In the first coalition (May 1915), Lansdowne came into the Cabinet without portfolio,
Curzon as Lord Privy Seal, Bonar Law at the Colonial Office, Austen Chamberlain at the
India Office, Balfour at the Admiralty, Selborne as President of the Board of Agriculture,
Walter Long as President of the Local Government Board, Sir Edward Carson as
Attorney General, F. E. Smith as Solicitor General, Lord Robert Cecil as Under Secretary
in the Foreign Office, and Arthur Steel-Maitland as Under Secretary in the Colonial
Office. Of these eleven names, at least nine were members of the Cecil Bloc, and four
were close to the Milner Group (Cecil, Balfour, Steel-Maitland, and Selborne).
In the second coalition government (December 1916), Milner was Minister without
Portfolio; Curzon was Lord President of the Council; Bonar Law, Chancellor of the
Exchequer; Sir Robert Finlay, Lord Chancellor; the Earl of Crawford, Lord Privy Seal;
Sir George Cave, Home Secretary; Arthur Balfour, Foreign Secretary; The Earl of Derby,
War Secretary; Walter Long, Colonial Secretary; Austen Chamberlain, at the India
Office; Sir Edward Carson, First Lord of the Admiralty; Henry E. Duke, Chief Secretary
for Ireland; H. A. L. Fisher, President of the Board of Education; R. E. Prothero,
President of the Board of Agriculture; Sir Albert Stanley, President of the Board of
Trade; F. E. Smith, Attorney General; Robert Cecil, Minister of Blockade; Lord
Hardinge, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs; Steel-Maitland, Under Secretary for the
Colonies; and Lord Wolmer (son of Lord Selborne), assistant director of the War Trade
Department. Of these twenty names, eleven, at least, were members of the Cecil Bloc,
and four or five were members of the Milner Group.
Milner himself became the second most important figure in the government (after
Lloyd George), especially while he was Minister without Portfolio. He was chiefly
interested in food policy, war trade regulations, and postwar settlements. He was
chairman of a committee to increase home production of food (1915) and of a committee
on postwar reconstruction (1916). From the former came the food-growing policy
adopted in 1917, and from the latter came the Ministry of Health set up in 1919. In 1917
he went with Lloyd George to a meeting of the Allied War Council in Rome and from
there on a mission to Russia. He went to France after the German victories in March
1918, and was the principal influence in the appointment of Foch as Supreme
Commander in the west. In April he became Secretary of State for War, and, after the
election of December 1918, became Colonial Secretary. He was one of the signers of the
Treaty of Versailles. Of Milner's role at this time, John Buchan wrote in his memoirs: "In
the Great War from 1916 to 1918, he was the executant of the War Cabinet who
separated the sense from the nonsense in the deliberations of that body, and was
responsible for its chief practical achievements. To him were largely due the fruitful
things which emerged from the struggle, the new status of the Dominions, and the notable
advances in British social policy." In all of these actions Milner remained as unobtrusive
as possible. Throughout this period Milner's opinion of Lloyd George was on the highest
level. Writing twenty years later in The Commonwealth of God, Lionel Curtis recorded
two occasions in which Milner praised Lloyd George in the highest terms. On one of
these he called him a greater war leader than Chatham.
At this period it was not always possible to distinguish between the Cecil Bloc and the
Milner Group, but it is notable that the members of the former who were later clearly
members of the latter were generally in the fields in which Milner was most interested. In
general, Milner and his Group dominated Lloyd George during the period from 1917 to
1921. As Prime Minister, Lloyd George had three members of the Group as his
secretaries (P. H. Kerr, 1916-1922; W. G. S. Adams, 1916-1919; E. W. M. Grigg, 1921-
1922) and Waldorf Astor as his parliamentary secretary (1917-1918). The chief decisions
were made by the War Cabinet and Imperial War Cabinet, whose membership merged
and fluctuated but in 1917-1918 consisted of Lloyd George, Milner, Curzon, and
Smuts—that is, two members of the Milner Group, one of the Cecil Bloc, with the Prime
Minister himself. The secretary to these groups was Maurice Hankey (later a member of
the Milner Group), and the editor of the published reports of the War Cabinet was W. G.
S. Adams. Amery was assistant secretary, while Meston was a member of the Imperial
War Cabinet in 1917. Frederick Liddell (Fellow of All Souls) was made First
Parliamentary Counsel in 1917 and held the position for eleven years, following this post
with a fifteen-year period of service as counsel to the Speaker (1928-1943).(2)
Within the various government departments a somewhat similar situation prevailed.
The Foreign Office in its topmost ranks was held by the Cecil Bloc, with Balfour as
Secretary of State (1916-1919), followed by Curzon (1919-1924). When Balfour went to
the United States on a mission in 1917, he took along Ian Malcolm (brother-in-law of
Dougal Malcolm). Malcolm was later Balfour's private secretary at the Peace Conference
in 1919. In Washington, Balfour had as deputy chairman to the mission R. H. Brand. In
London, as we have seen, Robert Cecil was Parliamentary Under Secretary and later
Assistant Secretary. In the Political Intelligence Department, Alfred Zimmern was the
chief figure. G. W. Prothero was director of the Historical Section and was, like Cecil and
Zimmern, chiefly concerned with the future peace settlement. He was succeeded by J. W.
Headlam-Morley, who held the post of historical adviser from 1920 to his death in 1928.
All of these persons were members of the Cecil Bloc or Milner Group.
In the India Office we need mention only a few names, as this subject will receive a
closer scrutiny later. Austen Chamberlain was Secretary of State in 1915-1917 and gave
the original impetus toward the famous act of 1919. Sir Frederick Duke (a member of the
Round Table Group, whom we shall mention later) was chief adviser to Chamberlain's
successor, E. S. Montagu, and became Permanent Under Secretary in 1920. Sir Malcolm
Seton (also a member of the Round Table Group from 1913 onward) was Assistant Under
Secretary (1919-1924) and later Deputy Under Secretary.
In blockade and shipping, Robert Cecil was Minister of Blockade (1916-1918), while
Reginald Sothern Holland organized the attack on German trade in the earlier period
(1914). M. L. Gwyer was legal adviser to the Ministry of Shipping during the war and to
the Ministry of Health after the war (1917-1926), while J. Arthur Salter (later a
contributor to The Round Table and a Fellow of All Souls for almost twenty years) was
director of ship requisitioning in 1917 and later secretary to the Allied Maritime
Transport Council and chairman of the Allied Maritime Transport Executive (1918).
After the war he was a member of the Supreme Economic Council and general secretary
to the Reparations Commission (1919-1922).
A. H. D. R. Steel-Maitland was head of the War Trade Department in 1917-1919,
while Lord Wolmer (son of Lord Selborne and grandson of Lord Salisbury) was assistant
director in 1916-1918. Henry Birchenough was a member or chairman of several
committees dealing with related matters. R. S. Rait was a member of the department from
its creation in 1915 to the end of the war; H. W. C. Davis was a member in 1915 and a
member of the newly created War Trade Advisory Committee thereafter. Harold Butler