Chapter 9: Creation of the Commonwealth
The evolution of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations is to a very great extent a result of the activities of the Milner Group. To be sure, the ultimate goal of the Group was quite different from the present system, since they wanted a federation of the Empire, but this was a long-run goal, and en route they accepted the present system as a temporary way station. However, the strength of colonial and Dominion feeling, which made the ideal of federation admittedly remote at all times, has succeeded in making this way-station a permanent terminal and thus had eliminated, apparently forever, the hope for federation. With the exception of a few diehards (of whom Milner and Curtis were the leaders), the Group has accepted the solution of imperial cooperation and "parallelism" as an alternative to federation. This was definitely stated in The Round Table of December 1920. In that issue the Group adopted the path of cooperation as its future policy and added: "Its [The Round Tables] promoters in this country feel bound to state that all the experience of the war and of the peace has not shaken in the least the fundamental conviction with which they commenced the publication of this Review.... The Round Table has never expressed an opinion as to the form which this constitutional organization would take, nor as to the time when it should be undertaken. But it has never disguised its conviction that a cooperate system would eventually break down." In September 1935, in a review of its first twenty-five years, the journal stated: "Since the war, therefore, though it has never abandoned its view that the only final basis for freedom and enduring peace is the organic union of nations in a commonwealth embracing the whole world or, in the first instance, a lesser part of it, The Round Table has been a consistent supporter ... of the principles upon which the British Empire now rests, as set forth in the Balfour Memorandum of 1926.... It has felt that only by trying the cooperation method to the utmost and realizing its limitations in practice would nations within or without the British Empire be brought to face the necessity for organic union."
There apparently exists within the Milner Group a myth to the effect that they invented the expression "Commonwealth of Nations," that it was derived from Zimmern's book The Greek Commonwealth (published in 1911) and first appeared in public in the title of Curtis's book in 1916. This is not quite accurate, for the older imperialists of the Cecil Bloc had used the term "commonwealth" in reference to the British Empire on various occasions as early as 1884. In that year, in a speech at Adelaide, Australia, Lord Rosebery referred to the possibility of New Zealand seceding from the Empire and added: "God forbid. There is no need for any nation, however great, leaving the Empire, because the Empire is a Commonwealth of Nations."
If the Milner Group did not invent the term, they gave it a very definite and special meaning, based on Zimmern's book, and they popularized the use of the expression. According to Zimmern, the expression "commonwealth" referred to a community based on freedom and the rule of law, in distinction to a government based on authority or even arbitrary tyranny. The distinction was worked out in Zimmern's book in the contrast between Athens, as described in Pericles's funeral oration, and Sparta (or the actual conduct of the Athenian empire). As applied to the modern world, the contrast was between the British government, as described by Dicey, and the despotisms of Philip II, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II. In this sense of the word, commonwealth was not originally an alternative to federation, as it later became, since it referred to the moral qualities of government, and these could exist within either a federated or a nonfederated Empire.
The expression "British Commonwealth of Nations" was, then, not invented by the Group but was given a very special meaning and was propagated in this sense until it finally became common usage. The first step in this direction was taken on 15 May 1917, when General Smuts, at a banquet in his honor in the Houses of Parliament, used the expression. This banquet was apparently arranged by the Milner Group, and Lord Milner sat at Smuts's right hand during the speech. The speech itself was printed and given the widest publicity, being disseminated throughout Great Britain, the Commonwealth, the United States, and the rest of the world. In retrospect, some persons have believed that Smuts was rejecting the meaning of the expression as used by the Milner Group, because he did reject the project for imperial federation in this speech. This, however, is a mistake, for, as we have said, the expression "commonwealth" at that time had a meaning which could include either federation or cooperation among the members of the British imperial system. The antithesis in meaning between federation and commonwealth is a later development which took place outside the Group. To this day, men like Curtis, Amery, and Grigg still use the term "commonwealth" as applied to a federated Empire, and they always define the word "commonwealth" as "a government of liberty under the law" and not as an arrangement of independent but cooperating states.
The development of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations and the role which the Milner Group played in this development cannot be understood by anyone who feels that federation and commonwealth were mutually exclusive ideas.
