Anglo-American Establishment полностью

to be great. If necessary, the strategy can be carried further, by arranging for the secretary

to the Rhodes Trustees to go to America for a series of "informal discussions" with

former Rhodes Scholars, while a prominent retired statesman (possibly a former Viceroy

of India) is persuaded to say a few words at the unveiling of a plaque in All Souls or New

College in honor of some deceased Warden. By a curious coincidence, both the "informal

discussions" in America and the unveiling speech at Oxford touch on the same topical

subject.

An analogous procedure in reverse could be used for policies or books which the

Group did not approve. A cutting editorial or an unfriendly book review, followed by a

suffocating blanket of silence and neglect, was the best that such an offering could expect

from the instruments of the Milner Group. This is not easy to demonstrate because of the

policy of anonymity followed by writers and reviewers in The Times, The Round Table,

and The Times Literary Supplement, but enough cases have been found to justify this

statement. When J. A. Farrer's book England under Edward VII was published in 1922

and maintained that the British press, especially The Times, was responsible for bad

Anglo-German feeling before 1909, The Times Literary Supplement gave it to J. W.

Headlam-Morley to review. And when Baron von Eckardstein, who was in the German

Embassy in London at the time of the Boer War, published his memoirs in 1920, the

same journal gave the book to Chirol to review, even though Chirol was an interested

party and was dealt with in a critical fashion in several passages in the book itself. Both

of these reviews were anonymous.

There is no effort here to contend that the Milner Group ever falsified or even

concealed evidence (although this charge could be made against The Times). Rather it

propagated its point of view by interpretation and selection of evidence. In this fashion it

directed policy in ways that were sometimes disastrous. The Group as a whole was made

up of intelligent men who believed sincerely, and usually intensely, in what they

advocated, and who knew that their writings were intended for a small minority as

intelligent as themselves. In such conditions there could be no value in distorting or

concealing evidence. To do so would discredit the instruments they controlled. By giving

the facts as they stood, and as completely as could be done in consistency with the

interpretation desired, a picture could be construed that would remain convincing for a

long time.

This is what was done by The Times. Even today, the official historian of The Times is

unable to see that the policy of that paper was anti-German from 1895 to 1914 and as

such contributed to the worsening of Anglo-German relations and thus to the First World

War. This charge has been made by German and American students, some of them of the

greatest diligence and integrity, such as Professors Sidney B. Fay, William L. Langer,

Oron J. Hale, and others. The recent History of The Times devotes considerable space and

obviously spent long hours of research in refuting these charges, and fails to see that it

has not succeeded. With the usual honesty and industry of the Milner Group, the historian

gives the evidence that will convict him, without seeing that his interpretation will not

hold water. He confesses that the various correspondents of The Times in Berlin played

up all anti-English actions and statements and played down all pro-English ones; that

they quoted obscure and locally discredited papers in order to do this; that all The Times

foreign correspondents in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and elsewhere were anti-German, and

that these were the ones who were kept on the staff and promoted to better positions; that

the one member of the staff who was recognized as being fair to Germany (and who was

unquestionably the most able man in the whole Times organization), Donald Mackenzie

Wallace, was removed as head of the Foreign Department and shunted off to be editor of

the supplementary volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica (which was controlled by The

Times); and that The Times frequently printed untrue or distorted information on

Germany. All of this is admitted and excused as the work of honest, if hasty, journalists,

and the crowning proof that The Times was not guilty as charged is implied to be the fact

that the Germans did ultimately get into a war with Britain, thus proving at one stroke

that they were a bad lot and that the attitude of The Times staff toward them was justified

by the event.

It did not occur to the historian of The Times that there exists another explanation of

Anglo-German relations, namely that in 1895 there were two Germanies—the one

admiring Britain and the other hating Britain—and that Britain, by her cold-blooded and