Thoughts:

This chapter of the oligarchy begins with Cecil Rhodes. He, along with a few close friends, set about to lay the foundation for a secret society who's admittance was completely nepotistic. The membership was often obscured by changing names via marriage or titles.

The group influenced not the masses, but the few who were in a position the masses. Through their publication, most notably The Round Table and The Times, they set about forming the opinions of the most influential of society. These influential people would then, often unwittingly, propagate the formula the Rhodes secret society had brewed.

During the first generation this group was made up of driven individuals, often dedicating their lives and fortunes to bringing about the expansion of the British way of life. The members did not seek fame or notoriety and were happy to exact their control from behind the curtain. Beyond Cecil himself, Lord Salisbury was an influential member during the time period of the late 1800s.

The second generation, sometimes calling themselves "Society" was mainly made up of the children of the first generation. Having grown up in often extraordinary positions of wealth and easily navigating a path through the most elite schools, such as Eton, Oxford, of All Souls, this generation was less focused on manifesting the plans of their fathers and more interested in the pleasures associated with their privileged positions. This generation was not all unfocused, Alfred Milner took it upon himself to reforge the secret society, less along nepotistic lines and more along ideological ones. During the very late 1800s through the early 1900s, Stead was the most influential member.

The gave rise to the third generation. A more youthful membership overseen by Milner has been nicknamed Milner's Kindergarten. The group, under Milner's leadership in the early 1900s, had taken on a much more serious demeanor than even the original masterminds had exhibited. Milner doubled down on the use of propaganda to steer the masses from behind the scenes. They began gaining more control and influence through newspapers and placing their members in positions of influence within the educational landscape of England, particularly at All Souls College. Milner himself was completely dedicated to the state. He forwent a happy home-life, pleasure in general, and diplomacy to be a superb administrator - exactly what the group needed. He was not a wealthy nor famous man, but with the tools left to him by his predecessors he was able to deftfully manipulate the minds of his audience

Speaking of tools left behind, Cecil Rhode's died in 1902. Before he died he had written seven different version of his will. In five of the seven he explicitly mentions the secret society and how his great wealth should be used to advance British ideals the world over. He even spoke of structuring it after the Jesuits, rings within rings. The final two wills make no mention of the society, but this is likely because Rhodes had become much more famous by this time and the society wouldn't be very secret if it was discussed outwardly. In these last two version of the will the society was replaced with an outline for a scholarship program, the Rhodes Scholarship, that seems to be nothing more than a screen for the society and a way to recruit young members with potential.

One of the more noteworthy members was Lionel Curtis. He had grandiose ideas of a global federation he called the Commonwealth of Nations. He wrote several books extolling the virtues of this idea and believed in it so wholeheartedly that he was will to architect the demise of the English Empire itself to accomplish it. It was his believe that from the ashes of the Empire the Commonwealth of Nations would be born. To accomplish these ends he was involved with both the Royal Institute of International Affairs and later the League of Nations. He was so ahead of his time that it was often said that what Lionel writes will come to fruition 20 years later. This is simply a testament to the superb long-game the group played.

Milner's influence spread into the USA. This was in continuance of the original group's belief that England and America had to be unified to lead the way to the Imperial, and later federated, future. This influence garnered him more tools of influence and finance. When setting up the African survey project, Milner's kindergarten, who control the entire project tip to stern, gained funding from the Carnegie Corp. Similar financial support was given towards other projects, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, which is essentially the American version of Chatham House, by such groups as the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.

Similarly, the Englishmen in South African were in secret contact with England and planned the Jameson Raid. When it failed they were somewhat exposed, but since they had such influence the investigation never went anywhere and their lies were swept under the rug.

They understood that the most effective form propaganda was education. By influencing, or outright capturing in some cases, the universities they were able to simultaneously scour the enrollment for the best and brightest that could be recruited into the campaign as well as take up positions as teachers and lecturers to instill their values even in those that would never even know of the group's existence let alone know membership. Other pursuits that stemmed from the learned ranks of the many Sirs and Lords that populated the group include a great many writers, quite a few lawyers, and later even economists. This is in addition to the political offices they had, usually indirectly as council, in their clutches.

Looking back to the early 1900's you probably wouldn't think of the, assumedly modern idea of adult and continuing education. The Round Table group actually did promote such an idea with the overt intention of giving the people the tools they needed to govern themselves and to subordinate themselves to the needs of the state. This was of course nothing but indoctrination. They even boldly made such claims that it was men's minds that were broken and could be set straight by their propaganda.

"That the chief obstacle to this union was to be found in men's minds was perfectly clear to Curtis. To overcome this obstacle, he put his faith in propaganda, and the chief instruments of that propaganda, he said, must be the churches and the universities. He said nothing about the Milner Group, but, considering Curtis's position in this Group and that Lothian and others agreed with him, it is not surprising that the chief source of this propaganda is to be found in those agencies controlled by the Group.(12)"

One among their propaganda outlets, The Times, was the most influential paper in England. For its entire existence, except for a few years when the goals of a former member did not align with the rest of the group, it has been seen as a paper not of mass circulation, but read by those of influence. Those with other papers would write about stories they had read in The Times. In modern terms it seems similar to the Associated Press. A relatively small outfit can have enormous influence because its content ripples through a vast number of outlets. Outlets that need not be looking to promote an agenda, but instead looking for a juicy story that is all but written for them. This idea is similar to what they did in the universities in general and with the Rhodes Scholarship specifically. By influencing the top universities they would sow the seeds of their plans in the minds of students who would then go on to grow these seeds to fruition. All without ever knowing that they had been manipulated into thinking this way or that way.

Of the main ideas that the group had and passed on were the ideals of ancient Greece. They wanted to get beyond their historical city states and move to the oft mentioned federation or commonwealth. They also saw the state as a pursuit that should come before the man and that this duty is more important than self-interest. Interesting that such ideas of collectivism are held by what were, more often than not, wealth, titled individuals.

Originally another idea they mostly held unanimously was that of sound money and that banking should use gold and competitive trade to balance national budgets. Later they slowly replaced these ideals with ideas that self-regulating monopolies and gov spending should be employed because sound money was somehow impeding production. Although it is not mentioned explicitly, given how far-seeing these men were, it seems completely reasonable that they simply realized that they could wield incalculably more control, from behind the curtain they so love to hide, by diluting the then gold backed currencies into nothing but pure fiat. This would predictably lead to debt slavery and the decline in property ownership as the capital simultaneously diminished in value via inflation and accumulated in the hands of the wealthy via investment returns. Looking back on them it seems they were generally much closer to socialists than capitalists. They focused on building the state/empire and the moral obligations of man (not so much as in acquiring wealth).

During the WW1 and WW2 periods, the group continued to pull the strings of those that held elected positions. Milner himself writes the Balfour declaration, but can not introduce it himself because he is not in any official position to do so. This initially declared that Palestine start off Arab controlled but will allow some Jewish migration based on demographics. This is slowly changed to "allow" the region to become Jewish dominated. I really can't see any reason for the Milner Group wanting this except to sow discontent in the Middle East. Additionally, Arabs are to be given a "front door" to Europe via the Mediterranean while being exposed to westernization. Interesting to see how Palestine/Israel and the Arab/Muslim migration is doing today.

Post WW1 the Group thought Versailles was too strict. They wanted to build Germany back up now that the Kaiser was out of the picture. They supposedly could not see that the 4 main power sectors of Germany (The Prussian Officers' Corps, the Junker landlords, the governmental bureaucracy (especially the administrators of police and justice), and the great industrialists.) were still intact even without the Kaiser. Not only intact, but now with arguably more power. The whole idea was to rebuild Germany and smash it into France and the USSR to weaken the whole of Europe to the point where England could remain in control. This can clearly be seen when they didn't even flinch at the Nazi's coming to power. Later, Allen Dulles, sometimes called the interface between the government and the deep state, was often seen speaking at their meetings and was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (Dulles was dealing with Nazis extensively). He Group claimed to want a balance of power (even when they initially were against it) and they wanted German economy to prosper so there wouldn't be any trouble (or because they wanted their dog on its feet again?). Even those who followed in the Milner Group's footsteps, or are members of its more modern incarnations, such as Gregory Bateson have been very clear that the Versailles treaty and subsequent dealings with Germany were used to essentially guarantee WW2.

Lastly, in India the Milner Group pushed too hard too fast. Their utopian ideals gave too much self-government but with too many limitations faster than the new ideas could take hold. India of course gained her independence, but one is left wondering about Curtis' prognostications about the death of the English Empire and the global federation, the Commonwealth of Nations, that would rise like a phoenix from the ashes.

How independent is India today? How much influence do modern Milner Groups have over the officials in any country? How much power does the United Nations wield? How much power do the global financial titan bandy about? Who controls the newspapers today? The television, the radio, the major internet sites? It isn't hard to draw a straight line from the Commonwealth of Nations to the modern society. It also isn't hard to see that the same tactics, namely subversion via indoctrination in schools, churches, and media, are still employed today in ever more honed forms.