In fact, there were not two ideas, but three, and they were not regarded by the Group as substitutes for each other but as supplements to each other. These three ideas were: (1) the creation of a common ideology and world outlook among the peoples of the United Kingdom, the Empire, and the United States; (2) the creation of instruments and practices of cooperation among these various communities in order that they might pursue parallel policies; and (3) the creation of a federation on an imperial, Anglo-American, or world basis. The Milner Group regarded these as supplementary to one another and worked vigorously for all of them, without believing that they were mutually exclusive alternatives. They always realized, even the most fanatical of them, that federation, even of the Empire only, was very remote. They always, in this connection, used such expressions as "not in our lifetime" or "not in the present century." They always insisted that the basic unity of any system must rest on common ideology, and they worked in this direction through the Rhodes Scholarships, the Round Table Groups, and the Institutes of International Affairs, even when they were most ardently seeking to create organized constitutional relationships. And in these constitutional relationships they worked equally energetically and simultaneously for imperial federation and for such instruments of cooperation as conferences of Prime Ministers of Dominions. The idea, which seems to have gained currency, that the Round Table Group was solely committed to federation and that the failure of this project marked the defeat and eclipse of the Group is erroneous. On the contrary, by the 1930s, the Round Table Group was working so strongly for a common ideology and for institutions of cooperation that many believers in federation regarded them as defeatist. For this reason, some believers in federation organized a new movement called the "World Commonwealth Movement." Evidence of this movement is an article by Lord Davies in The Nineteenth Century and After for January 1935, called "Round Table or World Commonwealth?" This new movement was critical of the foreign policy rather than the imperial policy of the Round Table Group, especially its policy of appeasement toward Germany and of weakening the League of Nations, and its belief that Britain could find security in isolation from the Continent and a balance-of-power policy supported by the United Kingdom, the Dominions, and the United States.
The effort of the Round Table Group to create a common ideology to unite the supporters of the British way of life appears in every aspect of their work. It was derived from Rhodes and Milner and found its most perfect manifestation in the Rhodes Scholarships. As a result of these and of the Milner Group's control of so much of Oxford, Oxford tended to become an international university. Here the Milner Group had to tread a narrow path between the necessity of training non-English (including Americans and Indians) in the English way of life and the possibility of submerging that way of life completely (at Oxford, at least) by admitting too many non-English to its cloistered halls. On the whole, this path was followed with considerable success, as will be realized by anyone who has had any experience with Rhodes Scholars. To be sure, the visitors from across the seas picked up the social customs of the English somewhat more readily than they did the English ideas of playing the game or the English ideas of politics, but, on the whole, the experiment of Rhodes, Milner, and Lothian cannot be called a failure. It was surely a greater success in the United States than it was in the Dominions or in India, for in the last, at least, the English idea of liberty was assimilated much more completely than the idea of loyalty to England.
The efforts of the Milner Group to encourage federation of the Empire have already been indicated. They failed and, indeed, were bound to fail, as most members of the Group soon realized. As early as 1903, John Buchan and Joseph Chamberlain had given up the attempt. By 1917, even Curtis had accepted the idea that federation was a very remote possibility, although in his case, at least, it remained as the beckoning will-o-the-wisp by which all lesser goals were measured and found vaguely dissatisfying. (1)
The third string to the bow — imperial cooperation — remained. It became in time the chief concern of the Group. The story of these efforts is a familiar one, and no attempt will be made here to repeat it. We are concerned only with the role played by the Milner Group in these efforts. In general this role was very large, if not decisive.
The proposals for imperial cooperation had as their basic principle the assumption that communities which had a common ideology could pursue parallel courses toward the same goal merely by consultation among their leaders. For a long time, the Milner Group did not see that the greater the degree of success obtained by this method, the more remote was the possibility that federation could ever be attained. It is very likely that the Group was misled in this by the fact that they were for many years extremely fortunate in keeping members of the Group in positions of power and influence in the Dominions. As long as men like Smuts, Botha (who did what Smuts wanted), Duncan, Feetham, or Long were in influential positions in South Africa; as long as men like Eggleston, Bavin, or Dudley Braham were influential in Australia; as long as men like Glazebrook, Massey, Joseph Flavelle, or Percy Corbett were influential in Canada — in a nutshell, as long as members of the Milner Group were influential throughout the Dominions, the technique of the parallel policy of cooperation would be the easiest way to reach a common goal. Unfortunately, this was not a method that could be expected to continue forever, and when the Milner Group grew older and weaker, it could not be expected that their newer recruits in England (like Hodson, Coupland, Actor, Woodward, Elton, and others) could continue to work on a parallel policy with the newer arrivals to power in the Dominions. When that unhappy day arrived, the Milner Group should have had institutionalized modes of procedure firmly established. They did not, not because they did not want them, but because their members in the Dominions could not have remained in influential positions if they had insisted on creating institutionalized links with Britain when the people of the Dominions obviously did not want such links.
