary of National Biography and numerous other works, including Cecil Rhodes (1921), The British Empire (for the Home University Library, 1928), Volume XI of the Oxford History of England (The Whig Supremacy, 1714-1760), Botha, Smuts, and South Africa (1946), and edited The Makers of the Nineteenth Century (1915-1928).

Lord Basil Blackwood, son and heir of Lord Dufferin, went to Balliol in 1891 but never graduated, being an adventurer of the first order. Taken to South Africa by Milner, he was employed in the Judge Advocate's Department for a year (1900-1901), then was Assistant Colonial Secretary of Orange River Colony for six years (1901-1907). He became Colonial Secretary of Barbados in 1907 and Assistant Secretary of the Land Development Commission in England in 1910. He would have been an important member of the Milner Group but was killed in France in 1917.

Of the major members of the Kindergarten, Robert H. Brand (since 1946 Baron Brand) stands close to the top. His father was second Viscount Brand, twenty-fourth Baron Dacre (created 1307), son of a Speaker of the House of Commons (1872-1884), while his mother was Susan Cavendish, daughter of Lord George Cavendish, and niece of the seventh Duke of Devonshire. His father, as Governor of New South Wales in 1895-1899, was one of the original instigators of the federation of the Australian Colonies, which came into effect in 1900. His older brother, the third Viscount Hampden, was a lord-in-waiting to the King (1924-1936), while another brother, Admiral Sir Hubert Brand, was extra equerry to the King (1922) and principal naval aide to the King (1931-1932). His nephew, Freeman Freeman-Thomas (Baron Willingdon after 1910; Marquess of Willingdon after 1936), in 1892 married the daughter of Lord Brassey, and became Governor-General of Canada (1926-1931) and Viceroy of India (1931-1936).

Brand, who has been a Fellow of All Souls since 1901, is chiefly responsible for the Astor influence in the Milner Group. He went to South Africa in 1902 and was made secretary of the Inter-colonial Council of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony and secretary of the Railway Committee of the Central South African Railways, with Philip Kerr (the future Lord Lothian) as assistant secretary on both organizations. He was secretary to the Transvaal Delegation at the South African National Convention (1908-1909) and at once wrote a deliberately naive work published by Oxford University Press in 1909 with the title The Union of South Africa. In this work there is no mention of the Kindergarten, and where it is necessary to speak of its work, this is done as if it were performed by persons unknown to the writer. He says, for example (page 40): "The Transvaal Delegation alone was assisted throughout the convention by a staff of legal advisers and experts," and thus dismisses the Kindergarten's essential work. His own work is passed over in silence, and at the front of the volume is placed a quotation in Dutch from President Sir John Brand of the Orange River Colony, possibly to mislead the ordinary reader into believing that there was a family connection between the South African politician and the author of the book.

Brand's role in the Milner Group after 1910 is too great to be covered adequately here. Suffice it to say that he was regarded as the economist of the Round Table Group and became a partner and managing director of Lazard Brothers and Company, a director of Lloyd's Bank, and a director of The Times, retiring from these positions in 1944 and 1945. During the First World War, he was a member of the Imperial Munitions Board of Canada (1915-1918) and deputy chairman of the British Mission in Washington (1917-1918). While in Washington, he married Nancy Astor's sister, daughter of Chiswell Dabney Langhorne of Virginia. It was this connection which gave him his entree to Cliveden in the period when that name became notorious.

Brand was one of the important figures in international finance in the period after 1918. At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 he was financial adviser to Lord Robert Cecil, chairman of the Supreme Economic Council. He was later vice-president of the Brussels Conference (1920) and financial representative for South Africa at the Genoa Conference (1922). He was a member of the committee of experts on stabilization of the German mark in 1923, the committee which paved the way for the Dawes Plan. After an extended period in private business, he was head of the British Food Mission to Washington (1941-1944), chairman of the British Supply Council in North America (1942-1945, 1946), and His Majesty's Treasury Representative in Washington (1944-1946). In this last capacity he had much to do with negotiating the enormous American loan to Britain for postwar reconstruction. During the years 1942-1944, Brand put in his own place as managing director of Lazard Brothers his nephew, Thomas Henry Brand, son of Viscount Hampden, and, when Brand left Lazard in 1944, he brought the same nephew to Washington as chief executive officer on the British side of the Combined Production and Resources Board, and later (1945) as chairman of the official Committee on Supplies for Liberated Areas. In all of his activities Brand has remained one of the most central figures in the core of the Milner Group.

Just as important as Brand was his intimate friend Philip Kerr (later Lord Lothian), whom we have already seen as Brand's assistant in South Africa.
Kerr, grandson, through his mother, of the fourteenth Duke of-Norfolk, originally went to South Africa as private secretary to a friend of his father's, Sir Arthur Lawley, Lieutenant Governor of the Transvaal (1902). Kerr was Brand's assistant on the Inter-colonial Council and on the Committee of the Central South African Railways (1905-1908). Later, as secretary to the Transvaal Indigency Commission (1907-1908), he wrote a report on the position of poor white laborers in a colored country which was so valuable that it was republished by the Union government twenty years later.

From 1908 on, Kerr was, as we shall see, one of the chief organizers of publicity in favor of the South African Union. He was secretary to the Round Table Group in London and editor of The Round Table from 1910 to 1916, leaving the post to become secretary to Lloyd George (1916-1922), manager of the Daily Chronicle (1921), and secretary to the Rhodes Trust (1925-1939). He obtained several governmental offices after the death of his cousin, the tenth Marquess of Lothian, in 1930, gave him a title, 28,000 acres of land, and a seat in the House of Lords. He was Chancellor to the Duchy of Lancaster (1931), Parliamentary Under Secretary to the India Office (1931-1932), a member of the first and second Round Table Conferences on India, and chairman of the Indian Franchise Committee, before he finished his life as Ambassador to the United States (1939-1940). In 1923 he and Lionel Curtis published a book called The Prevention of War, consisting of lectures which they had previously given at Williams College. After his death, Curtis edited a collection of American Speeches of Lord Lothian, with an introduction by Lord Halifax and a biographical sketch by Edward Grigg (reprinted from The Round Table). This was published, as might be expected, by Chatham House.

On his death, Lord Lothian left his ancestral estate, Newbattle Abbey in Midlothian, as a residential college for adult education in Scotland, and left his Tudor country house, Blickling (frequent assembly place of the Milner Group), as a national monument. He never married and gave up his Roman Catholic faith for Christian Science in the course of an almost fatal illness in 1914.

Geoffrey Dawson (1874-1944), who changed his name from Robinson in 1917, was also one of the innermost members of the Milner Group. A member of the Colonial Office under Chamberlain (1898-1901), he became for five years private secretary to Milner in South Africa (1901-1905) and then was made South African correspondent of The Times and editor of the Johannesburg Star in the critical period of the formation of the Union (1905-1910). Always a member of the Round Table Group and the Milner Group, Dawson added to these the offices of editor of The Times (1912-1919, 1922-1941) and secretary to the Rhodes Trustees (1921-1922). During the period in which Dawson was not editor of The Times, he was well provided for by the Milner Group, being made estates bursar of All Souls, a director of Consolidated Gold Fields, Ltd., and of Trust Houses, Ltd. (both Rhodes concerns), as well as being secretary to the Rhodes Trust. He married in 1919 the daughter of Sir Arthur Lawley (later sixth Baron Wenlock), Kerr's old chief in the Transvaal. Sir Arthur, who had started his career as private secretary to his uncle, the Duke of Westminster, in 1892, ended it as Governor of Madras (1906-1911).

Dawson was probably as close to Milner personally as any member of the Kindergarten, although Amery must be regarded as Milner's political heir. The Times' obituary of Dawson says: "To none was Milner's heart more wholly given than to Dawson; the sympathy between the older and the younger man was almost that of father and son, and it lasted unchanged until Milner's death." As editor of The Times, Dawson was one of the most influential figures in England. He used that influence in the directions decided by the Group. This was to be seen, in later years, in the tremendous role which he played in the affairs of India and, above all, in the appeasement policy. In 1929 he visited his "long-standing friend" Lord Halifax, then Viceroy of India, and subsequently wrote most of The Times editorials on India in the fight which preceded the Government of India Act of 1935. In 1937 he wrote The Times articles which inaugurated the last stage of appeasement, and personally guided The Times support of that policy. After his retirement from the chair of editor of The Times in 1941, he served for the last three years of his life as editor of The Round Table.

William Flavelle Monypenny was assistant editor of The Times (1894-1899) before he went to South Africa to become editor of the Johannesburg Star. He left this position at the outbreak of the Boer War, since the publication of a pro-British paper was not possible during the hostilities. After a short period as a lieutenant in the Imperial Light Horse (1899-1900), Monypenny was made Director of Civil Supplies under Milner (1900-1902) and then resumed his post as editor of the Star. In 1903 he resigned in protest against Milner's policy of importing Chinese laborers and walked across Africa from the Cape to Egypt. Resuming his position on The Times (1903-1908), he became a director of the firm for the last four years of his life (1908-1912). About this time Lord Rowton, who had been Disraeli's private secretary, left his papers to The Times to be used for a Life of Disraeli. The task was begun by Monypenny, but he finished only the first two volumes of the six-volume work. The last four volumes were written by George E. Buckle, editor of The Times (1884-1912), Fellow of All Souls (1877-1885), and a contemporary of Milner's at Oxford (1872-1876).

It is perhaps worth noting that when Monypenny resigned from the Johannesburg Star he was replaced as editor by William Basil Worsfold, who held the post for two years, being replaced, as we have said, by Geoffrey Dawson. In the years 1906-1913 Worsfold published a three-volume study of Milner's accomplishments in South Africa. This contains the most valuable account in existence of the work of the Kindergarten. (4)

Fabian Ware (Sir Fabian since 1922), who had been a reporter on The Morning Post (1899-1901), was Assistant Director and Director of Education in the Transvaal (1901-1905) and Director of Education in the Orange River Colony (1903), as well as a member of the Transvaal Legislative Council (1903-1905). He was editor of The Morning Post in 1905-1911 and then became special commissioner to the board of the Rio Tinto Company, on which Milner was director. During the First World War he rose to the rank of major general. Since then he has been permanent vice-chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission. A book which he wrote in 1937, The Immortal Heritage, The Work of the Imperial War Graves Commission, was made the occasion of an article on this subject in The Round Table. Sir Fabian was a member of the Imperial Committee on Economic Consultation and Cooperation in 1933 and was a director-general in the War Office in 1939-1944.

Main Swete Osmond Walrond was in the Ministry of Finance in Egypt (1894-1897) before he became Milner's private secretary for the whole period of his High Commissionership (1897-1905)
. He was then appointed District Commissioner in Cyprus but did not take the post. In 1917-1919 he was in the Arab Bureau in Cairo under the High Commissioner and acted as an unofficial, but important, adviser to Milner's mission to Egypt in 1919-1921. This mission led to Egyptian independence from Britain.