I'm on-board all the way until the very last few pages/chapter. After having such control over S. Africa, India, and the rest of the Empire for decades I am supposed to believe that after WW2, all of a sudden, the Milner Group got old and disintegrated because the youthful members didn't have the will or intelligence to continue? Even after attending prestigious universities and being groomed for decades for that very task? Given the advantage of being able to look back on what was written 40-odd years ago, I can see the manipulation of a descendant of the Milner Group pretty much everywhere I look. Whether it is the New York Times, or London, the Washington Post, and even CNN of Fox, I see the hand of the manipulators hard at work. Hollywood is basically the public relations branch of these manipulators, and the intelligence community writ large, the CIA specifically, has been carrying water for the group, whatever name they go by today, since their inception. The League of Nations "failed", but it did usher in the United Nation and the European Union. Even if these are faltering today, have they not acted as scaffolding to assist in construction a global world view that is more communistic than any organization could provide? Why rule with a supranational organization when you can propagandize the global citizenry into happily acquiescing to your every desire? Is there anywhere not touch by the hand of globalism? How far and wide do the McDonald's arches and the Nike swoosh roam? We are fast becoming, and many have already succumb, fat and happy, endlessly amused global consumers of the brave new world.

P.S. The book was published 4 years after Quigley died. Those last few pages could have been added as counterintelligence.

Books to check out:

• 1884 edition Toynbee's Lectures on the Industrial Revolution preface by Jowett later versions have Milner's "Reminiscence of Arnold Toynbee"

• 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)

• His [Curtis] 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).

• Brand's articles in The Round Table, reprinted in his book, War and National Finance (1921)

• Yale began, in 1948, to publish its new quarterly review called World Politics.

Exceptional Excerpts:

Later, in behalf of The Times and with the permission of Marconi, he [George R. Parkin] sent the first press dispatch ever transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean by radio.

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.

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.'

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)

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.

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.

This influence was not exercised by acting directly on public opinion, since the Milner Group never intended to influence events by acting through any instruments of mass propaganda, but rather hoped to work on the opinions of the small group of 'important people,' who in turn could influence wider and wider circles of persons. This was the basis on which the Milner Group itself was constructed; it was the theory behind the Rhodes Scholarships; it was the theory behind 'The Round Table and the Royal Institute of International Affairs; it was the theory behind the efforts to control All Souls, New College, and Balliol and, through these three, to control Oxford University; and it was the theory behind The Times.

Thus, a statesman (a member of the Group) announces a policy. About the same time, the Royal Institute of International Affairs publishes a study on the subject, and an Oxford don, a Fellow of All Souls (and a member of the Group) also publishes a volume on the subject (probably through a publishing house, like G. Bell and Sons or Faber and Faber, allied to the Group). The statesman's policy is subjected to critical analysis and final approval in a 'leader' in The Times, while the two books are reviewed (in a single review) in The Times Literary Supplement. Both the 'leader' and the review are anonymous but are written by members of the Group. And finally, at about the same time, an anonymous article in The Round Table strongly advocates the same policy. The cumulative effect of such tactics as this, even if each tactical move influences only a small number of important people, is bound to be great. If necessary, the strategy can be carried further, by arranging for the secretary to the Rhodes Trustees to go to America for a series of 'informal discussions' with former Rhodes Scholars, while a prominent retired statesman (possibly a former Viceroy of India) is persuaded to say a few words at the unveiling of a plaque in All Souls or New College in honor of some deceased Warden. By a curious coincidence, both the 'informal discussions' in America and the unveiling speech at Oxford touch on the same topical subject.

An analogous procedure in reverse could be used for policies or books which the Group did not approve. A cutting editorial or an unfriendly book review, followed by a suffocating blanket of silence and neglect, was the best that such an offering could expect from the instruments of the Milner Group.

The plan of procedure was the same as that which had worked so successfully in South Africa—that is, to form local groups of influential men to agitate for imperial federation and to keep in touch with these groups by correspondence and by the circulation of a periodical.

[To the Round Table Group] The key to all economics and prosperity was considered to rest in banking and finance. With 'sound money,' a balanced budget, and the international gold standard, it was expected that prosperity and rising standards of living would follow automatically. These ideas were propagated through The Round Table, in the period after 1912, in a series of articles written by Brand and subsequently republished under his name, with the title War and National Finance (1921). They are directly antithetical to the ideas of Milner as revealed in his book published two years later. Milner insisted that financial questions must be subordinated to economic questions and economic questions to political questions. As a result, if a deflationary policy, initiated for financial reasons, has deleterious economic or political effects, it must be abandoned. Milner regarded the financial policy advocated by Brand in 1919 and followed by the British government for the next twelve years as a disaster, since it led to unemployment, depression, and ruination of the export trade. instead, Milner wanted to isolate the British economy from the world economy by tariffs and other barriers and encourage the economic development of the United Kingdom by a system of government spending, self-regulated capital and labor, social welfare, etc. This program, which was based on 'monopoly capitalism' or even 'national socialism' rather than 'financial capitalism,' as Brand's was, was embraced by most of the Milner Group after September 1931, when the ending of the gold standard in Britain proved once and for all that Brand's financial program of 1919 was a complete disaster and quite unworkable. As a result, in the years after 1931 the businessmen of the Milner Group embarked on a policy of government encouragement of self-regulated monopoly capitalism. This was relatively easy for many members of the Group because of the distrust of economic individualism which they had inherited from Toynbee and Milner. In April 1932, when P. Horsfall, manager of Lazard Brothers Bank (a colleague of Brand), asked John Dove to write a defense of individualism in The Round Table, Dove suggested that he write it himself, but, in reporting the incident to Brand, he clearly indicated that the Group regarded individualism as obsolete.(8)

Milner was a combination of technocrat and guild socialist and objected vigorously to the orthodox financial policy of deflation, balanced budget, gold standard, and free international exchange advocated by the Group after 1918.

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,

Palestine, however, had a peculiar position among mandates because of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which states that Britain would regard with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine. This declaration, which is always known as the Balfour Declaration, should rather be called 'the Milner Declaration,' since Milner was the actual draftsman and was, apparently, its chief supporter in the War Cabinet. This fact was not made public until 21 July 1937. At that time Ormsby-Gore, speaking for the government in Commons, said, 'The draft as originally put up by Lord Balfour was not the final draft approved by the War Cabinet. The particular draft assented to by the War Cabinet and afterwards by the Allied Governments and by the United States . . . and finally embodied in the Mandate, happens to have been drafted by Lord Milner. The actual final draft had to be issued in the name of the Foreign Secretary, but the actual draftsman was Lord Milner.' Milner had referred to this fact in a typically indirect and modest fashion in the House of Lords on 27 June 1923, when he said, 'I was a party to the Balfour Declaration.'

the Milner Group has always had very close relationships with the associates of J. P. Morgan and with the various branches of the Carnegie Trust. These relationships, which are merely examples of the closely knit ramifications of international financial capitalism, were probably based on the financial holdings controlled by the Milner Group through the Rhodes Trust. The term 'international financier' can be applied with full justice to several members of the Milner Group inner circle, such as Brand, Hichens, and above all, Milner himself.

Among the other benefactors of the Institute, we might mention the following. In 1926 the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees (Hichens and Dame Janet Courtney) gave £3000 for books; the Bank of England gave £600; J. D. Rockefeller gave £3000. In 1929 pledges were obtained from about a score of important banks and corporations, promising annual grants to the Institute. Most of these had one or more members of the Milner Group on their boards of directors. Included in the group were the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company; the Bank of England; Barclay's Bank; Baring Brothers; the British American Tobacco Company; the British South Africa Company; Central Mining and Investment Corporation; Erlangers, Ltd; the Ford Motor Company; Hambros' Bank; Imperial Chemical Industries; Lazard Brothers; Lever Brothers; Lloyd's; Lloyd's Bank; the Mercantile and General Insurance Company; the Midland Bank; Reuters; Rothschild and Sons; Stern Brothers; Vickers-Armstrong; the Westminster Bank; and Whitehall Securities Corporation.

In December 1918, Curtis wrote in The Round Table on this subject as follows: 'No one class, but the nation itself was involved in the sin. There were Socialists who licked their lips over Brest-Litovsk. All but a mere remnant, and those largely in prison or exile, accepted or justified the creed of despotism so long as it promised them the mastery of the world. The German People consented to be slaves in their own house as the price of enslaving mankind.' If these words had been printed and posted on the walls of All Souls, of Chatham House, of New College, of The Times office in Printing House Square, and of The Round Table office at 175 Piccadilly, there need never have been a Second World War with Germany. But these words were not remembered by the Group. Instead, they assumed that the 'bad' Germans were the small group that was removed from office in 1918 with the Kaiser. They did not see that the Kaiser was merely a kind of facade for four other groups: The Prussian Officers' Corps, the Junker landlords, the governmental bureaucracy (especially the administrators of police and justice), and the great industrialists. They did not see that these four had been able to save themselves in 1918 by jettisoning the Kaiser, who had become a liability. They did not see that these four were left in their positions of influence, with their power practically intact—indeed, in many ways with their power greater than ever, since the new 'democratic' politicians like Ebert, Scheidemann, and Noske were much more subservient to the four groups than the old imperial authorities had ever been.

