state" with its own army and powers of action. The British were horrified, but with the
help of the Americans were able to shelve this suggestion. However, to satisfy the
demand from their own delegations as well as the French, they spread a camouflage of
sham world government over the structure they had planned. This was done by Cecil
Hurst. Hurst visited David Hunter Miller, the American legal expert, one night and
persuaded him to replace the vital clauses 10 to 16 with drafts drawn up by Hurst. These
drafts were deliberately drawn with loopholes so that no aggressor need ever be driven to
the point where sanctions would have to be applied. This was done by presenting
alternative paths of action leading toward sanctions, some of them leading to economic
sanctions, but one path, which could be freely chosen by the aggressor, always available,
leading to a loophole where no collective action would be possible. The whole procedure
was concealed beneath a veil of legalistic terminology so that the Covenant could be
presented to the public as a watertight document, but Britain could always escape from
the necessity to apply sanctions through a loophole.
In spite of this, the Milner Group were very dissatisfied. They tried simultaneously to
do three things: (1) to persuade public opinion that the League was a wonderful
instrument of international cooperation designed to keep the peace; (2) to criticize the
Covenant for the "traces of a sham world-government" which had been thrown over it;
and (3) to reassure themselves and the ruling groups in England, the Dominions, and the
United States that the League was not "a world-state." All of this took a good deal of neat
footwork, or, more accurately, nimble tongues and neat pen work. More double-talk and
double-writing were emitted by the Milner Group on this subject in the two decades
1919-1939 than was issued by any other group on this subject in the period.
Among themselves the Group did not conceal their disappointment with the Covenant
because it went too far. In the June 1919 issue of
"The document is not the Constitution of a Super-state, but, as its title explains, a solemn
agreement between Sovereign States which consent to limit their complete freedom of
action on certain points.... The League must continue to depend on the free consent, in the
last resort, of its component States; this assumption is evident in nearly every article of
the Covenant, of which the ultimate and most effective sanction must be the public
opinion of the civilized world. If the nations of the future are in the main selfish,
grasping, and bellicose, no instrument or machinery will restrain them." But in the same
issue we read the complaint: "In the Imperial Conference Sir Wilfrid Laurier was never
tired of saying, 'This is not a Government, but a conference of Governments with
Governments.' It is a pity that there was no one in Paris to keep on saying this. For the
Covenant is still marked by the traces of sham government. "
By the March 1920 issue, the full bitterness of the Group on this last point became
evident. It said: "The League has failed to secure the adhesion of one of its most
important members, The United States, and is very unlikely to secure it.... This situation
presents a very serious problem for the British Empire. We have not only undertaken
great obligations under the League which we must now both in honesty and in self-regard
revise, but we have looked to the League to provide us with the machinery for United
British action in foreign affairs. " (my italics; this is the cat coming out of the bag). The
article continued with criticism of Wilson, and praise of the Republican Senate's refusal
to swallow the League as it stood. It then said:
“The vital weakness of the Treaty and the Covenant became more clear than ever in
the months succeeding the signature at Versailles. A settlement based on ideal principles
and poetic justice can be permanently applied and maintained only by a world
government to which all nations will subordinate their private interests.... It demands, not
only that they should sacrifice their private interests to this world-interest, but also that
they should be prepared to enforce the claims of world-interest even in matters where
their own interests are in no wise engaged. It demands, in fact, that they should
subordinate their national sovereignty to an international code and an international ideal.
The reservations of the American Senate...point the practical difficulties of this ideal with
simple force. All the reservations . . . are affirmations of the sovereign right of the
American people to make their own policy without interference from an International
League.... None of these reservations, it should be noted, contravenes the general aims of
the League; but they are, one and all, directed to ensure that no action is taken in pursuit
of those aims except with the consent and approval of the Congress.... There is nothing