Lionel Curtis is one of the most important members of the Milner Group, or, as a member of the Group expressed it to me, he is the fans et origo. It may sound extravagant as a statement, but a powerful defense could be made of the claim that what Curtis thinks should be done to the British Empire is what happens a generation later. I shall give here only two recent examples of this. In 1911 Curtis decided that the name of His Majesty's Dominions must be changed from "British Empire" to "Commonwealth of Nations." This was done officially in 1948. Again, about 1911 Curtis decided that India must be given complete self-government as rapidly as conditions permitted. This was carried out in 1947. As we shall see, these are not merely coincidental events, for Curtis, working behind the scenes, has been one of the chief architects of the present Commonwealth. It is not easy to discern the places where he has passed, and no adequate biographical sketch can be put on paper here. Indeed, much of the rest of this volume will be a contribution to the biography of Lionel Curtis. Burning with an unquenchable ardor, which some might call fanatical, he has devoted his life to his dominant idea, that the finer things of life — liberty, democracy, toleration, etc. — could be preserved only within an integrated world political system, and that this political system could be constructed about Great Britain, but only if Britain adopted toward her Dominions, her colonies, and the rest of the world a policy of generosity, of trust, and of developing freedom. Curtis was both a fanatic and an idealist. But he was not merely "a man in a hurry." He had a fairly clear picture of what he wanted. He did not believe that complete and immediate freedom and democracy could be given to the various parts of the imperial system, but felt that they could only be extended to these parts in accordance with their ability to develop to a level where they were capable of exercising such privileges. When that level was achieved and those privileges were extended, he felt that they would not be used to disrupt the integrated world system of which he dreamed, but to integrate it more fully and in a sounder fashion — a fashion based on common outlook and common patterns of thought rather than on the dangerous unity of political subjection, censorship, or any kind of duress. To Curtis, as to H. G. Wells, man's fate depended on a race between education and disaster. This was similar to the feeling which animated Rhodes when he established the Rhodes Scholarships, although Curtis has a much broader and less nationalistic point of view than Rhodes. Moreover, Curtis believed that people could be educated for freedom and responsibility by giving them always a little more freedom, a little more democracy, and a little more responsibility than they were quite ready to handle. This is a basically Christian attitude — the belief that if men are trusted they will prove trustworthy — but it was an attitude on which Curtis was prepared to risk the existence of the British Empire. It is not yet clear whether Curtis is the creator of the Commonwealth of Nations or merely the destroyer of the British Empire. The answer will be found in the behavior of India in the next few years. The Milner Group knew this. That is why India, since 1913, has been the chief object of their attentions.

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

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


Four years later, in 1920, Curtis wrote: "The whole effect of the war has been to bring movements long gathering to a sudden head . . . companionship in arms has fanned . . . long smouldering resentment against the prescription that Europeans are destined to dominate the rest of the world. In every part of Asia and Africa it is bursting into flames.... Personally, I regard this challenge to the long unquestioned claim of the white man to dominate the world as inevitable and wholesome especially to ourselves." (5)

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


Curtis was registered as an undergraduate at New College for fourteen years (1891-1905) because he was too busy to take time to get his degree. This is undoubtedly also the reason he was admitted to All Souls so belatedly, since an ordinary fellowship requires as a qualification the possession either of a university prize or of a first-class honours degree. By the time Curtis took his degree he had fought in the Boer War, been Town Clerk of Johannesburg, and been assistant secretary for local government in the Transvaal. In 1906 he resigned his official positions to organize "Closer Union Groups" agitating for a federation of South Africa. When this work was well started, he became a member of the Transvaal Legislative Council and wrote the Transvaal draft of a projected constitution for such a federation. In 1910-1912, and at various times subsequently, he traveled about the world, organizing Round Table Groups in the Dominions and India. In 1912 he was chosen Beit Lecturer in Colonial History at Oxford, but gave it up in 1913 to turn his attention for almost six years to the preparatory work for the Government of India Act of 1919. He was secretary to the Irish Conference of 1921 (arranged by General Smuts) and was adviser on Irish affairs to the Colonial Office for the next three years. In 1919 he was one of the chief — if not the chief, — founders of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and during the 1920s divided his attention between this and the League of Nations — in neither case, however, in a fashion to attract public attention. Undoubtedly his influence within the Milner Group declined after 1922, the preponderance falling into the hands of Lothian, Brand, and Dawson. The failure to achieve federation within the Empire was undoubtedly a blow to his personal feeling and possibly to his prestige within the Group. Nonetheless, his influence remained great, and still is. In the 1920s he moved to Kidlington, near Oxford, and thus was available for the Group conferences held at All Souls. His chief published works include The Problem of the Commonwealth (1915), The Commonwealth of Nations (1916), Dyarchy (1920), The Prevention of War (1924), the Capital Question of China (1932), The Commonwealth of God (1932-1938), and The Protectorates of South Africa (1935).

John Dove (1872-1934) was sent to Milner in 1903 by Sir William Anson, Warden of All Souls. He was assistant Town Clerk and later Clerk of Johannesburg (1903-1907) and then chairman of the Transvaal Land Settlement Board (1907-1909). After a trip to Australia and India with Lionel Curtis, for the purpose of organizing Round Table Groups, he returned to London in 1911 and lived with Brand and Kerr in Cumberland Mansions. He went to South Africa with Earl Grey in 1912 to unveil the Rhodes Memorial, and served in the First World War with military intelligence in France. In 1918 he became a kind of traveling representative of financial houses, probably as a result of his relationship with Brand. He began this with an extended trip to India for the Commonwealth Trust Company in 1918 and in the next fifteen years made almost annual trips to Europe. Editor of The Round Table from 1921 to his death in 1934, he displayed an idealistic streak similar to that found in Curtis but without the same driving spirit behind it. After his death, Brand published a volume of his letters (1938). These are chiefly descriptive of foreign scenes, the majority written to Brand himself.
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Re: The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Clivede

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Part 2 of 2

Leopold Amery was not a member of the Kindergarten but knew all the members well and was in South Africa, during their period of service, as chief correspondent of The Times for the Boer War and the editor of The Times History of the South African War (which appeared in seven volumes in the decade 1900-1909). Amery, who was a Fellow of All Souls for fourteen years early in the century and has been one again since 1938, is one of the inner core of the Milner Group. He started his career as private secretary to Leonard H. Courtney, Unionist Member of Parliament and Deputy Speaker in Lord Salisbury's second government. Through this connection, Amery was added to The Times editorial staff (1899-1909) and would have become editor but for his decision to go into politics. In this he was not, at first, successful, losing three contests as a Unionist and tariff reformer in the high tide of Liberal supremacy (1906-1910). When victory came in 1911, it was a good one, for Amery held the same seat (for Birmingham) for thirty-four years. During that time he held more important government posts than can be mentioned here. These included the following: assistant secretary of the War Cabinet and Imperial War Council (1917); secretary to the Secretary of State for War (Milner, 1917-1918); Parliamentary Under Secretary for Colonies (1919-1921); Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty (1921-1922); First Lord of the Admiralty (1922-1924); Secretary of State for Colonies (1924-1929) and for Dominion Affairs (1925-1929); Secretary of State for India and Burma (1940-1945). Amery wrote dozens of volumes, chiefly on the Empire and imperial trade relations. In 1910 he married the sister of a fellow Member of Parliament, Florence Greenwood. The colleague, Hamar Greenwood (Baron Greenwood since 1929 and Viscount Greenwood since 1937), was a Liberal M.P. for sixteen years (1906-1922) and a Conservative M.P. for five (1924-1929), a change in which Amery undoubtedly played an important role. Lord Greenwood was secretary of the Overseas Trade Department (1919-1920) and Chief Secretary for Ireland (1920- 1922). In recent years he has been chairman of the board of directors of one of England's greatest steel firms (Dorman, Long, and Company), treasurer of the Conservative Party, and president of the British Iron and Steel Federation (1938-1939).

Amery can be regarded as Milner's political heir. From the beginning of his own political career in 1906 to the death of Milner in 1925, he was more closely associated with Milner's active political life than any other person. In 1906, when Amery made his first effort to be elected to Parliament, Milner worked actively in support of his candidacy. It is probable that this, in spite of Milner's personal prestige, lost more votes than it gained, for Milner made no effort to conceal his own highly unorthodox ideas. On 17 December 1906, for example, he spoke at Wolverhampton as follows: "Not only am I an Imperialist of the deepest dye — and Imperialism, you know, is out of fashion — but I actually believe in universal military training.... I am a Tariff Reformer and one of a somewhat pronounced type.... I am unable to join in the hue and cry against Socialism. That there is an odious form of Socialism I admit, a Socialism which attacks wealth simply because it is wealth, and lives on the cultivation of class hatred. But that is not the whole story; most assuredly not. There is a nobler Socialism, which so far from springing from envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, is born of genuine sympathy and a lofty and wise conception of what is meant by national life." These sentiments may not have won Amery many votes, but they were largely shared by him, and his associations with Milner became steadily more intimate. In his last years of public office, Milner was generally assisted by Amery (1917-1921), and when he died it was Amery who arranged the public memorial service and controlled the distribution of tickets.

Edward William Mackay Grigg (Sir Edward after 1920, Lord Altrincham since 1945) is one of the most important members of the Milner Group. On graduating from New College, he joined the staff of The Times and remained with it for ten years (1903-1913), except for an interval during which he went to South Africa. In 1913 he became joint editor of The Round Table, but eventually left to fight the war in the Grenadier Guards. In 1919, he went with the Prince of Wales on a tour of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. After replacing Kerr for a year or so as secretary to Lloyd George (1921-1922), he was a Member of Parliament in 1922-1925 and again in 1933-1945. He has also been Governor of Kenya Colony (1925-1931), parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Information (1939-1940), Joint Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for War (1940-1942), and Minister Resident in the Middle East (1944-1945). He also found time to write many books, such as The Greatest Experiment in History (1924); Three Parties or Two? (1931), The Faith of an Englishman (1931), Britain Looks at Germany (1938), The British Commonwealth (1943), and British Foreign Policy (1944).

Another visitor to South Africa during the period of the Kindergarten was H. A. L. Fisher. Fisher, a famous historian in his own right, can be regarded as one of the founders of the Kindergarten and was a member of the Milner Group from at least 1899. The chief recruiting for the Kindergarten, beyond that done by Milner himself, was done by Fisher and his close friend Sir William Anson. The relationships between these two, Goschen, and Milner were quite close (except that Milner and Anson were by no means close), and this quartet had a great deal to do with the formation of the Milner Group and with giving it a powerful hold on New College and All Souls. Fisher graduated from New College in 1888 and at once became fellow and tutor in the same college. These positions were held, with interruptions, until 1912, when Fisher left Oxford to become Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University. He returned to New College as Warden for the last fifteen years of his life (1925-1940). Fisher originally expected to tutor in philosophy, but his appointment required him to teach history. His knowledge in this field was scanty, so it was amplified by vacation reading with A. L. Smith (the future Master of Balliol, an older contemporary of Milner's at Balliol, and a member of the Milner Group). Smith, in addition to teaching Fisher history, also taught him how to skate and to ride a bicycle and worked with him on the literary remains of Fisher's brother-in-law, Frederic W. Maitland, the great historian of the English law. As a result of this last activity, Fisher produced in 1911 a three-volume set of Maitland's Collected Works, and a biographical sketch of Maitland (1910), while Smith in 1908 published two lectures and a bibliography on Maitland. Smith's own biographical sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography was written by another member of the Milner Group, Kenneth Norman Bell (Fellow of All Souls, 1907-1914; Beit Lecturer in Colonial History, 1924-1927; and member of the family that controlled the publishing house of G. Bell and Sons). His son, Arthur Lionel Foster Smith, was a Fellow of All Souls under Anson (1904-1908) and later organized and supervised the educational system of Mesopotamia (1920-1931).