Their aim became the double one of keeping Germany in the fold of redeemed sinners by concessions, and of using this revived and purified Germany against Russia and France.(3)

The Milner Group never intended that the League should be used as an instrument of collective security or that sanctions should be used as an instrument by the League. From the beginning, they expected only two things from the League: (1) that it could be used as a center for international cooperation in international administration in nonpolitical matters, and (2) that it could be used as a center for consultation in political matters.

That the chief obstacle to this union was to be found in men's minds was perfectly clear to Curtis. To overcome this obstacle, he put his faith in propaganda, and the chief instruments of that propaganda, he said, must be the churches and the universities. He said nothing about the Milner Group, but, considering Curtis's position in this Group and that Lothian and others agreed with him, it is not surprising that the chief source of this propaganda is to be found in those agencies controlled by the Group.(12)

In the United States, the chief source of this propaganda was the organization known as Union Now, which was an offshoot of the Rhodes Scholarship network. The publicized originator of the idea was Clarence Streit, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 1920 and League of Nations correspondent of The New York Times in 1929-1938.

Until federation abolishes sovereignty and creates a true world government amenable to public opinion, the nations will continue to live in anarchy, whatever their contractual obligations may be; and under conditions of anarchy it is power and not public opinion that counts....

The short-run goal of the Milner Group still remained a Continent dominated by Hitler between an Oceanic Bloc on the west and the Soviet Union on the east.

Notes:

Table of Contents

Preface
01: Introduction
02: The Cecil Bloc
03: The Secret Society of Cecil Rhodes
04: Milner's Kindergarten, 1897-1910
05: Milner Group, Rhodes, and Oxford, 1901-1925
06: The Times
07: The Round Table
08: War and Peace, 1915-1920
09: Creation of the Commonwealth
10: The Royal Institute of International Affairs
11: India, 1911-1945
12: Foreign Policy, 1919-1940
13: The Second World War, 1939-1945
Appendix - A Tentative Roster of the Milner Group

Preface

page 2:

• 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.

page 3:

• 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.

Chapter 1: Introduction

page 4:

• One wintry afternoon in February 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London.

• 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.

• 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).

page 5:

• 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.

page 7:

• 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.

page 8:

• Later, in behalf of The Times and with the permission of Marconi, he [George R. Parkin (later Sir George, 1846-1922) ] sent the first press dispatch ever transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean by radio.

page 10:

• 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 Croup 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)

• // Education work... aka indoctrination.

page 11:

• // Milner abandoned law and dedicated himself to public good. He became a journalist.

page 12:

• Milner wrote Carrett'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."

Chapter 2: The Cecil Bloc

page 13:

• 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).

• 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.

page 14:

• // Lord Salisbury practiced nepotism, had 2 brothers, 2 sisters, 5 sons, 3 daughters.

page 18:

• 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,

• 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)

page 19:

• 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)

page 20:

• relationship between the Cecil Bloc and All Souls:

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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    18683-1867 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

page 24:

• G. W. Prothero's work on the literary remains of Seeley must have endeared hin1 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)

page 25:

• 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 Group. 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.

• But, realizing that conditions had changed, he put much greater emphasis on propaganda activities and on ideological unity within the Group.

page 26:

• The first two generations [of the Cecil Bloc] 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."

page 27:

• 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 Hewart. 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).

• 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.

Chapter 3: The Secret Society of Cecil Rhodes

page 28:

• 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.

• 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."

page 29:

• 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 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.

page 30:

• 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)

• // Decentralized control.

• "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." -Stead

page 32:

• 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.”

page 33:

• Under date of 3 February 1890, we read in these Lord Escher] 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)

page 34:

• "ideal arrangement' for the society:

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

• 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.

page 35:

• Of the persons so far named, we can be certain that six were initiates. These were Rhodes, Lord Rothschild, Johnston, Stead, Brett, and Milner.

page 42:

• 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).

• 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)

• 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.

Chapter 4: Milner's Kindergarten, 1897-1910

page 44:

• 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.

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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                       1874-1944 Magdalen  1898-1905;  
(until 1917 Robinson)                 1893-1897           1915-1944
John Buchan                           1875-1940 Brasenose             Never
(later Lord Tweedsmuir)               1895-1899
Dougal Orme Malcolm                   1877-1955 New       1895-1899   1899-1955
(later Sir Dougal)
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                      1858-1925 Brasenose             Never
(later Sir George)                    1880-1884
John Hanbury-Williams                 1859-1946 Wellington, N. Z.     Never
(later Sir John)
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:

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

page 45:

• 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.

page 47:

• In 1907 he [William Lionel Hichens (1874-1940)] went to India as a member of the Royal Commission on Decentralization...

• 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...

page 49:

• 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.

page 53:

• 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)

page 54:

• what Lionel 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.

page 55:

• 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.

page 56:

• In 1919 he [Lionel Curtis] 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.

• His [Curtis] 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).

page 57:

• Leopold 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.

• Amery was not a member of the Kindergarten.

page 59:

• H.A.L. Fisher 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)

• [one of Fisher's works] '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.

page 62:

• 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.

• 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.

page 63:

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

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

page 69:

• 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.

page 70:

• [Sept 1935 of 'The Round Table' states:] "... Groups in the four overseas Dominions still assemble their material and hammer out their views, metaphorically, ‘round the table.’ Some of their members have shared continuously in this work for a quarter of a century; and in England, too, the group of friends who came together in South Africa still help to guide the destinies and contribute to the pages of the review they founded, though the chances of life and death have taken some of their number, and others have been brought in to contribute new points of view and younger blood.”

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

page 72:

• Writing to his old friend Sir Clinton Dawkins, who had been, with Milner, a member of the Toynbee group in 1879-1884

• // Related to Richard Dawkins?

• Milner 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)

• 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.

page 73:

• Sir Edward 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

• 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.

• Alfred Beit established a trust to build the Cape-Cairo railway in addition to some scholarly appointments.

• // This reminds me of the modern Chinese interest in Africa (and by extension the whole One Belt/One Road initiative). Is it true that the empire is shifting from west to east but still moving towards 100 year old goals?

page 84:

• 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)

1
2
3
4
5
6

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

• The influence of the Milner Group at Oxford was sufficient to enable it to get control of the Dictionary of National Biography...

page 85:

• 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.

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

Chapter 6: The Times

page 85:

• Beyond the academic field, the Milner Group engaged in journalistic activities that sought to influence public opinion in directions which the Group desired.

page 86:

• The Milner Group did not own The Times before 1922, but clearly controlled it at least as far back as 1912. Even before this last date, members of the innermost circle of the Milner Group were swarming about the great newspaper. In fact, it would appear that The Times had been controlled by the Cecil Bloc since 1884 and was taken over by the Milner Group in the same way in which All Souls was taken over, quietly and without a struggle.

• [Lord Astor] was British delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations in 1931, chairman of the League Committee on Nutrition (1936-1937), and chairman of the council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (since 1935).

page 88:

• It is true that Lord Astor became one of the more important figures in the Milner Group after Milner's death in 1925, but the center of gravity of the Group as a whole was elsewhere: before 1920, in the Round Table Group; and after 1920, in All Souls. Lord Astor was of great importance in the later period, especially after 1930, but was of no significance in the earlier period...

page 90:

• In 1892, Miss Shaw was sent to South Africa by Moberly Bell, with instructions to set up two lines of communication from that area to herself. One of these was to be known to The Times and would handle routine matters; the second was to be known only to herself and was to bring confidential material to her private address. The expenses of both of these avenues would be paid for by The Times, but the expenses of the secret avenue would not appear on the records at Printing House Square.(5)

• From this date onward, Miss Shaw was in secret communication with Cecil Rhodes. This communication was so close that she was informed by Rhodes of the plot which led up to the Jameson Raid, months before the raid took place. She was notified by Rhodes of the approximate date on which the raid would occur, two weeks before it did occur. She even suggested on several occasions that the plans be executed more rapidly, and on one occasion suggested a specific date for the event.

page 92:

• When we realize that the anticipated uprising of the English in the Transvaal had been financed and armed with munitions from the funds of the British South Africa Company, it is clear that we must wait until Hitler's coup in Austria in March 1938 to find a parallel to Rhodes's and Jameson's attempted coup in South Africa forty-two years earlier.

• The Jameson Raid, if the full story could ever be told, would give the finest possible example of the machinations of Rhodes's secret society. Another example, almost as good, would be the completely untold story of how the society covered up these activities in the face of the investigation of the Parliamentary Select Committee.

page 93:

• The difficulty which the initiates in London had in preparing a defense for the Select Committee was complicated by the fact that they were not able to reach Rhodes, who was en route from South Africa with Garrett. As soon as the boat docked, Brett (Lord Esher) sent "Natty" Rothschild from London with a message from Chamberlain to Rhodes.

page 94:

• It is clear that the Select Committee made no real effort to uncover the real relationships between the conspirators, The Times, and the Salisbury government. When witnesses refused to produce documents or to answer questions, the committee did not insist, and whole fields of inquiry were excluded from examination by the committee.

page 96:

• This account, by no means complete, shows clearly that the Milner Group controlled The Times, indirectly from 1912 if not earlier, and directly from
• The importance of this control should be obvious. The Times, although of a very limited circulation (only about 35,000 at the beginning of the century, 50,000 at the outbreak of the First World War, and 187,000 in 1936), was the most influential paper in England.

