expected from their Christian background, that force could not avail against moral issues,
that force corrupts those who use it, and that the real basis of social and political life w as
custom and tradition. At Paris the Group found that they were living in a different world
from the French. They suddenly saw not only that they did not have the same outlook as
their former allies, but that these allies embraced the “despotic" and "militaristic" outlook
against which the late war had been waged. At once, the Group began to think that the
influence which they had been mobilizing against Prussian despotism since 1907 could
best be mobilized, now that Prussianism was dead, against French militarism and
Bolshevism. And what better ally against these two enemies in the West and the East
shall the newly baptized Germany? Thus, almost without realizing it, the Group fell back
into the old balance-of-power pattern. Their aim became the double one of keeping
Germany in the fold of redeemed sinners by concessions, and of using this revived and
purified Germany against Russia and France.(3)
In the third place, the Group in 1918 had been willing to toy with the idea of an
integrated Europe because, in 1918, they believed that a permanent system of cooperation
between Britain and the United States was a possible outcome of the war. This was the
lifelong dream of Rhodes, of Milner, of Lothian, of Curtis. For that they would have
sacrificed anything within reason. When it became clear in 1920 that the United States
had no intention of underwriting Britain and instead would revert to her prewar
isolationism, the bitterness of disappointment in the Milner Group were beyond bounds.
Forever after, they blamed the evils of Europe, the double-dealing of British policy, and
the whole train of errors from 1919 to 1940 on the American reversion to isolationism. It
should be clearly understood that by American reversion to isolationism the Milner
Croup did not mean the American rejection of the League of Nations. Frequently they
said that they did mean this, that the disaster of 1939-1940 became inevitable when the
Senate rejected the League of Nations in 1920. This is completely untrue, both as a
statement of historical fact and as a statement of the Group's attitude toward that rejection
at the time. As we shall see in a moment, the Group approved of the Senate's rejection of
the League of Nations, because the reasons for that rejection agreed completely with the
Group's own opinion about the League. The only change in the Group's opinion, as a
result of the Senate's rejection of the League, occurred in respect to the Group's opinion
regarding the League itself. Previously they had disliked the League; now they hated it—
except as a propaganda agency. The proofs of these statements will appear in a moment.
The change in the Group's attitude toward Germany began even before the war ended.
We have indicated how the Group rallied to give a public testimonial of faith in Lord
Milner in October 1918, when he became the target of public criticism because of what
was regarded by the public as a conciliatory speech toward Germany. The Group
objected violently to the anti-German tone in which Lloyd George conducted his electoral
campaign in the "khaki election' of December 1918.
spoke of Lloyd George and "the odious character of his election campaign." Zimmern,
after a devastating criticism of Lloyd George's conduct in the election, wrote: "He erred,
not, like the English people, out of ignorance but deliberately, out of cowardice and lack
of faith." In the preface to the same volume (
December, 1918, when we elected a Parliament pledged to violate a solemn agreement
made but five weeks earlier, we stand shamed, dishonoured, and, above all, distrusted
before mankind." The agreement to which Zimmern referred was the so-called Pre-
Armistice Agreement of 5 November 1918, made with the Germans, by which, if they
accepted an armistice, the Allies agreed to make peace on the basis of the Fourteen
Points. It was the thesis of the Milner Group that the election of 1918 and the Treaty of
Versailles as finally signed violated this Pre-Armistice Agreement. As a result, the Group
at once embarked on its campaign for revision of the treaty, a campaign whose first aim,
apparently, was to create a guilty conscience in regard to the treaty in Britain and the
United States. Zimmern's book, Brand's book of the previous year, and all the articles of
The Round Table were but ammunition in this campaign. However, Zimmern had no
illusions about the Germans, and his attack on the treaty was based solely on the need to
redeem British honor. As soon as it became clear to him that the Group was going
beyond this motive and was trying to give concessions to the Germans without any
attempt to purge Germany of its vicious elements and without any guarantee that those