H. A. L. Fisher held many important posts in his career, partly because of membership in the Milner Group. In 1908, while the Kindergarten, which he had helped to assemble, was still in South Africa, he went there on an extended lecture tour; in 1911-1912 he was Chichele Lecturer in Foreign History; in 1912-1915 he was an important member of the Royal Commission on Public Services in India; in 1916-1926 he was a member of the House of Commons, the first half of the period as a Cabinet member (President of the Board of Education, 1916-1922). He was a delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations for three years (1920-1922), governor of the British Broadcasting Corporation for four (1935-1939), and a Rhodes Trustee for about fifteen (1925-1940). (6)

Fisher's bibliography forms an extensive list of published works. Besides his Unfinished Biography (1940) and his famous three-volume History of Europe (1935- 1936), it contains many writings on subjects close to the Milner Group. His Creighton Lecture in 1911 on Political Unions examines the nature of federalism and other unions and fits in well with the discussions going on at the time within Round Table Groups on this subject — discussions in which Fisher played an important part. In the section of this lecture dealing with the Union of South Africa, Fisher was almost as deliberately evasive as Brand had been in his book on the Union, which appeared two years earlier. He mentions the preliminary work of the Kindergarten toward union (work in which he had taken a part himself during his visit to South Africa in 1908) as the work of anonymous persons, but does state that the resulting constitution for a united South Africa was largely the work of the Transvaal delegation (which, as we shall see, was one controlled by the Kindergarten).

Other writings of Fisher's resulting from his work with the Milner Group are his "Imperial Administration" in Studies in History and Politics (1920); his An International Experiment, dealing with the League of Nations (1921); The Common Weal, dealing with the duties of citizenship (1924); and Our New Religion (1929), dealing with Christian Science. In connection with this last book, it might be mentioned that Christian Science became the religion of the Milner Group after Milner's death. Among others, Nancy Astor and Lord Lothian were ardent supporters of the new belief. Christian Science was part of the atmosphere of Cliveden.

Fisher's relationship with Milner was quite close and appeared chiefly in their possession of fellowships in New College, obtained by the older man in 1878 and by the younger ten years later. In 1901, when the Kindergarten was formed, the two had been Fellows together for thirteen years, and in 1925, when Milner died and Fisher became Warden, they had been Fellows together for thirty-seven years.

There was also a more personal relationship, created in 1899, when Fisher married Lettice Ilbert. Her father, Sir Courtenay Ilbert (1841-1924), was a lifelong friend of Anson and an old friend of Milner. Sir Courtenay, as law member of the Viceroy of India's Council in 1883, had tried in vain to remove from the Indian code"every judicial disqualification based merely upon race distinctions." Under Lord Dufferin (Lord Basil Blackwood's father), he set up the general system of law and procedure for Burma (1885), and in 1898 he issued what became the basic codification of Indian law. He was clerk of the House of Commons from 1902 to 1921. Mrs. H. A. L. Fisher, one of Sir Courtenay's five daughters, recalls in The Milner Papers how Alfred Milner use to romp with the girls when they were children.

Fisher was a very valuable member of the Milner Group because he, along with Lord Goschen, became the chief means by which the Group secured access to the College of All Souls. This access was secured by the friendship of these two men with Sir William Anson. Anson himself was a member of the Cecil Bloc rather than the Milner Group. His personal relations with Milner were not very close, and, indeed, there is some doubt as to his actual feeling toward Milner. The only comment about Milner in the published portions of Anson's journal is a rather acid remark regarding the lack of eloquence in a Milner speech in the House of Lords against the Parliament Act of 1911.(7) Nor did Anson see eye to eye with Milner, or indeed with most members of the Milner Group, since he was much too conservative. He was, to be sure, a Liberal Unionist, as most important members of the Group were. He was also an imperialist and interested in social welfare, but he did not have the high disregard for systems of economics that is so characteristic of all members of the Group before 1917. Anson had an ingrained respect for the economic status quo, and the old Liberal's suspicion of the intervention by public authority in the economic field. These tendencies had been strengthened by years of tender attention to the extensive landed wealth possessed by All Souls. Nonetheless, Anson became one of the chief architects of the Milner Group and is undoubtedly the chief factor in the Group's domination of All Souls since Anson's death. During his wardenship (1881-1914), Anson was the most influential figure in All Souls, not merely in its social and intellectual life but also in the management of its fortune and the selection of its members. In the ordinary expectation of affairs, the former task was generally left in the hands of the estates bursar, and the latter was shared with the other Fellows. Anson, however, took the dominant role in both matters, to such a degree in fact that Bishop Henson (himself a member of All Souls since 1884), in his Memoir of Anson, says that the Warden was always able to have his candidate emerge with the prized fellowship.

In seeking to bestow fellowships at All Souls on those individuals whom we now regard as the chief members of the Milner Group, Anson was not conscious that he was dealing with a group at all. The candidates who were offering themselves from New College in the period 1897-1907 were of such high ability that they were able to obtain the election on their own merits. The fact that they came strongly recommended by Fisher served to clinch the matter. They thus did not enter All Souls as members of the Milner Group — at least not in Anson's lifetime. After 1914 this was probably done (as in the case of Lionel Curtis in 1921, Basil Williams in 1924, or Reginald Coupland in 1920), but not before. Rather, likely young men who went to New College in the period on either side of the Boer War were marked out by Fisher and Anson, elected to All Souls, and sent into Milner's Kindergarten on the basis of merit rather than connections.

Another young man who came to visit in South Africa in 1904 and 1905 was Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, already a Fellow of All Souls and a future member of the Milner Group. Better known to the world today as the first Earl of Halifax, he was the son of the second Viscount Halifax and in every way well qualified to become a member of the Milner Group. Lord Halifax is a great-grandson of Lord Grey of the great Reform Bill of 1832, and a grandson of Lord Grey's secretary and son-in-law, Charles Wood (1800-1885), who helped put the Reform Bill through. The same grandfather became, in 1859-1866, the first Secretary of State for the new India, putting through reforms for that great empire which were the basis for the later reforms of the Milner Group in the twentieth century. Lord Halifax is also a grandnephew of Lord Durham, whose famous report became the basis for the federation of Canada in 1867.

As Edward Wood, the future Lord Halifax undoubtedly found his path into the select company of All Souls smoothed by his own father's close friendship with Phillimore and with the future Archbishop Lang, who had been a Fellow for fifteen years when Wood was elected in 1903.

As a newly elected Fellow, Wood went on a world tour, which took him to South Africa twice (in 1904 and 1905). Each time, he was accompanied by his father, Viscount Halifax, who dined with Milner and was deeply impressed. The Viscount subsequently became Milner's chief defender in the House of Lords. In 1906, for example, when Milner was under severe criticism in the Commons for importing Chinese laborers into South Africa, Lord Halifax introduced and carried in the Upper House a resolution of appreciation for Milner's work.

Edward Wood's subsequent career is one of the most illustrious of contemporary Englishmen. A Member of Parliament for fifteen years (1910-1925), he held posts as Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Colonies (1921-1922), President of the Board of Education (in succession to H. A. L. Fisher, 1922-1924), and Minister of Agriculture, before he went to India (as Baron Irwin) to be Viceroy. In this post, as we shall see, he furthered the plans of the Milner Group for the great subcontinent (1926-1931), before returning to more brilliant achievements as president of the Board of Education (1932- 1935), Secretary of State for War (1935), Lord Privy Seal (1935-1937), Lord President of the Council (1937-1938), Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1938-1940), and, finally, Ambassador to Washington (as successor to Lord Lothian, 1941-1946). In Washington, as we shall see, he filled the embassy with members of All Souls College.

There can be little doubt that Lora Halifax owed much of his rise in public affairs to his membership in the Milner Group. His authorized biographer, Alan Campbell Johnson, writes in connection with one appointment of Halifax's: "It is widely believed that the influence of Geoffrey Dawson and other members of The Times editorial staff discovered him as an ideal Viceroy and whispered his name at the proper time both to the proper authorities in George V's entourage and at 10 Downing Street." In connection with his appointment as Foreign Secretary, Johnson says:

"Lothian, Geoffrey Dawson, and Brand, who used to congregate at Cliveden House as the Astors' guests and earned the title of a "set," to which, in spite of imaginative left- wing propaganda, they never aspired, urged Chamberlain at the decisive moment to have the courage of his convictions and place Halifax, even though he was a Peer, in the office to which his experience and record so richly entitled him. They argued forcibly that to have a Foreign Secretary safely removed from the heat of the House of Commons battle was just what was required to meet the delicate international situation."


Another member of this South African group who was not technically a member of the Kindergarten (because not a member of the civil service) was Basil Kellett Long. He went from Brasenose to Cape Town to study law in 1902 and was called to the bar three years later. In 1908 he was elected to the Cape Parliament, and a year later succeeded Kerr as editor of the Kindergarten's propagandist journal, The State (1909-1912). He was a member of the first Parliament of a united South Africa for three years (1910-1913) and then succeeded Amery as head of the Dominions Department of The Times. In 1921 he left this post and the position of foreign editor (held jointly with it in 1920-1921) to return to South Africa as editor of the Cape Times (1921-1935). He was one of the most important figures in the South African Institute of International Affairs after its belated foundation. With the outbreak of war in 1939, he was put in charge of liaison work between the South African branch and the parent institute in London.

The work of the Kindergarten in South Africa is not so well known as might be expected. Indeed, until very recently the role played by this group, because of its own deliberate policy of secrecy, has been largely concealed. The only good narration of their work is to be found in Worsfold's The Reconstruction of the New Colonies under Lord Milner, but Worsfold, writing so early, could not foresee the continued existence of the Kindergarten as a greater and more influential group. Lionel Curtis's own account of what the Group did, in his Letter to the People of India (1917), is very brief and virtually unknown in the United States or even in England. The more recent standard accounts, such as that in Volume VIII of the Cambridge History of the British Empire (1936), give even less than Worsfold. This will not appear surprising when we point out that the chapter in this tome dealing with "The Formation of the Union, 1901-1910" is written by Hugh A. Wyndham, a member of the Kindergarten. It is one of the marvels of modern British scholarship how the Milner Group has been able to keep control of the writing of history concerned with those fields in which it has been most active.

Only in very recent years has the role played by the Kindergarten as part of a larger group been appreciated, and now only by a very few writers, such as the biographer of Lord Halifax, already mentioned, and M. S. Green. The latter, a high school teacher in Pretoria, South Africa, in his brief work on The Making of the Union of South Africa (1946) gives an account of the Kindergarten which clearly shows his realization that this was only the early stages of a greater group that exercised its influence through The Round Table, The Times, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the College of All Souls.