• This influence was not exercised by acting directly on public opinion, since the Milner Group never intended to influence events by acting through any instruments of mass propaganda, but rather hoped to work on the opinions of the small group of "important people," who in turn could influence wider and wider circles of persons. This was the basis on which the Milner Group itself was constructed; it was the theory behind the Rhodes Scholarships; it was the theory behind "The Round Table and the Royal Institute of International Affairs; it was the theory behind the efforts to control All Souls, New College, and Balliol and, through these three, to control Oxford University; and it was the theory behind The Times.

page 97:

• Thus, a statesman (a member of the Group) announces a policy. About the same time, the Royal Institute of International Affairs publishes a study on the subject, and an Oxford don, a Fellow of All Souls (and a member of the Group) also publishes a volume on the subject (probably through a publishing house, like G. Bell and Sons or Faber and Faber, allied to the Group). The statesman's policy is subjected to critical analysis and final approval in a "leader" in The Times, while the two books are reviewed (in a single review) in The Times Literary Supplement. Both the "leader" and the review are anonymous but are written by members of the Group. And finally, at about the same time, an anonymous article in The Round Table strongly advocates the same policy. The cumulative effect of such tactics as this, even if each tactical move influences only a small number of important people, is bound to be great. If necessary, the strategy can be carried further, by arranging for the secretary to the Rhodes Trustees to go to America for a series of "informal discussions" with former Rhodes Scholars, while a prominent retired statesman (possibly a former Viceroy of India) is persuaded to say a few words at the unveiling of a plaque in All Souls or New College in honor of some deceased Warden. By a curious coincidence, both the "informal discussions" in America and the unveiling speech at Oxford touch on the same topical subject.

• An analogous procedure in reverse could be used for policies or books which the Group did not approve. A cutting editorial or an unfriendly book review, followed by a suffocating blanket of silence and neglect, was the best that such an offering could expect from the instruments of the Milner Group.

• Even today, the official historian of The Times is unable to see that the policy of that paper was anti-German from 1895 to 1914 and as such contributed to the worsening of Anglo-German relations and thus to the First World War.

page 98:

• The recent History of The Times devotes considerable space and obviously spent long hours of research in refuting these charges, and fails to see that it has not succeeded. With the usual honesty and industry of the Milner Group, the historian gives the evidence that will convict him, without seeing that his interpretation will not hold water.

Chapter 7: The Round Table

page 98:

• The second important propaganda effort of the Milner Group in the period after 1909 was The Round Table. This was part of an effort by the circle of the Milner Group to accomplish for the whole Empire what they had just done for South Africa.

• The plan of procedure was the same as that which had worked so successfully in South Africa—that is, to form local groups of influential men to agitate for imperial federation and to keep in touch with these groups by correspondence and by the circulation of a periodical.

• // Decentralized control, but in a common direction...

page 99:

• "I [Lionel Curtis] began to think of the British Commonwealth as the greatest instrument ever devised for enabling that principle to be realized, not merely for the children of Europe, but for all races and kindreds and peoples and tongues. And it is for that reason that I have ceased to speak of the British Empire and called the book in which I published my views The Commonwealth of Nations."

• India received complete self-government in 1947 and the British Commonwealth changed its name officially to Commonwealth of Nations in 1948. There can be no doubt that both of these events resulted in no small degree from the influence of Lionel Curtis and the Milner Group

page 101:

• The Round Table itself. This was an extraordinary magazine. The first issue appeared with the date 15 November 1910. It had no names in the whole issue, either of the officers or of the contributors of the five articles. The opening statement of policy was unsigned, and the only address to which communications could be sent was "The Secretary, 175 Piccadilly, London, W." This anonymity has been maintained ever since,

page 102:

• The Round Table was essentially the propaganda vehicle of a handful of people and could not have carried signed articles either originally, when they were too few, or later, when they were too famous. It was never intended to be either a popular magazine or self-supporting, but rather was aimed at influencing those in a position to influence public opinion. As Curtis wrote in 1920, "A large quarterly like The Round Table is not intended so much for the average reader, as for those who write for the average reader. It is meant to be a storehouse of information of all kinds upon which publicists can draw...."

• It is perhaps worth mentioning that the first article of the first issue, called "Anglo-German Rivalry," was very anti-German...

page 103:

• [To the Round Table Group] The key to all economics and prosperity was considered to rest in banking and finance. With "sound money," a balanced budget, and the international gold standard, it was expected that prosperity and rising standards of living would follow automatically. These ideas were propagated through The Round Table, in the period after 1912, in a series of articles written by Brand and subsequently republished under his name, with the title War and National Finance (1921). They are directly antithetical to the ideas of Milner as revealed in his book published two years later. Milner insisted that financial questions must be subordinated to economic questions and economic questions to political questions. As a result, if a deflationary policy, initiated for financial reasons, has deleterious economic or political effects, it must be abandoned. Milner regarded the financial policy advocated by Brand in 1919 and followed by the British government for the next twelve years as a disaster, since it led to unemployment, depression, and ruination of the export trade. instead, Milner wanted to isolate the British economy from the world economy by tariffs and other barriers and encourage the economic development of the United Kingdom by a system of government spending, self-regulated capital and labor, social welfare, etc. This program, which was based on "monopoly capitalism" or even "national socialism" rather than "financial capitalism," as Brand's was, was embraced by most of the Milner Group after September 1931, when the ending of the gold standard in Britain proved once and for all that Brand's financial program of 1919 was a complete disaster and quite unworkable. As a result, in the years after 1931 the businessmen of the Milner Group embarked on a policy of government encouragement of self-regulated monopoly capitalism. This was relatively easy for many members of the Group because of the distrust of economic individualism which they had inherited from Toynbee and Milner. In April 1932, when P. Horsfall, manager of Lazard Brothers Bank (a colleague of Brand), asked John Dove to write a defense of individualism in The Round Table, Dove suggested that he write it himself, but, in reporting the incident to Brand, he clearly indicated that the Group regarded individualism as obsolete.(8)

page 104:

• The following list gives the editors of The Round Table from 1910 to the recent past:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Philip Kerr, 1910-1917 (assisted by E. Grigg, 1913-1915)
Reginald Coupland, 1917-1919
Lionel Curtis, 1919-1921
John Dove, 1921-1934
Henry V. Hodson, 1934-1939
Vincent Todd Harlow, (acting editor) 1938
Reginald Coupland, 1939-1941
Geoffrey Dawson, 1941-1944

page 110:

• The Milner Group is a standing refutation of the Marxist or Leninist interpretations of history or of imperialism. Its members were motivated only slightly by materialistic incentives, and their imperialism was motivated not at all by the desire to preserve or extend capitalism. On the contrary their economic ideology, in the early stages at least, was more socialistic than Manchester in its orientation. To be sure, it was an undemocratic kind of socialism, which was willing to make many sacrifices to the well- being of the masses of the people but reluctant to share with these masses political power that might allow them to seek their own well-being. This socialistic leaning was more evident in the earlier (or Balliol) period than in the later (or New College) period, and disappeared almost completely when Lothian and Brand replaced Esher, Grey, and Milner at the center of the Group. Esher regarded the destruction of the middle class as inevitable and felt that the future belonged to the workers and an administrative state.

• Even earlier, Arnold Toynbee was a socialist of sorts and highly critical of the current ideology of liberal capitalism as proclaimed by the high priests of the Manchester School. Milner gave six lectures on socialism in Whitechapel in 1882 (published in 1931 in The National Review). Both Toynbee and Milner worked intermittently at social service of a mildly socialistic kind, an effort that resulted in the founding of Toynbee Hall as a settlement house in 1884.

• Both Toynbee and Milner were early suspicious of the virtues of free trade—not, however, because tariffs could provide high profits for industrial concerns but because tariffs and imperial preference could link the Empire more closely into economic unity.

• Milner was a combination of technocrat and guild socialist and objected vigorously to the orthodox financial policy of deflation, balanced budget, gold standard, and free international exchange advocated by the Group after 1918.

page 111:

• Not himself a trained economist, Milner, nevertheless, saw that the real problems were of a technical and material nature and that Britain's ability to produce goods should be limited only by the real supply of knowledge, labor, energy, and materials and not by the artificial limitations of a deliberately restricted supply of money and credit.

• // This infuriates me... production would not be limited by money (read currency). Money/currency is akin to inches. Inches measure distance and money measures wealth (physical stuff). If you change the size of an inch, it does not affect the distance. If you print more money it does not change the wealth. A gallon of gasoline used to cost 25 cents. Today it costs over 250 cents. What changed? It is still the same gallon of gas and its price-tag is still is still (relatively) proportional to income. This argument that money/currency/credit is somehow a limiting factor is nonsense used to cover for an inflationary system that benefits those that create the fresh currency. They can spend the newly minted currency before the effects of inflation are felt and thus get something for nothing. If there is "not enough" (or "too much") money, the price-tag simply adjusts.

