Anglo-American Establishment полностью

1920. In that issue the Group adopted the path of cooperation as its future policy and

added: "Its [ The Round Tables] promoters in this country feel bound to state that all the

experience of the war and of the peace has not shaken in the least the fundamental

conviction with which they commenced the publication of this Review.... The Round

Table has never expressed an opinion as to the form which this constitutional

organization would take, nor as to the time when it should be undertaken. But it has never

disguised its conviction that a cooperate system would eventually break down." In

September 1935, in a review of its first twenty-five years, the journal stated: "Since the

war, therefore, though it has never abandoned its view that the only final basis for

freedom and enduring peace is the organic union of nations in a commonwealth

embracing the whole world or, in the first instance, a lesser part of it, The Round Table

has been a consistent supporter . . . of the principles upon which the British Empire now

rests, as set forth in the Balfour Memorandum of 1926.... It has felt that only by trying the

cooperation method to the utmost and realizing its limitations in practice would nations

within or without the British Empire be brought to face the necessity for organic union."

There apparently exists within the Milner Group a myth to the effect that they

invented the expression "Commonwealth of Nations," that it was derived from Zimmern's

book The Greek Commonwealth (published in 1911) and first appeared in public in the title of Curtis's book in 1916. This is not quite accurate, for the older imperialists of the

Cecil Bloc had used the term "commonwealth" in reference to the British Empire on

various occasions as early as 1884. In that year, in a speech at Adelaide, Australia, Lord

Rosebery referred to the possibility of New Zealand seceding from the Empire and

added: "God forbid. There is no need for any nation, however great, leaving the Empire,

because the Empire is a Commonwealth of Nations."

If the Milner Group did not invent the term, they gave it a very definite and special

meaning, based on Zimmern's book, and they popularized the use of the expression.

According to Zimmern, the expression "commonwealth" referred to a community based

on freedom and the rule of law, in distinction to a government based on authority or even

arbitrary tyranny. The distinction was worked out in Zimmern's book in the contrast

between Athens, as described in Pericles's funeral oration, and Sparta (or the actual

conduct of the Athenian empire). As applied to the modern world, the contrast was

between the British government, as described by Dicey, and the despotisms of Philip II,

Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II. In this sense of the word, commonwealth was not originally

an alternative to federation, as it later became, since it referred to the moral qualities of

government, and these could exist within either a federated or a nonfederated Empire.

The expression "British Commonwealth of Nations" was, then, not invented by the

Group but was given a very special meaning and was propagated in this sense until it

finally became common usage. The first step in this direction was taken on 15 May 1917,

when General Smuts, at a banquet in his honor in the Houses of Parliament, used the

expression. This banquet was apparently arranged by the Milner Group, and Lord Milner

sat at Smuts's right hand during the speech. The speech itself was printed and given the

widest publicity, being disseminated throughout Great Britain, the Commonwealth, the

United States, and the rest of the world. In retrospect, some persons have believed that

Smuts was rejecting the meaning of the expression as used by the Milner Group, because

he did reject the project for imperial federation in this speech. This, however, is a

mistake, for, as we have said, the expression "commonwealth" at that time had a meaning

which could include either federation or cooperation among the members of the British

imperial system. The antithesis in meaning between federation and commonwealth is a

later development which took place outside the Group. To this day, men like Curtis,

Amery, and Grigg still use the term "commonwealth" as applied to a federated Empire,

and they always define the word "commonwealth" as "a government of liberty under the

law" and not as an arrangement of independent but cooperating states.

The development of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations and the

role which the Milner Group played in this development cannot be understood by anyone

who feels that federation and commonwealth were mutually exclusive ideas.

In fact, there were not two ideas, but three, and they were not regarded by the Group

as substitutes for each other but as supplements to each other. These three ideas were: (1)

the creation of a common ideology and world outlook among the peoples of the United