The work of union in South Africa was only part of the much greater task of imperial union. This was always the ultimate goal of Cecil Rhodes, of Milner, and of the Kindergarten. Milner wrote in his diary on 25 January 1904: "My work has been constantly directed to a great and distant end — the establishment in South Africa of a great and civilized and progressive community, one from Cape Town to the Zambesi — independent in the management of its own affairs, but still remaining, from its own firm desire, a member of the great community of free nations gathered together under the British flag. That has been the object of all my efforts. It is my object still." (8) In his great farewell speech of March 1905, Milner called upon his hearers, and especially the Kindergarten, to remain loyal to this ultimate goal. He said:

"What I pray for hardest is, that those with whom I have worked in a great struggle and who may attach some weight to my words should remain faithful, faithful above all in the period of reaction, to the great idea of Imperial Unity. Shall we ever live to see its fulfillment? Whether we do or not, whether we succeed or fail, 1 shall always be steadfast in that faith, though I should prefer to work quietly and in the background, in the formation of opinion rather than in the exercise of power.... When we who call ourselves Imperialists talk of the British Empire, we think of a group of states, all independent in their local concerns, but all united for the defense of their own common interests and the development of a common civilization; united, not in an alliance — for alliances can be made and unmade, and are never more than nominally lasting — but in a permanent organic union. Of such a union the dominions as they exist today, are, we fully admit, only the raw material. Our ideal is still distant but we deny that it is either visionary or unattainable.... The road is long, the obstacles are many, the goal may not be reached in my lifetime — perhaps not in that of any man in this room. You cannot hasten the slow growth of a great idea like that by any forcing process. But what you can do is to keep it steadily in view, to lose no opportunity to work for it, to resist like grim death any policy which leads away from it. I know that the service of that idea requires the rarest combination of qualities, a combination of ceaseless effort with infinite patience. But then think on the other hand of the greatness of the reward; the immense privilege of being allowed to contribute in any way to the fulfillment of one of the noblest conceptions which has ever dawned on the political imagination of mankind."


For the first couple of years in South Africa the Kindergarten worked to build up the administrative, judicial, educational, and economic systems of South Africa. By 1905 they were already working for the Union. The first steps were the Inter-colonial Council, which linked the Transvaal and Orange River Colony; the Central South African Railway amalgamation; and the customs union. As we have seen, the Kindergarten controlled the first two of these completely; in addition, they controlled the administration of Transvaal completely. This was important, because the gold and diamond mines made this colony the decisive economic power in South Africa, and control of this power gave the Kindergarten the leverage with which to compel the other states to join a union.

In 1906, Curtis, Dawson, Hichens, Brand, and Kerr, with the support of Feetham and Malcolm, went to Lord Selborne and asked his permission to work for the Union. They prevailed upon Dr. Starr Jameson, at that time Premier of Cape Colony, to write to Selborne in support of the project. When permission was obtained, Curtis resigned from his post in Johannesburg and, with Kerr's assistance, formed "Closer Union Societies" as propaganda bodies throughout South Africa. Dawson, as editor, controlled the Johannesburg Star. The Times of London was controlled completely, as far as news from South Africa was concerned, with Monypenny, Amery, Basil Williams, and Grigg in strategic spots — the last as head of the imperial department of the paper. Fabian Ware published articles by various members of the Milner Group in his Morning Post. In South Africa, £5000 was obtained from Abe Bailey to found a monthly paper to further the cause of union. This paper, The State, was edited by Philip Kerr and B. K. Long and became the predecessor of The Round Table, also edited by Kerr and financed by Bailey. Bailey was not only the chief financial support of the Kindergarten's activities for closer union in South Africa, but also the first financial contributor to The Round Table in 1910, and to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919. He contributed to both during his life, and at his death in 1940 gave The Round Table £1000 a year for an indefinite period. He had given the Royal Institute £5000 a year in perpetuity in 1928. Like his close associates Rhodes and Beit, he left part of his immense fortune in the form of a trust fund to further imperial interests. In Bailey's case, the fund amounted to £250,000.

As part pf the project toward a Union of South Africa, Curtis in 1906 drew up a memorandum on the need for closer union of the South African territories, basing his arguments chiefly on the need for greater railway and customs unity. This, with the addition of a section written by Kerr on railway rates, and a few paragraphs by Selborne, was issued with the famous Selborne Federation Dispatch of 7 January 1907 and published as an Imperial Blue Book (Cmd. 3564 of 1907). It was republished, with an introduction by Basil Williams of the Kindergarten, by Oxford University Press in 1925. The Central Committee of the Closer Union Societies (which was nothing but the Kindergarten) wrote a complete and detailed account of the political institutions of the various areas concerned. This was called The Government of South Africa and was issued anonymously in five parts, and revised later in two quarto volumes. A copy was sent to every delegate to the National Convention in Durban in 1908, along with another anonymous work (edited by B. K. Long), called The Framework of Union. This latter work contained copies of the five chief federal constitutions of the world (United States, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia). Curtis was also the chief author of the draft of projected constitution presented by the Transvaal delegation to the National Convention. This draft, with modifications, became the Constitution of the Union of South Africa in 1910. The Transvaal delegation, alone of the various delegations, lived together in one house and had a body of expert advisers; both of these circumstances were due to the Kindergarten.

After the convention accepted the Union Constitution, it was necessary to have it accepted by the Imperial Parliament and the various states of South Africa. In both of these tasks the Kindergarten played an important role, in England through their control of The Times and The Morning Post as well as other sources of propaganda, and in South Africa by the economic pressure of the Transvaal. In Natal, the only state which submitted the question to a referendum, the Kindergarten put on an intensive propaganda drive, financed with money from the Transvaal. Of this struggle in Natal, Brand, with his usual secrecy on all matters dealing with the Kindergarten, merely says: "A referendum was therefore taken — contrary to general expectation, it revealed an overwhelming majority for union, a good testimony to the sound sense of the people of the colony. "(9) Brand, as secretary to the Transvaal delegation to the Convention, knew more than this!

The same secrecy was maintained in regard to the whole convention. No record of its proceedings was kept, but, according to Worsfold, its resolutions were drafted by Brand and Duncan.

Throughout these activities, the Kindergarten received powerful support from a man who by this time was a member of the Milner Group and later gained international fame, chiefly because of this membership. This was Jan C. Smuts.

Smuts had studied in England, at Cambridge University and the Middle Temple. By 1895 he was a lawyer in Cape Town. His lack of success in this profession doubtless had some influence in turning him into the devious opportunist he soon became, but throughout his opportunism he clung to that ideal which he shared with Rhodes and Milner — the ideal of a united South Africa. All his actions from this date onward — no matter how much they may seem, viewed superficially, to lead in another direction — were directed toward the end ultimately achieved: a United South Africa within the British Empire — and, to him almost equally important, a United South Africa in which he would be the dominant figure. Smuts and Milner differed chiefly on this last point, for if Milner was "selfless," this was almost the last word which could be applied to Smuts. Otherwise the two seemed very similar — similar in their desires for a united South Africa and later a united British Empire, and extraordinarily similar in their cold austerity, impersonal intellectualism, and driving discipline (applied to self even more than to others). In spite of their similar goals for the Empire, Smuts and Milner were not close friends. Perhaps such similar personalities could not be expected to find mutual agreement, but the divergence probably rests, rather, on the one characteristic in their personalities where they most obviously differed.

Smuts and Rhodes, on the other hand, got on together very well. As early as 1895, the unsuccessful Cape Town lawyer was sent by the great imperialist to Kimberley to speak in his defense. But after the Jameson Raid, Smuts became one of the most vociferous critics of Rhodes and the British. These attacks gave Smuts a reputation as an Anglophobe, which yielded considerable profits immediately. Going to the Transvaal (where he added to his fame by uncompromising support of President Kruger), he was raised, at the age of twenty-eight, to the post of State Attorney (1898). In this position, and later as Colonial Secretary, he adopted tactics which led steadily to war (forcing the Uitlanders to pay taxes while denying them the franchise, arresting Uitlander newspaper editors like Monypenny, etc.). At the Bloemfontein Conference of 1899 between Kruger and Milner, all of Smuts's advice to the former was in the direction of concessions to Milner, yet it was Smuts who drafted the ultimatum of 9 October, which led to the outbreak of war. During the war he was one of the most famous of Boer generals, yet, when negotiations for peace began, it was he who drew up the proposal to accept the British terms without delay. With the achievement of peace, Smuts refused Milner's invitation to serve in the Legislative Council of the Transvaal, devoting himself instead to violent and frequently unfair attacks on Milner and the Kindergarten, yet as soon as self- government was granted (in 1906) he became Colonial Secretary and Minister of Education and worked in the closest cooperation with the Kindergarten to obtain Milner's ideal of a united South Africa.

There is really nothing puzzling or paradoxical in these actions. From the beginning, Smuts wanted a brilliant career in a united South Africa within a united British Empire, within, if possible, a united world. No stage would be too big for this young actor's ambitions, and these ambitions were not, except for his own personal role, much different from those of Milner or Rhodes. But, as a very intelligent man, Smuts knew that he could play no role whatever in the world, or in the British Empire, unless he could first play a role in South Africa. And that required, in a democratic regime (which he disliked), that he appear pro-Boer rather than pro-British. Thus Smuts was pro-Boer on all prominent and nonessential matters but pro-British on all unobtrusive and essential matters (such as language, secession, defense, etc.).

At the National Convention of 1908-1909, it was Smuts who dominated the Transvaal delegation and succeeded in pushing through the projects prepared by the Kindergarten. From this emerged a personal connection that still exists, and from time onward, as a member of the Milner Group, Smuts, with undeniable ability, was able to play the role he had planned in the Empire and the world. He became the finest example of the Milner Group's contention that within a united Empire rested the best opportunities for freedom and self-development for all men. (10)

In the new government formed after the creation of the Union of South Africa, Smuts held three out of nine portfolios (Mines, Defense, and Interior). In 1912 he gave up two of these (Mines and Interior) in exchange for the portfolio of Finance, which he held until the outbreak of war. As Minister of Defense (1910-1920) and Prime Minister (1919- 1924), he commanded the British forces in East Africa (1916-1917) and was the South African representative and one of the chief members of the Imperial War Cabinet (1917- 1918). At the Peace Conference at Paris he was a plenipotentiary and played a very important role behind the scenes in cooperation with other members of the Milner Group. In 1921 he went on a secret mission to Ireland and arranged for an armistice and opened negotiations between Lloyd George and the Irish leaders. In the period following the war, his influence in South African politics declined, but he continued to play an important role within the Milner Group and in those matters (such as the Empire) in which the Group was most concerned. With the approach of the Second World War, he again came to prominence in political affairs. He was Minister of Justice until the war began (1933- 1939) and then became Prime Minister, holding the Portfolios of External Affairs and Defense (1939-1948). Throughout his political life, his chief lieutenant was Patrick Duncan, whom he inherited directly from Milner.

Smuts was not the only addition made to the Milner Group by the Kindergarten during its stay in South Africa. Among the others were two men who were imported by Milner from the Indian Civil Service to guide the efforts of the Kindergarten in forming the Transvaal Civil Service. These two were James S. Meston (later Lord Meston, 1865- 1943) and William S. Marris (later Sir William, 1873-1945). Both had studied briefly at Oxford in preparation for the Indian Civil Service. Meston studied at Balliol (after graduating from Aberdeen University) at the time when Milner was still very close to the college (c. 1884), and when Toynbee, tutor to Indian Civil Service candidates at Balliol, had just died. It may have been in this fashion that Milner became acquainted with Meston and thus called him to South Africa in 1903. Until that time, Meston's career in the Indian Civil Service had been fairly routine, and after eighteen years of service he had reached the position of Financial Secretary to the United Provinces.

Marris, a younger colleague of Meston's in the Indian Civil Service, was a native of New Zealand and, after studying at Canterbury College in his own country, went to Christ Church, Oxford, to prepare for the Indian Civil Service. He passed the necessary examinations and was made an assistant magistrate in the United Provinces. From this post he went to South Africa to join the Kindergarten two years after Meston had.

