Kingdom, the Empire, and the United States; (2) the creation of instruments and practices
of cooperation among these various communities in order that they might pursue parallel
policies; and (3) the creation of a federation on an imperial, Anglo-American, or world
basis. The Milner Group regarded these as supplementary to one another and worked
vigorously for all of them, without believing that they were mutually exclusive
alternatives. They always realized, even the most fanatical of them, that federation, even
of the Empire only, was very remote. They always, in this connection, used such
expressions as "not in our lifetime" or "not in the present century." They always insisted
that the basic unity of any system must rest on common ideology, and they worked in this
direction through the Rhodes Scholarships, the Round Table Groups, and the Institutes of
International Affairs, even when they were most ardently seeking to create organized
constitutional relationships. And in these constitutional relationships they worked equally
energetically and simultaneously for imperial federation and for such instruments of
cooperation as conferences of Prime Ministers of Dominions. The idea, which seems to
have gained currency, that the Round Table Group was solely committed to federation
and that the failure of this project marked the defeat and eclipse of the Group is
erroneous. On the contrary, by the 1930s, the Round Table Group was working so
strongly for a common ideology and for institutions of cooperation that many believers in
federation regarded them as defeatist. For this reason, some believers in federation
organized a new movement called the "World Commonwealth Movement." Evidence of
this movement is an article by Lord Davies in
January 1935, called "
critical of the foreign policy rather than the imperial policy of the Round Table Group,
especially its policy of appeasement toward Germany and of weakening the League of
Nations, and its belief that Britain could find security in isolation from the Continent and
a balance-of-power policy supported by the United Kingdom, the Dominions, and the
United States.
The effort of the Round Table Group to create a common ideology to unite the
supporters of the British way of life appears in every aspect of their work. It was derived
from Rhodes and Milner and found its most perfect manifestation in the Rhodes
Scholarships. As a result of these and of the Milner Group's control of so much of
Oxford, Oxford tended to become an international university. Here the Milner Group had
to tread a narrow path between the necessity of training non-English (including
Americans and Indians) in the English way of life and the possibility of submerging that
way of life completely (at Oxford, at least) by admitting too many non-English to its
cloistered halls. On the whole, this path was followed with considerable success, as will
be realized by anyone who has had any experience with Rhodes Scholars. To be sure, the
visitors from across the seas picked up the social customs of the English somewhat more
readily than they did the English ideas of playing the game or the English ideas of
politics, but, on the whole, the experiment of Rhodes, Milner, and Lothian cannot be
called a failure. It was surely a greater success in the United States than it was in the
Dominions or in India, for in the last, at least, the English idea of liberty was assimilated
much more completely than the idea of loyalty to England.
The efforts of the Milner Group to encourage federation of the Empire have already
been indicated. They failed and, indeed, were bound to fail, as most members of the
Group soon realized. As early as 1903, John Buchan and Joseph Chamberlain had given
up the attempt. By 1917, even Curtis had accepted the idea that federation was a very
remote possibility, although in his case, at least, it remained as the beckoning will-o-the-
wisp by which all lesser goals were measured and found vaguely dissatisfying.(1)
The third string to the bow—imperial cooperation—remained. It became in time the
chief concern of the Group. The story of these efforts is a familiar one, and no attempt
will be made here to repeat it. We are concerned only with the role played by the Milner
Group in these efforts. In general this role was very large, if not decisive.
The proposals for imperial cooperation had as their basic principle the assumption that
communities which had a common ideology could pursue parallel courses toward the
same goal merely by consultation among their leaders. For a long time, the Milner Group
did not see that the greater the degree of success obtained by this method, the more
remote was the possibility that federation could ever be attained. It is very likely that the
Group was misled in this by the fact that they were for many years extremely fortunate in