The use of Colonial or Imperial Conferences as a method for establishing closer contact with the various parts of the Empire was originally established by the Cecil Bloc and taken over by the Milner Group. The first four such Conferences (in 1887, 1897, 1902, and 1907) were largely dominated by the former group, although they were not technically in power during the last one. The decisive changes made in the Colonial Conference system at the Conference of 1907 were worked out by a secret group, which consulted on the plans for eighteen months and presented them to the Royal Colonial Institute in April 1905. These plans were embodied in a dispatch from the Colonial Secretary, Alfred Lyttelton, and carried out at the Conference of 1907. As a result, it was established that the name of the meeting was to be changed to Imperial Conference; it was to be called into session every four years; it was to consist of Prime Ministers of the self-governing parts of the Empire; the Colonial Secretary was to be eliminated from the picture; and a new Dominion Department, under Sir Charles Lucas, was to be set up in the Colonial Office. As the future Lord Lothian wrote in The Round Table in 1911, the final result was to destroy the hopes for federation by recognizing the separate existence of the Dominions. (2)
At the Conference of 1907, at the suggestion of Haldane, there was created a Committee of Imperial Defence, and a plan was adopted to organize Dominion defense forces on similar patterns, so that they could be integrated in an emergency. The second of these proposals, which led to a complete reorganization of the armies of New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa in 1909-1912, with very beneficial results in the crisis of 1914-1918, is not of immediate concern to us. The Committee of Imperial Defence and its secretarial staff were creations of Lord Esher, who had been chairman of a special committee to reform the War Office in 1903 and was permanent member of the Committee of Imperial Defence from 1905 to his death. As a result of his influence, the secretariat of this committee became a branch of the Milner Group and later became the secretariat of the Cabinet itself, when that body first obtained a secretariat in 1917.
From this secretarial staff the Milner Group obtained three recruits in the period after 1918. These were Maurice Hankey, Ernest Swinton, and W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (now Lord Harlech). Hankey was assistant secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence from 1908 to 1912 and was secretary from 1912 to 1938. Swinton was assistant secretary from 1917 to 1925. Both became members of the Milner Group, Hankey close to the inner circle, Swinton in one of the less central rings. Ormsby-Gore was an assistant secretary in 1917-1918 at the same time that he was private secretary to Lord Milner. All three of these men are of sufficient importance to justify a closer examination of their careers.
Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey (Sir Maurice after 1916, Baron Hankey since 1939), whose family was related by marriage to the Wyndhams, was born in 1877 and joined the Royal Marines when he graduated from Rugby in 1895. He retired from that service in 1918 as a lieutenant colonel and was raised to colonel on the retired list in 1929. He was attached for duty with the Naval Intelligence Department in 1902 and by this route reached the staff of the Committee of Imperial Defence six years later. In 1917, when it was decided to give the Cabinet a secretariat for the first time, and to create the Imperial War Cabinet by adding overseas representatives to the British War Cabinet (a change in which Milner played the chief role), the secretariat of the Committee of Imperial Defence became also the secretariat of the other two bodies. At the same time, as we have seen, the Prime Minister was given a secretariat consisting of two members of the Milner Group (Kerr and Adams). In this way Hankey became secretary and Swinton assistant secretary to the Cabinet, the former holding that post, along with the parallel post in the Committee of Imperial Defence, until 1938. It was undoubtedly through Hankey and the Milner Group that Swinton became Chichele Professor of Military History and a Fellow of All Souls in 1925. As for Hankey himself, he became one of the more significant figures in the Milner Group, close to the inner circle and one of the most important (although relatively little-known) figures in British history of recent times. He was clerk of the Privy Council in 1923-1938; he was secretary to the British delegation at the Peace Conference of 1919, at the Washington Conference of 1921, at the Genoa Conference of 1922, and at the London Reparations Conference of 1924. He was secretary general of the Hague Conference of 1929-1930, of the London Naval Conference of 1930, and of the Lausanne Conference of 1932. He was secretary general of the British Imperial Conferences of 1921, 1923, 1926, 1930, and 1937. He retired in 1938, but became a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission (succeeding Lord Hailey) in 1939. He was British government director of the Suez Canal Company in 1938-1939, Minister without Portfolio in 1939-1940, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1940-1941, Paymaster General in 1941-1942, chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee and of the Engineering Advisory Committee in 1942-1943. At the present time he is a director of the Suez Canal Company (since 1945), chairman of the Technical Personnel Committee (since 1941), chairman of the Interdepartmental Committee on Further Education and Training and of the Committee on Higher Appointments in the Civil Service (since 1944), and chairman of the Colonial Products Research Committee (since 1942). Hankey, in 1903, married Adeline de Smidt, daughter of a well-known South African political figure. His oldest son, Robert, is now a First Secretary in the diplomatic service, while his daughter, Ursula, has been married since 1929 to John A. Benn, chairman of the board of Benn Brothers, publishers.