Meston's position in South Africa was adviser to the Cape Colony and the Transvaal on civil service reform (1904-1906). He remained ever after a member of the Milner Group, being used especially for advice on Indian affairs. On his return from South Africa, he was made secretary to the Finance Department of the Government of India (1906-1912). Two years later he was made Finance Member of the Governor-General's Council, and, the following year, became a member of the Imperial Legislative Council. In 1912 he became for five years Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces. During this period he worked very closely with Lionel Curtis on the projected reforms which ultimately became the Government of India Act of 1919. In 1917 Meston went to London as Indian representative to the Imperial War Cabinet and to the Imperial Conference of that year. On his return to India, he again was Finance Member of the Governor- General's Council until his retirement in 1919. He then returned to England and, as the newly created Baron Meston of Agra and Dunottar, continued to act as chief adviser on Indian affairs to the Milner Group. He was placed on the boards of directors of a score of corporations in which the Group had influence. On several of these he sat with other members of the Group. Among these we might mention the English Electric Company (with Hichens), the Galloway Water Power Company (with Brand), and the British Portland Cement Manufacturers Association (with the third Lord Selborne). From its foundation he was an important member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, was chairman of its executive committee in 1919-1926, and was a member of the council for most of the period 1926-1943.

Marris, who replaced Meston in the Transvaal in 1906, was eight years his junior (born 1873) and, perhaps for this reason, was much closer to the member of the Kindergarten and became, if possible, an even more intimate member of the Milner Group. He became Civil Service Commissioner of the Transvaal and deputy chairman of the Committee on the Central South African Railways. He did not return to India for several years, going with Curtis instead on a world tour through Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, organizing the Round Table Groups (1911). It was he who persuaded Curtis, and through him the Milner Group, that India should be allowed to proceed more rapidly than had been intended on the path toward self-government.

Back in India in 1912, Marris became a member of the Durbar Executive Committee and, later, secretary to the Home Department of the Government of India. In 1916 he became Inspector General of Police for the United Provinces, and the following year Joint Secretary to the Government of India. During this period he helped Curtis with the projected reforms plans, and he was made responsible for carrying them out when the act was passed in 1919, being made Commissioner of Reforms and Home Secretary to the Government of India (1919-1921). At the same time he was knighted. After a brief period as Governor of Assam (1921-1922), he was Governor of the United Provinces (1922- 1928) and a member of the Council of India (1928-1929). After his retirement from active participation in the affairs of India, he embarked upon a career in academic administration, which brought him additional honors. He was Principal of Armstrong College in 1929-1937, Vice-Chancellor and Pro- Vice-Chancellor of Durham University in 1929-1937, a Governor of the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester in 1937-1945.

Marris's son, Adam D. Marris, born in the year his father went to the Transvaal, is today still a member of the Milner Group. After graduating from Winchester School and Trinity College, Oxford, he went to work with Lazard Brothers. There is no doubt that this position was obtained through his father's relationship with Brand, at that time manager of Lazard. Young Marris remained with the banking firm for ten years, but at the outbreak of war he joined the Ministry of Economic Warfare for a year. Then he joined the All Souls Group that was monopolizing the British Embassy in Washington, originally as First Secretary and later as Counselor to the Embassy (1940-1945). After the war he was British Foreign Office representative on the Emergency Economic Committee for Europe as secretary-general. In 1946 he returned to Lazard Brothers.

The older Marris brought into the Milner Group from the Indian Civil Service another member who has assumed increasing importance in recent years. This was Malcolm Hailey (since 1936 Lord Hailey). Hailey, a year older than Marris, took the Indian Civil Service examinations with Marris in 1895 and followed in his footsteps thereafter. Secretary to the Punjab government in 1907 and Deputy Secretary to the Government of India the following year, he was a member of the Delhi Durbar Committee in 1912 and Chief Commissioner in that city for the next eight years. In this post he was one of the advisers used by Curtis on Indian reforms (1916). After the war Hailey was a member of the Executive Council of the Viceroy in the Financial and Home Departments (1919- 1924), Governor of Punjab (1924-1928), and Governor of the United Provinces (1928- 1930, 1931-1934). During this last period he was one of the closest advisers to Baron Irwin (Lord Halifax) during his term as Viceroy (1926-1936). After Hailey left the Indian Service in 1934, he was used in many important capacities by the Milner Group, especially in matters concerned with Africa and the mandates. Since this use illustrates to perfection the skillful way in which the Milner Group has functioned in recent years, it might be presented here as a typical case.

We have seen that the Milner Group controlled the Rhodes money after Rhodes's death in 1902. In 1929 the Group invited General Smuts to give the Rhodes Lectures at Oxford. In these lectures, Smuts suggested that a detailed survey of Africa and its resources was badly needed. The Royal Institute of International Affairs took up this suggestion and appointed a committee, with Lord Lothian as chairman, to study the project. This committee secured the services of the retiring Governor of the United Provinces to head the survey. Thus Sir Malcolm Hailey became the director of the project and general editor of the famous African Survey, published in 1938 by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, with funds obtained from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Thus the hand of the Milner Group appears in this work from its first conception to its final fruition, although the general public, ignorant of the existence of such a group, would never realize it.

Hailey was also made a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a member of the Permanent Mandate Commission of the League of Nations (1935-1939), chairman of the School of Oriental and African Studies (1941-1945), chairman of International African Institute, president of the Royal Central Asian Society, chairman of the Colonial Research Committee, member of the Senate of the University of London, Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College at Oxford (1939-1947), head of an economic mission to the Belgian Congo (1941), Romanes Lecturer at Oxford (1941), etc., etc.

Along with all these important posts, Lord Hailey found time to write in those fields with which the Milner Group was most concerned. Among these works we might mention: Britain and Her Dependencies, The Future of Colonial Peoples, and Great Britain, India, and the Colonial Dependencies in the Post-War World (all three published in 1943).

The achievement of the Union of South Africa in 1910 did not mean the end of the Kindergarten. Instead, it set out to repeat on the imperial scene what it had just accomplished in South Africa. In this new project the inspiration was the same (Milner), the personnel was the same (the Kindergarten), the methods were the same (with the Round Table Groups replacing the 'Closer Union Societies" and The Round Table replacing The State. But, as befitted a larger problem, additional personnel and additional funds were required. The additional personnel came largely from New College and All Souls; the additional funds came from Cecil Rhodes and his associates and All Souls. The older sources of funds (like Abe Bailey) and influence (like The Times) remained loyal to the Group and continued to assist in this second great battle of the Milner Croup. As John Buchan wrote in his autobiography, "Loyalty to Milner and his creed was a strong cement which endured long after our South African service ended, since the Round Table coterie in England continued the Kindergarten." Or, if we may call another competent witness, Lord Oxford and Asquith, writing of Milner after his death, stated: "His personality was so impressive that he founded a school of able young men who during his lifetime and since have acknowledged him as their principal political leader.... He was an Expansionist, up to a point a Protectionist, with a strain in social and industrial matters of semi-Socialist sentiment." (11)

More convincing, perhaps, than either Buchan or Asquith is the word of the Group itself. The Round Table, in its issue of September 1935, celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary by printing a brief history of the Group. This sketch, while by no means complete and without mentioning any names of members, provides irrefutable proof of the existence and importance of the Milner Group. It said, in part:

"By the end of 1913 The Round Table had two aspects. On the one hand, it published a quarterly review. . . . On the other hand it represented a body of men united in support of the principle of freedom and enquiring jointly, through the method of group study, how it could be preserved and expanded in the conditions of the then existing world. In calling for preparation against the German danger (as it did from the very beginning) The Round Table was not merely, or even chiefly, concerned with saving British skins. It was concerned with upholding against the despotic state what it began to call 'the principle of the commonwealth.' . . . The root principle of The Round Table remained freedom — 'the government of men by themselves' and it demanded that within the Empire this principle should be persistently pursued and expressed in institutions. For that reason it denounced the post-war attempt to repress the Irish demand for national self-government by ruthless violence after a century of union had failed to win Irish consent, as a policy in conflict with British wealth; and it played its part in achieving the Irish Treaty, and the Dominion settlement. Within the limits of the practiceable it fought for the Commonwealth ideal in India. It was closely associated with the device of dyarchy, which seemed for the time being the most practical method of preventing the perpetuation of an irremovable executive confronting an irresponsible legislature and of giving Indians practical training in responsibility for government — the device embodied in the Montagu-Chelmsford Report and the Government of India Act.... The Round Table, while supporting the legal formulation of national freedom in the shape of Dominion autonomy, has never lost sight of its ultimate ideal of an organic and articulate Commonwealth. The purpose of devolution is not to drive liberty to the point of license but to prepare for the ultimate basis on which alone freedom can be preserved the reign of law over all.... Federal Union is the only security for the freedom both of the individual and of the nation. . . . The principle of anonymity has never been broken and it remains not only as a means of obtaining material from sources that would otherwise be closed, but also as a guarantee that both the opinions and the facts presented in the articles are scrutinized by more than one individual judgment.... Imperceptibly, the form of the review has changed to suit altered circumstances.... But the fundamentals remain unchanged. Groups in the four overseas Dominions still assemble their material and hammer out their views, metaphorically, 'round the table.' Some of their members have shared continuously in this work for a quarter of a century; and in England, too, the group of friends who came together in South Africa still help to guide the destinies and contribute to the pages of the review they founded, though the chances of life and death have taken some of their number, and others have been brought in to contribute new points of view and younger blood."
 
 
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Re: The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Clivede

Postby admin » Mon Apr 29, 2019 11:42 pm

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

It is generally believed, and stated as a fact by many writers, that Milner hoped for some new political appointment after his return from Africa and was deprived of this by the election of 1906, which swept the Conservatives from office and brought in the Liberals. It is perfectly true that Milner was out of political life for ten years, but there is, so far as I know, no evidence that this was contrary to his own wish. In his farewell speech of March 1905, delivered long before the Liberal victory at the polls, Milner stated in reference "to the great idea of Imperial Unity": "I shall always be steadfast in that faith, though I should prefer to work quietly and in the background, in the formation of opinion rather than in the exercise of power." This is exactly what Milner did. Even after he returned to positions of power in 1915-1921, he worked as quietly as possible and attracted public attention at an absolute minimum. (1)

Milner had nothing to gain from public office after 1905, until the great crisis of 1915- 1918 made it imperative for all able men to take a hand in active affairs. If he wanted to speak his own mind, he always had his seat in the House of Lords, and speaking engagements elsewhere were easy — indeed, too easy — to get. In South Africa his union program after 1905 was going forward at a rate that exceeded his most optimistic hopes. And nowhere else did it seem, in 1905, that he could, in actual administration, accomplish more than he could in quietly building up a combination propaganda and patronage machine at home. This machine was constructed about Rhodes and his associates, New College, and All Souls.

Milner was not of any political party himself and regarded party politics with disgust long before 1905. As his friend Edmund Garrett wrote in 1905: "Rhodes and Milner both number themselves of that great unformed party which is neither the ins nor the outs, which touches here the foreign politics of the one, here the home politics of the other; a party to which Imperialism and Carlyle's Condition of the People Question are one and the same business of fitly rearing, housing, distributing, coordinating, and training for war and peace the people of this commonwealth; a party which seems to have no name, no official leader, no paper even, but which I believe, when it comes by a soul and a voice, will prove to include a majority of the British in Britain and a still greater majority of the British overseas." (2) There can be no doubt that these were Milner's sentiments. He hoped to give that unformed party "a soul and a voice," and he intended to do this apart from party politics. When he was offered the position of president of the imperial federalist organization he refused it, but wrote to the secretary, Mr. F. H. Congdon, as follows:

"Personally I have no political interest worth mentioning, except the maintenance of the Imperial connection, and I look upon the future with alarm. The party system at home and in the Colonies seems to me to work for the severance of ties, and that contrary to the desire of our people on both sides. It is a melancholy instance of the manner in which bad political arrangements, lauded to the skies from year s end to year's end as the best in the world, may not only injure the interests, but actually frustrate the desires of the people. I can see no remedy or protection, under the present circumstances, except a powerful body of men — and it would have to be very powerful — determined at all times and under all circumstances to vote and work, regardless of every other circumstance, against the man or party who played fast and loose with the cause of National Unity. You can be sure that for my own part I shall always do that.... " (3)


Milner, in his distaste for party politics and for the parliamentary system, and in his emphasis on administration for social welfare, national unity, and imperial federation, was an early example of what James Burnham has called the "managerial revolution" — that is, the growth of a group of managers, behind the scenes and beyond the control of public opinion, who seek efficiently to obtain what they regard as good for the people. To a considerable extent this point of view became part of the ideology of the Milner Group, although not of its most articulate members, like Lionel Curtis, who continued to regard democracy as a good in itself.

