In this secret society Rhodes was to be leader; Stead, Brett (LordEsher), and Milner were to form an executive committee; Arthur(Lord) Balfour, (Sir) Harry Johnston, Lord Rothschild, Albert (Lord)Grey, and others were listed as potential members of a "Circle ofInitiates;" while there was to be an outer circle known as the Quigley,
2- Carroll Quigley,
272
THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
"Association of Helpers" (later organized by Milner as the Round Table organization).
THE PATTERN OF CONSPIRACY
Here, then, was the classical pattern of political conspiracy. This was the structure that made it possible for Quigley to differentiate between an international "network" and the secret society
In time, as these conspiracies are built from the center out, they form additional rings of organization. Those in the outer echelons usually are idealists with an honest desire to improve the world.
They never suspect an inner control for other purposes, and only those few who demonstrate a ruthless capacity for higher leadership are ever allowed to see it.
After the death of Cecil Rhodes, the inner core of his secret society fell under the control of Lord Alfred Milner, Governor-General and High Commissioner of South Africa. As director of a number of public banks and as corporate precursor of England's Midland Bank, he became one of the greatest political and financial powers in the world. Milner recruited into his secret society a group of young men chiefly from Oxford and Toynbee Hall and, according to Quigley:
Through his influence these men were able to win influential posts in government and international finance and became the dominant influence in British imperial and foreign affairs up to 1939.... In 1909-1913 they organized semi-secret groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the chief British dependencies and the United States....
Money for the widely ramified activities of this organization came
... chiefly from the Rhodes Trust itself, and from wealthy associates such as the Beit brothers, from Sir Abe Bailey, and (after 1915) from the Astor family ... and from foundations and firms associated with the international banking fraternity, especially the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and other organizations associated with J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller and Whitney families, and the associates of Lazarc!
Brothers and of Morgan, Grenfell, and Company....
1. Quigley,
MASQUERADE IN MOSCOW
273
At the end of the war of 1914, it became clear that the organization of this system had to be greatly extended. Once again the task was entrusted to Lionel Curtis who established, in England and each dominion, a front organization to the existing local Round Table Group. This front organization, called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, had as its nucleus in each area the existing submerged Round Table Group. In New York it was known as the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a front for J.P. Morgan and Company in association with the very small American Round Table Group.1
The Council on Foreign Relations was a spin-off from the
failure of the world's leaders at the end of World War I to embrace the League of Nations as a true world government. It became clear to the master planners that they had been unrealistic in their expectations for rapid acceptance. If their plan were to be carried forward, it would have to be done on the basis of patient gradualism symbolized by the Fabian turtle. Rose Martin says:
Colonel House was only one man, where a multitude was needed.
He had set the pattern and outlined goals for the future, and he still had a scheme or two in mind. In particular, he foresaw it would be necessary for the Fabians to develop a top level Anglo-American planning group in the field of foreign relations which could secretly influence policy on the one hand and gradually "educate" public opinion on the other....
