idea of abandoning this traditional policy; for one brief moment they felt that if Europe
were given self-determination and parliamentary governments, Britain could permit some
kind of federated or at least cooperative Europe without danger to Britain. The moment
soon passed. The League of Nations, which had been regarded by the Group as the seed
whence a united Europe might grow, became nothing more than a propaganda machine,
as soon as the Group resumed its belief in the balance of power. Curtis, who in December
1918 wrote in The Round Table: "That the balance of power has outlived its time by a
century and that the world has remained a prey to wars, was due to the unnatural
alienation of the British and American Commonwealths"—Curtis, who wrote this in
1918, four years later (9 January 1923) vigorously defended the idea of balance of power
against the criticism of Professor A. F. Pollard at a meeting of the RIIA.
This change in point of view was based on several factors. In the first place, the
Group, by their practical experience at Paris in 1919, found that it was not possible to
apply either self-determination or the parliamentary form of government to Europe. As a
result of this experience, they listened with more respect to the Cecil Bloc, which always
insisted that these, especially the latter, were intimately associated with the British
outlook, way of life, and social traditions, and were not articles of export. This issue was
always the chief bone of contention between the Group and the Bloc in regard to India. In
India, where their own influence as pedagogues was important, the Group did not accept
the Bloc's arguments completely, but in Europe, where the Group's influence was remote
and indirect, the Group was more receptive.
In the second place, the Croup at Paris became alienated from the French because of
the latter's insistence on force as the chief basis of social and political life, especially the
French insistence on a permanent mobilization of force to keep Germany down and on an
international police force with autonomous power as a part of the League of Nations. The
Group, although they frequently quoted Admiral Mahan's kind words about force in
social life, did not really like force and shrank from its use, believing, as might be
expected from their Christian background, that force could not avail against moral issues,
that force corrupts those who use it, and that the real basis of social and political life w as
custom and tradition. At Paris the Group found that they were living in a different world
from the French. They suddenly saw not only that they did not have the same outlook as
their former allies, but that these allies embraced the “despotic" and "militaristic" outlook
against which the late war had been waged. At once, the Group began to think that the
influence which they had been mobilizing against Prussian despotism since 1907 could
best be mobilized, now that Prussianism was dead, against French militarism and
Bolshevism. And what better ally against these two enemies in the West and the East
shall the newly baptized Germany? Thus, almost without realizing it, the Group fell back
into the old balance-of-power pattern. Their aim became the double one of keeping
Germany in the fold of redeemed sinners by concessions, and of using this revived and
purified Germany against Russia and France.(3)
In the third place, the Group in 1918 had been willing to toy with the idea of an
integrated Europe because, in 1918, they believed that a permanent system of cooperation
between Britain and the United States was a possible outcome of the war. This was the
lifelong dream of Rhodes, of Milner, of Lothian, of Curtis. For that they would have
sacrificed anything within reason. When it became clear in 1920 that the United States
had no intention of underwriting Britain and instead would revert to her prewar
isolationism, the bitterness of disappointment in the Milner Group were beyond bounds.
Forever after, they blamed the evils of Europe, the double-dealing of British policy, and
the whole train of errors from 1919 to 1940 on the American reversion to isolationism. It
should be clearly understood that by American reversion to isolationism the Milner
Croup did not mean the American rejection of the League of Nations. Frequently they
said that they did mean this, that the disaster of 1939-1940 became inevitable when the
Senate rejected the League of Nations in 1920. This is completely untrue, both as a
statement of historical fact and as a statement of the Group's attitude toward that rejection
at the time. As we shall see in a moment, the Group approved of the Senate's rejection of
the League of Nations, because the reasons for that rejection agreed completely with the
Group's own opinion about the League. The only change in the Group's opinion, as a
result of the Senate's rejection of the League, occurred in respect to the Group's opinion
regarding the League itself. Previously they had disliked the League; now they hated it—
except as a propaganda agency. The proofs of these statements will appear in a moment.
The change in the Group's attitude toward Germany began even before the war ended.
We have indicated how the Group rallied to give a public testimonial of faith in Lord
Milner in October 1918, when he became the target of public criticism because of what
was regarded by the public as a conciliatory speech toward Germany. The Group
objected violently to the anti-German tone in which Lloyd George conducted his electoral
campaign in the "khaki election' of December 1918. The Round Table in March 1919
spoke of Lloyd George and "the odious character of his election campaign." Zimmern,
after a devastating criticism of Lloyd George's conduct in the election, wrote: "He erred,
not, like the English people, out of ignorance but deliberately, out of cowardice and lack
of faith." In the preface to the same volume ( Europe in Convalescence) he wrote: "Since
December, 1918, when we elected a Parliament pledged to violate a solemn agreement
made but five weeks earlier, we stand shamed, dishonoured, and, above all, distrusted
before mankind." The agreement to which Zimmern referred was the so-called Pre-
Armistice Agreement of 5 November 1918, made with the Germans, by which, if they
accepted an armistice, the Allies agreed to make peace on the basis of the Fourteen
Points. It was the thesis of the Milner Group that the election of 1918 and the Treaty of
Versailles as finally signed violated this Pre-Armistice Agreement. As a result, the Group
at once embarked on its campaign for revision of the treaty, a campaign whose first aim,
apparently, was to create a guilty conscience in regard to the treaty in Britain and the
United States. Zimmern's book, Brand's book of the previous year, and all the articles of
The Round Table were but ammunition in this campaign. However, Zimmern had no
illusions about the Germans, and his attack on the treaty was based solely on the need to
redeem British honor. As soon as it became clear to him that the Group was going
beyond this motive and was trying to give concessions to the Germans without any
attempt to purge Germany of its vicious elements and without any guarantee that those
concessions would not be used against everything the Group held dear, he left the inner
circle of the Group and moved to the second circle. He was not convinced that Germany
could be redeemed by concessions made blindly to Germany as a whole, or that Germany
should be built up against France and Russia. He made his position clear in a brilliant and
courageous speech at Oxford in May 1925, a speech in which he denounced the steady