and, later, secretary to the Home Department of the Government of India. In 1916 he
became Inspector General of Police for the United Provinces, and the following year
Joint Secretary to the Government of India. During this period he helped Curtis with the
projected reforms plans, and he was made responsible for carrying them out when the act
was passed in 1919, being made Commissioner of Reforms and Home Secretary to the
Government of India (1919-1921). At the same time he was knighted. After a brief period
as Governor of Assam (1921-1922), he was Governor of the United Provinces (1922-
1928) and a member of the Council of India (1928-1929). After his retirement from
active participation in the affairs of India, he embarked upon a career in academic
administration, which brought him additional honors. He was Principal of Armstrong
College in 1929-1937, Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Durham University
in 1929-1937, a Governor of the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester in 1937-1945.
Marris's son, Adam D. Marris, born in the year his father went to the Transvaal, is
today still a member of the Milner Group. After graduating from Winchester School and
Trinity College, Oxford, he went to work with Lazard Brothers. There is no doubt that
this position was obtained through his father's relationship with Brand, at that time
manager of Lazard. Young Marris remained with the banking firm for ten years, but at
the outbreak of war he joined the Ministry of Economic Warfare for a year. Then he
joined the All Souls Group that was monopolizing the British Embassy in Washington,
originally as First Secretary and later as Counselor to the Embassy (1940-1945). After the
war he was British Foreign Office representative on the Emergency Economic
Committee for Europe as secretary-general. In 1946 he returned to Lazard Brothers.
The older Marris brought into the Milner Group from the Indian Civil Service another
member who has assumed increasing importance in recent years. This was Malcolm
Hailey (since 1936 Lord Hailey). Hailey, a year older than Marris, took the Indian Civil
Service examinations with Marris in 1895 and followed in his footsteps thereafter.
Secretary to the Punjab government in 1907 and Deputy Secretary to the Government of
India the following year, he was a member of the Delhi Durbar Committee in 1912 and
Chief Commissioner in that city for the next eight years. In this post he was one of the
advisers used by Curtis on Indian reforms (1916). After the war Hailey was a member of
the Executive Council of the Viceroy in the Financial and Home Departments (1919-
1924), Governor of Punjab (1924-1928), and Governor of the United Provinces (1928-
1930, 1931-1934). During this last period he was one of the closest advisers to Baron
Irwin (Lord Halifax) during his term as Viceroy (1926-1936). After Hailey left the Indian
Service in 1934, he was used in many important capacities by the Milner Group,
especially in matters concerned with Africa and the mandates. Since this use illustrates to
perfection the skillful way in which the Milner Group has functioned in recent years, it
might be presented here as a typical case.
We have seen that the Milner Group controlled the Rhodes money after Rhodes's
death in 1902. In 1929 the Group invited General Smuts to give the Rhodes Lectures at
Oxford. In these lectures, Smuts suggested that a detailed survey of Africa and its
resources was badly needed. The Royal Institute of International Affairs took up this
suggestion and appointed a committee, with Lord Lothian as chairman, to study the
project. This committee secured the services of the retiring Governor of the United
Provinces to head the survey. Thus Sir Malcolm Hailey became the director of the project
and general editor of the famous African Survey, published in 1938 by the Royal Institute
of International Affairs, with funds obtained from the Carnegie Corporation of New
York. Thus the hand of the Milner Group appears in this work from its first conception to
its final fruition, although the general public, ignorant of the existence of such a group,
would never realize it.
Hailey was also made a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of International
Affairs, a member of the Permanent Mandate Commission of the League of Nations
(1935-1939), chairman of the School of Oriental and African Studies (1941-1945),
chairman of International African Institute, president of the Royal Central Asian Society,
chairman of the Colonial Research Committee, member of the Senate of the University of
London, Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College at Oxford (1939-1947), head of an
economic mission to the Belgian Congo (1941), Romanes Lecturer at Oxford (1941), etc.,
etc.
Along with all these important posts, Lord Hailey found time to write in those fields
with which the Milner Group was most concerned. Among these works we might
mention: Britain and Her Dependencies, The Future of Colonial Peoples, and Great
Britain, India, and the Colonial Dependencies in the Post-War World (all three published
in 1943).
The achievement of the Union of South Africa in 1910 did not mean the end of the
Kindergarten. Instead, it set out to repeat on the imperial scene what it had just
accomplished in South Africa. In this new project the inspiration was the same (Milner),
the personnel was the same (the Kindergarten), the methods were the same (with the
Round Table Groups replacing the 'Closer Union Societies" and The Round Table
replacing The State. But, as befitted a larger problem, additional personnel and additional
funds were required. The additional personnel came largely from New College and All
Souls; the additional funds came from Cecil Rhodes and his associates and All Souls. The
older sources of funds (like Abe Bailey) and influence (like The Times) remained loyal to
the Group and continued to assist in this second great battle of the Milner Croup. As John
Buchan wrote in his autobiography, "Loyalty to Milner and his creed was a strong cement
which endured long after our South African service ended, since the Round Table coterie
in England continued the Kindergarten." Or, if we may call another competent witness,
Lord Oxford and Asquith, writing of Milner after his death, stated: "His personality was
so impressive that he founded a school of able young men who during his lifetime and
since have acknowledged him as their principal political leader.... He was an
Expansionist, up to a point a Protectionist, with a strain in social and industrial matters of
semi-Socialist sentiment."(11)
More convincing, perhaps, than either Buchan or Asquith is the word of the Group
itself. The Round Table, in its issue of September 1935, celebrated its twenty-fifth
anniversary by printing a brief history of the Group. This sketch, while by no means
complete and without mentioning any names of members, provides irrefutable proof of
the existence and importance of the Milner Group. It said, in part:
“By the end of 1913 The Round Table had two aspects. On the one hand, it published
a quarterly review. . . . On the other hand it represented a body of men united in support
of the principle of freedom and enquiring jointly, through the method of group study,
how it could be preserved and expanded in the conditions of the then existing world. In
calling for preparation against the German danger (as it did from the very beginning) The