• // The fact that these ideas of money/credit have been followed for nearly the last century and that they have led to EVERY SINGLE NATION on earth being indebted and the global (and most local) financial economy is in ruins is testament to their failing. For example, the USA has a national debt of ~22 trillion dollars. If this credit was created/expanded to stop the limitations of production, why is the USA's infrastructure crumbling? Why is the unemployment (when comparing working age population to labor force) at over 20% (as opposed to the foolish reported number of how many people are collecting unemployment checks). Why are suicide rates and drug use rates skyrocketing? Why can't people afford to raise a family on a single income? Why do groups like the Tea Party and Occupy Wallstreet exist if that 22 trillion dollars was created to improve everything? Or am I to believe that without all the money printing, things would be worse?

• Brand advocated the financial policy which the British government followed, with such disastrous results, for the next thirteen years. He wrote:

• “That nation will recover quickest after the war which corrects soonest any depreciation in currency, reduces by production and saving its inflated credit, brings down its level of prices, and restores the free import and export of gold.... With all our wealth of financial knowledge and experience behind us it should be easy for us to steer the right path—though it will not be always a pleasant one—amongst the dangers of the future. Every consideration leads to the view that the restoration of the gold standard— whether or not it can be achieved quickly—should be our aim. Only by that means can we be secure that our level of prices shall be as low as or lower than prices in other countries, and on that condition depends the recovery of our export trade and the prevention of excessive imports. Only by that means can we provide against and abolish the depreciation of our currency which, though the [existing] prohibition against dealings in gold prevents our measuring it, almost certainly exists, and safeguard ourself against excessive grants of credit.”

• // I find myself completely in agreement with this quote. The "disasterous results" happened AFTER the gold standard was removed and credit increased, depreciating the value of the currency.

• He then outlined a detailed program to contract credit, curtail government spending, raise taxes, curtail imports, increase exports, etc.(15)

• // It goes on to state that these policies were implemented, but there is no citation. Was there a period after WW1 which the British debt was declining? I seem to remember that the "gold standard" they reimplemented pegged the gold to the pound instead of allowing the free market to determine the price.

• // I think this was a rouse to make it seem like the gold standard was the problem, thus giving credability to its complete abolishment. Given the oligarchical controlled monopoly rich global economy today, and how the banking cabal has such extraordinary power with their ability to print money, I have trouble seeing how the Milner Group and it successors did not steer the ship exactly where they wanted. In most modern times we see the slow adoption of e-currency, outlined extensively in "Out of Control" by modern technocrats, that seems to be nothing more than a global currency totally under the thumb of a technocratic oligarchy whos manipulation of decentralized systems has become quite masterful via cybernetics.

page 112:

• Curtis puts this quite clearly in The Commonwealth of Nations (1916), where he says: “States, whether autocracies or commonwealths, ultimately rest on duty, not on self-interest or force.... The quickening principle of a state is a sense of devotion, an adequate recognition somewhere in the minds of its subjects that their own interests are subordinate to those of the state. The bond which unites them and constitutes them collectively as a state is, to use the words of Lincoln, in the nature of dedication. Its validity, like that of the marriage tie, is at root not contractual but sacramental. Its foundation is not self-interest, but rather some sense of obligation, however conceived, which is strong enough to over-master self-interest.” (16)

• // And this is where it goes off the rails. Subordination to the state.

page 114:

• The people must first be trained to understand and practice the chief principles of commonwealth, namely the supremacy of law and the subjection of the motives of self-interest and material gain to the sense of duty to the interests of the community as a whole. Curtis felt that such an educational process was not only morally necessary on the part of Britain but was a practical necessity, since the British could not expect to keep 430 million persons in subjection forever but must rather hope to educate them up to a level where they could appreciate and cherish British ideals.

• // They say trained, I say indoctrinated. Reminds me of Huxley predicting that people will be happy (in servitude) when they ought not be.

page 115:

• And the future Lord Lothian, ordering an article on India for The Round Table from a representative in India, wrote: "We want an article in The Round Table and I suggest to you that the main conclusion which the reader should draw from it should be that the responsibility rests upon him of seeing that the Indian demands are sympathetically handled without delay after the war."(22)

• In the sketch of Milner in the Dictionary of National Biography, written by Basil Williams of the Kindergarten, we read: "He was always ready to discuss national questions on a non-party basis, joining with former members of his South African 'Kindergarten' in their 'moot,' from which originated the political review, The Round Table, and in a more heterogeneous society, the 'Coefficients,' where he discussed social and imperial problems with such curiously assorted members as L. S. Amery, H. G. Wells, (Lord) Haldane, Sir Edward Grey, (Sir) Michael Sadler, Bernard Shaw, J. L. Garvin, William Pember Reeves, and W. A. S. Hewins."

page 116:

• The Times and The Round Table are not the only publications which have been controlled by the Milner Group. At various times in the past, the Group has been very influential on the staffs of the Quarterly Review, The Nineteenth Century and After, The Economist, and the Spectator.

Chapter 8: War and Peace, 1915-1920

page 117:

• But with the outbreak of war, the Milner Group and the Cecil Bloc wanted to come to power and wanted it badly, chiefly because control of the government in wartime would make it possible to direct events toward the postwar settlement which the Group envisaged. The Group also believed that the war could be used by them to fasten on Britain the illiberal economic regulation of which they had been dreaming since Chamberlain resigned in 1903 (at least).

page 120:

• Lord Wolmer (son of Lord Selborne and grandson of Lord Salisbury)

page 121:

• Most of the group went en masse to the Peace Conference at Paris as expert advisers,

page 122:

• By 1919 they began to think in terms of balance of power and of the need to reconstruct Germany against the dangers of "bolshevism" on one hand and of "French militarism" on the other, and they felt that if Germany were made democratic and treated in a friendly fashion she could be incorporated into the British world system...

• // I think this was simply to build up Germany and then, via WW2, smash it into Russia and France thus weakening them all while England would remain unscathed. Next could come unification. Clearly it didn't go as smoothly as planned, but the proof is in the pudding - the EU and the United Nations exists and are lauded by many today.

Chapter 9: Creation of the Commonwealth

page 123:

• 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.

• 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."

page 124:

• 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.

page 126:

• 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.

page 129:

• 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."

• 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,

• Milner died, in May 1925

• // Milner's War Cabinet continued as the British Empire Delegation in the peace negotiations of Versailles in 1919.

page 134:

• 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,

• 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.

page 135:

• 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.

• // Conference divided into 4 committees. Miler Group chaired 2 of 4 and held 4 of 7 rapporteurs.

• 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.

• // 5 of 15 English delegates (including chair) were Milner Group. New Zealand and Australia had Rhodes scholars and Milner Group associates present.

• // 9 (and 3 associates) of 99 total delegates were Milner Group.

• // The third conference only had 5 or 6 of 56 from Milner Group.

page 139:

• The Milner Group itself had been one of the chief, if not the chief, forces in Britain intensifying the decentralizing influences in the self-governing portions of the Empire. This influence was most significant in regard to India, Palestine, Ireland, and Egypt, each of which was separated from Great Britain by a process in which the Milner Group was a principal agent.

page 141:

• Palestine, however, had a peculiar position among mandates because of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which states that Britain would regard with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine. This declaration, which is always known as the Balfour Declaration, should rather be called "the Milner Declaration," since Milner was the actual draftsman and was, apparently, its chief supporter in the War Cabinet. This fact was not made public until 21 July 1937. At that time Ormsby-Gore, speaking for the government in Commons, said, "The draft as originally put up by Lord Balfour was not the final draft approved by the War Cabinet. The particular draft assented to by the War Cabinet and afterwards by the Allied Governments and by the United States . . . and finally embodied in the Mandate, happens to have been drafted by Lord Milner. The actual final draft had to be issued in the name of the Foreign Secretary, but the actual draftsman was Lord Milner." Milner had referred to this fact in a typically indirect and modest fashion in the House of Lords on 27 June 1923, when he said, "I was a party to the Balfour Declaration."

• The general attitude of the Milner Group was neither pro-Arab nor pro-Zionist, although tending, if at all, toward the latter rather than the former.

page 142:

• Dove declared that the whole Arab world should be in one state and it must have Syria and Palestine for its front door, not be like South Africa, with Delagoa Bay in other hands. The Arab world, he explained, needs this western door because we are trying to westernize the Arabs, and without it they would be driven to the east and to India, which they hate. He concluded:

• “If the Arab belongs to the Mediterranean, as T. E. Lawrence insists, we should do nothing to stop him getting back to it. Why our own nostrum for the ills of mankind everywhere is Western Civilization, and, if it is a sound one, what would be the good of forcing a people who want direct contact with us to slink in and out of their country by a back door which, like the Persian Gulf, opens only on the East? It would certainly check development, if it did not actually warp it. I suggest then that partition should not be permanent, but this does not mean that a stage of friendly tutelage is necessarily a bad thing for the Arabs. On the contrary, advanced peoples can give so much to stimulate backward ones if they do it with judgment and sympathy. Above all, it must not be the kind of help which kills individuality.... Personally, I don't see the slightest harm in Jews coming to Palestine under reasonable conditions. They are the Arabs' cousins as much as the Phoenicians, and if Zionism brings capital and labour which will enable industries to start, it will add to the strength of the larger unit which some day is going to include Palestine. But they must be content to be part of such a potential unit. They need have no fear of absorption, for they have everything to gain from an Arab Federation. It would mean a far larger field for their activities.”

