1925, Foreign Minister of Patiala State in 1925-1931, a member of the Indian Round
Table Conference in 1920-1932, a significant figure in the British Broadcasting
Corporation and the Ministry of Information in delegation. There is nothing to indicate
that Mr. Latham (later Sir John) was a member of the Milner Group, but in later years his
son, Richard, clearly was. Sir John had apparently made his first contact with the Milner
Group in 1919, when he, a Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, was a
member of the staff of the Australian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and, while
there, became an assistant secretary to the British delegation. In 1922, at the age of forty-
five, he began a twelve-year term as an Australian M. P. During that brief period he was
Attorney General in 1925-1929, Minister of Industry in 1928-1929, Leader of the
Opposition in 1929-1931, Deputy Leader of the Majority in 1931-1932, and Deputy
Prime Minister, Attorney General, and Minister for Industry in 1932-1934. In addition, he
was British secretary to the Allied Commission on Czechoslovak Affairs in 1919, first
president of the League of Nations Union, Australian delegate to the League of Nations
in 1926 and 1932, Australian representative to the World Disarmament Conference in
1932, Chancellor of the University of Melbourne in 1939-1941; Australian Minister of
Japan in 1940-1941, and vice-president of the period 1932-1944, and is now a member of
the editorial staff of The Times.
At these two conferences, various members of the Cecil Bloc and Milner Group were
called in for consultation on matters within their competence. Of these persons, we might
mention the names of H. A. L. Fisher, Sir Eyre Crowe, Sir Cecil Hurst, Robert Cecil,
Leopold Amery, Samuel Hoare, and Sir Fabian Ware (of the Kindergarten).
The Imperial Conference of 1926 is generally recognized as one of the most important
of the postwar period. The Cecil Bloc and Milner Group again had three out of five
members of the United Kingdom delegation (Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, and Leopold
Amery), with Baldwin and Churchill the other two. Hankey was, as usual, secretary of
the conference. Of the other seven delegations, nothing is germane to our investigation
except that Vincent Massey was an adviser to the Canadian, and John Greig Latham was
a member of the Australian, Australian Red Cross in 1944. Since 1934, he has been Chief
Justice of Australia. In this brilliant, if belated, career, Sir John came into contact with the
Milner Group, and this undoubtedly assisted his son, Richard, in his more precocious
career. Richard Latham was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford until 1933 and a Fellow of All
Souls from 1935. He wrote the supplementary legal chapter in W. K. Hancock's Survey of
British Commonwealth Affairs and was one of the chief advisers of K. C. Wheare in his
famous book, The Statute of Westminister and Dominion Status (1938). Unfortunately,
Richard Latham died a few years later while still in his middle thirties. It is clear from
Professor Wheare's book that Sir John Latham, although a member of the opposition at
the time, was one of the chief figures in Australia's acceptance of the Statute of
Westminster.
The new status of the Dominions, as enunciated in the Report of the conference and
later known as the "Balfour Declaration," was accepted by the Milner Group both in The
Round Table and in The Times. In the latter, on 22 November 1926, readers were
informed that the"Declaration" merely described the Empire as it was, with nothing really
new except the removal of a few anachronisms. It concluded: "In all its various clauses
there is hardly a statement or a definition which does not coincide with familiar practice."
The Imperial Conference of 1930 was conducted by a Labour government and had no
members of the Cecil Bloc or Milner Group among its chief delegates. Sir Maurice
Hankey, however, was secretary of the conference, and among its chief advisers were
Maurice Gwyer and H. D. Henderson. Both of these were members of All Souls and
probably close to the Milner Group.
The Imperial Conference of 1937 was held during the period in which the Milner
Group was at the peak of its power. Of the eight members of the United Kingdom
delegation, five were from the Milner Group (Lord Halifax, Sir John Simon, Malcolm
MacDonald, W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, and Sir Samuel Hoare). The others were Baldwin,
Neville Chamberlain, and J. Ramsay MacDonald. In addition, the chief of the Indian
delegation was the Marquess of Zetland of the Cecil Bloc. Sir Maurice Hankey was
secretary of the conference, and among the advisers were Sir Donald Somervell (of All
Souls and the Milner Group), Vincent Massey, Sir Fabian Ware, and the Marquess of
Hartington.
In addition to the Imperial Conferences, where the influence of the Milner Group was
probably more extensive than appears from the membership of the delegations, the Group
was influential in the administration of the Commonwealth, especially in the two periods
of its greatest power, from 1924 to 1929 and from 1935 to 1939. An indication of this can
be seen in the fact that the office of Colonial Secretary was held by the Group for seven
out of ten years from 1919 to 1929 and for five out of nine years from 1931 to 1940,
while the office of Dominion Secretary was held by a member of the Group for eight out
of the fourteen years from its creation in 1925 to the outbreak of the war in 1939
(although the Labour Party was in power for two of those years). The Colonial
Secretaries to whom we have reference were:
Lord Milner, 1919-1921
Leopold Amery, 1924-1929
Malcolm MacDonald, 1935
W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, 1936-1938
Malcolm MacDonald, 1938-1940
The Dominion Secretaries to whom we have reference were:
Amery, 1925-1929
Malcolm MacDonald, 1935-1938, 1938-1939
The lesser positions within the Colonial Office were not remote from the Milner
Group. The Permanent Under Secretary was Sir George Fiddes of the Kindergarten in
1916-1921. In addition, James Masterton-Smith, who had been Balfour's private secretary
previously, was Permanent Under Secretary in succession to Fiddes in 1921-1925, and
John Maffey, who had been Lord Chelmsford's secretary while the latter was Viceroy in
1916-1921, was Permanent Under Secretary from 1933 to 1937. The position of
Parliamentary Under Secretary, which had been held by Lord Selborne in 1895-1900 and
by Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland in 1915-1917, was held by Amery in 1919-1921, by Edward
Wood (Lord Halifax) in 1921-1922, by Ormsby-Gore in 1922-1924, 1924-1929, and by
Lord Dufferin (brother of Lord Blackwood of the Kindergarten) from 1937 to 1940.
Most of these persons (probably all except Masterton-Smith, Maffey, and Lord
Dufferin) were members of the Milner Group. The most important, of course, was
Leopold Amery, whom we have already shown as Milner's chief political protege. We
have not yet indicated that Malcolm MacDonald was a member of the Milner Group, and
must be satisfied at this point with saying that he was a member, or at least an instrument,
of the Group, from 1931 or 1932 onward, without ever becoming a member of the inner
circle. The evidence indicating this relationship will be discussed later.
At this point we should say a few words about W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (Lord Harlech
since 1938), who was a member of the Cecil Bloc by marriage and of the Milner Group
by adoption. A graduate of Eton in 1930, he went to New College as a contemporary of