Anglo-American Establishment полностью

advocating repression and the group in Ireland advocating separation from the crown had

brought each other to some realization of the advantages of compromise.

These advantages were pointed out by the Group, especially by Lionel Curtis, who

began a two-year term as editor of The Round Table immediately after his great triumph

in the Government of India Act of 1919. In the March 1920 issue, for example, he

discussed and approved a project, first announced by Lloyd George in December 1919, to

separate northern and southern Ireland and give self-government to both as autonomous

parts of Great Britain. This was really nothing but an application of the principle of

devolution, whose attractiveness to the Milner Group has already been mentioned.

The Irish Settlement in the period 1920-1923 is very largely a Milner Group

achievement. For most of this period Amery's brother-in-law, Hamar Greenwood

(Viscount Greenwood since 1937), was Chief Secretary for Ireland. He was, indeed, the

last person to hold this office before it was abolished at the end of 1922. Curtis was

adviser on Irish affairs to the Colonial Office in 1921-1924, and Smuts and Feetham

intervened in the affair at certain points.

A settlement of the Irish problem along lines similar to those advocated by The Round

Table was enacted in the Government of Ireland Act of December 1920. Drafted by H. A.

L. Fisher and piloted through Commons by him, it passed the critical second reading by a

vote of 348-94. In the majority were Amery, Nancy Astor, Austen Chamberlain, H. A. L.

Fisher, Hamar Greenwood, Samuel Hoare, G. R. Lane-Fox (brother-in-law of Lord

Halifax), and E. F. L. Wood (Lord Halifax). In the minority were Lord Robert Cecil and

Lord Wolmer (son of Lord Selborne). In the House of Lords the bill passed by 164-75. In

the majority were Lords Curzon, Lytton, Onslow (brother-in-law of Lord Halifax),

Goschen, Hampden (brother of Robert Brand), Hardinge, Milner, Desborough, Ernle,

Meston, Monson, Phillimore, Riddell, and Wemyss. In the minority were Lords

Linlithgow, Beauchamp (father-in-law of Samuel Hoare), Midleton, Bryce, Ampthill

(brother-in-law of Samuel Hoare), and Leconfield (brother of Hugh Wyndham).

The act of 1920 never went into effect because the extremists on both sides were not

yet satiated with blood. By June 1921 they were. The first movement in this direction,

according to W. K. Hancock, "may be said to open as early as October 1920 when The

Times published suggestions for a truce and negotiations between plenipotentiaries of

both sides." The same authority lists ten voices as being raised in protest at British

methods of repression. Three of these were of the Milner Group ( The Times, The Round

Table, and Sir John Simon). He quotes The Round Table as saying: "If the British

Commonwealth can only be preserved by such means, it would become a negation of the

principle for which it has stood."(6) Similar arguments were brought to bear on the Irish

leaders by Jan Smuts.

Smuts left South Africa for England at the end of May 1921, to attend the Imperial

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