Chapter 10: The Royal Institute of International Affairs

page 150:

• The Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) is nothing but the Milner Group "writ large." It was founded by the Group, has been consistently controlled by the Group, and to this day is the Milner Group in its widest aspect.

• The real founder of the Institute was Lionel Curtis, although this fact was concealed for many years and he was presented to the public as merely one among a number of founders.

page 151:

• the Milner Group has always had very close relationships with the associates of J. P. Morgan and with the various branches of the Carnegie Trust. These relationships, which are merely examples of the closely knit ramifications of international financial capitalism, were probably based on the financial holdings controlled by the Milner Group through the Rhodes Trust. The term "international financier" can be applied with full justice to several members of the Milner Group inner circle, such as Brand, Hichens, and above all, Milner himself.

page 154:

• This does not mean that the Group monopolized the meetings, or even spoke at a majority of them. The meetings generally took place once a week from October to June of each year, and probably members of the Group spoke or presided at no more than a quarter of them. This, however, represents far more than their due proportion, for when the Institute had 2500, members the Milner Group amounted to no more than 100.

page 157:

• // The Royal Institute for International Affairs is now called Chatham House.

• Among the other benefactors of the Institute, we might mention the following. In 1926 the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees (Hichens and Dame Janet Courtney) gave £3000 for books; the Bank of England gave £600; J. D. Rockefeller gave £3000. In 1929 pledges were obtained from about a score of important banks and corporations, promising annual grants to the Institute. Most of these had one or more members of the Milner Group on their boards of directors. Included in the group were the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company; the Bank of England; Barclay's Bank; Baring Brothers; the British American Tobacco Company; the British South Africa Company; Central Mining and Investment Corporation; Erlangers, Ltd; the Ford Motor Company; Hambros' Bank; Imperial Chemical Industries; Lazard Brothers; Lever Brothers; Lloyd's; Lloyd's Bank; the Mercantile and General Insurance Company; the Midland Bank; Reuters; Rothschild and Sons; Stern Brothers; Vickers-Armstrong; the Westminster Bank; and Whitehall Securities Corporation.

page 158:

• Chatham House had close institutional relations with a number of other similar organizations, especially in the Dominions. It also has a parallel organization, which was regarded as a branch, in New York. This latter, the Council on Foreign Relations, was not founded by the American group that attended the meeting at the Hotel Majestic in 1919, but was taken over almost entirely by that group immediately after its founding in 1919.

• the Milner Group did not monopolize the membership or the official positions in these new [Indian, Australian] institutes any more than they did in London, for this would have weakened the chief aim of the Group in setting them up, namely to extend their influence to wider areas.

page 160:

• These were called the International Studies Conferences and devoted themselves to an effort to obtain different national points of view on international problems. The members of the Studies Conferences were twenty-five organizations. Twenty of these were Coordinating Committees created for the purpose in twenty different countries. The other five were the following international organizations: The Academy of International Law at The Hague; The European Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; the Geneva School of International Studies; the Graduate Institute of International Studies at Geneva; the Institute of Pacific Relations.

page 161:

• The first, a study of "Sanctions," was prepared by the RIIA and has been published since. The second, a study of "British Opinion on Collective Security," was prepared by the British Coordinating Committee. The third, a collection of "British Views on Collective Security," was prepared by the delegates. It had an introduction by Meston and nine articles, of which one was by G. M. Gathorne-Hardy and one by H. V. Hodson. Zimmern also presented a memorandum on behalf of the Geneva School. Opening speeches were made by Austen Chamberlain, Allen W. Dulles (of the Council on Foreign Relations), and Louis Eisenmann of the University of Paris. Closing speeches were made by Lord Meston, Allen Dulles, and Gilbert Murray. Meston acted as president of the conference, and Dulles as chairman of the study meetings. The proceedings were edited and published by a committee of two Frenchmen and A. J. Toynbee.

Chapter 11: India, 1911-1945

page 179:

• This basic idea—that if you have faith in people, they will prove worthy of that faith, or, expressed in somewhat more concrete terms, that if you give dissatisfied people voluntarily more than they expect and, above all, before they really expect to get it, they will not abuse the gift but will be sobered simultaneously by the weight of responsibility and the sweetness of gratitude— was an underlying assumption of the Milner Group's activities from 1901 to the present.

page 185:

• From our point of view, his [Winston Churchill] most interesting statement, and one which was not contradicted, said: "I have watched this story from its very unfolding, and what has struck me more than anything else about it has been the amazingly small number of people who have managed to carry matters to their present lamentable pitch. You could almost count them on the fingers of one hand. I have also been struck by the prodigious power which this group of individuals have been able to exert and relay, to use a mechanical term, through the vast machinery of party, of Parliament, and of patronage, both here and in the East. It is tragical that they should have been able to mislead the loyalties and use the assets of the Empire to its own undoing. I compliment them on their skill, and I compliment them also on their disciples. Their chorus is exceedingly well drilled."

page 186:

• the Milner Group generally supported Moslem demands because of its usual emphasis on minority rights.

page 188:

• The Group made another error in their constant tendency to accept the outcry of a small minority of Europeanized agitators as the voice of India.

Chapter 12: Foreign Policy, 1919-1940

page 189:

• The political power of the Milner Group in the period 1919-1939 grew quite steadily. It can be measured by the number of ministerial portfolios held by members of the Group.

page 190:

• from 1929 to September 1931. Toward the end of this period, the Labour government experienced increasing difficulty because the deflationary policy of the Bank of England and the outflow of gold from the country were simultaneously intensifying the depression, increasing unemployment and public discontent, and jeopardizing the gold standard. In fact, the Bank of England's policy made it almost impossible for the Labour Party to govern.

• pressure which the bankers were putting on the Labour government in the period 1929-1931. The Milner Group were clearly in a position to influence this pressure. E. R. Peacock (Parkin's old associate) was at the time a director of the Bank of England and a director of Baring Brothers; Robert Brand, Thomas Henry Brand, and Adam Marris (son of Sir William Marris) were all at Lazard and Brothers; Robert Brand was also a director of Lloyd's Bank; Lord Selborne was a director of Lloyd's Bank; Lord Lugard was a director of Barclay's Bank; Major Astor was a director of Hambros Bank; and Lord Goschen was a director of the Westminster Bank.

page 192:

• When the original draft of the Treaty of Versailles was presented to the Germans on 7 May 1919, the defeated delegates were aghast at its severity. They drew up a detailed criticism of 443

pages. The answer to this protest, making a few minor changes in the treaty but

allowing the major provisions to stand, was drafted by an inter-allied committee of five, of which Philip Kerr was the British member. The changes that were made as concessions to the Germans were made under pressure from Lloyd George, who was himself under pressure from the Milner Group.

page 194:

• In December 1918, Curtis wrote in The Round Table on this subject as follows: "No one class, but the nation itself was involved in the sin. There were Socialists who licked their lips over Brest-Litovsk. All but a mere remnant, and those largely in prison or exile, accepted or justified the creed of despotism so long as it promised them the mastery of the world. The German People consented to be slaves in their own house as the price of enslaving mankind." If these words had been printed and posted on the walls of All Souls, of Chatham House, of New College, of The Times office in Printing House Square, and of The Round Table office at 175 Piccadilly, there need never have been a Second World War with Germany. But these words were not remembered by the Group. Instead, they assumed that the "bad" Germans were the small group that was removed from office in 1918 with the Kaiser. They did not see that the Kaiser was merely a kind of facade for four other groups: The Prussian Officers' Corps, the Junker landlords, the governmental bureaucracy (especially the administrators of police and justice), and the great industrialists. They did not see that these four had been able to save themselves in 1918 by jettisoning the Kaiser, who had become a liability. They did not see that these four were left in their positions of influence, with their power practically intact—indeed, in many ways with their power greater than ever, since the new "democratic" politicians like Ebert, Scheidemann, and Noske were much more subservient to the four groups than the old imperial authorities had ever been.

• // They didn't see this? I'd say it was all part of setting the table for WW2. The Round Table, in their attempt to enslave the world (in the name of righteousness and law) were the ones stoking the fires of these conflicts. IMHO the plan was to stop Germany from becoming a naval power in WW1 and to set Germany up, with anger from the economic effects post WW1, for the encore of WW2, which about smashing Germany into the USSR/France to destroy them all. These weakened nations could then be brought together under the umbrella of the United Nations.

