Freeman, Lord Bryce, and A. V. Dicey, felt that the distinguishing mark between the two
hosts could be found in their views of law—the forces of light regarding law as manmade
and mutable, but yet above all men, while the forces of darkness regarded law as divine
and eternal, yet subordinate to the king. The one permitted diversity, growth, and
freedom, while the other engendered monotony, stultification, and slavery. The struggle
between the two had gone on for thousands of years, spawning such offspring as the
Persian Wars, the Punic Wars, and the struggles of Britain with the forces of Philip II, of
Louis XIV, of Napoleon, and of Wilhelm II. Thus, to this Group, Britain stood as the
defender of all that was fine or civilized in the modern world, just as Athens had stood for
the same values in the ancient world. (17) Britain's mission, under this interpretation, was
to carry freedom and light (that is, the principles of commonwealth) against the forces of
theocracy and darkness (that is, autocracy) in Asia—and even in Central Europe. For this
Group regarded the failure of France or Germany to utilize the English idea of
"supremacy of law" (as described by Dicey in his The Law of the Constitution, 1885) as
proof that these countries were still immersed, at least partially, in the darkness of
theocratic law. The slow spread of English political institutions to Europe as well as Asia
in the period before the First World War was regarded by the Group as proof both of their
superiority and of the possibility of progress. In Asia and Africa, at least, England's
civilizing mission was to be carried out by force, if necessary, for "the function of force is
to give moral ideas time to take root." Asia thus could be compelled to accept
civilization, a procedure justifiable to the Group on the grounds that Asians are obviously
better off under European rule than under the rule of fellow Asians and, if consulted,
would clearly prefer British rule to that of any other European power. To be sure, the
blessings to be extended to the less fortunate peoples of the world did not include
democracy. To Milner, to Curtis, and apparently to most members of the Group,
democracy was not an unmixed good, or even a good, and far inferior to rule by the best,
or, as Curtis says, by those who "have some intellectual capacity for judging the public
interest, and, what is no less important, some moral capacity for treating it as paramount
to their own."
This disdain for unrestricted democracy was quite in accordance with the ideas
revealed by Milner's activities in South Africa and with the Greek ideals absorbed at
Balliol or New College. However, the restrictions on democracy accepted by the Milner
Group were of a temporary character, based on the lack of education and background of
those who were excluded from political participation. It was not a question of blood or
birth, for these men were not racists.
This last point is important because of the widespread misconception that these people
were racially intolerant. They never were; certainly those of the inner circle never were.
On the contrary, they were ardent advocates of a policy of education and uplift of all
groups, so that ultimately all groups could share in political life and in the rich benefits of
the British way of life. To be sure, the members of the Group did not advocate the
immediate extension of democracy and self-government to all peoples within the Empire,
but these restrictions were based not on color of skin or birth but upon cultural outlook
and educational background. Even Rhodes, who is widely regarded as a racist because his
scholarships were restricted to candidates from the Nordic countries, was not a racist. He
restricted his scholarships to these countries because he felt that they had a background
sufficiently homogeneous to allow the hope that educational interchange could link them
together to form the core of the worldwide system which he hoped would ultimately
come into existence. Beyond this, Rhodes insisted that there must be no restrictions
placed on the scholarships on a basis of race, religion, skin color, or national origin.(18)
In his own life, Rhodes cared nothing about these things. Some of his closest friends were
Jews (like Beit), and in three of his wills he left Lord Rothschild as his trustee, in one as
his sole trustee. Milner and the other members felt similarly. Lionel Curtis, in his
writings, makes perfectly clear both his conviction that character is acquired by training
rather than innate ability and his insistence on tolerance in personal contact between
members of different races. In his
"English success in planting North America and the comparative failure of their rivals
must, in fact, be traced to the respective merits not of breed but of institutions"; and
again: "The energy and intelligence which had saved Hellas [in the Persian Wars] was the