Hankey was Lord Esher's chief protege in the Milner Group and in British public life. They were in constant communication with one another, and Esher gave Hankey a constant stream of advice about his conduct in his various official positions. The following scattered examples can be gleaned from the published Journals and Letters of Reginald, Viscount Esher. On 18 February 1919, Esher wrote Hankey, advising him not to accept the position as Secretary General of the League of Nations. On 7 December 1919, he gave him detailed advice on how to conduct himself as secretary to the Conference of Dominion Prime Ministers, telling him to work for "a League of Empire" based on cooperation and not on any "rigid constitutional plan," to try to get an Imperial General Staff, and to use the Defence Committee as such a staff in the meantime. In 1929, when Ramsay MacDonald tried to exclude Hankey from a secret Cabinet meeting, Esher went so far in support of his protege as to write a letter of admonition to the Prime Minister. This letter, dated 21 July 1929, said: "What is this I see quoted from a London paper that you are excluding your Secretary from Cabinet meetings? It probably is untrue, for you are the last person in the world to take a retrograde step toward 'secrecy' whether in diplomacy or government. The evolution of our Cabinet system from 'Cabal' has been slow but sure. When the Secretary to the Cabinet became an established factor in conducting business, almost the last traces of Mumbo Jumbo, cherished from the days when Bolingbroke was a danger to public peace, disappeared."
Hankey was succeeded as secretary of the Cabinet in 1938 by Edward E. Bridges, who has been close to the Milner Group since he became a Fellow of All Souls in 1920. Bridges, son of the late Poet Laureate Robert Bridges, had the advantages of a good education at Eton and Magdalen. He was a Treasury civil servant from 1919, was knighted in 1939, and since 1945 has combined with his Cabinet position the exalted post of Permanent Secretary of the Treasury and head of His Majesty's Civil Service.
The Imperial Conference of 1911 has little concern with our story, although Asquith's opening speech could have been written in the office of The Round Table. Indeed, it is quoted with approval by Lionel Curtis in his The Problem of the Commonwealth, published five years later. Asquith pointed out that the Empire rested on three foundations: (a) the reign of law, in Dicey's sense, (b) local autonomy, and (c) trusteeship of the interests and fortunes of fellow subjects who have not yet attained "to the full stature of self-government." He then pointed out the two principles of centralization and disintegration which had applied to the Empire in the early Victorian period, and declared: "Neither of these theories commands the faintest support today, either at home or in any part of our self-governing Empire.... Whether in this United Kingdom or in any one of the great communities which you represent, we each of us are, and we each of us intend to remain, master in our own household. This is, here at home and throughout the Dominions, the lifeblood of our polity." Thus spoke Asquith, and even the ultra-federalist Curtis approved. He also approved when Asquith squelched Sir John Ward's suggestion for the creation of an Imperial Council, although doubtless from quite a different motivation.
At the Conference of 1911, as is well known, the overseas members were for the first time initiated into the mysteries of high policy, because of the menace of Germany. Except for this, which paid high dividends in 1914, the Conference was largely wasted motion.
The Conference of 1915 was not held, because of the war, but as soon as Milner came into the government in December 1915, The Round Table's argument that the war should be used as a means for consolidating the Empire, rather than as an excuse for postponing consolidation, began to take effect. The Round Table during 1915 was agitating for an immediate Imperial Conference with Indian participation for the first time. As soon as Milner joined the Cabinet in December 1915, he sent out cables to the Dominions and to India, inviting them to come. It was Milner also who created the Imperial War Cabinet by adding Dominion members to the British War Cabinet. These developments were foretold and approved by The Round Table. In its June 1917 issue it said, in the course of a long article on "New Developments in the Constitution of the Empire":
"At a date which cannot be far distant an Imperial Conference will assemble, the purpose of which will be to consider what further steps can be taken to transform the Empire of a State in which the main responsibilities and burdens of its common affairs are sustained and controlled by the United Kingdom into a commonwealth of equal nations conducting its foreign policy and common affairs by some method of continuous consultation and concerted action.... The decision today is against any federated reconstruction after the war.... It is evident, however, that the institution through which the improved Imperial system will chiefly work will be the newly constituted Imperial Cabinet. The Imperial Cabinet will be different in some important respects from the Imperial Conference. It will meet annually instead of once in four years. It will be concerned more particularly with foreign policy, which the Imperial Conference has never yet discussed.... Its proceedings will consequently be secret.... It will also consist of the most important British Ministers sitting in conclave with the Overseas Ministers instead of the Secretary of State for the Colonies alone as has been usually the case hitherto."