• The Milner Group did not see this, because they did not want to see it. Not that they were not warned. Brigadier General John H. Morgan, who was almost a member of the Group and who was on the Inter-allied Military Commission of Control in Germany in 1919- 1923, persistently warned the government and the Group of the continued existence and growing power of the German Officers' Corps and of the unreformed character of the German people.

page 195:

• In a similar fashion, the Milner Group knew that the industrialists, the Junkers, the police, and the judges were cooperating with the reactionaries to suppress all democratic and enlightened elements in Germany and to help all the forces of "despotism" and "sin" (to use Curtis's words). The Group refused to recognize these facts. For this, there were two reasons. One, for which Brand was chiefly responsible, was based on certain economic assumptions. Among these, the chief was the belief that "disorder" and social unrest could be avoided only if prosperity were restored to Germany as soon as possible. By "disorder," Brand meant such activities as were associated with Trotsky in Russia, Béla Kun in Hungary, and the Spartacists or Kurt Eisner in Germany. To Brand, as an orthodox international banker, prosperity could be obtained only by an economic system under the control of the old established industrialists and bankers. This is perfectly clear from Brand's articles in The Round Table, reprinted in his book, War and National Finance (1921). Moreover, Brand felt confident that the old economic groups could reestablish prosperity quickly only if they were given concessions in respect to Germany's international financial position by lightening the weight of reparations on Germany and by advancing credit to Germany, chiefly from the United States. This point of view was not Brand's alone. It dominated the minds of all international bankers from Thomas Lamont to Montague Norman and from 1918 to at least 1931. The importance of Brand, from out point of view, lies in the fact that, as "the economic expert" of the Milner Group and one of the leaders of the Group, he brought this point of view into the Group and was able to direct the great influence of the Group in this direction.(2)

• Blindness to the real situation in Germany was also encouraged from another point of view. This was associated with Philip Kerr. Roughly, this point of view advocated a British foreign policy based on the old balance-of-power system. Under that old system, which Britain had followed since 1500, Britain should support the second strongest power on the Continent against the strongest power, to prevent the latter from obtaining supremacy on the Continent. For one brief moment in 1918, the Group toyed with the idea of abandoning this traditional policy; for one brief moment they felt that if Europe were given self-determination and parliamentary governments, Britain could permit some kind of federated or at least cooperative Europe without danger to Britain. The moment soon passed. The League of Nations, which had been regarded by the Group as the seed whence a united Europe might grow, became nothing more than a propaganda machine, as soon as the Group resumed its belief in the balance of power. Curtis, who in December 1918 wrote in The Round Table: "That the balance of power has outlived its time by a century and that the world has remained a prey to wars, was due to the unnatural alienation of the British and American Commonwealths"—Curtis, who wrote this in 1918, four years later (9 January 1923) vigorously defended the idea of balance of power against the criticism of Professor A. F. Pollard at a meeting of the RIIA.

page 196:

• Their aim became the double one of keeping Germany in the fold of redeemed sinners by concessions, and of using this revived and purified Germany against Russia and France.(3)

• When it became clear in 1920 that the United States had no intention of underwriting Britain and instead would revert to her prewar isolationism, the bitterness of disappointment in the Milner Group were beyond bounds. Forever after, they blamed the evils of Europe, the double-dealing of British policy, and the whole train of errors from 1919 to 1940 on the American reversion to isolationism.

page 198:

• in December 1918, The Round Table said: "It would seem desirable that the treaties should not be long term, still less perpetual, instruments. Perpetual treaties are indeed a lien upon national sovereignty and a standing contradiction of the principle of the democratic control of foreign policy...

page 206:

• The Milner Group never intended that the League should be used as an instrument of collective security or that sanctions should be used as an instrument by the League. From the beginning, they expected only two things from the League: (1) that it could be used as a center for international cooperation in international administration in nonpolitical matters, and (2) that it could be used as a center for consultation in political matters.

• ...each state would retain full sovereignty and would cooperate only on a completely voluntary basis in fields of social importance.

page 207:

• Unfortunately, in the process of drawing up the Covenant of the League in 1919, certain phrases or implications were introduced into the document, under pressure from France, from Woodrow Wilson, and from other groups in Britain, which could be taken to indicate that the League might have been intended to be used as a real instrument of collective security, that it might have involved some minute limitation of state sovereignty, that sanctions might under certain circumstances be used to protect the peace. As soon as these implications became clear, the Group's ardor for the League began to evaporate. when the United States refused to join the League, this dwindling ardor turned to hatred. Nevertheless, the Group did not abandon the League at this point. On the contrary, they tightened their grip on it—in order to prevent any "foolish" persons from using the vague implications of the Covenant in an effort to make the League an instrument of collective security. The Group were determined that if any such effort as this were made, they would prevent it and, if necessary, destroy the League to prevent it. Only they would insist, in such a case, that the League was destroyed not by them but by the persons who tried to use it as an instrument of collective security.

page 209:

• [in Dec 1918 Round Table Curtis wrote:] "... [The League must not be a world government.] If the burden of a world government is placed on it it will fall with a crash." He pointed out it could be a world government only if it represented peoples and not states, and if it had the power to tax those peoples. It should simply be an interstate conference of the world.

page 215:

• The ability of the Milner Group to mobilize public opinion in regard to the League of Nations is almost beyond belief. It was not a simple task, since they were simultaneously trying to do two things: on the one hand, seeking to build up popular opinion in favor of the League so that its work could be done more effectively; and, at the same time, seeking to prevent influential people from using the League as an instrument of world government before popular opinion was ready for a world government. In general, The Round Table and The Times were used for the latter purpose, while the League of Nations Union and a strange assortment of outlets, such as Chatham House, Toynbee Hall, extension courses at Oxford, adult-education courses in London, International Conciliation in the United States, the Institute of Politics at Williamstown, the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation at Paris, the Geneva School of International Studies and the Graduate Institute of International Studies at Geneva, and the various branches of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, were used for the former purpose. The Milner Group did not control all of these. Their influence was strong in all of them, and, since the influence of J. P. Morgan and Company was also strong in most of them and since Morgan and the Group were pursuing a parallel policy on this issue, the Group were usually able to utilize the resources of these various organizations when they wished.

page 230:

• On 21 February 1938, during the Austrian crisis, John Simon said in the House of Commons, "Great Britain has never given special guarantees regarding Austrian independence." Six days later, Chamberlain said: "We must not try to delude small nations into thinking that they will be protected by the League against aggression and acting accordingly when we know that nothing of the kind can be expected." Five days after the seizure of Austria on 12 March 1938, the Soviet Union sent Britain a proposal for an international conference to stop aggression. The suggestion was rejected at once, and, on 20 March 1938, Chamberlain wrote to his sister: "I have therefore abandoned any idea of giving guarantees to Czechoslovakia or to the French in connection with her obligation to that country."

page 232:

• The Round Table, speaking for the inner circle of the Milner Group, was not nearly so anti-Russian as the Chamberlain group. Accordingly, it never regarded a collision between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as a practical solution of Europe's problems. It did accept the idea of a four-power pact to exclude Russia from Europe, but it was not willing to allow Germany to expand eastward as she wished.

page 235:

• From this point onward (early 1938), the Milner Group increasingly emphasized the necessity for building up this Oceanic bloc. In England the basic propaganda work was done through The Round Table and Lionel Curtis, while in the United States it was done through the Rhodes Scholarship organization, especially through Clarence Streit and Frank Aydelotte.

• 1938, with the title The Commonwealth of God. The first two volumes of this work are nothing more than a rehash and expansion of the older work The Commonwealth of Nations (1916). By a superficial and frequently erroneous rewriting of world history, the author sought to review the evolution of the "commonwealth" idea and to show that all of history leads to its fulfillment and achievement in federation. Ultimately, this federation will be worldwide, but en route it must pass through stages, of which the chief is federation of the English-speaking peoples.

• That the chief obstacle to this union was to be found in men's minds was perfectly clear to Curtis. To overcome this obstacle, he put his faith in propaganda, and the chief instruments of that propaganda, he said, must be the churches and the universities. He said nothing about the Milner Group, but, considering Curtis's position in this Group and that Lothian and others agreed with him, it is not surprising that the chief source of this propaganda is to be found in those agencies controlled by the Group.(12)

page 236:

• In the United States, the chief source of this propaganda was the organization known as Union Now, which was an offshoot of the Rhodes Scholarship network. The publicized originator of the idea was Clarence Streit, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 1920 and League of Nations correspondent of The New York Times in 1929-1938.

• ...president of Swarthmore College was Frank Aydelotte, the most important member of the Milner Group in the United States since the death of George Louis Beer. Dr. Aydelotte was one of the original Rhodes Scholars, attending Brasenose in 1905-1907. He was president of Swarthmore from 1921 to 1940; has been American secretary to the Rhodes Trustees since 1918; has been president of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars since 1930; has been a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation since 1922; and was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations for many years. In 1937, along with three other members of the Milner Group, he received from Oxford (and Lord Halifax) the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law.

• // Streit wrote Union Now.