Milner's own antipathy to democracy as practiced in the existing party and parliamentary system is obvious. Writing to his old friend Sir Clinton Dawkins, who had been, with Milner, a member of the Toynbee group in 1879-1884, he said in 1902: "Two things constantly strike me. One is the soundness of the British nation as a whole, contrasted with the rottenness of party politics." About the same time he wrote to another old Balliol associate, George Parkin: "I am strongly impressed by two things: one that the heart of the nation is sound, — and secondly that our constitution and methods are antiquated and bad, and the real sound feeling of the nation does not get a chance of making itself effective." Two years later he wrote to a friend of Rhodes, Sir Lewis Michell: "Representative government has its merits, no doubt, but the influence of representative assemblies, organized on the party system, upon administration — 'government' in the true sense of the word — is almost uniformly bad. "(4)

With sentiments such as these, Milner laid down the duties of public office with relief and devoted himself, not to private affairs, but to the secret public matters associated with his "Association of Helpers." To support himself during this period, Milner acted as confidential adviser to certain international financiers in London's financial district. His entree to this lucrative occupation may have been obtained through Lord Esher, who had just retired from a similar well-remunerated collaboration with Sir Ernest Cassel.

Milner's most important work in this period was concerned with the administration of the Rhodes Trust and the contacts with Oxford University which arose out of this and from his own position as a Fellow of New College.

The Rhodes Trust was already in operation when Milner returned from Africa in 1905, with the actual management of the scholarships in the hands of George Parkin, who had been brought from his position as Principal of Upper Canada College by Milner. He held the post for eighteen years (1902-1920). The year following his appointment, an Oxford secretary to the trustees was appointed to handle the local work during Parkin's extended absences. This appointment went to Francis Wylie (Sir Francis since 1929), Fellow and tutor of Brasenose, who was named by the influence of Lord Rosebery, whose sons he had tutored. (5) The real control of the trust has rested with the Milner Group from 1902 to the present. Milner was the only really active trustee and he controlled the bureaucracy which handled the trust. As secretary to the trustees before 1929, we find, for example, George Parkin (1902-1920), Geoffrey Dawson (1921-1922), Edward Grigg (1922-1925), and Lord Lothian (1925-1940) — all of them clearly Milner's nominees. On the Board of Trustees itself, in the same period, we find Lord Rosebery, Lord Milner, Lord Grey, Dr. Jameson, Alfred Beit, Lewis Michell, B. F. Hawksley, Otto Beit, Rudyard Kipling, Leopold Amery, Stanley Baldwin, Geoffrey Dawson, H. A. L. Fisher, Sothern Holland, and Sir Edward Peacock. Peacock had been teacher of English and housemaster at Upper Canada College during the seven years in which Parkin was principal of that institution (1895-1902) and became an international financier as soon as Parkin became secretary of the Rhodes Trust. Apparently he did not represent the Rhodes Trust but rather the interests of that powerful and enigmatic figure Edward Rogers Wood of Toronto. Wood and Peacock were very close to the Canadian branch of the Milner Group, that is to say, to A. J. Glazebrook, Parkin, and the Massey family, but it is not clear that either represented the interests of the Milner Group. Peacock was associated at first with the Dominion Securities Corporation of London (1902-1915) and later with Baring Brothers as a specialist in utility enterprises in Mexico, Spain, and Brazil (1915-1924). He was made Receiver-General of the Duchy of Cornwall in 1929 and was knighted in 1934. He was a director of the Bank of England from 1921-1946, managing director of Baring Brothers from 1926, a director of Vickers-Armstrong from 1929, and in addition a director of many world-famous corporations, such as the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Hudson Bay Company, and the Sun Life Assurance Society. He was an expert at the Genoa Conference in 1922 and acted as the British Treasury's representative in Washington during the Second World War.

If we look at the list of Rhodes Trustees, we see that the Milner Group always had complete control. Omitting the five original trustees, we see that five of the new additions were from the Milner Group, three were from the Rhodes clique, and three represented the outside world. In the 1930s the Board was stabilized for a long period as Amery, Baldwin, Dawson, Fisher, Holland, and Peacock, with Lothian as secretary. Six of these seven were of the Milner Group, four from the inner core.

A somewhat similar situation existed in respect to the Beit Railway Fund. Although of German birth, Alfred Beit became a British subject and embraced completely the ideas on the future role of the British Empire shared by Rhodes and Milner. An intimate friend of these and of Lord Rosebery, he was especially concerned with the necessity to link the British possessions in Africa together by improved transportation (including the Cape to Cairo Railway). Accordingly, he left £1,200,000 as the Beit Railway Trust, to be used for transportation and other improvements in Africa. The year before his death (1906), he was persuaded by the Milner Group to establish a Beit Professorship and a Beit Lecturership in Colonial History at Oxford. The money provided yielded an income far in excess of the needs of these two chairs, and the surplus has been used for other "imperialist" purposes. In addition, Beit gave money to the Bodleian Library at Oxford for books on colonial history. In 1929, when Rhodes House was opened, these and other books on the subject were moved from the Bodleian to Rhodes House, and the Beit Professor was given an office and lecture hall in Rhodes House. There have been only two incumbents of the Beit Professorship since 1905: Hugh Edward Egerton in 1905- 1920, and Reginald (Sir Reginald since 1944) Coupland since 1920. Egerton, a member of the Cecil Bloc and the Round Table Group, was a contemporary of Milner's at Oxford whose father was a member of the House of Commons and Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He was originally private secretary to his cousin Edward Stanhope, Colonial Secretary and Secretary of War in Lord Salisbury's first government. In 1886, Egerton became a member of the managing committee of the newly created Emigrants Information Office. He held this job for twenty years, during which time he came into the sphere of the Milner Group, partly because of the efforts of South Africa, and especially the British South Africa Company, to encourage emigration to their territories, but also because of his Short History of British Colonial Policy, published in 1897. On the basis of this contact and this book, he was given the new Beit Chair in 1905 and with it a fellowship at All Souls. In his professional work he constantly supported the aims of the Milner Group, including the publication of Federations and Unions within the British Empire (1911) and British Colonial Policy in the Twentieth Century (1922). His book Canadian Constitutional Development, along with Sir Charles Lucas's edition of Lord Durham's reports, was the chief source of information for the process by which Canada was federated used by the Milner Group. He wrote the biography of Joseph Chamberlain in the Dictionary of National Biography, while his own biography in the same collection was written by Reginald Coupland. He remained a Fellow of All Souls and a member of the Milner Group until his death in 1927, although he yielded his academic post to Reginald Coupland in 1920. Coupland, who was a member of the Milner Group from his undergraduate days at New College (1903-1907), and who became one of the inner circle of the Milner Group as early as 1914, will be discussed later. He has been, since 1917, one of the most important persons in Britain in the formation of British imperial policy.

The Beit Railway Trust and the Beit chairs at Oxford have been controlled by the Milner Group from the beginning, through the board of trustees of the former and through the board of electors of the latter. Both of these have interlocking membership with the Rhodes Trust and the College of All Souls. For example, the board of electors of the Beit chair in 1910 consisted of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, the Regius Professor of Modern History, the Chichele Professor of Modern History, the Secretary of State for Colonies, Viscount Milner, H. A. L. Fisher, and Leopold Amery. By controlling All Souls and the two professorships (both ex-officio fellowships of All Souls), the Milner Group could control five out of seven electors to the Beit professorship. In recent years the board of electors has consistently had a majority of members of All Souls and/or the Milner Group. In 1940, for example, the board had, besides three ax-officio members, two members of All Souls, a Rhodes Trustee, and H. A. L. Fisher.

The Beit Lectureship in Colonial History was similarly controlled. In 1910 its board of electors had seven members, four ex-officio (The Vice-Chancellor, the Regius Professor of History, the Chichele Professor of History, the Beit Professor) and three others (A. L. Smith, H, A. L. Fisher, and Leopold Amery). In 1930 the board consisted of the Vice- Chancellor, the Beit Professor, H. A. L. Fisher, F. M. Powicke, and three fellows of All Souls. As a result, the lectureship has generally been held by persons close to the Milner Group, as can be seen from the following list of incumbents:

W. L. Grant, 1906-1910
J. Munro, 1910-1912
L. Curtis, 1912-1913
R. Coupland, 1913-1918
E. M. Wrong, 1919-1924
K. N. Bell, 1924-1927
W. P. Morrell, 1927-1930
V. T. Harlow, 1930-1935
K. C. Wheare, 1935-1940


Without attempting to identify all of these completely, it should be pointed out that four were Fellows of All Souls, while, of the others, one was the son-in-law of George Parkin, another was the son-in-law of A. L. Smith, and a third was librarian of Rhodes House and later acting editor of The Round Table.

During this period after 1905, the Milner Group was steadily strengthening its relationships with New College, All Souls, and to some extent with Balliol. Through Fisher and Milner there came into the Group two tutors and a scholar of New College. These were Alfred Zimmern, Robert S. Rait (1874-1936), and Reginald Coupland.

Alfred Zimmern (Sir Alfred since 1936) was an undergraduate at New College with Kerr, Grigg, Brand, Curtis, Malcolm, and Waldorf Astor (later Lord Astor) in 1898-1902. As lecturer, fellow, and tutor there in the period 1903-1909, he taught a number of future members of the Milner Group, of whom the chief was Reginald Coupland. His teaching and his book The Greek Commonwealth (1911) had a profound effect on the thinking of the inner circle of the Milner Group, as can be seen, for example, in the writings of Lionel Curtis. In the period up to 1921 he was close to this inner core and in fact can be considered as a member of it. After 1921 he disagreed with the policy of the inner core toward the League of Nations and Germany, since the core wanted to weaken the one and strengthen the other, an opinion exactly opposite to that of Zimmern. He remained, however, a member of the Group and was, indeed, its most able member and one of its most courageous members. Since his activities will be mentioned frequently in the course of this study, we need do no more than point out his various positions here. He was a staff inspector of the Board of Education in 1912-1915; the chief assistant to Lord Robert Cecil in the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office in 1918-1919; Wilson Professor of International Politics at University College of Wales, Abersytwyth, in 1919-1921; Professor of Political Science at Cornell in 1922-1923; deputy director and chief administrator of the League of Nations Institute of Intellectual Cooperation in 1926- 1930; Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford in 1930-1944; deputy director of the Research Department of the Foreign Office in 1943-1945; adviser to the Ministry of Education in 1945; director of the Geneva School of International Studies in 1925-1939; adviser and chief organizer of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization in 1946; and Visiting Professor at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, from 1947.

