William Lionel Hichens (1874-1940), on graduating from New College, served briefly
as a cyclist messenger in the Boer War and then joined the Egyptian Ministry of Finance
(1900). After only nine months' service, he was shifted by Milner to South Africa to join
the Kindergarten as Treasurer of Johannesburg. He at once went to England to float a
loan, and on his return (in 1902) was made Colonial Treasurer of the Transvaal and
Treasurer of the Inter-colonial Council. Later he added to his responsibilities the role of
Acting Commissioner of Railways. In 1907 he went to India as a member of the Royal
Commission on Decentralization, following this with a stint as chairman of the Board of
Inquiry into Public Service in Southern Rhodesia (1909). In 1910 he went into private
business, becoming chairman of the board of a great steel firm, Cammell Laird and
Company, but continued as a member of the Milner Group. In 1915, Lloyd George sent
Hichens and Brand to organize the munitions industry of Canada. They set up the
Imperial Munitions Board of Canada, on which Joseph Flavelle (Sir Joseph after 1917)
was made chairman, Charles B. Gordon (Sir Charles after 1917) vice-chairman, and
Brand a member. In later years Hichens was a prominent businessman, one of the great
steel masters of England, director of the Commonwealth Trust Company (which sent
John Dove to India in 1918), of the London Northwestern Railway and its successor, the
London, Midlands and Scottish. 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 and spent years of effort on Birkbeck
College, the graduate evening school of the University of London. He w as chairman of
the board of governors of this institution from 1927 until his death, by a German bomb, in
December of 1940. From 1929 onwards, like most of the inner circle of the Milner
Group, he lived close to Oxford (at North Aston). He married Hermione Lyttelton,
daughter of Sir Neville Lyttelton, niece of Viscount Cobham, and cousin of the present
Oliver Lyttelton.
George Vandeleur Fiddes (Sir George after 1912) had been private secretary to the
Earl of Onslow, father of Lady Halifax, before he was secretary to Milner in South Africa
(1897-1900). Later he was political secretary to the Commander-in-Chief in South Africa
(1900), secretary to the Transvaal administration (1900-1902), Assistant Under Secretary
of State for the Colonies (1909-1916), and Permanent Under Secretary for the Colonies
(1916-1921).
John Hanbury-Williams (Sir John after 1908) had been in the regular army for
nineteen years, chiefly as aide to various colonial administrators, when he was assigned
to Milner as military secretary in 1897. After three years of that, he went to London as
secretary to the Secretary of State for War (St. John Brodrick, 1900-1903), and to Canada
as secretary and military secretary to the Governor-General, Earl Grey (1904-1909). Then
he was brigadier general in charge of administration in Scotland (1909-1914) and on the
General Staff (1914), Chief of the British Military Mission to Russia (1914-1917), in
charge of the British Prisoners of War Department at The Hague (1917-1918) and in
Switzerland (1918), and ended his career in a blaze of glory as a major general, marshal
of the diplomatic corps (1920-1934), and extra equerry to three Kings of England (1934-
1946).
John Buchan was not a member of the inner core of the Milner Group, but was close
to it and was rewarded in 1935 by being raised to a barony as Lord Tweedsmuir and sent
to Canada as Governor-General. He is important because he is (with Lionel Curtis) one of
the few members of the inner circles of the Milner Group who have written about it in
published work. In his autobiography, Pilgrim’s Way (Boston, 1940), he gives a brief
outline of the personnel of the Kindergarten and their subsequent achievements, and a
brilliant analysis of Milner himself. He wrote:
“He (Milner) had received—chiefly from Arnold Toynbee—an inspiration which
centered all his interests on the service of the state. He had the instincts of a radical
reformer joined to a close-textured intellect which reformers rarely possess. He had a
vision of the Good Life spread in a wide commonalty; and when his imagination
apprehended the Empire, his field of vision was marvelously enlarged. So at the outset of
his career he dedicated himself to a cause, putting things like leisure, domestic happiness,
and money-making behind him. In Bacon's phrase he espoused the State. On the
intellectual side he found that which wholly satisfied him in the problems of
administration, when he confronted them as Goschen's secretary, and in Egypt, and at
Somerset House. He had a mind remarkable both for its scope and its mastery over
details—the most powerful administrative intelligence, I think, which Britain has
produced in our day. If I may compare him with others, he was as infallible as Cromer in
detecting the center of gravity in a situation, as brilliant as Alfred Beit in bringing order
out of tangled finances, and he had Curzon's power of keeping a big organization steadily
at work. He was no fanatic—his intelligence was too supreme for that—but in the noblest
sense of the word, he was an enthusiast. He narrowed his interests of set purpose, and this
absorption meant a certain rigidity. He had cut himself off from some of the emollients of
life. Consequently, the perfect administrator was a less perfect diplomatist. . . [Later,
Buchan adds,] I was brought into close touch with a great character. Milner was the most
selfless man I have ever known. He thought of his work and his cause, much of his
colleagues, never of himself. He simply was not interested in what attracts common
ambition. He could not be bribed, for there was nothing on the globe wherewith to bribe
him; or deterred by personal criticism, for he cared not at all for fame; and it would have
been as easy to bully the solar system, since he did not know the meaning of fear.”
The effect Milner had on Buchan was shared by the other members of the
Kindergarten and provided that spiritual bond which animated the Milner Group. This
spirit, found in Toynbee, in Goschen, in Milner, and later in Lionel Curtis, was the
motivating force of the Milner Group until after 1922. Indeed, much of what Buchan says
here about Milner could be applied with slight change to Lionel Curtis, and Curtis, as we
shall see, was the motivating force of the Milner Group from 1910 to 1922. After 1922,
as the influence of Lord Lothian, Lord Astor, and Lord Brand increased and that of
Milner declined, the spirit of the Group became somewhat tarnished but not completely
lost.
Buchan went to Brasenose College, but, as he says himself, "I lived a good deal at
Balliol and my closest friends were of that college." He mentions as his closest friends
Hilaire Belloc, F. E. Smith (the future Lord Birkenhead), John Simon, Leo Amery, T. A.
Nelson, Arthur Salter, Bron Lucas, Edward Wood (the future Lord Halifax), and
Raymond Asquith. Of this list, five were future Fellows of All Souls, and four of these
were important members of the Milner Group.
Buchan went to South Africa in 1901, on Milner's personal invitation, to be his private
secretary, but stayed only two years. Placed in charge of resettlement of displaced Boers