As is well known, the Imperial War Cabinet met fourteen times in 1917, met again in 1918, and assembled at Paris in 1918-1919 as the British Empire delegation to the Peace Conference. Parallel with it, the Imperial War Conference met in London in 1917, under the Colonial Secretary, to discuss non-war problems. At the meetings of the former body it was decided to hold annual meetings in the future and to invite the Dominions to establish resident ministers in London to insure constant consultation. At a meeting in 1917 was drawn up the famous Imperial Resolution, which excluded federation as a solution of the imperial problem and recognized the complete equality of the Dominions and the United Kingdom under one King. These developments were not only acceptable to Milner but apparently were largely engineered by him. On 9 July 1919, he issued a formal statement containing the sentences, "The only possibility of a continuance of the British Empire is on a basis of absolute-out-and-out-equal partnership between the United Kingdom and the Dominions. I say that without any kind of reservation whatever."
When Milner died, in May 1925, The Times obituary had this to say about this portion of his life:
"With the special meeting of the War Cabinet attended by the Dominion Prime Ministers which, beginning on March 20, came to be distinguished as the Imperial War Cabinet . . . Milner was more closely concerned than any other British statesman. The conception of the Imperial War Cabinet and the actual proposal to bring the Dominion Premiers into the United Kingdom Cabinet were his. And when, thanks to Mr. Lloyd George's ready acceptance of the proposal, Milner's conception was realized, it proved to be not only a solution of the problem of Imperial Administrative unity in its then transient but most urgent phase, but a permanent and far-reaching advance in the constitutional evolution of the Empire. It met again in 1918, and was continued as the British Empire Delegation in the peace negotiations at Versailles in 1919. Thus, at the moment of its greatest need, the Empire was furnished by Milner with a common Executive. For the Imperial War Cabinet could and did, take executive action, and its decisions bound the Empire at large." (3)
It was also Milner who insisted on and made the arrangements for the Imperial Conference of 1921, acting in his capacity as Colonial Secretary, although he was forced, by reason of poor health, to resign before the conference assembled. It was in this period as Colonial Secretary that Milner, assisted by Amery, set up the plans for the new "dyarchic" constitution for Malta, gave Egypt its full freedom, set Curtis to work on the Irish problem, and gave Canada permission to establish its own legation in the United States — the latter post filled only in 1926, and then by the son-in-law of Milner's closest collaborator in the Rhodes Trust.
The Imperial Conferences of 1921 and 1923 were largely in the control of the Cecil Bloc, at least so far as the United Kingdom delegation was concerned. Three of the five members of this delegation in 1921 were from this Bloc (Balfour, Curzon, and Austen Chamberlain), the other two being Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. Of the members of the other five delegations, only Smuts, from South Africa, is of significance to us. On the secretarial staff for the United Kingdom delegation, we might point out the presence of Hankey and Grigg.
In the Imperial Conference of 1923 we find a similar situation. Three of the four delegates from the United Kingdom were of the Cecil Bloc (Lord Salisbury, Curzon, and the Duke of Devonshire), the other being Prime Minister Baldwin. Smuts again led the South African delegation. The secretarial staff was headed by Hankey, while the separate Indian secretarial group was led by L. F. Rushbrook Williams. The latter, whom we have already mentioned, had been associated with the Milner Group since he was elected a Fellow of All Souls in 1914, had done special work in preparation of the Government of India Act of 1919, and worked under Marris in applying that act after it became law. His later career carried him to various parts of the Milner Group's extensive system, as can be seen from the fact that he was a delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations in 1925, Foreign Minister of Patiala State in 1925-1931, a member of the Indian Round Table Conference in 1920-1932, a significant figure in the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Ministry of Information in delegation. There is nothing to indicate that Mr. Latham (later Sir John) was a member of the Milner Group, but in later years his son, Richard, clearly was. Sir John had apparently made his first contact with the Milner Group in 1919, when he, a Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, was a member of the staff of the Australian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and, while there, became an assistant secretary to the British delegation. In 1922, at the age of forty- five, he began a twelve-year term as an Australian M. P. During that brief period he was Attorney General in 1925-1929, Minister of Industry in 1928-1929, Leader of the Opposition in 1929-1931, Deputy Leader of the Majority in 1931-1932, and Deputy Prime Minister, Attorney General, and Minister for Industry in 1932-1934. In addition, he was British secretary to the Allied Commission on Czechoslovak Affairs in 1919, first president of the League of Nations Union, Australian delegate to the League of Nations in 1926 and 1932, Australian representative to the World Disarmament Conference in 1932, Chancellor of the University of Melbourne in 1939-1941; Australian Minister of Japan in 1940-1941, and vice-president of the period 1932-1944, and is now a member of the editorial staff of The Times.
