States around Germany, mainly with a view to feeding their ravenous military appetites.
There is a serious danger lest a policy of excessive generosity on our part, or on the part
of America, may simply have the effect of enabling France still more effectively to
subsidize and foster militarism on the Continent.... If things continue on the present lines,
this country may soon have to start rearming herself in sheer self-defence.”
This speech of Smuts covers so adequately the point of view of the Milner Group in
the early period of appeasement that no further quotations are necessary. No real change
occurred in the point of view of the Group from 1920 to 1938, not even as a result of the
death of democratic hopes in Germany at the hands of the Nazis. From Smuts's speech of
October 1923 before the South African Luncheon Club to Smuts's speech of November
1934 before the RIIA, much water flowed in the river of international affairs, but the
ideas of the Milner Group remained rigid and, it may be added, erroneous. Just as the
speech of 1923 may be taken as the culmination of the revisionist sentiment of the Group
in the first five years of peace, so the speech of 1934 may be taken as the initiation of the
appeasement sentiment of the Group in the last five years of peace. The speeches could
almost be interchanged. We may call one revisionist and the other appeasing, but the
point of view, the purpose, the method is the same. These speeches will be mentioned
again later.
The aim of the Milner Group through the period from 1920 to 1938 was the same: to
maintain the balance of power in Europe by building up Germany against France and
Russia; to increase Britain's weight in that balance by aligning with her the Dominions
and the United States; to refuse any commitments (especially any commitments through
the League of Nations, and above all any commitments to aid France) beyond those
existing in 1919; to keep British freedom of action; to drive Germany eastward against
Russia if either or both of these two powers became a threat to the peace of Western
Europe.
The sabotage of the peace settlement by the Milner Group can be seen best in respect
to reparations and the League of Nations. In regard to the former, their argument
appeared on two fronts: in the first place, the reparations were too large because they
were a dishonorable violation of the Pre-Armistice Agreement; and, in the second place,
any demand for immediate or heavy payments in reparation would ruin Germany's
international credit and her domestic economic system, to the jeopardy of all reparation
payments immediately and of all social order in Central Europe in the long run.
The argument against reparations as a violation of the Pre-Armistice Agreement can
be found in the volumes of Zimmern and Brand already mentioned. Both concentrated
their objections on the inclusion of pension payments by the victors to their own soldiers
in the total reparation bill given to the Germans. This was, of course, an obvious violation
of the Pre-Armistice Agreement, which bound the Germans to pay only for damage to
civilian property. Strangely enough, it was a member of the Group, Jan Smuts, who was
responsible for the inclusion of the objectionable items, although he put them in not as a
member of the Group, but as a South African politician. This fact alone should have
prevented him from making his speech of October 1923. However, love of consistency
has never prevented Smuts from making a speech.
From 1921 onward, the Milner Group and the British government (if the two policies
are distinguishable) did all they could to lighten the reparations burden on Germany and
to prevent France from using force to collect reparations. The influence of the Milner
Group on the government in this field may perhaps be indicated by the identity of the two
policies. It might also be pointed out that a member of the Group, Arthur (now Sir
Arthur) Salter, was general secretary of the Reparations Commission from 1920 to 1922.
Brand was financial adviser to the chairman of the Supreme Economic Council (Lord
Robert Cecil) in 1919; he was vice-president of the Brussels Conference of 1920; and he
was the financial representative of South Africa at the Genoa Conference of 1922 (named
by Smuts). He was also a member of the International Committee of Experts on the
Stabilization of the German Mark in 1922. Hankey was British secretary at the Genoa
Conference of 1922 and at the London Reparations Conference of 1924. He was general
secretary of the Hague Conference of 1929-1930 (which worked out the detailed
application of the Young Plan) and of the Lausanne Conference (which ended
reparations).
On the two great plans to settle the reparations problem, the Dawes Plan of 1924 and
the Young Plan of 1929, the chief influence was that of J. P. Morgan and Company, but
the Milner Group had half of the British delegation on the former committee. The British
members of the Dawes Committee were two in number: Sir Robert Molesworth (now