Anglo-American Establishment полностью

To build up public opinion in favor of the League of Nations, the Milner Group

formed an organization known as the League of Nations Union. In this organization the

most active figures were Lord Robert Cecil, Gilbert Murray, the present Lord Esher, Mrs.

Lyttelton, and Wilson Harris. Lord Cecil was president from 1923 to 1945; Professor

Murray was chairman from 1923 to 1938 and co-president from 1938 to 1945; Wilson

Harris was its parliamentary secretary and editor of its paper, Headway, for many years.

Among others, C. A. Macartney, of All Souls and the RIIA, was head of the Intelligence

Department from 1928 to 1936. Harris and Macartney were late additions to the Group,

the former becoming a member of the inner circle about 1922, while the latter became a

member of the outer circle in the late 1920s, probably as a result of his association with

the Encyclopedia Britannica as an expert on Central Europe. Wilson Harris was one of

the most intimate associates of Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr, and other members of the inner

core in the 1920s, and this association became closer, if possible, in the 1930s. A

graduate of Cambridge University in 1906, he served for many years in various capacities

with the Daily News. Since 1932 he has been editor of The Spectator, and since 1945 he

has been a Member of Parliament from Cambridge University. He was one of the most

ardent advocates of appeasement in the period 1935-1939, especially in the meetings at

Chatham House. In this connection, it might be mentioned that he was a member of the

council of the RIIA in 1924-1927. He has written books on Woodrow Wilson, the peace

settlement, the League of Nations, disarmament, etc. His most recent work is a biography

of J. A. Spender, onetime editor of the Westminster Gazette (1896-1922), which he and

his brother founded in 1893 in collaboration with Edmund Garrett and Edward Cook,

when all four left the Pall Mall Gazette after its purchase by Waldorf Astor.

The ability of the Milner Group to mobilize public opinion in regard to the League of

Nations is almost beyond belief. It was not a simple task, since they were simultaneously

trying to do two things: on the one hand, seeking to build up popular opinion in favor of

the League so that its work could be done more effectively; and, at the same time,

seeking to prevent influential people from using the League as an instrument of world

government before popular opinion was ready for a world government. In general, The

Round Table and The Times were used for the latter purpose, while the League of Nations

Union and a strange assortment of outlets, such as Chatham House, Toynbee Hall,

extension courses at Oxford, adult-education courses in London, International

Conciliation in the United States, the Institute of Politics at Williamstown, the Institute of

Intellectual Cooperation at Paris, the Geneva School of International Studies and the

Graduate Institute of International Studies at Geneva, and the various branches of the

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, were used for the former purpose. The

Milner Group did not control all of these. Their influence was strong in all of them, and,

since the influence of J. P. Morgan and Company was also strong in most of them and

since Morgan and the Group were pursuing a parallel policy on this issue, the Group were

usually able to utilize the resources of these various organizations when they wished.

As examples of this, we might point out that Curtis and Kerr each gave a series of

lectures at the Institute of Politics, Williamstown, in 1922. Selections from these, along

with an article from the September 1922 issue of The Round Table, were published in

International Conciliation for February 1923. Kerr and Lord Birkenhead spoke at the

Institute in 1923; Sir Arthur Willert, a close associate if not a member of the Group,

spoke at the Institute of Politics in 1927. Sir Arthur was always close to the Group. He

was a member of the staff of The Times from 1906 to 1921, chiefly as head of the

Washington office; he was in the Foreign Office as head of the News Department from

1921 to 1935, was on the United Kingdom delegation to the League of Nations in 1929-

1934, was an important figure in the Ministry of Information (a Milner Group fief) in

1939-1945, and wrote a book called The Empire and the World in collaboration with H.

V. Hodson and B. K. Long of the Kindergarten.

Other associates of the Group who spoke at the Institute of Politics at Williamstown

were Lord Eustace Percy, who spoke on wartime shipping problems in 1929, and Lord

Meston, who spoke on Indian nationalism in 1930. (7)

The relationship between the Milner Group and the valuable little monthly publication

called International Conciliation was exercised indirectly through the parallel group in