with the Daily News. Since 1932 he has been editor of The Spectator, and since 1945 he
has been a Member of Parliament from Cambridge University. He was one of the most
ardent advocates of appeasement in the period 1935-1939, especially in the meetings at
Chatham House. In this connection, it might be mentioned that he was a member of the
council of the RIIA in 1924-1927. He has written books on Woodrow Wilson, the peace
settlement, the League of Nations, disarmament, etc. His most recent work is a biography
of J. A. Spender, onetime editor of the Westminster Gazette (1896-1922), which he and
his brother founded in 1893 in collaboration with Edmund Garrett and Edward Cook,
when all four left the Pall Mall Gazette after its purchase by Waldorf Astor.
The ability of the Milner Group to mobilize public opinion in regard to the League of
Nations is almost beyond belief. It was not a simple task, since they were simultaneously
trying to do two things: on the one hand, seeking to build up popular opinion in favor of
the League so that its work could be done more effectively; and, at the same time,
seeking to prevent influential people from using the League as an instrument of world
government before popular opinion was ready for a world government. In general, The
Round Table and The Times were used for the latter purpose, while the League of Nations
Union and a strange assortment of outlets, such as Chatham House, Toynbee Hall,
extension courses at Oxford, adult-education courses in London, International
Conciliation in the United States, the Institute of Politics at Williamstown, the Institute of
Intellectual Cooperation at Paris, the Geneva School of International Studies and the
Graduate Institute of International Studies at Geneva, and the various branches of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, were used for the former purpose. The
Milner Group did not control all of these. Their influence was strong in all of them, and,
since the influence of J. P. Morgan and Company was also strong in most of them and
since Morgan and the Group were pursuing a parallel policy on this issue, the Group were
usually able to utilize the resources of these various organizations when they wished.
As examples of this, we might point out that Curtis and Kerr each gave a series of
lectures at the Institute of Politics, Williamstown, in 1922. Selections from these, along
with an article from the September 1922 issue of The Round Table, were published in
International Conciliation for February 1923. Kerr and Lord Birkenhead spoke at the
Institute in 1923; Sir Arthur Willert, a close associate if not a member of the Group,
spoke at the Institute of Politics in 1927. Sir Arthur was always close to the Group. He
was a member of the staff of The Times from 1906 to 1921, chiefly as head of the
Washington office; he was in the Foreign Office as head of the News Department from
1921 to 1935, was on the United Kingdom delegation to the League of Nations in 1929-
1934, was an important figure in the Ministry of Information (a Milner Group fief) in
1939-1945, and wrote a book called The Empire and the World in collaboration with H.
V. Hodson and B. K. Long of the Kindergarten.
Other associates of the Group who spoke at the Institute of Politics at Williamstown
were Lord Eustace Percy, who spoke on wartime shipping problems in 1929, and Lord
Meston, who spoke on Indian nationalism in 1930. (7)
The relationship between the Milner Group and the valuable little monthly publication
called International Conciliation was exercised indirectly through the parallel group in
America, which had been organized by the associates of J. P. Morgan and Company
before the First World War, and which made its most intimate connections with the
Milner Group at the Peace Conference of 1919. We have already mentioned this
American group in connection with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute of
Pacific Relations. Through this connection, many of the activities and propaganda
effusions of the Milner Group were made available to a wide public in America. We have
already mentioned the February 1923 issue of International Conciliation, which was
monopolized by the Group. A few other examples might be mentioned. Both of General
Smuts's important speeches, that of 23 October 1923 and that of 13 November 1934,
were reproduced in International Conciliation. So too was an article on "The League and
Minorities" by Wilson Harris. This was in the September 1926 issue. A Times editorial of
22 November 1926 on "The Empire as It Is" was reprinted in March 1927; another of 14
July 1934 is in the September issue of the same year; a third of 12 July 1935 is in the
issue of September 1935. Brand's report on Germany's Foreign Creditors' Standstill
Agreements is in the May issue of 1932; while a long article from the same pen on "The
Gold Problem" appears in the October 1937 issue. This article was originally published,
over a period of three days, in The Times in June 1937. An article on Russia from The Round Table was reprinted in December 1929. Lord Lothian's speeches of 25 October
1939 and of 11 December 1940 were both printed in the issues of International
Conciliation immediately following their delivery. An article by Lothian called "League
or No League," first published in The Observer in August 1936, was reprinted in the
periodical under consideration in December 1936. An article by Lord Cecil on
disarmament, another by Clarence Streit (one of the few American members of the
Group) on the League of Nations, and a third by Stephen King-Hall on the Mediterranean
problem were published in December 1932, February 1934, and January 1938
respectively. A speech of John Simon's appears in the issue of May 1935; one of Samuel
Hoare's is in the September issue of the same year; another by Samuel Hoare is in the
issue of November 1935. Needless to say, the activities of the Institute of Pacific
Relations, of the Imperial Conferences, of the League of Nations, and of the various
international meetings devoted to reparations and disarmament were adequately reflected
in the pages of International Conciliation.
The deep dislike which the Milner Group felt for the Treaty of Versailles and the
League of Nations was shared by the French, but for quite opposite reasons. The French
felt insecure in the face of Germany because they realized that France had beaten
Germany in 1918 only because of the happy fact that she had Russia, Great Britain, Italy,
and the United States to help her. From 1919 onward, France had no guarantee that in any
future attack by Germany she would have any such assistance. To be sure, the French
knew that Britain must come to the aid of France if there was any danger of Germany
defeating France. The Milner Group knew this too. But France wanted some arrangement
by which Britain would be alongside France from the first moment of a German attack,
since the French had no assurance that they could withstand a German onslaught alone,
even for a brief period. Moreover, if they could, the French were afraid that the opening
onslaught would deliver to the Germans control of the most productive part of France as