Another Fellow of New College who joined the Milner Group was R. S. Rait (1874- 1936). Of much less significance than Zimmern, he worked with the Group in the Trade Intelligence Department of the War Office in 1915-1918. He is the chief reason why the Milner Group, especially in the writings of Lionel Curtis, emphasized the union with Scotland as a model for the treatment of Ireland. A close friend of A. V. Dicey, Fellow of All Souls, he wrote with him Thoughts on the Union between England and Scotland (1920), and, with C. H. Firth, another Fellow of All Souls, he wrote Acts and Ordonnances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660 (1911). He left New College in 1913 to become Professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow (1913-1929) and five years later was made Royal Historiographer of Scotland (1919-1929). Originally intimate with the inner circle of the Milner Group, he drifted away after 1913.

Reginald Coupland (Sir Reginald since 1944) came into the Milner Group's inner circle shortly before Rait moved out, and has been there ever since. A student of Zimmern's at New College in 1903-1907, he became a Fellow and lecturer in ancient history at Trinity College, Oxford, immediately upon graduation and stayed there for seven years. Since then his academic career has carried him to the following positions: Beit Lecturer in Colonial History (1913-1918), Beit Professor of Colonial History (since 1920), Fellow of All Souls (since 1920), and Fellow of Nuffield College (since 1939). He was also editor of The Round Table after Lord Lothian left (1917-1919) and again at the beginning of the Second World War (1939-1941). His most important activities, however, have been behind the scenes: as member of the Royal Commission on Superior Civil Services in India (1923), as adviser to the Burma Round Table Conference of 1931, as a member of the Peel Commission to Palestine (1936-1937), and as a member of Sir Stafford Cripps's Mission to India (1942). He is reputed to have been the chief author of the Peel Report of 1937, which recommended partition of Palestine and restriction of Jewish immigration into the area — two principles which remained at the basis of British policy until 1949. In fact, the pattern of partition contained in the Peel Report, which would have given Transjordan an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea across the southern portion of Palestine, was a subject of violent controversy in 1948.

Coupland has been a prolific writer. Besides his many historical works, he has written many books that reflect the chief subjects of discussion in the inmost circle of the Milner Group. Among these, we might mention Freedom and Unity, his lecture at Patna College, India, in 1924; The American Revolution and the British Empire (1930); The Empire in These Days (1935); The Cripps Mission (1942); and Report on the Constitutional Problem in India (3 parts, 1942-1943).

The Milner Group's relationships with All Souls were also strengthened after Milner returned to England in 1905, and especially after the Kindergarten returned to England in 1909-1911. The Milner Group's strength in All Souls, however, was apparently not sufficiently strong for them to elect a member of the Milner Group as Warden when Anson died in 1914, for his successor, Francis W. Pember, onetime assistant legal adviser to the Foreign Office, and a Fellow of All Souls since 1884, was of the Cecil Bloc rather than of the Milner Group. Pember did not, however, resist the penetration of the Milner Group into All Souls, and as a result both of his successors as Warden, W. G. S. Adams (1933-1945) and B. H. Sumner (1945- ), were members of the Milner Group.

In general, the movement of persons was not from the Milner Group to All Souls but in the reverse direction. All Souls, in fact, became the chief recruiting agency for the Milner Group, as it had been before 1903 for the Cecil Bloc. The inner circle of this Group, because of its close contact with Oxford and with All Souls, was in a position to notice able young undergraduates at Oxford. These were admitted to All Souls and at once given opportunities in public life and in writing or teaching, to test their abilities and loyalty to the ideals of the Milner Group. If they passed both of these tests, they were gradually admitted to the Milner Group's great fiefs such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Times, The Round Table, or, on the larger scene, to the ranks of the Foreign or Colonial Offices. So far as I know, none of these persons recruited through All Souls ever reached the inner circle of the Milner Group, at least before 1939. This inner circle continued to be largely monopolized by the group that had been in South Africa in the period before 1909. The only persons who were not in South Africa, yet reached the inner circle of the Milner Group, would appear to be Coupland, Lord Astor, Lady Astor, Arnold Toynbee, and H. V. Hodson. There may be others, for it is difficult for an outsider to be sure in regard to such a secret matter.

Of the members of All Souls who got into at least the second circle of the Milner Group, we should mention the names of the following:

Name / Birth Date / College / All Souls Fellow

W. G. S. Adams / 1874 / Balliol, 1896-1900 / 1910- (Warden 1933-1945)
K. N. Bell / 1884 / Balliol, 1903-1906 / 1907-1914
I. Berlin / 1909 / Corpus Christi, 1928-1932 / 1932-1939
H. B. Butler / 1883 / Balliol, 1902-1905 / 1905-1912
R. D'O. Butler / - / Balliol, 1935-1938 / 1938-
F. Clarke / -- / Balliol, 1905-1908 / 1908-1915
P. E. Corbett / 1892 / Balliol, 1919-1920 / 1920-1928
C. R. M. F. Cruttwell / -- / Queen's, 1906-1910 / 1911-1918
H. W. C. Davis / 1874 / Balliol, 1891-1895 / 1895-1902
G. C. Faber / 1889 / Christ Church, 1908-1913 / 1919-
J. G. Foster / -- / New College, 1922-1925 / 1924-
M. L. Gwyer / 1878 / Christ Church, 1897-1901 / 1902-1916
W. K. Hancock / 1898 / Balliol, 1922-1923 / 1924-1930, 1944-
C. R. S. Harris / 1896 / Corpus Christi, 1918-1923 / 1921-1936
H. V. Hodson / 1906 / Balliol, 1925-1928 / 1928-1935
C. S. Macartney / 1896 / Trinity College, Cambridge / 1936-
R. M. Makins / 1904 / Christ Church, 1922-1925 / 1925-1932
J. Morley / 1938 / Lincoln, 1856-1859 / 1904-1911
C. J. Radcliffe / 1899 / New College, 1919-1922 / 1922-1937
J. A. Salter / 1881 / Brasenose, 1899-1904 / 1932-
D. B. Somervell / 1889 / Magdalen 1907-1911 / 1912-
A. H. D. R. Steel-Maitland / 1876 / Balliol, 1896-1900 / 1900-1907
B. H. Sumner / 1893 / Balliol, 1912-1916 / 1919-1926, Warden 1945-
L. F. R. Williams / 1890 / University 1909-1912 / 1914-1921
E. L. Woodward / 1890 / Corpus Christi, 1908-1911 / 1911-1944


Of these twenty-five names, four were Fellows of Balliol during the periods in which they were not Fellows of All Souls (Bell, David, Sumner, and Woodward). It is not necessary to say much about these various men at this time, but certain of them should be identified. The others will be mentioned later.

William George Stewart Adams was lecturer in Economics at Chicago and Manchester universities and Superintendent of Statistics and Intelligence in the Department of Agriculture before he was elected to All Souls in 1910. Then he was Gladstone Professor of Political Theory and Institutions (1912-1933), a member of the committee to advise the Irish Cabinet (191 1), in the Ministry of Munitions (1915), Secretary to Lloyd George (1916-1919), editor of the War Cabinet Reports (1917-1918), and a member of the Committee on Civil Service Examinations (1918).

The Reverend Kenneth Norman Bell was lecturer in history at Toronto University during his fellowship in All Souls (1907-1914); a director of G. Bell and Sons, Publishers; a tutor and Fellow of Balliol (1919-1941); Beit Lecturer in Colonial History (1924-1927); and a member of the committee for supervision of the selection of candidates for the Colonial Administrative Service. He edited, with W. P. Morrell, Select Documents in British Colonial History, 1830-1860 (1928).

Harold Beresford Butler (Sir Harold since 1946) was a civil servant, chiefly in the Home Office, and secretary to the British delegation to the International Conference on Aerial Navigation in Paris during his Fellowship at All Souls. He was subsequently in the Foreign Trade Department of the Foreign Office (1914-1917) and in the Ministry of Labour (1917-1919). On the Labour Commission of the Paris Peace Conference and at the International Labor Conference in Washington (1919), he later became deputy director (1920-1932) and director (1932-1938) of the International Labour Office of the League of Nations. Since 1939, he has been Warden of Nuffield College (1939-1943) and minister in charge of publicity in the British Embassy in Washington (1942-1946). He has written a number of books, including a history of the inter-war period called The Lost Peace (1941).

H. W. C. Davis, the famous medieval historian, became a Fellow of All Souls immediately after graduating from Balliol in 1895, and was a Fellow of Balliol for nineteen years after that, resigning from the latter to become Professor of History at Manchester University (1921-1925). During this period he was a lecturer at New College (1897-1899), Chichele Lecturer in Foreign History (1913), editor of the Oxford Pamphlets on the war (1914-1915), one of the organizers of the War Trade Intelligence Department of the Ministry of Blockade in the Foreign Office (1915), acting director of the Department of Overseas Trade under Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland (1917-1919), an expert at the Paris Peace Conference (1918-1919), and editor of the Dictionary of National Biography (1920-1928). In 1925 he returned from Manchester to Oxford as Regius Professor of Modern History in succession to Sir Charles Firth, became a Fellow of Oriel College, Curator of the Bodleian, and was named by the International Labour Office (that is, by Harold Butler) as the British representative on the Blanesburgh Committee on Factory Legislation in Europe. He edited the report of this committee. In addition to his very valuable studies in medieval history, Davis also wrote The History of the Blockade (1920) and sections of the famous History of the Peace Conference, edited by Harold Temperley (also a member of the Group).

Sir Maurice Linford Gwyer was a Fellow of All Souls for fourteen years after graduating from Christ Church (1902-1916). During this time he was admitted to the bar, practiced law, was lecturer in Private International Law at Oxford (1912-1915) and solicitor to the Insurance Commissioners (1902-1916). He was then legal adviser to the Ministry of Shipping (1917-1919) and to the Ministry of Health (1919-1926), then Procurator-General and Solicitor to the Treasury (1926-1933), First Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury (1934-1937), and Chief Justice of India (1937-1943). He was first British delegate to The Hague Conference on Codification of International Law (1930) and a member of the Indian States Inquiry Committee (1932). He edited the later editions of Anson's Law of Contract and Law and Custom of the Constitution.

William Keith Hancock, of Australia and Balliol, was a member of All Souls from 1924. He was Professor of History at Adelaide in 1924-1933, Professor of Modern History at Birmingham in 1934-1944, and is now Chichele Professor of Economic History at Oxford. He wrote the three-volume work Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, published by Chatham House in 1937-1942.