At these two conferences, various members of the Cecil Bloc and Milner Group were called in for consultation on matters within their competence. Of these persons, we might mention the names of H. A. L. Fisher, Sir Eyre Crowe, Sir Cecil Hurst, Robert Cecil, Leopold Amery, Samuel Hoare, and Sir Fabian Ware (of the Kindergarten).
The Imperial Conference of 1926 is generally recognized as one of the most important of the postwar period. The Cecil Bloc and Milner Group again had three out of five members of the United Kingdom delegation (Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, and Leopold Amery), with Baldwin and Churchill the other two. Hankey was, as usual, secretary of the conference. Of the other seven delegations, nothing is germane to our investigation except that Vincent Massey was an adviser to the Canadian, and John Greig Latham was a member of the Australian, Australian Red Cross in 1944. Since 1934, he has been Chief Justice of Australia. In this brilliant, if belated, career, Sir John came into contact with the Milner Group, and this undoubtedly assisted his son, Richard, in his more precocious career. Richard Latham was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford until 1933 and a Fellow of All Souls from 1935. He wrote the supplementary legal chapter in W. K. Hancock's Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs and was one of the chief advisers of K. C. Wheare in his famous book, The Statute of Westminister and Dominion Status (1938). Unfortunately, Richard Latham died a few years later while still in his middle thirties. It is clear from Professor Wheare's book that Sir John Latham, although a member of the opposition at the time, was one of the chief figures in Australia's acceptance of the Statute of Westminster.
The new status of the Dominions, as enunciated in the Report of the conference and later known as the "Balfour Declaration," was accepted by the Milner Group both in The Round Table and in The Times. In the latter, on 22 November 1926, readers were informed that the"Declaration" merely described the Empire as it was, with nothing really new except the removal of a few anachronisms. It concluded: "In all its various clauses there is hardly a statement or a definition which does not coincide with familiar practice."
The Imperial Conference of 1930 was conducted by a Labour government and had no members of the Cecil Bloc or Milner Group among its chief delegates. Sir Maurice Hankey, however, was secretary of the conference, and among its chief advisers were Maurice Gwyer and H. D. Henderson. Both of these were members of All Souls and probably close to the Milner Group.
The Imperial Conference of 1937 was held during the period in which the Milner Group was at the peak of its power. Of the eight members of the United Kingdom delegation, five were from the Milner Group (Lord Halifax, Sir John Simon, Malcolm MacDonald, W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, and Sir Samuel Hoare). The others were Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, and J. Ramsay MacDonald. In addition, the chief of the Indian delegation was the Marquess of Zetland of the Cecil Bloc. Sir Maurice Hankey was secretary of the conference, and among the advisers were Sir Donald Somervell (of All Souls and the Milner Group), Vincent Massey, Sir Fabian Ware, and the Marquess of Harrington.
In addition to the Imperial Conferences, where the influence of the Milner Group was probably more extensive than appears from the membership of the delegations, the Group was influential in the administration of the Commonwealth, especially in the two periods of its greatest power, from 1924 to 1929 and from 1935 to 1939. An indication of this can be seen in the fact that the office of Colonial Secretary was held by the Group for seven out of ten years from 1919 to 1929 and for five out of nine years from 1931 to 1940, while the office of Dominion Secretary was held by a member of the Group for eight out of the fourteen years from its creation in 1925 to the outbreak of the war in 1939 (although the Labour Party was in power for two of those years). The Colonial Secretaries to whom we have reference were:
Lord Milner, 1919-1921
Leopold Amery, 1924-1929
Malcolm MacDonald, 1935
W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, 1936-1938
Malcolm MacDonald, 1938-1940
The Dominion Secretaries to whom we have reference were:
Leopold Amery, 1925-1929
Malcolm MacDonald, 1935-1938, 1938-1939
The lesser positions within the Colonial Office were not remote from the Milner Group. The Permanent Under Secretary was Sir George Fiddes of the Kindergarten in 1916-1921. In addition, James Masterton-Smith, who had been Balfour's private secretary previously, was Permanent Under Secretary in succession to Fiddes in 1921-1925, and John Maffey, who had been Lord Chelmsford's secretary while the latter was Viceroy in 1916-1921, was Permanent Under Secretary from 1933 to 1937. The position of Parliamentary Under Secretary, which had been held by Lord Selborne in 1895-1900 and by Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland in 1915-1917, was held by Amery in 1919-1921, by Edward Wood (Lord Halifax) in 1921-1922, by Ormsby-Gore in 1922-1924, 1924-1929, and by Lord Dufferin (brother of Lord Blackwood of the Kindergarten) from 1937 to 1940.
