Anglo-American Establishment полностью

the great historian of the English law. As a result of this last activity, Fisher produced in

1911 a three-volume set of Maitland's Collected Works, and a biographical sketch of

Maitland (1910), while Smith in 1908 published two lectures and a bibliography on

Maitland. Smith's own biographical sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography was

written by another member of the Milner Group, Kenneth Norman Bell (Fellow of All

Souls, 1907-1914; Beit Lecturer in Colonial History, 1924-1927; and member of the

family that controlled the publishing house of G. Bell and Sons). His son, Arthur Lionel

Foster Smith, was a Fellow of All Souls under Anson (1904-1908) and later organized

and supervised the educational system of Mesopotamia (1920-1931).

H. A. L. Fisher held many important posts in his career, partly because of membership

in the Milner Group. In 1908, while the Kindergarten, which he had helped to assemble,

was still in South Africa, he went there on an extended lecture tour; in 1911-1912 he was

Chichele Lecturer in Foreign History; in 1912-1915 he was an important member of the

Royal Commission on Public Services in India; in 1916-1926 he was a member of the

House of Commons, the first half of the period as a Cabinet member (President of the

Board of Education, 1916-1922). He was a delegate to the Assembly of the League of

Nations for three years (1920-1922), governor of the British Broadcasting Corporation

for four (1935-1939), and a Rhodes Trustee for about fifteen (1925-1940).(6)

Fisher's bibliography forms an extensive list of published works. Besides his

Unfinished Biography (1940) and his famous three-volume History of Europe (1935-

1936), it contains many writings on subjects close to the Milner Group. His Creighton

Lecture in 1911 on Political Unions examines the nature of federalism and other unions

and fits in well with the discussions going on at the time within Round Table Groups on

this subject—discussions in which Fisher played an important part. In the section of this

lecture dealing with the Union of South Africa, Fisher was almost as deliberately evasive

as Brand had been in his book on the Union, which appeared two years earlier. He

mentions the preliminary work of the Kindergarten toward union (work in which he had

taken a part himself during his visit to South Africa in 1908) as the work of anonymous

persons, but does state that the resulting constitution for a united South Africa was

largely the work of the Transvaal delegation (which, as we shall see, was one controlled

by the Kindergarten).

Other writings of Fisher's resulting from his work with the Milner Group are his

"Imperial Administration" in Studies in History and Politics (1920); his An International

Experiment, dealing with the League of Nations (1921); The Common Weal, dealing with

the duties of citizenship (1924); and Our New Religion (1929), dealing with Christian

Science. In connection with this last book, it might be mentioned that Christian Science

became the religion of the Milner Group after Milner's death. Among others, Nancy

Astor and Lord Lothian were ardent supporters of the new belief. Christian Science was

part of the atmosphere of Cliveden.

Fisher's relationship with Milner was quite close and appeared chiefly in their

possession of fellowships in New College, obtained by the older man in 1878 and by the

younger ten years later. In 1901, when the Kindergarten was formed, the two had been

Fellows together for thirteen years, and in 1925, when Milner died and Fisher became

Warden, they had been Fellows together for thirty-seven years.

There was also a more personal relationship, created in 1899, when Fisher married

Lettice Ilbert. Her father, Sir Courtenay Ilbert (1841-1924), was a lifelong friend of

Anson and an old friend of Milner. Sir Courtenay, as law member of the Viceroy of

India's Council in 1883, had tried in vain to remove from the Indian code"every judicial

disqualification based merely upon race distinctions." Under Lord Dufferin (Lord Basil

Blackwood's father), he set up the general system of law and procedure for Burma

(1885), and in 1898 he issued what became the basic codification of Indian law. He was

clerk of the House of Commons from 1902 to 1921. Mrs. H. A. L. Fisher, one of Sir

Courtenay's five daughters, recalls in The Milner Papers how Alfred Milner use to romp

with the girls when they were children.

Fisher was a very valuable member of the Milner Group because he, along with Lord

Goschen, became the chief means by which the Group secured access to the College of

All Souls. This access was secured by the friendship of these two men with Sir William

Anson. Anson himself was a member of the Cecil Bloc rather than the Milner Group. His

personal relations with Milner were not very close, and, indeed, there is some doubt as to