Conference of that year, which was to open on a Monday. He arrived in England the
preceding Saturday and went to Oxford to stay with friends of the Milner Group. In the
evening he attended a Rhodes dinner, which means he saw more of the Group. The
following day, he was called by the King to Windsor Castle and went immediately. The
King told Smuts that he was going to make a speech at the opening of the new Ulster
Parliament. He asked Smuts to write down suggestions for this speech. Smuts stayed the
night at Windsor
Castle, drafted a speech, and gave it to the King's private secretary. The sequel can
best be told in Smuts's own words as recorded in the second volume of S. G. Millin's
biography: "The next day Lloyd George invited me to attend a committee meeting of the
Cabinet, to give my opinion of the King's speech. And what should this King's speech
turn out to be but a typewritten copy of the draft I had myself written the night before. I
found them working on it. Nothing was said about my being the author. They innocently
consulted me and I innocently answered them. But imagine the interesting position. Well,
they toned the thing down a bit, they made a few minor alterations, but in substance the
speech the King delivered next week in Belfast was the one I prepared.” (7) Needless to
say, this speech was conciliatory.
Shortly afterward, Tom Casement, brother of Sir Roger Casement, who had been
executed by the British in 1916, opened negotiations between Smuts and the Irish leaders
in Dublin. Tom Casement was an old friend of Smuts, for he had been British Consul at
Delagoa Bay in 1914 and served with Smuts in East Africa in 1916-1917. As a result,
Smuts went to Ireland in June 1921 under an alias and was taken to the hiding place of
the rebels. He tried to persuade them that they would be much better off with Dominion
status within the British Commonwealth than as a republic, offering as an example the
insecure position of the Transvaal before 1895 in contrast with its happy condition after
1909. He said in conclusion, "Make no mistake about it, you have more privilege, more
power, more peace, more security in such a sisterhood of equal nations than in a small,
nervous republic having all the time to rely on goodwill, and perhaps the assistance, of
foreigners. What sort of independence do you call that? By comparison with real
independence it is a shadow. You sell the fact for the name." Smuts felt that his argument
was having an effect on Arthur Griffith and some others, but de Valera remained
suspicious, and Erskine Childers was "positively hostile." Nevertheless, the Irish decided
to open negotiations with London, and Smuts promised to arrange an armistice. The
armistice went into effect on 11 July 1921, and three days later the conference began.
The Irish Conference of 1921 was held in two sessions: a week in July and a series of
meetings from 11 October to 6 December 1921. The secretary to the conference was
Lionel Curtis, who resigned his editorship of The Round Table for the purpose and
remained as chief adviser on Irish affairs to the Colonial Office for the next three years.
As a result of the conference, the Irish moderates negotiated the Articles of Agreement of
6 December 1921. De Valera had refused to form part of the Irish delegation at the
second session of the conference, and refused to accept Dominion status, although Smuts
begged him to do so in a letter published in The Times on 15 August.
As a result of the Articles of Agreement of December 1921 and the Irish Free State
Act of March 1922, Southern Ireland became an independent Dominion within the
British Commonwealth. Its boundary with Northern Ireland was to be settled by a
Boundary Commission of three members representing the three interested parties. On this
commission, Richard Feetham of the Milner Group was the British member and also
chairman.
The subsequent revolt of de Valera and the Irish Republicans against the Free State
government, and the ultimate victory of their ideas, is not part of our story. It was a
development which the Milner Group were powerless to prevent. They continued to
believe that the Irish, like others, could be bound to Britain by invisible ties if all visible
ones were destroyed. This extraordinary belief, admirable as it was, had its basis in a
profoundly Christian outlook and, like appeasement of Hitler, self-government for India,
or the Statute of Westminister, had its ultimate roots in the Sermon on the Mount.
Unfortunately, such Christian tactics were acutely dangerous in a non-Christian world,
and in this respect the Irish were only moderately different from Hitler.
The Milner Group's reward for their concessions to Ireland was not to be obtained in
this world. This became clear during the Second World War, when the inability of the
British to use Irish naval bases against German submarines had fatal consequences for
many gallant British seamen. These bases had been retained for Britain as a result of the
agreement of 1922 but were surrendered to the Irish on 25 April 1938, just when Hitler's
threat to Britain was becoming acute. The Round Table of June 1938 welcomed this
surrender, saying: "The defence of the Irish coast, as John Redmond vainly urged in
1914, should be primarily a matter for Irishmen."
As the official links between Eire and Britain were slowly severed, the Croup made
every effort to continue unofficial relationships such as those through the Irish Institute of
International Affairs and the unofficial British Commonwealth relations conference,
which had Irish members in 1938.
The relationships of Britain with Egypt were also affected by the activity of the Milner
Group. The details need not detain us long. It is sufficient to state that the Egyptian
Declaration of 1922 was the result of the personal negotiations of Lord Milner in Egypt
in his capacity as Colonial Secretary. In this post his Permanent Under Secretary was Sir
George Fiddes of the Kindergarten, his Parliamentary Under Secretary was Amery, and
his chief adviser in Egypt was M. S. O. Walrond, also of the Kindergarten.
Without going into the very extensive influence which members of the Milner Group
have had on other parts of the Commonwealth (especially tropical Africa), it must be
clear that, however unsatisfactory Commonwealth relations may be to the Group now,
they nevertheless were among the chief creators of the existing system. This will appear
even more clearly when we examine their influence in the history of India.
Chapter 10—The Royal Institute of International Affairs
The Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) is nothing but the Milner Group
"writ large." It was founded by the Group, has been consistently controlled by the Group,
and to this day is the Milner Group in its widest aspect. It is the legitimate child of the
Round Table organization, just as the latter was the legitimate child of the "Closer
Union" movement organized in South Africa in 1907. All three of these organizations
were formed by the same small group of persons, all three received their initial financial
backing from Sir Abe Bailey, and all three used the same methods for working out and
propagating their ideas (the so-called Round Table method of discussion groups plus a
journal). This similarity is not an accident. The new organization was intended to be a
wider aspect of the Milner Group, the plan being to influence the leaders of thought
through The Round Table and to influence a wider group through the RIIA.