John Morley (Lord Morley of Blackburn) was a member of the Cecil Bloc rather than of the Milner Group, but in one respect, his insistence on the inadvisability of using force and coercion within the Empire, a difference which appeared most sharply in regard to Ireland, he was more akin to the Group than to the Bloc. He was a close friend of Lord Salisbury, Lord Esher, and Joseph Chamberlain and was also a friend of Milner's, since they worked together on the Pall Mall Gazette in 1882-1883. He had close personal and family connections with H. A. L. Fisher, the former going back to a vacation together in 1 892 and the latter based on Morley's lifelong friendship with Fisher's uncle, Leslie Stephen. It was probably through Fisher's influence that Morley was elected a Fellow of All Souls in 1904. He had shown that his heart was in the right place, so far as the Milner Group was concerned, in 1894, when Gladstone retired from the leadership of the Liberal Party and Morley used his influence to give the vacant position to Lord Rosebery. Morley was Secretary of State for India in the period 1905-1910, putting through the famous Morley-Minto reforms in this period. In this he made use of a number of members of the Milner and All Souls groups. The bill itself was put through the House of Commons by a member of All Souls, Thomas R. Buchanan (1846-1911), who was shifted from Financial Secretary in the War Office under Haldane to Under Secretary in the India Office for the purpose (1908-1909).(6)

James Arthur Salter (Sir Arthur since 1922) was born in Oxford and lived there until he graduated from Brasenose in 1904. He went to work for the Shipping Department of the Admiralty in the same year and worked in this field for most of the next fourteen years. In 1917 he was Director of Ship Requisitioning and later secretary and chairman of the Allied Maritime Transport Executive. He was on the Supreme Economic Council in 1919 and became general secretary to the Reparations Commission for almost three years (1920- 1922). He was Director of the Economic and Finance Section of the League of Nations in 1919-1922 and again in 1922-1931. In the early 1930s he went on several missions to India and China and served on various committees concerned with railroad matters. He was Gladstone Professor of Political Theory and Institutions in 1934-1944, Member of Parliament from Oxford University after 1937, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Shipping in 1939-1941, head of the British Merchant Shipping Mission in America in 1941-1943, Senior Deputy Director General of UNRRA in 1944, and Chancellor to the Duchy of Lancaster in 1945.

Donald B. Somervell (Sir Donald since 1933) has been a Fellow of All Souls since he graduated from Magdalen in 1911, although he took his degree in natural science. He entered Parliament as a Unionist in 1931 and almost at once began a governmental career. He was Solicitor General (1933-1936), Attorney General (1936-1945), and Home Secretary (1945), before becoming a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1946. His brother, D. C. Somervell, edited the one-volume edition of Toynbee's A Study of History for Chatham House.

Sir Arthur Ramsay Steel-Maitland was a Fellow of All Souls for the seven years following his graduation from Balliol in 1900. He was unsuccessful as a candidate for Parliament in 1906, but was elected as a Conservative from Birmingham four years later. He was Parliamentary Under Secretary for Colonies (1915-1917), Joint Parliamentary Under Secretary in the Foreign Office and Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade in the capacity of head of the Department of Overseas Trade (1917-1919), and Minister of Labour (1924-1929).

Benedict H. Sumner was a Fellow of All Souls for six years (1919-1928) and a Fellow of Balliol for twenty (1925-1944), before he became Warden of All Souls (1945). During the First World War, he was with Military Intelligence and afterwards with the British delegation at the Peace Conference. During the Second World War, he was attached to the Foreign Office (1939-1942). He is an authority on Russian affairs, and this probably played an important part in his selection as Warden of All Souls in 1945.

Laurence F. R. Williams went to Canada as lecturer in medieval history at Queen's University after leaving Balliol (1913-1914). Immediately on becoming a Fellow of All Souls in 1914, he went to India as Professor of Indian History at the University of Allahabad. In 1918 and in 1919 he was busy on constitutional reforms associated with the Government of India Act of 1919, working closely with Sir William Marris. He then became director of the Central Bureau of Information for six years (1920-1926) and secretary to the Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes for four (1926-1930). He was, in this period, also secretary to the Indian Delegation at the Imperial Conference of 1923, political secretary to the Maharaja of Patiala, substitute delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations (1925), member of the Legislative Assembly (1924-1925), joint director of the Indian Princes' Special Organization (1929-1931), adviser to the Indian States delegation at the Round Table Conference of 1930-1931, and delegate to the Round Table Conference of 1932. In the 1930s he was Eastern Service director of the BBC (under H. A. L. Fisher), and in the early days of the Second World War was adviser on Middle East Affairs to the Ministry of Information. Since 1944 he has been in the editorial department of The Times. His written output is considerable, much of it having been published as official documents or parliamentary papers. Among these are the Moral and Material Progress Reports of India for 1917-1925, the official Report on Lord Chelmsford's Administration, and the official History of the Tour of the Prince of Wales. He also wrote Lectures on the Handling of Historical Material (1917), a History of the Abbey of St. Alban (1917), and a half dozen books and pamphlets on India.

Ernest Llewellyn Woodward, the last Fellow of All Souls whom we shall mention here, is of great significance. After studying at Oxford for seven years (1908-1915) he went into the British Expeditionary Force for three, and then was elected a Fellow of All Souls, an appointment he held until he became a Fellow of Balliol in the middle of the 1940s. He was also a tutor and lecturer at New College, a Rhodes Traveling Fellow (1931), and in 1944 succeeded Sir Alfred Zimmern as Montague Burton Professor of International Relations. When the decision was made after the Second World War to publish an extensive selection of Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, Woodward was made general editor of the series and at once associated with himself Rohan D'Olier Butler, who has been a Fellow of All Souls since leaving Balliol in 1938.

Woodward was a member of the council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the middle 1930s, and domestic bursar of All Souls a little later. He has written a number of historical works, of which the best known are Volume XIII of the Oxford History of England ("The Age of Reform," 1938), Three Studies in European Conservatism (1929), and Great Britain and the German Navy (1935).

These twenty-five names give the chief members of All Souls, in the period before 1939, who became links with the Milner Group and who have not previously been discussed. In the same period the links with New College and Balliol were also strengthened. The process by which this was done for the former, through men like H. A. L. Fisher, has already been indicated. Somewhat similar but less intimate relationships were established with Balliol, especially after A. L. Smith became Master of that college in 1916. Smith, as we have indicated, was a contemporary and old friend of Milner at Balliol and shared his (and Toynbee's) ideas regarding the necessity of uplifting the working classes and preserving the Empire. His connections with Fisher and with All Souls were intimate. He was a close friend of Lord Brassey, whose marital relationships with the Rosebery and Brand families and with the Cecil Bloc have been mentioned already. Through A. L. Smith, Brassey reorganized the financial structure of the Balliol foundation in 1904. He was, as we have shown, a close collaborator of Milner in his secret plans, by intimate personal relationships before 1897 and by frequent correspondence after that date. There can be no doubt that A. L. Smith shared in this confidence. He was a collaborator with the Round Table Group after 1910, being especially useful, by his Oxford position, in providing an Oxford background for Milner Group propaganda among the working classes. This will be mentioned later. A. L. Smith's daughter Mary married a Fellow of All Souls, F. T. Barrington-Ward, whose older brother, R. M. Barrington-Ward, was assistant editor of The Times in 1927-1941 and succeeded Dawson as editor in 1941. Smith's son, A. L. F. Smith, was elected to All Souls in 1904, was director, and later adviser, of education to the Government of Iraq in 1920-1931, and was Rector of Edinburgh Academy from 1931 to 1945.

A. L. Smith remained as Master of Balliol from 1916 to his death in 1924. His biographical sketch in The Dictionary of National Biography was written by K. N. Bell of All Souls.

The influence of the Milner Group and the Cecil Bloc on Balliol in the twentieth century can be seen from the following list of persons who were Fellows or Honorary Fellows of Balliol:

Archbishop Lang
K. N. Bell Lord Asquith
H. W. C. Davis Lord Brassey
J. H. Hofmeyr Lord Curzon
Vincent Massey Lord Ernie
F. W. Pember Lord Grey of Fallodon
A. L. Smith Lord Lansdowne
B. H. Sumner Lord Milner
A. J. Toynbee Leopold Amery
E. L. Woodward


Of these eighteen names, nine were Fellows of All Souls, and seven were clearly of the Milner Group.

There was also a close relationship between the Milner Group and New College. The following list gives the names of eight members of the Milner Group who were also Fellows or Honorary Fellows of New College in the years 1900-1947:

Lothian
Lord Milner
Isaiah Berlin
H. A. L. Fisher
Sir Samuel Hoare (Lord Templewood)
Gilbert Murray
W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (Lord Harlech)
Sir Alfred Zimmern


If we wished to add names to the Cecil Bloc, we would add those of Lord David Cecil, Lord Quickswood (Lord Hugh Cecil), and Bishop A. C. Headlam.

It is clear from these lists that almost every important member of the Milner Group was a fellow of one of the three colleges — Balliol, New College, or All Souls. Indeed, these three formed a close relationship, the first two on the undergraduate level and the last in its own unique position. The three were largely dominated by the Milner Group, and they, in turn, largely dominated the intellectual life of Oxford in the fields of law, history, and public affairs. They came close to dominating the university itself in administrative matters. The relationships among the three can be demonstrated by the proportions of All Souls Fellows who came from these two colleges, in relation to the numbers which came from the other eighteen colleges at Oxford or from the outside world. Of the one hundred forty-nine Fellows at All Souls in the twentieth century, forty- eight came from Balliol and thirty from New College, in spite of the fact that Christ Church was larger than these and Trinity, Magdalen, Brasenose, St. John's, and University colleges were almost as large. Only thirty-two came from these other five large colleges, while at least fifteen were educated outside Oxford.

The power of the Cecil Bloc and the Milner Group in Oxford in the twentieth century can be seen by glancing at the list of Chancellors of the University during the century: (7)

Salisbury, 1869-1903
Lord Goschen, 1903-1907
Lord Curzon, 1907-1925
Lord Milner, 1925
Lord George Cave, 1925-1928
Lord Grey of Fallodon, 1928-1933
Lord Halifax, 1933-


The influence of the Milner Group at Oxford was sufficient to enable it to get control of the Dictionary of National Biography after this work was given to the university in 1917. This control was exercised by H. W. C. Davis and his protege J. R. H. Weaver during the period before 1938. The former had been brought into the gifted circle because he was a Fellow of All Souls and later a Fellow of Balliol (1895-1921). In this connection he was naturally acquainted with Weaver (who was a Fellow of Trinity from 1913 to 1938) and brought him into the War Trade Intelligence Department when Davis organized this under Cecil-Milner auspices in 1915. Davis became editor of the Dictionary of National Biography under the same auspices in 1921 and soon asked Weaver to join him. They jointly produced the Dictionary supplement for 1912-1921. After Davis's death in 1928, Weaver became editor and brought out the supplement for 1922-1930. (8) He continued as editor until shortly before he was made President of Trinity College in 1938. Weaver wrote the sketch of Davis in the Dictionary and also a larger work called Henry William Carless Davis, a Memoir and a Selection of His Historical Papers, published in 1933.

This control of the Dictionary of National Biography will explain how the Milner Group controlled the writing of the biographies of its own members so completely in that valuable work. This fact will already have been observed in the present work. The only instance, apparently, where a member of the Milner Group or the Cecil Bloc did not have his biographical sketch written by another member of these groups is to be found in the case of Lord Phillimore, whose sketch was written by Lord Sankey, who was not a member of the groups in question. Phillimore is also the only member of these groups whose sketch is not wholeheartedly adulatory.

The influence of the Milner Group in academic circles is by no means exhausted by the brief examination just made of Oxford. At Oxford itself, the Group has been increasingly influential in Nuffield College, while outside of Oxford it apparently controls (or greatly influences) the Stevenson Professorship of International Relations at London; the Rhodes Professorship of Imperial History at London; Birkbeck College at London; the George V Professorship of History in Cape Town University; and the Wilson Professorship of International Politics at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Some of these are controlled completely, while others are influenced in varying degrees. In Canada the influence of the Group is substantial, if not decisive, at the University of Toronto and at Upper Canada College. At Toronto the Glazebrook- Massey influence is very considerable, while at present the Principal of Upper Canada College is W. L. Grant, son-in-law of George Parkin and former Beit Lecturer at Oxford. Vincent Massey is a governor of the institution.  
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