insurance that Hitler would not continue to use force after he obtained what he deserved
in justice.
These arguments of Lothian's were all supported by the Group in other ways. The
Round Table in its leading articles of March 1938, September 1938, and March 1939
demanded "national service." In the leading article of June 1938 it repeated all Lothian's
arguments in somewhat different words. These arguments could be summed up in the
slogan "appeasement and rearmament." Then it added:
“Until the nations can be brought to the two principles of collective security already
described, the best security for peace is that the world should be divided into zones within
each of which one of the great armed Powers, or a group of them, is clearly preponderant,
and in which therefore other Powers do not seek to interfere. Then there may be peace for
a time. The peace of the 19th century rested on the fact that the supremacy of the British
Nà: kept the whole oceanic area free from general war. . . . The vital question now arises
whether in that same zone, to which France and Scandinavia must be added, it is not
possible, despite the immense armaments of central Europe, Russia, and the Far East, for
the democracies to create security, stability, and peace in which liberal institutions can
survive. The oceanic zone in fact constitutes the one part of the world in which it is
possible today to realize the ideals of the League of Nations.”
From this point onward (early 1938), the Milner Group increasingly emphasized the
necessity for building up this Oceanic bloc. In England the basic propaganda work was
done through The Round Table and Lionel Curtis, while in the United States it was done
through the Rhodes Scholarship organization, especially through Clarence Streit and
Frank Aydelotte. In England, Curtis wrote a series of books and articles advocating a new
federal organization built around the English-speaking countries. The chief work of this
nature was his Civitas Dei, which appeared in three volumes in 1934-1937. A one-
volume edition was issued in 1938, with the title The Commonwealth of God. The first
two volumes of this work are nothing more than a rehash and expansion of the older work
The Commonwealth of Nations (1916). By a superficial and frequently erroneous
rewriting of world history, the author sought to review the evolution of the
"commonwealth" idea and to show that all of history leads to its fulfillment and
achievement in federation. Ultimately, this federation will be worldwide, but en route it
must pass through stages, of which the chief is federation of the English-speaking
peoples. Writing early in 1937, he advocated that the League of Nations be destroyed by
the mass resignation of the British democracies. These should then take the initiative in
forming a new league, also at Geneva, which would have no power to enforce anything
but would merely form a kind of international conference. Since it would be foolish to
expect any federation to evolve from any such organization as this, a parallel, but quite
separate, effort should be made to create an international commonwealth, based on the
example of the United States in 1788. This international commonwealth would differ
from the League of Nations in that its members would yield up part of their sovereignty,
and the central organization would function directly on individuals and not merely on
states. This international commonwealth would be formed, at first, only of those states
that have evolved furthest in the direction of obtaining a commonwealth form of
government for themselves. It will be recalled that this restriction on membership was
what Curtis had originally advocated for the League of Nations in The Round Table of
December 1918. According to Curtis, the movement toward the Commonwealth of God
can begin by the union of any two national commonwealths, no matter how small. He
suggested New Zealand and Australia, or these two and Great Britain. Then the
international commonwealth could be expanded to include India, Egypt, Holland,
Belgium, Scandinavia, France, Canada, the United States, and Ireland. That the chief
obstacle to this union was to be found in men's minds was perfectly clear to Curtis. To
overcome this obstacle, he put his faith in propaganda, and the chief instruments of that
propaganda, he said, must be the churches and the universities. He said nothing about the
Milner Group, but, considering Curtis's position in this Group and that Lothian and others
agreed with him, it is not surprising that the chief source of this propaganda is to be found
in those agencies controlled by the Group. (12)
In the United States, the chief source of this propaganda was the organization known
as Union Now, which was an offshoot of the Rhodes Scholarship network. The
publicized originator of the idea was Clarence Streit, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 1920
and League of Nations correspondent of The New York Times in 1929-1938. Mr. Streit's
plan, which was very similar to Curtis's, except that it included fifteen countries to begin
with, was first made public at a series of three lectures at Swarthmore College in
February 1939. Almost simultaneously his book, Union Now, was launched and received
wide publicity. Before we look at that, we might mention that at the time the president of
Swarthmore College was Frank Aydelotte, the most important member of the Milner
Group in the United States since the death of George Louis Beer. Dr. Aydelotte was one
of the original Rhodes Scholars, attending Brasenose in 1905-1907. He was president of
Swarthmore from 1921 to 1940; has been American secretary to the Rhodes Trustees
since 1918; has been president of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars since
1930; has been a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation since 1922; and was a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations for many years. In 1937, along with three other members of
the Milner Group, he received from Oxford (and Lord Halifax) the honorary degree of
Doctor of Civil Law. The other three recipients who were members of the Group were
Brand, Ormsby-Gore, and Sir Herbert Baker, the famous architect.
As soon as Streit's book was published, it was hailed by Lord Lothian in an interview
with the press. Shortly afterwards, Lothian gave it a favorable review in the Christian
Science Monitor of 6 May 1939. The book was distributed to educational institutions in
various places by the Carnegie Foundation and was greeted in the June 1939 issue of The
Round Table as "the only way." This article said: "There is, indeed, no other cure.... In
The Commonwealth of God Mr. Lionel Curtis showed how history and religion pointed
down the same path. It is one of the great merits of Mr. Streit's book that he translates the
general theme into a concrete plan, which he presents, not for the indefinite hereafter, but
for our own generation, now." In the September 1939 issue, in an article headed "Union:
Oceanic or Continental," The Round Table contrasted Streit's plan with that for European
union offered by Count Coudenhove-Kalergi and gave the arguments for both.
While all this was going on, the remorseless wheels of appeasement were grinding out
of existence one country after another. The fatal loss was Czechoslovakia. This disaster