how it could be preserved and expanded in the conditions of the then existing world. In
calling for preparation against the German danger (as it did from the very beginning) The
Round Table was not merely, or even chiefly, concerned with saving British skins. It was
concerned with upholding against the despotic state what it began to call ‘the principle of
the commonwealth.’ . . . The root principle of The Round Table remained freedom—‘the
government of men by themselves’ and it demanded that within the Empire this principle
should be persistently pursued and expressed in institutions. For that reason it denounced
the post-war attempt to repress the Irish demand for national self-government by ruthless
violence after a century of union had failed to win Irish consent, as a policy in conflict
with British wealth; and it played its part in achieving the Irish Treaty, and the Dominion
settlement. Within the limits of the practiceable it fought for the Commonwealth ideal in
India. It was closely associated with the device of dyarchy, which seemed for the time
being the most practical method of preventing the perpetuation of an irremovable
executive confronting an irresponsible legislature and of giving Indians practical training
in responsibility for government—the device embodied in the Montagu-Chelmsford
Report and the Government of India Act.... The Round Table, while supporting the legal
formulation of national freedom in the shape of Dominion autonomy, has never lost sight
of its ultimate ideal of an organic and articulate Commonwealth. The purpose of
devolution is not to drive liberty to the point of license but to prepare for the ultimate
basis on which alone freedom can be preserved the reign of law over all.... Federal Union
is the only security for the freedom both of the individual and of the nation. . . . The
principle of anonymity has never been broken and it remains not only as a means of
obtaining material from sources that would otherwise be closed, but also as a guarantee
that both the opinions and the facts presented in the articles are scrutinized by more than
one individual judgment.... Imperceptibly, the form of the review has changed to suit
altered circumstances.... But the fundamentals remain unchanged. Groups in the four
overseas Dominions still assemble their material and hammer out their views,
metaphorically, ‘round the table.’ Some of their members have shared continuously in
this work for a quarter of a century; and in England, too, the group of friends who came
together in South Africa still help to guide the destinies and contribute to the pages of the
review they founded, though the chances of life and death have taken some of their
number, and others have been brought in to contribute new points of view and younger
blood.”
Chapter 5—Milner Group, Rhodes, and Oxford, 1901-1925
It is generally believed, and stated as a fact by many writers, that Milner hoped for
some new political appointment after his return from Africa and was deprived of this by
the election of 1906, which swept the Conservatives from office and brought in the
Liberals. It is perfectly true that Milner was out of political life for ten years, but there is,
so far as I know, no evidence that this was contrary to his own wish. In his farewell
speech of March 1905, delivered long before the Liberal victory at the polls, Milner
stated in reference "to the great idea of Imperial Unity": "I shall always be steadfast in
that faith, though I should prefer to work quietly and in the background, in the formation
of opinion rather than in the exercise of power." This is exactly what Milner did. Even
after he returned to positions of power in 1915-1921, he worked as quietly as possible
and attracted public attention at an absolute minimum. (1)
Milner had nothing to gain from public office after 1905, until the great crisis of 1915-
1918 made it imperative for all able men to take a hand in active affairs. If he wanted to
speak his own mind, he always had his seat in the House of Lords, and speaking
engagements elsewhere were easy—indeed, too easy—to get. In South Africa his union
program after 1905 was going forward at a rate that exceeded his most optimistic hopes.
And nowhere else did it seem, in 1905, that he could, in actual administration,
accomplish more than he could in quietly building up a combination propaganda and
patronage machine at home. This machine was constructed about Rhodes and his
associates, New College, and All Souls.
Milner was not of any political party himself and regarded party politics with disgust
long before 1905. As his friend Edmund Garrett wrote in 1905: "Rhodes and Milner both
number themselves of that great unformed party which is neither the ins nor the outs,
which touches here the foreign politics of the one, here the home politics of the other; a
party to which Imperialism and Carlyle's Condition of the People Question are one and