Most of these persons (probably all except Masterton-Smith, Maffey, and Lord Dufferin) were members of the Milner Group. The most important, of course, was Leopold Amery, whom we have already shown as Milner's chief political protege. We have not yet indicated that Malcolm MacDonald was a member of the Milner Group, and must be satisfied at this point with saying that he was a member, or at least an instrument, of the Group, from 1931 or 1932 onward, without ever becoming a member of the inner circle. The evidence indicating this relationship will be discussed later.
At this point we should say a few words about W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (Lord Harlech since 1938), who was a member of the Cecil Bloc by marriage and of the Milner Group by adoption. A graduate of Eton in 1930, he went to New College as a contemporary of Philip Kerr and Reginald Coupland. He took his degree in 1908 and was made a Fellow of New College in 1936. A Conservative member of Parliament from 1910 until he went to the Upper House in 1938, he spent the early years of the First World War in military intelligence, chiefly in Egypt. In 1913 he married Lady Beatrice Cecil, daughter of the fourth Marquess of Salisbury, and four years later became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Milner as well as assistant secretary to the War Cabinet (associated in the latter post with Hankey, Kerr, W. G. S. Adams, and Amery of the Milner Group). Ormsby-Gore went on a mission to Palestine in 1918 and was with the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference as an expert on the Middle East. He was Under Secretary for the Colonies with the Duke of Devonshire in 1922-1924 and with Leopold Amery in 1924-1929, becoming Colonial Secretary in his own right in 1936-1938. In the interval he was Postmaster General in 1931 and First Commissioner of Works in 1931-1936. He was a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission (1921-1923) and of the Colonial Office Mission to the British West Indies (1921-1922), and was Chairman of the East African Parliamentary Commission in 1924. He was High Commissioner of South Africa and the three native protectorates in 1941-1944. He has been a director of the Midland Bank and of the Standard Bank of South Africa. He was also one of the founders of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a member of Lord Lothian's committee on the African Survey, and a member of the council of the Institute.
The Milner Group also influenced Commonwealth affairs by publicity work of great quantity and good quality. This was done through the various periodicals controlled by the Group, such as The Round Table, The Times, International Affairs and others; by books published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs and individual members of the Group; by academic and university activities by men like Professor Coupland, Professor Zimmern, Professor Harlow, and others; by public and private discussion meetings sponsored by the Round Table Groups throughout the Commonwealth, by the Institute of International Affairs everywhere, by the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), by the Council on Foreign Relations, by the Williamstown Institute of Politics, by the Rhodes Scholarship group; and through the three unofficial conferences on British Commonwealth relations held by the Group since 1933. Some of these organizations and activities have already been mentioned. The last will be discussed here. The rest are to be described in Chapter 10.
The three unofficial conferences on British Commonwealth relations were held at Toronto in 1933, at Sydney in 1938, and at London in 1945. They were initiated and controlled by the Milner Group, acting through the various Institutes of International Affairs, in the hope that they would contribute to the closer union of the Commonwealth by inclining the opinion of prominent persons in the Dominions in that direction. The plan was originated by the British Empire members of the Institute of Pacific Relations at the Kyoto meeting in 1929. The members from Great Britain consisted of Lord Robert Cecil, Sir Herbert Samuel, Sir Donald Somervell, Sir John Power, P. J. Noel-Baker, G. M. Gathorne-Hardy, H. V. Hodson, H. W. Kerr, A. J. Toynbee, J. W. Wheeler-Bennett, and A. E. Zimmern. Of these, two were from the Cecil Bloc and five from the Milner Group. Discussion was continued at the Shanghai meeting of the Institute of Pacific Relations in 1931, and a committee under Robert Cecil drew up an agenda for the unofficial conference. This committee made the final arrangements at a meeting in Chatham House in July 1932 and published as a preliminary work a volume called Consultation and Cooperation in the British Commonwealth.
