keeping members of the Group in positions of power and influence in the Dominions. As
long as men like Smuts, Botha (who did what Smuts wanted), Duncan, Feetham, or Long
were in influential positions in South Africa; as long as men like Eggleston, Bavin, or
Dudley Braham were influential in Australia; as long as men like Glazebrook, Massey,
Joseph Flavelle, or Percy Corbett were influential in Canada—in a nutshell, as long as
members of the Milner Group were influential throughout the Dominions, the technique
of the parallel policy of cooperation would be the easiest way to reach a common goal.
Unfortunately, this was not a method that could be expected to continue forever, and
when the Milner Group grew older and weaker, it could not be expected that their newer
recruits in England (like Hodson, Coupland, Actor, Woodward, Elton, and others) could
continue to work on a parallel policy with the newer arrivals to power in the Dominions.
When that unhappy day arrived, the Milner Group should have had institutionalized
modes of procedure firmly established. They did not, not because they did not want them,
but because their members in the Dominions could not have remained in influential
positions if they had insisted on creating institutionalized links with Britain when the
people of the Dominions obviously did not want such links.
The use of Colonial or Imperial Conferences as a method for establishing closer
contact with the various parts of the Empire was originally established by the Cecil Bloc
and taken over by the Milner Group. The first four such Conferences (in 1887, 1897,
1902, and 1907) were largely dominated by the former group, although they were not
technically in power during the last one. The decisive changes made in the Colonial
Conference system at the Conference of 1907 were worked out by a secret group, which
consulted on the plans for eighteen months and presented them to the Royal Colonial
Institute in April 1905. These plans were embodied in a dispatch from the Colonial
Secretary, Alfred Lyttelton, and carried out at the Conference of 1907. As a result, it was
established that the name of the meeting was to be changed to Imperial Conference; it
was to be called into session every four years; it was to consist of Prime Ministers of the
self-governing parts of the Empire; the Colonial Secretary was to be eliminated from the
picture; and a new Dominion Department, under Sir Charles Lucas, was to be set up in
the Colonial Office. As the future Lord Lothian wrote in
final result was to destroy the hopes for federation by recognizing the separate existence
of the Dominions.(2)
At the Conference of 1907, at the suggestion of Haldane, there was created a
Committee of Imperial Defence, and a plan was adopted to organize Dominion defense
forces on similar patterns, so that they could be integrated in an emergency. The second
of these proposals, which led to a complete reorganization of the armies of New Zealand,
Australia, and South Africa in 1909-1912, with very beneficial results in the crisis of
1914-1918, is not of immediate concern to us. The Committee of Imperial Defence and
its secretarial staff were creations of Lord Esher, who had been chairman of a special
committee to reform the War Office in 1903 and was permanent member of the
Committee of Imperial Defence from 1905 to his death. As a result of his influence, the
secretariat of this committee became a branch of the Milner Group and later became the
secretariat of the Cabinet itself, when that body first obtained a secretariat in 1917.
From this secretarial staff the Milner Group obtained three recruits in the period after
1918. These were Maurice Hankey, Ernest Swinton, and W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (now
Lord Harlech). Hankey was assistant secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence
from 1908 to 1912 and was secretary from 1912 to 1938. Swinton was assistant secretary
from 1917 to 1925. Both became members of the Milner Group, Hankey close to the
inner circle, Swinton in one of the less central rings. Ormsby-Gore was an assistant
secretary in 1917-1918 at the same time that he was private secretary to Lord Milner. All
three of these men are of sufficient importance to justify a closer examination of their
careers.
Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey (Sir Maurice after 1916, Baron Hankey since 1939),
whose family was related by marriage to the Wyndhams, was born in 1877 and joined the
Royal Marines when he graduated from Rugby in 1895. He retired from that service in
1918 as a lieutenant colonel and was raised to colonel on the retired list in 1929. He was
attached for duty with the Naval Intelligence Department in 1902 and by this route
reached the staff of the Committee of Imperial Defence six years later. In 1917, when it
was decided to give the Cabinet a secretariat for the first time, and to create the Imperial
War Cabinet by adding overseas representatives to the British War Cabinet (a change in