expert at the Paris Peace Conference (1918-1919), and editor of the Dictionary of
National Biography (1920-1928). In 1925 he returned from Manchester to Oxford as
Regius Professor of Modern History in succession to Sir Charles Firth, became a Fellow
of Oriel College, Curator of the Bodleian, and was named by the International Labour
Office (that is, by Harold Butler) as the British representative on the Blanesburgh
Committee on Factory Legislation in Europe. He edited the report of this committee. In
addition to his very valuable studies in medieval history, Davis also wrote The History of
the Blockade (1920) and sections of the famous History of the Peace Conference, edited by Harold Temperley (also a member of the Group).
Sir Maurice Linford Gwyer was a Fellow of All Souls for fourteen years after
graduating from Christ Church (1902-1916). During this time he was admitted to the bar,
practiced law, was lecturer in Private International Law at Oxford (1912-1915) and
solicitor to the Insurance Commissioners (1902-1916). He was then legal adviser to the
Ministry of Shipping (1917-1919) and to the Ministry of Health (1919-1926), then
Procurator-General and Solicitor to the Treasury (1926-1933), First Parliamentary
Counsel to the Treasury (1934-1937), and Chief Justice of India (1937-1943). He was
first British delegate to The Hague Conference on Codification of International Law
(1930) and a member of the Indian States Inquiry Committee (1932). He edited the later
editions of Anson's Law of Contract and Law and Custom of the Constitution.
William Keith Hancock, of Australia and Balliol, was a member of All Souls from
1924. He was Professor of History at Adelaide in 1924-1933, Professor of Modern
History at Birmingham in 1934-1944, and is now Chichele Professor of Economic
History at Oxford. He wrote the three-volume work Survey of British Commonwealth
Affairs, published by Chatham House in 1937-1942.
John Morley (Lord Morley of Blackburn) was a member of the Cecil Bloc rather than
of the Milner Group, but in one respect, his insistence on the inadvisability of using force
and coercion within the Empire, a difference which appeared most sharply in regard to
Ireland, he was more akin to the Group than to the Bloc. He was a close friend of Lord
Salisbury, Lord Esher, and Joseph Chamberlain and was also a friend of Milner's, since
they worked together on the Pall Mall Gazette in 1882-1883. He had close personal and
family connections with H. A. L. Fisher, the former going back to a vacation together in
1892 and the latter based on Morley's lifelong friendship with Fisher's uncle, Leslie
Stephen. It was probably through Fisher's influence that Morley was elected a Fellow of
All Souls in 1904. He had shown that his heart was in the right place, so far as the Milner
Group was concerned, in 1894, when Gladstone retired from the leadership of the Liberal
Party and Morley used his influence to give the vacant position to Lord Rosebery. Morley
was Secretary of State for India in the period 1905-1910, putting through the famous
Morley-Minto reforms in this period. In this he made use of a number of members of the
Milner and All Souls groups. The bill itself was put through the House of Commons by a
member of All Souls, Thomas R. Buchanan (1846-1911), who was shifted from Financial
Secretary in the War Office under Haldane to Under Secretary in the India Office for the
purpose (1908-1909).(6)
James Arthur Salter (Sir Arthur since 1922) was born in Oxford and lived there until
he graduated from Brasenose in 1904. He went to work for the Shipping Department of
the Admiralty in the same year and worked in this field for most of the next fourteen
years. In 1917 he was Director of Ship Requisitioning and later secretary and chairman of
the Allied Maritime Transport Executive. He was on the Supreme Economic Council in
1919 and became general secretary to the Reparations Commission for almost three years
(1920- 1922). He was Director of the Economic and Finance Section of the League of
Nations in 1919-1922 and again in 1922-1931. In the early 1930s he went on several
missions to India and China and served on various committees concerned with railroad
matters. He was Gladstone Professor of Political Theory and Institutions in 1934-1944,
Member of Parliament from Oxford University after 1937, Parliamentary Secretary to the
Ministry of Shipping in 1939-1941, head of the British Merchant Shipping Mission in
America in 1941-1943, Senior Deputy Director General of UNRRA in 1944, and
Chancellor to the Duchy of Lancaster in 1945.
Donald B. Somervell (Sir Donald since 1933) has been a Fellow of All Souls since he
graduated from Magdalen in 1911, although he took his degree in natural science. He
entered Parliament as a Unionist in 1931 and almost at once began a governmental
career. He was Solicitor General (1933-1936), Attorney General (1936-1945), and Home
Secretary (1945), before becoming a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1946. His brother, D. C.
Somervell, edited the one-volume edition of Toynbee's A Study of History for Chatham
House.
Sir Arthur Ramsay Steel-Maitland was a Fellow of All Souls for the seven years
following his graduation from Balliol in 1900. He was unsuccessful as a candidate for
Parliament in 1906, but was elected as a Conservative from Birmingham four years later.
He was Parliamentary Under Secretary for Colonies (1915-1917), Joint Parliamentary
Under Secretary in the Foreign Office and Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade
in the capacity of head of the Department of Overseas Trade (1917-1919), and Minister
of Labour (1924-1929).
Benedict H. Sumner was a Fellow of All Souls for six years (1919-1928) and a Fellow
of Balliol for twenty (1925-1944), before he became Warden of All Souls (1945). During
the First World War, he was with Military Intelligence and afterwards with the British
delegation at the Peace Conference. During the Second World War, he was attached to
the Foreign Office (1939-1942). He is an authority on Russian affairs, and this probably
played an important part in his selection as Warden of All Souls in 1945.
Laurence F. R. Williams went to Canada as lecturer in medieval history at Queen's
University after leaving Balliol (1913-1914). Immediately on becoming a Fellow of All
Souls in 1914, he went to India as Professor of Indian History at the University of
Allahabad. In 1918 and in 1919 he was busy on constitutional reforms associated with the
Government of India Act of 1919, working closely with Sir William Marris. He then
became director of the Central Bureau of Information for six years (1920-1926) and
secretary to the Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes for four (1926-1930). He was, in
this period, also secretary to the Indian Delegation at the Imperial Conference of 1923,
political secretary to the Maharaja of Patiala, substitute delegate to the Assembly of the
League of Nations (1925), member of the Legislative Assembly (1924-1925), joint
director of the Indian Princes' Special Organization (1929-1931), adviser to the Indian
States delegation at the Round Table Conference of 1930-1931, and delegate to the
Round Table Conference of 1932. In the 1930s he was Eastern Service director of the
BBC (under H. A. L. Fisher), and in the early days of the Second World War was adviser
on Middle East Affairs to the Ministry of Information. Since 1944 he has been in the