Anglo-American Establishment полностью

Chief Commissioner in that city for the next eight years. In this post he was one of the

advisers used by Curtis on Indian reforms (1916). After the war Hailey was a member of

the Executive Council of the Viceroy in the Financial and Home Departments (1919-

1924), Governor of Punjab (1924-1928), and Governor of the United Provinces (1928-

1930, 1931-1934). During this last period he was one of the closest advisers to Baron

Irwin (Lord Halifax) during his term as Viceroy (1926-1936). After Hailey left the Indian

Service in 1934, he was used in many important capacities by the Milner Group,

especially in matters concerned with Africa and the mandates. Since this use illustrates to

perfection the skillful way in which the Milner Group has functioned in recent years, it

might be presented here as a typical case.

We have seen that the Milner Group controlled the Rhodes money after Rhodes's

death in 1902. In 1929 the Group invited General Smuts to give the Rhodes Lectures at

Oxford. In these lectures, Smuts suggested that a detailed survey of Africa and its

resources was badly needed. The Royal Institute of International Affairs took up this

suggestion and appointed a committee, with Lord Lothian as chairman, to study the

project. This committee secured the services of the retiring Governor of the United

Provinces to head the survey. Thus Sir Malcolm Hailey became the director of the project

and general editor of the famous African Survey, published in 1938 by the Royal Institute

of International Affairs, with funds obtained from the Carnegie Corporation of New

York. Thus the hand of the Milner Group appears in this work from its first conception to

its final fruition, although the general public, ignorant of the existence of such a group,

would never realize it.

Hailey was also made a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of International

Affairs, a member of the Permanent Mandate Commission of the League of Nations

(1935-1939), chairman of the School of Oriental and African Studies (1941-1945),

chairman of International African Institute, president of the Royal Central Asian Society,

chairman of the Colonial Research Committee, member of the Senate of the University of

London, Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College at Oxford (1939-1947), head of an

economic mission to the Belgian Congo (1941), Romanes Lecturer at Oxford (1941), etc.,

etc.

Along with all these important posts, Lord Hailey found time to write in those fields

with which the Milner Group was most concerned. Among these works we might

mention: Britain and Her Dependencies, The Future of Colonial Peoples, and Great

Britain, India, and the Colonial Dependencies in the Post-WarWorld (all three published

in 1943).

The achievement of the Union of South Africa in 1910 did not mean the end of the

Kindergarten. Instead, it set out to repeat on the imperial scene what it had just

accomplished in South Africa. In this new project the inspiration was the same (Milner),

the personnel was the same (the Kindergarten), the methods were the same (with the

Round Table Groups replacing the 'Closer Union Societies" and The Round Table

replacing The State. But, as befitted a larger problem, additional personnel and additional

funds were required. The additional personnel came largely from New College and All

Souls; the additional funds came from Cecil Rhodes and his associates and All Souls. The

older sources of funds (like Abe Bailey) and influence (like The Times) remained loyal to

the Group and continued to assist in this second great battle of the Milner Croup. As John

Buchan wrote in his autobiography, "Loyalty to Milner and his creed was a strong cement

which endured long after our South African service ended, since the Round Table coterie

in England continued the Kindergarten." Or, if we may call another competent witness,

Lord Oxford and Asquith, writing of Milner after his death, stated: "His personality was

so impressive that he founded a school of able young men who during his lifetime and

since have acknowledged him as their principal political leader.... He was an

Expansionist, up to a point a Protectionist, with a strain in social and industrial matters of

semi-Socialist sentiment."(11)

More convincing, perhaps, than either Buchan or Asquith is the word of the Group

itself. The Round Table, in its issue of September 1935, celebrated its twenty-fifth

anniversary by printing a brief history of the Group. This sketch, while by no means

complete and without mentioning any names of members, provides irrefutable proof of

the existence and importance of the Milner Group. It said, in part:

“By the end of 1913 The Round Table had two aspects. On the one hand, it published

a quarterly review. . . . On the other hand it represented a body of men united in support

of the principle of freedom and enquiring jointly, through the method of group study,