Anglo-American Establishment полностью

America, which had been organized by the associates of J. P. Morgan and Company

before the First World War, and which made its most intimate connections with the

Milner Group at the Peace Conference of 1919. We have already mentioned this

American group in connection with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute of

Pacific Relations. Through this connection, many of the activities and propaganda

effusions of the Milner Group were made available to a wide public in America. We have

already mentioned the February 1923 issue of International Conciliation, which was

monopolized by the Group. A few other examples might be mentioned. Both of General

Smuts's important speeches, that of 23 October 1923 and that of 13 November 1934,

were reproduced in International Conciliation. So too was an article on "The League and

Minorities" by Wilson Harris. This was in the September 1926 issue. A Times editorial of

22 November 1926 on "The Empire as It Is" was reprinted in March 1927; another of 14

July 1934 is in the September issue of the same year; a third of 12 July 1935 is in the

issue of September 1935. Brand's report on Germany's Foreign Creditors' Standstill

Agreements is in the May issue of 1932; while a long article from the same pen on "The

Gold Problem" appears in the October 1937 issue. This article was originally published,

over a period of three days, in The Times in June 1937. An article on Russia from The Round Table was reprinted in December 1929. Lord Lothian's speeches of 25 October

1939 and of 11 December 1940 were both printed in the issues of International

Conciliation immediately following their delivery. An article by Lothian called "League

or No League," first published in The Observer in August 1936, was reprinted in the

periodical under consideration in December 1936. An article by Lord Cecil on

disarmament, another by Clarence Streit (one of the few American members of the

Group) on the League of Nations, and a third by Stephen King-Hall on the Mediterranean

problem were published in December 1932, February 1934, and January 1938

respectively. A speech of John Simon's appears in the issue of May 1935; one of Samuel

Hoare's is in the September issue of the same year; another by Samuel Hoare is in the

issue of November 1935. Needless to say, the activities of the Institute of Pacific

Relations, of the Imperial Conferences, of the League of Nations, and of the various

international meetings devoted to reparations and disarmament were adequately reflected

in the pages of International Conciliation.

The deep dislike which the Milner Group felt for the Treaty of Versailles and the

League of Nations was shared by the French, but for quite opposite reasons. The French

felt insecure in the face of Germany because they realized that France had beaten

Germany in 1918 only because of the happy fact that she had Russia, Great Britain, Italy,

and the United States to help her. From 1919 onward, France had no guarantee that in any

future attack by Germany she would have any such assistance. To be sure, the French

knew that Britain must come to the aid of France if there was any danger of Germany

defeating France. The Milner Group knew this too. But France wanted some arrangement

by which Britain would be alongside France from the first moment of a German attack,

since the French had no assurance that they could withstand a German onslaught alone,

even for a brief period. Moreover, if they could, the French were afraid that the opening

onslaught would deliver to the Germans control of the most productive part of France as

captured territory. This is what had happened in 1914. To avoid this, the French sought in

vain one alternative after another: (a) to detach from Germany, or, at least, to occupy for

an extended period, the Rhineland area of Germany (this would put the Ruhr, the most

vital industrial area of Germany, within striking distance of French forces); (b) to get a

British-American, or at least a British, guarantee of French territory; (c) to get a "League

of Nations with teeth," that is, one with its own police forces and powers to act

automatically against an aggressor. All of these were blocked by the English and

Americans at the Peace Conference in 1919. The French sought substitutes. Of these, the

only one they obtained was a system of alliances with new states, like Poland,

Czechoslovakia, and the enlarged Rumania, on the east of Germany. All of these states

were of limited power, and the French had little faith in the effectiveness of their

assistance. Accordingly, the French continued to seek their other aims: to extend the

fifteen years' occupation of the Rhineland into a longer or even an indefinite period; to

get some kind of British guarantee; to strengthen the League of Nations by "plugging the

gaps in the Covenant"; to use the leverage of reparations and disarmament as provided in