the need to control the chief avenues by which the general public obtains information on
public affairs, it is not surprising to find that the Ministry of Information was one of the
fiefs of the Group from its establishment in 1939.
At the outbreak of war, H. A. L. Fisher had been Governor of the BBC for four years.
It was probably as a result of this connection that L. F. Rushbrook Williams, whom we
have already mentioned in connection with Indian affairs and as a member of All Souls
since 1914, became Eastern Service Director of the BBC. He was later adviser on Middle
East affairs to the Ministry of Information but left this, in 1944, to become an editor of
The Times. Edward Griggs, now Lord Altrincham, was Parliamentary Secretary to the
Ministry of Information from its creation to the Cabinet revision of 1940, when he shifted
to the War Office. J. W. Wheeler-Bennett and Isaiah Berlin were with the New York
office of the Ministry of Information, as we have seen, the former throughout the war and
the latter in 1941-1942. H. V. Hodson, Fellow of All Souls and probably the most
important of the newer recruits to the Milner Group, was Director of the Empire Division
of the Ministry of Information from its creation in 1939 until he went to India as Reforms
Commissioner in 1941-1942. And finally, Cyril John Radcliffe (Sir Cyril after 1944), a
graduate of New College in 1922 and a Fellow of All Souls for fifteen years (1922-1937),
son-in-law of Lord Charnwood since 1939, was in the Ministry of Information for the
whole period of the war, more than four years of it as Director General of the whole
organization.(1)
In addition to these three great fiefs (the Research and Intelligence Department of the
Foreign Office, the Embassy in Washington, and the Ministry of Information), the Milner
Group exercised considerable influence in those branches of the administration concerned
with emergency economic regulations, although here the highest positions were reserved
to those members of the Cecil Bloc closest to the Milner Group. Oliver Lyttelton, whose
mother was a member of the Group, was Controller of Non-Ferrous Metals in 1939-1940,
was President of the Board of Trade in 1940-1941, and was Minister of Production in
1942-1945. Lord Wolmer (Lord Selborne since 1942) was Director of Cement in the
Ministry of Works in 1940-1942 and Minister of Economic Warfare in 1942-1945. In this
connection, it should be mentioned that the Milner Group had developed certain
economic interests in non-ferrous metals and in cement in the period of the 1920s and
1930s. The former developed both from their interest in colonial mines, which were the
source of the ores, and from their control of electrical utilities, wl1ich supplied much of
the power needed to reduce these ores. The center of these interests was to be found, on
the one hand, in the Rhodes Trust and the economic holdings of the associates of Milner
and Rhodes like R. S. Holland, Abe Bailey, P. L. Gell, etc., and, on the other hand, in the
utility interests of Lazard Brothers and of the Hoare family. The ramifications of these
interests are too complicated, and too well concealed, to be described in any detail here,
but we might point out that Lord Milner was a director of Rio Tinto, that Dougal
Malcolm was a director of Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines, that Samuel Hoare was
a director of Birmingham Aluminum Casting Company until he took public office, that
the Hoare family had extensive holdings in Associated Tin Mines of Nigeria, in British-
American Tin Corporation, in London Tin Corporation, etc.; that R. S. Holland was an
Anglo-Spanish Construction Company, on British Copper Manufacturers, and on the
British Metal Corporation; that Lyttelton Gell was a director of Huelva Copper and of the
Zinc Corporation; that Oliver Lyttelton was managing director of the British Metal
Corporation and a director of Metallgesellschaft, the German light-metals monopoly. The
chief member of the Group in the cement industry was Lord Meston, who was placed on
many important corporations after his return from India, including the Associated
Portland Cement Manufacturers and the British Portland Cement Manufacturers. The
third Lord Selborne was chairman of the Cement Makers Federation from 1934 to 1940,
resigning to take charge of the government's cement-regulation program.
In lesser posts in these activities, we might mention the following. Charles R. S.
Harris, whom we have already mentioned as an associate of Brand, a Fellow of All Souls
for fifteen years, a leader-writer on
who wrote a book on Germany's foreign indebtedness for Chatham House, was in the
Ministry of Economic Warfare in 1939-1940. He then spent two years in Iceland for the
Foreign Office, and three years with the War Office, ending up in 1944-1945 as a
member of the Allied Control Commission for Italy. H. V. Hodson was principal assistant
secretary and later head of the Non-Munitions Division of the Ministry of Production