goals. As a result, in the period 1931-1933, the Milner Group willingly liquidated
reparations, war debts, and the whole structure of international capitalism, and embraced
protection and cartels instead.
Parallel with their destruction of reparations, and in a much more direct fashion, the
Milner Group destroyed collective security through the League of Nations. The Group
never intended that the League of Nations should be used to achieve collective security.
They never intended that sanctions, either military or economic, should be used to force
any aggressive power to keep the peace or to enforce any political decision which might
be reached by international agreement. This must be understood at the beginning. The
Milner Group never intended that the League should be used as an instrument of
collective security or that sanctions should be used as an instrument by the League.
From the beginning, they expected only two things from the League: (1) that it could
be used as a center for international cooperation in international administration in
nonpolitical matters, and (2) that it could be used as a center for consultation in
political matters. In regard to the first point, the Group regarded the League as a center
for such activities as those previously exercised through the International Postal Union.
In all such activities as this, each state would retain full sovereignty and would cooperate
only on a completely voluntary basis in fields of social importance. In regard to the
second point (political questions), no member of the Group had any intention of any state
yielding any sliver of its full sovereignty to the League. The League was merely an
agreement, like any treaty, by which each state bound itself to confer together in a crisis
and not make war within three months of the submission of the question to consultation.
The whole purpose of the League was to delay action in a crisis by requiring this period
for consultation. There was no restriction on action after the three months. There was
some doubt, within the Group, as to whether sanctions could be used to compel a state to
observe the three months' delay. Most of the members of the Group said "no" to this
question. A few said that economic sanctions could be used. Robert Cecil, at the
beginning, at least, felt that political sanctions might be used to compel a state to keep the
peace for the three months, but by 1922 every member of the Group had abandoned both
political and economic sanctions for enforcing the three months' delay. There never was
within the Group any intention at any time to use sanctions for any other purpose, such as
keeping peace after the three-month period.
This, then, was the point of view of the Milner Group in 1919, as in 1939.
Unfortunately, in the process of drawing up the Covenant of the League in 1919, certain
phrases or implications were introduced into the document, under pressure from France,
from Woodrow Wilson, and from other groups in Britain, which could be taken to
indicate that the League might have been intended to be used as a real instrument of
collective security, that it might have involved some minute limitation of state
sovereignty, that sanctions might under certain circumstances be used to protect the
peace. As soon as these implications became clear, the Group's ardor for the League
began to evaporate. when the United States refused to join the League, this dwindling
ardor turned to hatred. Nevertheless, the Group did not abandon the League at this point.
On the contrary, they tightened their grip on it—in order to prevent any "foolish" persons
from using the vague implications of the Covenant in an effort to make the League an
instrument of collective security. The Group were determined that if any such effort as
this were made, they would prevent it and, if necessary, destroy the League to prevent it.
Only they would insist, in such a case, that the League was destroyed not by them but by
the persons who tried to use it as an instrument of collective security.
All of this may sound extreme. Unfortunately, it is not extreme. That this was what the
Group did to the League is established beyond doubt in history. That the Group intended
to do this is equally beyond dispute. The evidence is conclusive.
The British ideas on the League and the British drafts of the Covenant were formed by
four men, all close to the Milner Group. They were Lord Robert Cecil, General Smuts,
Lord Phillimore, and Alfred Zimmern. For drafting documents they frequently used Cecil
Hurst, a close associate, but not a member, of the Group. Hurst (Sir Cecil since 1920) was
assistant legal adviser to the Foreign Office in 1902-1918, legal adviser in 1918-1929, a
judge on the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague in 1929-1946, and
Chairman of the United Nations War Crimes Commission in 1943-1944. He was the man
responsible for the verbal form of Articles 10-16 (the sanction articles) of the Covenant
of the League of Nations, for the Articles of Agreement with Ireland in 1921, and for the
wording of the Locarno Pact in 1925. He frequently worked closely with the Milner
Group. For example, in 1921 he was instrumental in making an agreement by which the
British Yearbook of International Law, of which he was editor, was affiliated with the
Royal Institute of International Affairs. At the time, he and Curtis were working together
on the Irish agreement.
As early as 1916, Lord Robert Cecil was trying to persuade the Cabinet to support a
League of Nations. This resulted in the appointment of the Phillimore Committee, which
drew up the first British draft for the Covenant. As a result, in 1918-1919 Lord Robert
became the chief government spokesman for a League of Nations and the presumed
author of the second British draft. The real author of this second draft was Alfred
Zimmern. Cecil and Zimmern were both dubious of any organization that would restrict
state sovereignty. On 12 November 1918, the day after the armistice, Lord Robert made a
speech at Birmingham on the type of League he expected. That speech shows clearly that
he had little faith in the possibility of disarmament and none in international justice or
military sanctions to preserve the peace. The sovereignty of each state was left intact. As
W. E. Rappard (director of the Graduate School of International Studies at Geneva) wrote
in International Conciliation in June 1927, "He [Lord Cecil] was very sceptical about the
possibility of submitting vital international questions to the judgment of courts of law end
'confessed to the gravest doubts' as to the practicability of enforcing the decrees of such
courts by any 'form of international force.' On the other hand, he firmly believed in the
efficacy of economic pressure as a means of coercing a country bent on aggression in
violation of its pacific agreements." It might be remarked in passing that the belief that
economic sanctions could be used without a backing of military force, or the possibility
of needing such backing, is the one sure sign of a novice in foreign politics, and Robert
Cecil could never be called a novice in such matters. In the speech itself he said:
“The most important step we can now take is to devise machinery which, in case of
international dispute, will, at the least, delay the outbreak of war, and secure full and
open discussion of the causes of the quarrel. For that purpose . . . all that would be
necessary would be a treaty binding the signatories never to wage war themselves or