National Biography and by John Buchan in his autobiography, Pilgrim's Way (Boston,
1940).
4. On the reaction to the speeches of Smuts and Halifax, see J. G. Allen, Editorial
Opinion in the Contemporary British Commonwealth and Empire (Boulder, Colorado,
1946).
5. On this whole section, see "George Louis Beer" in The Round Table (September
1920), X, 933-935; G. L. Beer, African Questions at the Peace Conference (New York
1923), 424-425; H. D. Hall, Mandates, Dependencies, and Trusteeship (Washington,
1948); U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States. Paris Peace
Conference 1919, VI, 727-729. That Kerr wrote Article 22 is revealed in H. V.
Temperley, History of the Peace Conference, V1, 501. That Curtis wrote"Windows of
Freedom" and showed it to Smuts before he wrote his memorandum was revealed by
Curtis in a private communication to Professor Quincy Wright, according to Q. Wright,
Mandates under the League of Nations (Chicago, 1930), 22-23, note 53a.
6. W. K. Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs (3 vols., London, 1940-
1942), 1, 125.
7. S. G. Millen, General Smuts (2 vols., London, 1936), II, 321.
Chapter 10
1. Robert Jemmett Stopford (1895- ) was a banker in London from 1921 to 1928. He
was private secretary to the chairman of the Simon Commission in 1928-193O, a member
of the "Standstill Committee" on German Foreign Debts, a member of the Runciman
Commission to Czechoslovakia in 1938, Liaison Officer for Refugees with the
Czechoslovakian government in 1938-1939, Financial Counselor at the British Embassy
in Washington in 1943-1945.
Chapter 11
1. See Journals and Letters of Reginald, Viscount Esher (4 vols., London 1938), 11,
56, and III, 8.
2. According to David Ogg, Herbert Fisher, 1865-1940 (London, 1947), 96, Fisher,
"helped Mr. Montagu in drafting the Montagu-Chelmsford Report."
3. This memorandum was published, with Lord Halifax's permission, in A. C.
Johnson, Viscount Halifax (New York, 1941).
Chapter 12
1. See the minutes of the Council of Four, as recorded by Sir Maurice Hankey, in U.S.
Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. The
Paris Peace Conference, (Washington, D.C., 1946), VI, 138-160.
2. In Europe in Convalescence (New York, 1922), Alfred Zimmern wrote of October
1918 as follows: "Europe, 'from the Rhine to the Volga' to quote from a memorandum
written at the time, was in solution. It was not a question now of autocratic against
popular government; it was a question of government against anarchy. From one moment
to the next every responsible student of public affairs, outside the ranks of the
professional revolutionaries, however red his previous affiliations may have been, was
turned perforce into a Conservative. The one urgent question was to get Europe back to
work" (80).
In The Round Table for December 1918 (91-92) a writer (probably Curtis) stated:
"Modern civilization is at grips with two great dangers, the danger of organized
militarism . . . and the more insidious, because more pervasive danger of anarchy and
class conflict.... As militarism breeds anarchy, so anarchy in its turn breeds militarism.
Both are antagonistic to civilization."
In The Round Table for June 1919, Brand wrote: "It is out of any surplus on her
foreign balance of trade that Germany can alone—apart from any immediately available
assets—pay an indemnity. Why should Germany be able to do the miracle that France
and Italy cannot do, and not only balance her trade, but have great surpluses in addition to
pay over to her enemies? . . . If, as soon as peace is declared, Germany is given assistance
and credit, she can pay us something, and should pay all she can. But what she can pay in
the next five years must be, we repeat, limited. If, on the other hand, we take away from
her all her liquid assets, and all her working capital, if furthermore, she is bound in future
to make yearly payments to an amount which will in any reasonable human expectation
exceed her capacity, then no one outside of a lunatic asylum will lend her money or
credit, and she will not recover sufficiently to pay anything" —War and National Finance
(London, 1921), 193.
3. The attitude of the Group toward "French militarism" can be found in many places.
Among others, see Smuts's speech of October 1923, quoted below. This attitude was not
shared by Professor Zimmern, whose understanding of Europe in general and of France
in particular was much more profound than that of other members of the Group. In
Europe in Convalescence (158-161) he wrote: "A declaration of British readiness to sign
the Guarantee Treaty would be the best possible answer to French, and it may be added
also to Belgian fears.... He little knows either the French peasant or the French townsman
who thinks that aggression, whether open or concealed, against Germany need ever be
feared from their country.... France feels that the same willfully uncomprehending British
policy, the same aggravatingly self-righteous professions of rectitude, pursue her in the
East, from Danzig to Upper Silesia, as on the Western frontier of her hereditary foe; and
in her nervous exasperation she puts herself ever more in the wrong with her impeccably
cool-headed neighbor."
The Group's attitude toward Bolshevism was clearly stated is an article in The Round
Table for March 1919: "Bolshevism is a tyranny—a revolutionary tyranny if you will—
which is the complete abnegation of democracy and of all freedom of thought and action.
Based on force and terroristic violence, it is simply following out the same philosophy
which was preached by Nietzsche and Haeckel, and which for the past twenty-five years
has glorified the might of force as the final justification of all existence.... In its present
form Bolshevism must either spread or die. It certainly cannot remain stationary. And at
the present moment, it stands as a very real menace to the peace of Europe and to any
successful establishment of a League of Nations. This is the real problem which the
Allied delegates in Paris have now to face." (The italics are mine.)
4. The German emissary, whose name Smuts does not mention, was Walter de Haas,
Ministerialdirektor in the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.
5. When the Labour government was in power in 1924 and the Dawes settlement of
reparations was an accomplished fact, Stresemann was so afraid that D'Abernon would be
replaced as British Ambassador in Berlin that he w rote a letter to Lord Parmoor (father
of Stafford Cripps, Lord President in the Labour Cabinet, and delegate at the time to the
League of Nations), asking that D'Abernon be continued in his post as Ambassador. This
letter, dated 16 September 1924, was answered by Lord Parmoor on 18 September from
Geneva. He said, in part: "I think that in the first instance Lord D'Abernon was persuaded
to go to Berlin especially in relation to financial and economic difficulties, but perhaps he