following year, and in 1939 succeeded Lord Lothian as Secretary to the Rhodes Trustees.
By his close association with the MacDonald family, he became the obvious choice to
write the "official" life of J. R. (Ramsey) MacDonald, the first volume of which was
published in 1939. In 1945 he published a history of the British Empire called
After the election of 1935, the Milner Group took a substantial part in the government,
with possession of seven places in a Cabinet of twenty-one seats. By the beginning of
September of 1939, they had only five out of twenty-three, the decrease being caused, as
we shall see, by the attrition within the Group on the question of appeasement. In the War
Cabinet formed at the outbreak of the war, they had four out of nine seats. In this whole
period from 1935 to 1940, the following members of the Group were associated with the
government as officers of state: Halifax, Simon, Malcolm MacDonald, Zetland, Ormsby-
Gore, Hoare, Somervell, Lothian, Hankey, Grigg, Salter, and Amery.
It would appear that the Milner Group increased its influence on the government until
about 1938. We have already indicated the great power which they exercised in the
period 1915-1919. This influence, while great, was neither decisive nor preponderant. At
the time, the Milner Group was sharing influence with at least two other groups and was,
perhaps, the least powerful of the three. It surely was less powerful than the Cecil Bloc,
even as late as 1929, and was less powerful, perhaps, than the rather isolated figure of
Lloyd George as late as 1922. These relative degrees of power on the whole do not
amount to very much, because the three that we have mentioned generally agreed on
policy. When they disagreed, the views of the Milner Group did not usually prevail.
There were two reasons for this. Both the Cecil Bloc and Lloyd George were susceptible
to pressure from the British electorate and from the allies of Britain. The Milner Group,
as a non-elected group, could afford to be disdainful of the British electorate and of
French opinion, but the persons actually responsible for the government, like Lloyd
George, Balfour, and others, could not be so casual. As a consequence, the Milner Group
were bitterly disappointed over the peace treaty with Germany and over the Covenant of
the League of Nations. This may seem impossible when we realize how much the Group
contributed to both of these. For they did contribute a great deal, chiefly because of the
fact that the responsible statesmen generally accepted the opinion of the experts on the
terms of the treaty, especially the territorial terms. There is only one case where the
delegates overruled a committee of experts that was unanimous, and that was the case of
the Polish Corridor, where the experts were more severe with Germany than the final
agreement. The experts, thus, were of very great importance, and among the experts the
Milner Group had an important place, as we have seen. It would thus seem that the
Milner Group's disappointment with the peace settlement was largely criticism of their
own handiwork. To a considerable extent this is true. The explanation lies in the fact that
much of what they did as experts was done on instructions from the responsible delegates
and the fact that the Group ever after had a tendency to focus their eyes on the few
blemishes of the settlement, to the complete neglect of the much
larger body of acceptable decisions. Except for this, the Group could have no justification
for their dissatisfaction except as self-criticism. When the original draft of the Treaty of
Versailles was presented to the Germans on 7 May 1919, the defeated delegates were
aghast at its severity. They drew up a detailed criticism of 443 pages. The answer to this
protest, making a few minor changes in the treaty but allowing the major provisions to
stand, was drafted by an inter-allied committee of five, of which Philip Kerr was the
British member. The changes that were made as concessions to the Germans were made
under pressure from Lloyd George, who was himself under pressure from the Milner
Group. This appears clearly from the minutes of the Council of Four at the Peace
Conference. The first organized drive to revise the draft of the treaty in the direction of
leniency was made by Lloyd George at a meeting of the Council of Four on 2 June 1919.
The Prime Minister said he had been consulting with his delegation and with the Cabinet.
He specifically mentioned George Barnes ("the only Labour representative in his
Cabinet"), the South African delegation (who"were also refusing to sign the present
Treaty"), Mr. Fisher ("whose views carried great weight"), Austen Chamberlain, Lord
Robert Cecil, and both the Archbishops. Except for Barnes and the Archbishops, all of
these were close to the Milner Group. The reference to H. A. L. Fisher is especially
significant, for Fisher's views could "carry great weight" only insofar as he was a member