The conference was held at the University of Toronto, 11-21 September 1933, with forty-three delegates and thirty-three secretaries, the traveling expenses being covered by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The United Kingdom delegation consisted of the eleven names mentioned above plus R. C. M. Arnold as private secretary to Lord Cecil and J. P. Maclay (the famous shipbuilder) as private secretary to Sir Herbert Samuel. The Australian delegation of six included Professor A. H. Charteris, Professor Ernest Scott, A. Smithies (a Rhodes Scholar of 1929), Alfred Stirling (an Oxford B.A.), W. J. V. Windeyer, and Richard Latham (a Rhodes Scholar of 1933). The Canadian delegation consisted of N. W. Rowell, Sir Robert Borden, Louis Cote, John W. Dafoe, Sir Robert Falconer, Sir Joseph Flavelle, W. Sanford Evans, Vincent Massey, Rene L. Morin, J. S. Woodsworth, W. M. Birks, Charles J. Burchell, Brooke Claxton, Percy E. Corbett, W. P. M. Kennedy, J. J. MacDonnell (Rhodes Trustee for Canada), and E. J. Tarr. The secretary to the delegation was George Parkin Glazebrook (Balliol 1924). Most of these names are significant, but we need only point out that at least four of them, including the secretary were members of the Milner Group (Massey, Corbett, Flavelle, Glazebrook). The New Zealand delegation had three members, one of which was W. Downie Stewart, and the South African delegation had five members, including F. S. Malan and Professor Eric A. Walker. The secretariat to the whole conference was headed by I. S. Macadam of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The secretary to the United Kingdom delegation was H. V. Hodson. Thus it would appear that the Milner Group had eight out of forty- three delegates, as well as the secretaries to the Canadian and United Kingdom delegations.
The conference was divided into four commissions, each of which had a chairman and a rapporteur. In addition, the first commission (on foreign policy) was subdivided into two subcommittees. The chairmen of the four commissions were Robert Cecil, Vincent Massey, F. S. Malan, and W. Downie Stewart. Thus the Milner Group had two out of four. The rapporteurs (including the two subcommittees) were A. L. Zimmern, H. V. Hodson, P. E. Corbett, E. A. Walker, P. J. Noel-Baker, D. B. Somervell, and A. H. Charteris. Thus the Milner Group had four out of seven and possibly more (as Walker may be a member of the Group).
The discussions at the conference were secret, the press was excluded, and in the published Proceedings, edited by A. J. Toynbee, all remarks were presented in indirect discourse and considerably curtailed, without identification of the speakers. The conference made a number of recommendations, including the following: (1) Dominion High Commissioners in London should be given diplomatic status with direct access to the Foreign Office; (2) junior members of Dominion Foreign Offices should receive a period of training in the Foreign Office in London; (3) diplomatic representatives should be exchanged between Dominions; (4) Commonwealth tribunals should be set up to settle legal disputes between Dominions; (5) collective security and the League of Nations should be supported; (6) cooperation with the United States was advocated.
The second unofficial conference on British Commonwealth relations was held near Sydney, Australia, 3-17 September 1938. The expenses were met by grants from the Carnegie Corporation and the Rhodes Trustees. The decision to hold the second conference was made by the British members at the Yosemite meeting of the Institute of Pacific Relations in 1936. A committee under Viscount Samuel met at Chatham House in June 1937 and drew up the arrangements and the agenda. The selection of delegates was left to the various Institutes of International Affairs. From the United Kingdom went Lord Lothian (chairman), Lionel Curtis, W. K. Hancock, Hugh A. Wyndham, A. L. Zimmern, Norman Bentwich, Ernest Bevin, V. A. Cazalet, A. M. Fraser, Sir John Burnett-Stuart, Miss Grace Hadow, Sir Howard Kelly, Sir Frederick Minter, Sir John Pratt, and James Walker. At least five out of fifteen, including the chairman, were of the Milner Group. From Australia came thirty-one members, including T. R. Bavin (chairman of the delegation), K. H. Bailey (a Rhodes Scholar), and A. H. Charteris. From Canada came fifteen, including E. J. Tarr (chairman of the delegation) and P. E. Corbett. From India came four Indians. From Ireland came five persons. From New Zealand came fourteen, with W. Downie Stewart as chairman. From South Africa came six, including P. Van der Byl (chairman) and G. R. Hofmeyr (an old associate of the Milner Kindergarten in the Transvaal).
Of ninety delegates, nine were members of the Milner Group and three others may have been. This is a small proportion, but the conduct of the conference was well controlled. The chairmen of the three most important delegations were of the Milner Group (Eggleston, Downie Stewart, and Lothian); the chairman of the conference itself (Bavin) was. The secretary of the conference was Macadam, the recorder was Hodson, and the secretary to the press committee was Lionel Vincent Massey (grandson of George Parkin). The Proceedings of the conference were edited by Hodson, with an Introduction by Bavin, and published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Again, no indication was given of who said what.