Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Until 1907 the overseas portions of the Empire (except India) communicated with the imperial government through the secretary of state for colonies. To supplement this relationship, conferences of the prime ministers of the self-governing colonies were held in London to discuss common problems in 1887, 1897, 1902, 1907, 1911, 1917, and 1918. In 1907 it was decided to hold such conferences every four years, to call the self-governing colonies “Dominions,” and to by-pass the Colonial Secretary by establishing a new Dominion Department. Ruskin’s influence, among others, could be seen in the emphasis of the Imperial Conference of 1911 that the Empire rested on a triple foundation of (1) rule of law, (2) local autonomy, and (3) trusteeship of the interests and fortunes of those fellow subjects who had not yet attained self-government.

The Conference of 1915 could not be held because of the war, but as soon as Milner became one of the four members of the War Cabinet in 1915 his influence began to be felt everywhere. We have mentioned that he established a Cabinet secretariat in 1916-1917 consisting of two protégés of Esher (Hankey and Swinton) and two of his own (his secretaries, Leopold Amery and W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, later Lord Harlech). At the same time he gave the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, a secretariat from the Round Table, consisting of Kerr (Lothian), Grigg (Lord Altrincham), W. G. S. Adams (Fellow of All Souls College), and Astor. He created an Imperial War Cabinet by adding Dominion Prime Ministers (particularly Smuts) to the United Kingdom War Cabinet. He also called the Imperial Conferences of 1917 and 1918 and invited the dominions to establish Resident Ministers in London. As the war drew to a close in 1918, Milner took the office of Colonial Secretary, with Amery as his assistant, negotiated an agreement providing independence for Egypt, set up a new self-government constitution in Malta, sent Curtis to India (where he drew up the chief provisions of the Government of India Act of 1919), appointed Curtis to the post of Adviser on Irish Affairs (where he played an important role in granting dominion status to southern Ireland in 1921), gave Canada permission to establish separate diplomatic relations with the United States (the first minister being the son-in-law of Milner’s closest collaborator on the Rhodes Trust), and called the Imperial Conference of 1921.

During this decade 1919-1929 the Rhodes-Milner group gave the chief impetus toward transforming the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations and launching India on the road to responsible self-government. The creation of the Round Table groups by Milner’s Kindergarten in 1909-1913 opened a new day in both these fields, although the whole group was so secretive that, even today, many close students of the subject are not aware of its significance. These men had formed their intellectual growth at Oxford on Pericle’s funeral oration as described in a book by a member of the group, (Sir) Alfred Zimmern’s The Greek Commonwealth (1911), on Edmund Burke’s On Conciliation with America, on Sir J. B. Seeley’s Growth of British Policy, on A. V. Dicey’s The Law and Custom of the Constitution, and on The New Testament’s “Sermon on the Mount.” The last was especially influential on Lionel Curtis. He had a fanatical conviction that with the proper spirit and the proper organization (local self-government and federalism), the Kingdom of God could be established on earth. He was sure that if people were trusted just a bit beyond what they deserve they would respond by proving worthy of such trust. As he wrote in The Problem of a Commonwealth (1916), “if political power is granted to groups before they are fit they will tend to rise to the need.” This was the spirit which Milner’s group tried to use toward the Boers in 1902-1910, toward India in 1910-1947, and, unfortunately, toward Hitler in 1933-1939. This point of view was reflected in Curtis’s three volumes on world history, published as Civitas Dei in 1938. In the case of Hitler, at least, these high ideals led to disaster; this seems also to be the case in South Africa; whether this group succeeded in transforming the British Empire into a Commonwealth of Nations or merely succeeded in destroying the British Empire is not yet clear, but one seems as likely as the other.

That these ideas were not solely those of Curtis but were held by the group as a whole will be clear to all who study it. When Lord Lothian died in Washington in 1940, Curtis published a volume of his speeches and included the obituary which Grigg had written for The Round Table. Of Lothian this said, “He held that men should strive to build the Kingdom of Heaven here upon this earth, and that the leadership in that task must fall first and foremost upon the English-speaking peoples.” Other attitudes of this influential group can be gathered from some quotations from four books published by Curtis in 1916-1920: “The rule of law as contrasted with the rule of an individual is the distinguishing mark of the Commonwealth. In despotisms government rests on the authority of the ruler or of the invisible and uncontrollable power behind him. In a commonwealth rulers derive their authority from the law, and the law from a public opinion which is competent to change it…. The idea that the principle of the Commonwealth implies universal suffrage betrays an ignorance of its real nature. That principle simply means that government rests on the duty of the citizens to each other, and is to be vested in those who are capable of setting public interests before their own.… The task of preparing for freedom the races which cannot as yet govern themselves is the supreme duty of those who can. It is the spiritual end for which the Commonwealth exists, and material order is nothing except as a means to it.… The peoples of India and Egypt, no less than those of the British Isles and Dominions, must be gradually schooled in the management of their national affairs.… The whole effect of the war [of 1914-1918] has been to bring movements long gathering to a sudden head.… Companionship in arms has fanned … long smouldering resentment against the presumption that Europeans are destined to dominate the rest of the world. In every part of Asia and Africa it is bursting into flames.… Personally I regard this challenge to the long unquestioned claim of the white man to dominate the world as inevitable and wholesome, especially to ourselves.… The world is in the throes which precede creation or death. Our whole race has outgrown the merely national state and, as surely as day follows night or night the day, will pass either to a Commonwealth of Nations or else to an empire of slaves. And the issue of these agonies rests with us.”

In this spirit the Rhodes-Milner group tried to draw plans for a federation of the British Empire in 1909-1916. Gradually this project was replaced or postponed in favor of the commonwealth project of free cooperation. Milner seems to have accepted the lesser aim after a meeting, sponsored by the Empire Parliamentary Association, on July 28, 1916, at which he outlined the project for federation with many references to the writings of Curtis, but found that not one Dominion member present would accept it. At the Imperial Conference of 1917, under his guidance, it was resolved that “any readjustment of constitutional relations … should be based on a full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth and of India as an important portion of the same, should recognize the right of the Dominions and India to an adequate voice in foreign policy and in foreign relations, and should provide effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important matters of common Imperial concern.” Another resolution called for full representation for India in future Imperial Conferences. This was done in 1918. At this second wartime Imperial Conference it was resolved that Prime Ministers of Dominions could communicate directly with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and that each dominion (and India) could establish Resident Ministers in London who would have seats on the Imperial War Cabinet; Milner was the chief motivating force in these developments. He hoped that the Imperial War Cabinet would continue to meet annually after the war but this did not occur.