Group had left Indian affairs and shifted its chief interest to other fields. Curtis became
one of the chief factors in Irish affairs in 1921; Lord Chelmsford returned home and was
raised to a Viscounty in the same year; Meston retired in 1919; Marris became Governor
of Assam in 1921; Hailey became Governor of the Punjab in 1924; Duke died in 1924;
and Rushbrook Williams became director of the Central Bureau of Information,
Government of India, in 1920.
This does not indicate that the Milner Group abandoned all interest in India by 1924 or
earlier, but the Group never showed such concentrated interest in the problem of India
again. Indeed, the Group never displayed such concentrated interest in any problem either
earlier or later, with the single exception of the effort to form the Union of South Africa
in 1908-1909.
The decade 1919-1929 was chiefly occupied with efforts to get Gandhi to permit the
Indian National Congress to cooperate in the affairs of government, so that its members
and other Indians could acquire the necessary experience to allow the progressive
realization of self-government. The Congress Party, as we have said, boycotted the
elections of 1920 and cooperated in those of 1924 only for the purpose of wrecking them.
Nonetheless, the system worked, with the support of moderate groups, and the British
extended one right after another in steady succession. Fiscal autonomy was granted to
India in 1921, and that country at once adopted a protective tariff, to the considerable
injury of British textile manufacturing. The superior Civil Services were opened to
Indians in 1924. Indians were admitted to Woolwich and Sandhurst in the same year, and
commissions in the Indian Army were made available to them.
The appointment of Baron Irwin of the Milner Group to be Viceroy in 1926—an
appointment in which, according to A. C. Johnson's biography
"the influence of Geoffrey Dawson and other members of
have played a decisive role—was the chief step in the effort to achieve some real
progress under the Act of 1919 before that Act came under the critical examination of
another Royal Commission, scheduled for 1929. The new Viceroy's statement of policy,
made in India, 17 July 1926, was, according to the same source, embraced by
in an editorial "which showed in no uncertain terms that Irwin's policy was appreciated
and underwritten by Printing House Square."
Unfortunately, in the period 1924-1931 the India Office was not in control of either
the Milner Group or Cecil Bloc. For various reasons, of which this would seem to be the
most important, coordination between the Secretary of State and the Viceroy and between
Britain and the Indian nationalists broke down at the most crucial moments. The Milner
Group, chiefly through
by praising their man, Lord Irwin, and adversely criticizing the Secretary of State, Lord
Birkenhead. Relationships between Birkenhead and the Milner (and Cecil) Group had not
been cordial for a long time, and there are various indications of feuding from at least
1925. We may recall that in April 1925 a secret, or at least unofficial, "committee" of
Milner Group and Cecil Bloc members had nominated Lord Milner for the post of
Chancellor of Oxford University. Lord Birkenhead had objected both to the candidate
and to the procedure. In regard to the candidate, he would have preferred Asquith. In
regard to the procedure, he demanded to know by what authority this "committee" took
upon itself the task of naming a chancellor to a university of which he (Lord Birkenhead)
had been High Steward since 1922. This protest, as usual when Englishmen of this social
level are deeply moved, took the form of a letter to
a letter, written in the third person, in which he was informed that this committee had
existed before the World War, and that, when it was reconstituted at the end of the war,
Mr. F. E. Smith had been invited to be a member of it but had not seen fit even to
acknowledge the invitation.
The bad relationship between the Milner Group and Lord Birkenhead was not the
result of such episodes as this but rather, it would seem, based on a personal antipathy
engendered by the character of Lord Birkenhead and especially by his indiscreet and
undiplomatic social life and political activity. Nonetheless, Lord Birkenhead was a man
of unquestioned vigor and ability and a man of considerable political influence from the
day in 1906 when he had won a parliamentary seat for the Conservatives in the face of a
great Liberal tidal wave. As a result, he had obtained the post of Secretary of State for
India in November 1924 at the same time that Leopold Amery went to the Colonial
Office. The episode regarding the Milner candidacy to the Oxford Chancellorship
occurred six months later and was practically a direct challenge from Birkenhead to