• it [Union Now] was hailed by Lord Lothian in an interview with the press. Shortly afterwards, Lothian gave it a favorable review in the Christian Science Monitor of 6 May

• The book was distributed to educational institutions in various places by the Carnegie Foundation and was greeted in the June 1939 issue of The Round Table as "the only way." This article said: "There is, indeed, no other cure.... In The Commonwealth of God Mr. Lionel Curtis showed how history and religion pointed down the same path. It is one of the great merits of Mr. Streit's book that he translates the general theme into a concrete plan, which he presents, not for the indefinite hereafter, but for our own generation, now." In the September 1939 issue, in an article headed "Union: Oceanic or Continental," The Round Table contrasted Streit's plan with that for European union offered by Count Coudenhove-Kalergi and gave the arguments for both.

page 237:

• To frighten the British people, the British government circulated stories about the strength of the German Army and Air Force which were greatly exaggerated; they implied that Germany would use poison gas at once and from the air, although this was quite untrue; they distributed gas masks and madly built trenches in London parks, although the former were needless and the latter worthless.

• // Similar to the cold war USA tactics of scaring children with worthless bomb drills.

page 240:

• There can be little doubt that the Milner Group knew of these anti-Nazi plots within Germany. Several of the plotters were former Rhodes Scholars and were in touch with members of the inner circle of the Milner Group in the period up to 1943, if not later. One of the leaders of the anti-Hitler plotters in Germany, Helmuth von Moltke, was probably a member of the Milner Group as well as intellectual leader of the conspirators in Germany.

page 241:

• It is not without significance that one of the chief projects which the plotters hoped to further in post-Hitler German foreign policy was a "federation of Europe in a commonwealth not unlike the British Empire."(16)

page 242:

• The Times and in The Round Table. In the June 1938 issue of the latter, we read: "Czechoslovakia is apparently the danger spot of the next few months. It will require high statesmanship on all sides to find a peaceful and stable solution of the minorities problem. The critical question for the next six months is whether the four great Powers represented by the Franco-British entente and the Rome-Berlin axis can make up their minds that they will not go to war with one another and that they must settle outstanding problems by agreement together." In this statement, three implications are of almost equal importance. These are the time limit of "six months," the exclusion of both Czechoslovakia and Russia from the"agreement," and the approval of the four-power pact.

page 243:

• Until federation abolishes sovereignty and creates a true world government amenable to public opinion, the nations will continue to live in anarchy, whatever their contractual obligations may be; and under conditions of anarchy it is power and not public opinion that counts....

page 244:

• The short-run goal of the Milner Group still remained a Continent dominated by Hitler between an Oceanic Bloc on the west and the Soviet Union on the east.

page 246:

• Lord Lothian's speech of 25 October 1939, made in New York, that "The establishment of a true reign of law between nations is the only remedy for war."

page 248:

• One of these offers revolved around a semi-official economic agreement under which British and German industrialists would form cartel agreements in all fields to fix prices of their products and divide up the world's market. The Milner Group apparently objected to this on the grounds that it was aimed, or could be aimed, at the United States.

Chapter 13: The Second World War, 1939-1945

page 252:

• The Milner Group played a considerable role in the Second World War, not scattered throughout the various agencies associated with the great struggle, but concentrated in four or five chief fiefs. Among these were: (1) the Research and Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office; (2) the British Embassy in Washington; (3) the Ministry of Information; and (4) those agencies concerned with economic mobilization and economic reconstruction. Considering the age of most of the inner core of the Milner Group during the Second World War (the youngest, Lothian, was 57 in 1939; Hichens was 65; Brand was 61; Dawson was 65; and Curtis was 67), they accomplished a great deal. Unable, in most cases, to serve themselves, except in an advisory capacity, they filled their chief fiefs with their younger associates. In most cases, these were recruited from All Souls, but occasionally they were obtained elsewhere.

page 255:

• Yale began, in 1948, to publish its new quarterly review called World Politics.

page 257:

• The disasters into which the Group directed British policy in the years before 1940 are not such as to allow their prestige to continue undiminished. In imperial affairs, their policies have been largely a failure, with Ireland gone, India divided and going, Burma drifting away, and even South Africa more distant than at any time since 1910. In foreign policy their actions almost destroyed western civilization, or at least the European center of it. The Times has lost its influence; The Round Table seems lifeless.

• // With the luxury of 40 or 50 years since the writing, I can unequivocally say that their plans have most certainly come to fruition. The United Nations and the "international norms" that are bandied about so much, not to mention the European Union and the Euro, have allowed for places like India and South Africa to appear independent, when they are simply cogs in the every growing machine that is world government.

• // Even this world government is looking like it might be faltering with Russia and China taking on larger roles, but it seems to me like it is simply the next step toward a decentralized world government. The UN and EU have acted as scaffolding on which these new global ideas have been build and adopted.

Appendix - A Tentative Roster of the Milner Group

• // brackets denote lack of concrete evidence.

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A. The Society of the Elect

Cecil John Rhodes
Nathan Rothschild, Baron Rothschild
Sir Harry Johnston
William T. Stead
Reginald Brett, Viscount Esher
Alfred Milner, Viscount Milner
B. F. Hawksley
Thomas Brassey, Lord Brassey
Edmund Garrett
[Sir Edward Cook]
Alfred Beit
Sir Abe Bailey
Albert Grey, Earl Grey
Archibald Primrose, Earl of Rosebery
Arthur James Balfour
Sir George R. Parkin
Philip Lyttelton Gell
Sir Henry Birchenough
Sir Reginald Sothern Holland
Arthur Lionel Smith
Herbert A. L. Fisher
William Waldegrave Palmer, Earl of Selborne
[Sir Alfred Lyttelton]
Sir Patrick Duncan
Robert Henry Brand, Baron Brand
Philip Kerr, Marquess of Lothian
Lionel Curtis
Geoffrey Dawson
Edward Grigg, Baron Altrincham
Jan C. Smuts
Leopold Amery
Waldorf Astor, Viscount Astor
Nancy Astor, Lady Astor

B. The Association of Helpers

1. The Inner Circle

Sir Patrick Duncan
Robert Henry Brand, Baron Brand
Philip Kerr, Marquess of Lothian
Lionel Curtis
William L. Hichens
Geoffrey Dawson
Edward Grigg, Baron Altrincham
Herbert A. L. Fisher
Leopold Amery
Richard Feetham
Hugh A. Wyndham
Sir Dougal Malcolm
Basil Williams
Basil Kellett Long
Sir Abe Bailey
Jan C. Smuts
Sir William Marris
James S. Meston
Baron Meston
Malcolm Hailey
Baron Hailey
Flora Shaw
Lady Lugard
Sir Reginald Coupland
Waldorf Astor, Viscount Astor
Nancy Astor, Lady Astor
Maurice Hankey, Baron Hankey
Arnold J. Toynbee
Laurence F. Rushbrook Williams
Henry Vincent Hodson
Vincent Todd Harlow

2. The Outer Circle

John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir
Sir Fabian Ware
Sir Alfred Zimmern
Gilbert Murray
Robert Cecil, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
Sir James W. Headlam-Morley
Frederick J. N. Thesiger, Viscount Chelmsford
Sir Valentine Chirol
Edward F. L. Wood, Earl of Halifax
Sir [James] Arthur Salter
Sir Arthur H. D. R. Steel-Maitland
William G. A. Ormsby-Gore, Baron Harlech
Dame Edith Lyttelton, Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton
Frederick Lugard, Baron Lugard
Sir [Leander] Starr Jameson
Henry W. C. Davis
John A. Simon, Viscount Simon
Samuel J. G. Hoare, Viscount Templewood
Maurice P. A. Hankey, Baron Hankey
Wilson Harris
[Francis Clarke]
William G. S. Adams
[William K. Hancock]
Ernest L. Woodward
Sir Harold Butler
Kenneth N. Bell
Sir Donald B. Somervell
Sir Maurice L. Gwyer
Charles R. S. Harris
Sir Edward R. Peacock
Sir Cyril J. Radcliffe
John W. Wheeler-Bennett
Robert J. Stopford
Robert M. Barrington-Ward
[Kenneth C. Wheare]
Edward H. Carr
Malcolm MacDonald
Godfrey Elton, Baron Elton
Sir Neill Malcolm
Freeman Freeman-Thomas, Viscount Willingdon
Isaiah Berlin
Roger M. Makins
Sir Arthur Willert
Ivison S. Macadam

3. Members in other countries

a. Canada

Arthur J. Glazebrook
Sir George Parkin
Vincent Massey
George P. de T. Glazebrook
Percy Corbett [Sir Joseph Flavelle]

b. United States

George Louis Beer
Frank Aydelotte
Jerome Greene
[Clarence Steit]

c. South Africa

Jan C. Smuts
Sir Patrick Duncan
Sir Abe Bailey
Basil K. Long
Richard Feetham
[Sir James Rose-Innes]

d. Australia

Sir Thomas Bavin
Sir Frederic Eggleston
[Dudley D. Braham]

e. New Zealand

James Allen
William Downie Stewart
Arthur R. Atkinson

f. Germany

Helmuth James von Moltke
Adam von Trott zu Solz