who was "X," hastened to give the necessary assurances, according to the official
as the emissary of King Edward, but we, who know of his relationship with the Rhodes
secret society, are justified in asking if he were not equally the agent of the Milner Group,
since it was as vital to the Group as to the King that the policy of
unchanged. As we shall see in a later chapter, when Northcliffe did adopt a policy
contrary to that of the Group, in the period 1917-1919, the Group broke with him
personally and within three years bought his controlling interest in the paper.
Certain other persons were probably taken into"The Society of the Elect" in the next
few years. Hawksley, Rhodes's lawyer, was one. He obviously knew about the secret
society, since he drew up the wills in which it was mentioned. This, combined with the
fact that he was an intimate confidant of Rhodes in all the activities of the society and
was made a trustee of the last three wills (1892), makes it probable that he should be
regarded as an initiate.
Likewise it is almost certain that Milner brought in Sir Thomas Brassey (later Lord
Brassey), the wealthy naval enthusiast whose name is preserved in
during its ten years’ existence. In 1889, as we have mentioned, he hired George Parkin to
go to Australia on behalf of the League to make speeches in support of imperial
federation. We have already indicated that Milner in 1893 approached Parkin in behalf of
a mysterious and unnamed group of wealthy imperialists, and, some time later, Milner
and Brassey signed a contract with Parkin to pay him £450 a year for three years to
propagandize for imperial federation. Since this project was first broached to Parkin by
Milner alone and since the Imperial Federation League was, by 1893, in process of
dissolution, I think we have the right to assume that the unnamed group for which Milner
was acting was the Rhodes secret society. If so, Brassey must have been introduced to the
scheme sometime between 1891 and 1893. This last interpretation is substantiated by the
numerous and confidential letters which passed between Milner and Brassey in the years
which followed. Some of these will be mentioned later. It is worth mentioning here that
Brassey was appointed Governor of Victoria in 1895 and played an important role in the
creation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1900.
The propaganda work which Parkin did in the period 1893-1895 in fulfillment of this
agreement was part of a movement that was known at the time as "Seeley's lecturers."
This movement was probably all that ensued from the fifth portion of the "ideal
arrangement"—that is, from the projected college under Professor Seeley.
Another person who was brought into the secret society was Edmund Garrett, the
intimate friend of Stead, Milner, and Rhodes, who was later used by Milner as a go-
between for communications with the other two. Garrett had been sent to South Africa
originally by Stead while he was still on the
a second time in 1895 as editor of the Cape Times, the most influential English-language
newspaper in South Africa. This position he undoubtedly obtained from Stead and
Rhodes. Sir Frederick Whyte, in his biography of Stead, says that Rhodes was the chief
proprietor of the paper. Sir Edward Cook, however, the biographer of Garrett and a man
who was very close to the Rhodes secret society, says that the owners of the
were Frederick York St. Leger and Dr. Rutherfoord Harris. This is a distinction without
much difference, since Dr. Harris, as we shall see, was nothing more than an agent of
Rhodes.
In South Africa, Garrett was on most intimate personal relationships with Rhodes.
Even when the latter was Prime Minister of Cape Colony, Garrett used to communicate
with him by tossing pebbles at his bedroom window in the middle of the night. Such a
relationship naturally gave Garrett a prestige in South Africa which he could never have
obtained by his own position or abilities. When High Commissioner Hercules Robinson
drew up a proclamation after the Jameson Raid, he showed it to Garrett before it was
issued and cut out a paragraph at the latter's insistence.
Garrett was also on intimate terms with Milner during his period as High
Commissioner after 1897. In fact, when Rhodes spoke of political issues in South Africa,
he frequently spoke of "I myself, Milner, and Garrett." We have already quoted an
occasion on which he used this expression to Stead in 1900. Milner's relationship with
Garrett can be gathered from a letter which he w rote to Garrett in 1899, after Garrett had
to leave South Africa to go to a sanatorium in Germany: "It is no use protesting against