draw up four reports as follows: (a) the existing situation; (b) a system involving
complete independence for the Dominions; (c) a plan to secure unity of foreign relations
by each Dominion's following a policy independent from but parallel to that of Britain
itself; (d) a plan to reduce the United Kingdom to a Dominion and create a new imperial
government over all the Dominions. Since the last was what Curtis wanted, he decided to
write that report himself and allow supporters of each of the other three to write theirs. A
thousand copies of this speech were circulated among the groups throughout the world.
When the war broke out in 1914, the reports were not finished, so it was decided to
print the four sections already sent out, with a concluding chapter. A thousand copies of
this, with the title Project of a Commonwealth, were distributed among the groups. Then
a popular volume on the subject, with the title The Problem of the Commonwealth and
Curtis's name as editor, was published (May 1916). Two months later, the earlier work
(Project) was published under the title The Commonwealth of Nations, again with Curtis
named as editor. Thus appeared for the first time in public the name which the British
Empire was to assume thirty-two years later. In the September 1916 issue of The Round
Table, Kerr published a statement on the relationship of the two published volumes to the
Round Table Groups. Because of the paper shortage in England, Curtis in 1916 went to
Canada and Australia to arrange for the separate publication of The Problem of the
Commonwealth in those countries. At the same time he set up new Round Table Groups
in Australia and New Zealand. Then he went to India to begin serious work on Indian
reform. From this emerged the Government of India Act of 1919, as we shall see later.
By this time Curtis and the others had come to realize that any formal federation of the
Empire was impossible. As Curtis wrote in 1917 (in his Letter to the People of India):
"The people of the Dominions rightly aspire to control their own foreign affairs and yet
retain their status as British citizens. On the other hand, they detest the idea of paying
taxes to any Imperial Parliament, even to one upon which their own representatives sit.
The inquiry convinced me that, unless they sent members and paid taxes to an Imperial
Parliament, they could not control their foreign affairs and also remain British subjects.
But I do not think that doctrine is more distasteful to them than the idea of having
anything to do with the Government of India."
Reluctantly Curtis and the others postponed the idea of a federated Empire and fell
back on the idea of trying to hold the Empire together by the intangible bonds of common
culture and common outlook. This had originally (in Rhodes and Milner) been a
supplement to the project of a federation. It now became the chief issue, and the idea of
federation fell into a secondary place. At the same time, the idea of federation was
swallowed up in a larger scheme for organizing the whole world within a League of
Nations. This idea had also been held by Rhodes and Milner, but in quite a different
form. To the older men, the world was to be united around the British Empire as a
nucleus. To Curtis, the Empire was to be absorbed into a world organization. This second
idea was fundamentally mystical. Curtis believed: "Die and ye shall be born again." He
sincerely felt that if the British Empire died in the proper way (by spreading liberty,
brotherhood, and justice), it would be born again in a higher level of existence—as a
world community, or, as he called it, a "Commonwealth of Nations." It is not yet clear
whether the resurrection envisaged by Curtis and his associates will occur, or whether
they merely assisted at the crucifixion of the British Empire. The conduct of the new
India in the next few decades will decide this question.
The idea for federation of the Empire was not original with the Round Table Group,
although their writings would indicate that they sometimes thought so. The federation
which they envisaged had been worked out in detail by persons close to the Cecil Bloc
and was accepted by Milner and Rhodes as their own chief goal in life.
The original impetus for imperial federation arose within the Liberal Party as a
reaction against the Little England doctrines that were triumphant in England before
1868. The original movement came from men like John Stuart Mill (whose arguments in
support of the Empire are just like Curtis's) and Earl Grey (who was Colonial Secretary
under Russell in 1846-1852).(10)
This movement resulted in the founding of the Royal Colonial Society (now Royal
Empire Society) in 1868 and, as a kind of subsidiary of this, the Imperial Federation
League in 1884. Many Unionist members of the Cecil Bloc, such as Brassey and
Goschen, were in these organizations. In 1875 F. P. Labilliere, a moving power in both
organizations, read a paper before the older one on "The Permanent Unity of the Empire"
and suggested a solution of the imperial problem by creating a superimposed imperial
legislative body and a central executive over the whole Empire, including the United
Kingdom. Seven years later, in "The Political Organization of the Empire," he divided
authority between this new federal authority and the Dominions by dividing the business
of government into imperial questions, local questions, and questions concerning both
levels. He then enumerated the matters that would be allotted to each division, on a basis
very similar to that later advocated by Curtis. Another speaker, George Bourinot, in 1880,
dealt with "The Natural Development of Canada" in a fashion that sounds exactly like
Curtis.(11)
These ideas and projects were embraced by Milner as his chief purpose in life until,
like Curtis, he came to realize their impracticality. (12) Milner's ideas can be found in his
speeches and letters, especially in two letters of 1901 to Brassey and Parkin. Brassey had
started a campaign for imperial federation accompanied by devolution (that is, granting
local issues to local bodies even within the United Kingdom) and the creation of an
imperial parliament to include representatives of the colonies. This imperial parliament
would deal with imperial questions, while local parliaments would deal with local
questions. In pursuit of this project, Brassey published a pamphlet, in December 1900,
called A Policy on Which All Liberals May Unite and sent to Milner an invitation to join
him. Milner accepted in February 1901, saying:
“There are probably no two men who are more fully agreed in their general view of
Imperial policy [than we].... It is clear to me that we require separate organs to deal with
local home business and with Imperial business. The attempt to conduct both through one
so-called Imperial Parliament is breaking down.... Granted that we must have separate
Parliaments for Imperial and Local business, I have been coming by a different road, and
for somewhat different reasons, to the conclusion which you also are heading for, viz:
that it would be better not to create a new body over the so-called Imperial Parliament,
but . . . to create new bodies, or a new body under it for the local business of Great
Britain and Ireland, leaving it to deal with the wider questions of Foreign Policy, the
Defence of the Empire, and the relations of the several parts. In that case, of course, the