through devotion to duty and service under freedom and law; their neglect, even scorn,
for economic considerations; and their feeling for the urgent need to persuade others to
accept their point of view in order to allow the Empire to achieve the destiny for which
they yearn.
The Milner Group is a standing refutation of the Marxist or Leninist interpretations of
history or of imperialism. Its members were motivated only slightly by materialistic
incentives, and their imperialism was motivated not at all by the desire to preserve or
extend capitalism. On the contrary their economic ideology, in the early stages at least,
was more socialistic than Manchester in its orientation. To be sure, it was an
undemocratic kind of socialism, which was willing to make many sacrifices to the well-
being of the masses of the people but reluctant to share with these masses political power
that might allow them to seek their own well-being. This socialistic leaning was more
evident in the earlier (or Balliol) period than in the later (or New College) period, and
disappeared almost completely when Lothian and Brand replaced Esher, Grey, and
Milner at the center of the Group. Esher regarded the destruction of the middle class as
inevitable and felt that the future belonged to the workers and an administrative state. He
dedicated his book After the War (1919) to Robert Smillie, President of the Miners'
Federation, and wrote him a long letter on 5 May 1919. On 12 September of the same
year, he wrote to his son, the present Viscount Esher: "There are things that cannot be
confiscated by the Smillies and Sidney Webbs. These seem to me the real objectives."
Even earlier, Arnold Toynbee was a socialist of sorts and highly critical of the current
ideology of liberal capitalism as proclaimed by the high priests of the Manchester School.
Milner gave six lectures on socialism in Whitechapel in 1882 (published in 1931 in The
National Review). Both Toynbee and Milner worked intermittently at social service of a
mildly socialistic kind, an effort that resulted in the founding of Toynbee Hall as a
settlement house in 1884. As chairman of the board of Internal Revenue in 1892-1897,
Milner drew up Sir William Harcourt's budget, which inaugurated the inheritance tax. In
South Africa he was never moved by capitalistic motives, placing a heavy profits tax on
the output of the Rand mines to finance social improvements, and considering with
objective calm the question of nationalizing the railroads or even the mines. Both
Toynbee and Milner were early suspicious of the virtues of free trade—not, however,
because tariffs could provide high profits for industrial concerns but because tariffs and
imperial preference could link the Empire more closely into economic unity. In his later
years, Milner became increasingly radical, a development that did not fit any too well
with the conservative financial outlook of Brand, or even Hichens. As revealed in his
book Questions of the Hour (1923), Milner was a combination of technocrat and guild
socialist and objected vigorously to the orthodox financial policy of deflation, balanced
budget, gold standard, and free international exchange advocated by the Group after
1918. This orthodox policy, inspired by Brand and accepted by The Round Table after
1918, was regarded by Milner as an invitation to depression, unemployment, and the
dissipation of Britain's material and moral resources. On this point there can be no doubt
that Milner was correct. Not himself a trained economist, Milner, nevertheless, saw that
the real problems were of a technical and material nature and that Britain's ability to
produce goods should be limited only by the real supply of knowledge, labor, energy, and
materials and not by the artificial limitations of a deliberately restricted supply of money
and credit. This point of view of Milner's was not accepted by the Group until after 1931,
and not as completely as by Milner even then. The point of view of the Group, at least in
the period 1918-1931, was the point of view of the international bankers with whom
Brand, Hichens, and others were so closely connected. This point of view, which
believed that Britain's prewar financial supremacy could be restored merely by
reestablishing the prewar financial system, with the pound sterling at its prewar parity,
failed completely to see the changed conditions that made all efforts to restore the prewar
system impossible. The Group's point of view is clearly revealed in The Round Table
articles of the period. In the issue of December 1918, Brand advocated the financial
policy which the British government followed, with such disastrous results, for the next
thirteen years. He wrote:
“That nation will recover quickest after the war which corrects soonest any
depreciation in currency, reduces by production and saving its inflated credit, brings
down its level of prices, and restores the free import and export of gold.... With all our
wealth of financial knowledge and experience behind us it should be easy for us to steer
the right path—though it will not be always a pleasant one—amongst the dangers of the
future. Every consideration leads to the view that the restoration of the gold standard—
whether or not it can be achieved quickly—should be our aim. Only by that means can
we be secure that our level of prices shall be as low as or lower than prices in other
countries, and on that condition depends the recovery of our export trade and the
prevention of excessive imports. Only by that means can we provide against and abolish
the depreciation of our currency which, though the [existing] prohibition against dealings
in gold prevents our measuring it, almost certainly exists, and safeguard ourself against
excessive grants of credit.”
He then outlined a detailed program to contract credit, curtail government spending,
raise taxes, curtail imports, increase exports, etc. (15) Hichens, who, as an industrialist
rather than a banker, was not nearly so conservative in financial matters as Brand,
suggested that the huge public debt of 1919 be met by a capital levy, but, when Brand's
policies were adopted by the government, Hichens went along with them and sought a
way out for his own business by reducing costs by "rationalization of production."
These differences of opinion on economic matters within the Group did not disrupt the
Group, because it was founded on political rather than economic ideas and its roots were
to be found in ancient Athens rather than in modern Manchester. The Balliol generation,
from Jowett and Nettleship, and the New College generation, from Zimmern, obtained an
idealistic picture of classical Greece which left them nostalgic for the fifth century of
Hellenism and drove them to seek to reestablish that ancient fellowship of intellect and
patriotism in modern Britain. The funeral oration of Pericles became their political
covenant with destiny, Duty to the state and loyalty to one's fellow citizens became the
chief values of life. But, realizing that the jewel of Hellenism was destroyed by its
inability to organize any political unit larger than a single city, the Milner Group saw the
necessity of political organization in order to insure the continued existence of freedom
and higher ethical values and hoped to be able to preserve the values of their day by
organizing the whole world around the British Empire.
Curtis puts this quite clearly in The Commonwealth of Nations (1916), where he says: