go to Australia on behalf of the League to make speeches in support of imperial
federation. We have already indicated that Milner in 1893 approached Parkin in behalf of
a mysterious and unnamed group of wealthy imperialists, and, some time later, Milner
and Brassey signed a contract with Parkin to pay him £450 a year for three years to
propagandize for imperial federation. Since this project was first broached to Parkin by
Milner alone and since the Imperial Federation League was, by 1893, in process of
dissolution, I think we have the right to assume that the unnamed group for which Milner
was acting was the Rhodes secret society. If so, Brassey must have been introduced to the
scheme sometime between 1891 and 1893. This last interpretation is substantiated by the
numerous and confidential letters which passed between Milner and Brassey in the years
which followed. Some of these will be mentioned later. It is worth mentioning here that
Brassey was appointed Governor of Victoria in 1895 and played an important role in the
creation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1900.
The propaganda work which Parkin did in the period 1893-1895 in fulfillment of this
agreement was part of a movement that was known at the time as "Seeley's lecturers."
This movement was probably all that ensued from the fifth portion of the "ideal
arrangement"—that is, from the projected college under Professor Seeley.
Another person who was brought into the secret society was Edmund Garrett, the
intimate friend of Stead, Milner, and Rhodes, who was later used by Milner as a go-
between for communications with the other two. Garrett had been sent to South Africa
originally by Stead while he was still on the Pall Mall Gazette in 1889. He went there for
a second time in 1895 as editor of the Cape Times, the most influential English-language
newspaper in South Africa. This position he undoubtedly obtained from Stead and
Rhodes. Sir Frederick Whyte, in his biography of Stead, says that Rhodes was the chief
proprietor of the paper. Sir Edward Cook, however, the biographer of Garrett and a man
who was very close to the Rhodes secret society, says that the owners of the Cape Times
were Frederick York St. Leger and Dr. Rutherfoord Harris. This is a distinction without
much difference, since Dr. Harris, as we shall see, was nothing more than an agent of
Rhodes.
In South Africa, Garrett was on most intimate personal relationships with Rhodes.
Even when the latter was Prime Minister of Cape Colony, Garrett used to communicate
with him by tossing pebbles at his bedroom window in the middle of the night. Such a
relationship naturally gave Garrett a prestige in South Africa which he could never have
obtained by his own position or abilities. When High Commissioner Hercules Robinson
drew up a proclamation after the Jameson Raid, he showed it to Garrett before it was
issued and cut out a paragraph at the latter's insistence.
Garrett was also on intimate terms with Milner during his period as High
Commissioner after 1897. In fact, when Rhodes spoke of political issues in South Africa,
he frequently spoke of "I myself, Milner, and Garrett." We have already quoted an
occasion on which he used this expression to Stead in 1900. Milner's relationship with
Garrett can be gathered from a letter which he w rote to Garrett in 1899, after Garrett had
to leave South Africa to go to a sanatorium in Germany: "It is no use protesting against
the decrees of fate, nor do I want to say too much on what Rhodes calls ‘the personal.’
But this really was a great blow to me, and I have never quite got over your breakdown
and departure, never quite felt the same man since, either politically or privately. . . . Dear
Friend, I miss you fearfully, always shall miss you. So does this young country."'(12)
I think we are justified in assuming that a man as intimate as this with Rhodes and
Milner, who was used in such confidential and important ways by both of them, who
knew of the plans for the Johannesburg revolt and the Jameson Raid before they
occurred, and who knew of the Rhodes secret society, was an initiate. That Garrett knew
of the Jameson plot beforehand is recorded by Sir Edward Cook in his biography. That
Garrett knew of the secret society is recorded by Garrett himself in an article which he
published in the Contemporary Review after Rhodes's death in 1902. The words in which
Garrett made this last revelation are of some significance. He spoke of "that idea of a sort
of Jesuit-like Secret Society for the Promotion of the Empire, which for long he hugged
and which—minus, perhaps, the secrecy and the Jesuitry—I know to have had a good
deal of fascination for others among our contemporaries not reckoned visionaries by the
world. "
We have said that Garrett was used by Milner as an intermediary with both Rhodes
and Stead. The need for such an intermediary with Rhodes arose from Milner's feeling
that it was politically necessary to conceal the intimacy of their relationship. As Rhodes
told Stead, speaking of Milner, on 10 April 1900, "I have seen very little of him. He said
to me, 'The less you and I are seen together the better.' Hence, I never invited him to
Groote Schuur."(13)
Garrett was also used by Milner as an intermediary with Stead after the latter became
alienated from the initiates because of his opposition to the Boer War. One example of
this is of some significance. In 1902 Milner made a trip to England without seeing Stead.
On 12 April of that year, Garrett, who had seen Milner, wrote the following letter to
Stead: "I love the inner man, Stead, in spite of all differences, and should love him if he
damned me and my policy and acts ten times more. So does Milner—in the inner court—
we agreed when he was over—only there are temporary limitations and avoidances.... He
told me why he thought on the whole he'd better not see you this time. I quite understood,
though I'm not sure whether you would, but I'm sure you would have liked the way in
which, without any prompting at all, he spoke of his personal feelings for you being
unaffected by all this. Someday let us hope, all this tyranny will be overpass, and we shall
be able to agree again, you and Milner, Cook and I." It is possible that the necessity for
Milner to overrule his personal feelings and the mention of "the inner court" may be
oblique references to the secret society. In any case, the letter shows the way in which
Stead was quietly pushed aside in that society by its new leader.
Another prominent political figure who may have been an initiate in the period
before 1902 is Lord Rosebery. Like his father-in-law, Lord Rothschild, who was an
initiate, Rosebery was probably not a very active member of The Society of the
Elect, although for quite different reasons. Lord Rothschild held aloof because to
him the whole project was incomprehensible and unbusinesslike; Lord Rosebery
held aloof because of his own diffident personality and his bad physical health.
However, he cooperated with the members of the society and was on such close personal
relationships with them that he probably knew of the secret society. Brett was one of his
most intimate associates and introduced him to Milner in 1885. As for Rhodes,
Rosebery's official biographer, the Marquess of Crewe, says that he "both liked and
admired Cecil Rhodes who was often his guest." He made Rhodes a Privy Councillor,
and Rhodes made him a trustee of his will. These things, and the fact that the initiates