Rhodes. Moreover, Curtis believed that people could be educated for freedom and
responsibility by giving them always a little more freedom, a little more democracy, and
a little more responsibility than they were quite ready to handle. This is a basically
Christian attitude—the belief that if men are trusted they will prove trustworthy—but it
was an attitude on which Curtis was prepared to risk the existence of the British Empire.
It is not yet clear whether Curtis is the creator of the Commonwealth of Nations or
merely the destroyer of the British Empire. The answer will be found in the behavior of
India in the next few years. The Milner Group knew this. That is why India, since 1913,
has been the chief object of their attentions.
These ideas of Curtis are clearly stated in his numerous published works. The
following quotations are taken from
Round Table Group and published under Curtis's name in 1916:
“Responsible government can only be realized for any body of citizens in so far as
they are fit for the exercise of political power. In the Dependencies the great majority of
the citizens are not as yet capable of governing themselves and for them the path to
freedom is primarily a problem of education.... The Commonwealth is a typical section of
human society including every race and level of civilization organized in one state. In this
world commonwealth the function of government is reserved to the European minority,
for the unanswerable reason that for the present this portion of its citizens is alone
capable of the task—civilized states are obliged to assume control of backward
communities to protect them from exploitation by private adventurers from Europe....
The Commonwealth cannot, like despotisms, rest content with establishing order within
and between the communities it includes. It must by its nature prepare these communities
first to maintain order within themselves. The rule of law must be rooted in the habits and
wills of the peoples themselves.... The peoples of India and Egypt, no less than those of
the British Isles and Dominions, must be gradually schooled to the management of their
national affairs.... It is not enough that free communities should submit their relations to
the rule of law. Until all those people control that law the principle by which the
commonwealth exists is unfulfilled. The task of preparing for freedom the races which
cannot as yet govern themselves is the supreme duty of those races who can. It is the
spiritual end for which the Commonwealth exists, and material order is nothing except a
means to it.... In India the rule of law is firmly established. Its maintenance is a trust
which rests on the government of the Commonwealth until such time as there are Indians
enough able to discharge it. India may contain leaders qualified not only to make but also
to administer laws, but she will not be ripe for self-government until she contains an
electorate qualified to recognize those leaders and place them in office.... For England the
change is indeed a great one. Can she face it? Can she bear to lose her life, as she knows
it, to find it in a Commonwealth, wide as the world itself, a life greater and nobler than
before? Will she fail at this second and last crisis of her fate, as she failed at the first, like
Athens and Prussia, forsaking freedom for power, thinking the shadow more real than the
light, and esteeming the muckrake more than the crown?”
Four years later, in 1920, Curtis wrote: "The whole effect of the war has been to bring
movements long gathering to a sudden head . . . companionship in arms has fanned . . .
long smouldering resentment against the prescription that Europeans are destined to
dominate the rest of the world. In every part of Asia and Africa it is bursting into
flames.... Personally, I regard this challenge to the long unquestioned claim of the white
man to dominate the world as inevitable and wholesome especially to ourselves." (5)
Unfortunately for the world, Curtis, and the Milner Group generally, had one grave
weakness that may prove fatal. Skilled as they were in political and personal relations,
endowed with fortune, education, and family connections, they were all fantastically
ignorant of economics—even those, like Brand or Hichens, who were regarded within the
Group as its experts on this subject. Brand was a financier, while Hichens was a
businessman—in both cases occupations that guarantee nothing in the way of economic
knowledge or understanding.
Curtis was registered as an undergraduate at New College for fourteen years (1891-
1905) because he was too busy to take time to get his degree. This is undoubtedly also the
reason he was admitted to All Souls so belatedly, since an ordinary fellowship requires as
a qualification the possession either of a university prize or of a first-class honours
degree. By the time Curtis took his degree he had fought in the Boer War, been Town