This is my last try already.
If still not conspiratorial view of history, I chop off my head
for you.
Ruskin's message had a sensational impact. His inaugural lecture
was copied out in longhand by one undergraduate, Cecil Rhodes, who
kept it with him for thirty years. Rhodes (1853-1902) feverishly
exploited the diamond and goldfields of South Africa, rose to be
prime minister of the Cape Colony (1890-1896), contributed money to
political parties, controlled parliamentary seats both in England
and in South Africa, and sought to win a strip of British territory
across Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to Egypt and to join these
two extremes together with a telegraph line and ultimately with a
Cape-to-Cairo Railway.
Rhodes inspired devoted support for his goals from others in
South Africa and in England. With financial support from Lord
Rothschild and Alfred Beit, he was able to monopolize the diamond
mines of South Africa as De Beers Consolidated Mines and to build
up a great gold mining enterprise as Consolidated Gold Fields. In
the middle 1890's Rhodes had a personal income of at least a
million pounds sterling a year (then about five million dollars)
which was spent so freely for his mysterious purposes that he was
usually overdrawn on his account.
These purposes centered on his desire to federate the
English-speaking peoples and to bring all the habitable portions of
the world under their control. For this purpose Rhodes left part of
his great fortune to found the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford in
order to spread the English ruling class tradition throughout the
English-speaking world as Ruskin had wanted.
Among Ruskin's most devoted disciples at Oxford were a group of
intimate friends including Arnold Toynbee, Alfred (later Lord)
Milner, Arthur Glazebrook, George (later Sir George) Parkin, Philip
Lyttelton Gell, and Henry (later Sir Henry) Birchenough.
These were so moved by Ruskin that they devoted the rest of
their lives to carrying out his ideas. A similar group of Cambridge
men including Reginald Baliol Brett (Lord Esher), Sir John B.
Seeley, Albert (Lord) Grey, and Edmund Garrett were also aroused by
Ruskin's message and devoted their lives to extension of the
British Empire and uplift of England's urban masses as two parts of
one project which they called "extension of the English-speaking
idea."
They were remarkably successful in these aims because England's
most sensational journalist William T. Stead (1849-1912), an ardent
social reformer and imperialist, brought them into association with
Rhodes.
This association was formally established on February 5,
1891, when Rhodes and Stead organized a secret society of which
Rhodes had been dreaming for sixteen years.
In this secret
society Rhodes was to be leader; Stead, Brett (Lord Esher),
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 of
Initiates"; while there was to be an outer circle known as the
"Association of Helpers" (later organized by Milner as the Round
Table organization).
Brett was invited to join this organization the same day
and Milner a couple of weeks later, on his return from Egypt. Both
accepted with enthusiasm. Thus the central part of the secret
society was established by March 1891. It continued to function as
a formal group, although the outer circle was, apparently, not
organized until 1909-1913.
This group was able to get access to Rhodes's money after his
death in 1902 and also to the funds of loyal Rhodes supporters like
Alfred Beit (1853-1906) and Sir Abe Bailey (1864-1940).
With this backing they sought to extend and execute the ideals
that Rhodes had obtained from Ruskin and Stead. Milner was the
chief Rhodes Trustee and Parkin was Organizing Secretary of the
Rhodes Trust after 1902, while Gell and Birchenough, as well as
others with similar ideas, became officials of the British South
Africa Company.
They were joined in their efforts by other Ruskinite friends of
Stead's like Lord Grey, Lord Esher, and Flora Shaw (later Lady
Lugard). In 1890, by a stratagem too elaborate to describe here,
Miss Shaw became Head of the Colonial Department of The
Times while still remaining on the payroll of Stead's Pall
Mall Gazette, In this post she played a major role in the next
ten years in carrying into execution the imperial schemes of Cecil
Rhodes, to whom Stead had introduced her in 1889.
In the meantime, in 1884, acting under Ruskin's inspiration, a
group which included Arnold Toynbee, Milner, Gell, Grey, Seeley,
and Michael Glazebrook founded the first "settlement house," an
organization by which educated, upper-class people could live in
the slums in order to assist, instruct, and guide the poor, with
particular emphasis on social welfare and adult education.
The new enterprise, set up in East London with P. L. Gell as
chairman, was named Toynbee Hall after Arnold Toynbee who died,
aged 31, in 1883. This was the original model for the thousands of
settlement houses, such as Hull House in Chicago, now found
throughout the world, and was one of the seeds from which the
modern movement for adult education and university extension
grew.
As governor-general and high commissioner of South Africa in the
period 1897-1905, Milner recruited a group of young men, chiefly
from Oxford and from Toynbee Hall, to assist him in organizing his
administration.
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. Under Milner in South Africa they were known as Milner's
Kindergarten until 1910. In 1909-1913 they organized semi-secret
groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the chief British
dependencies and the United States. These still function in eight
countries.
They kept in touch with each other by personal correspondence
and frequent visits, and through an influential quarterly magazine,
The Round Table, founded in 1910 and largely supported by
Sir Abe Bailey's money.
In 1919 they founded the Royal Institute of International
Affairs (Chatham House) for which the chief financial supporters
were Sir Abe Bailey and the Astor family (owners of The
Times). Similar Institutes of International Affairs were
established in the chief British dominions and in the United States
(where it is known as the Council on Foreign Relations) in the
period 1919-1927.
After 1925 a somewhat similar structure of organizations, known
as the Institute of Pacific Relations, was set up in twelve
countries holding territory in the Pacific area, the units in each
British dominion existing on an interlocking basis with the Round
Table Group and the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the
same country.
In Canada the nucleus of this group consisted of Milner's
undergraduate friends at Oxford (such as Arthur Glazebrook and
George Parkin), while in South Africa and India the nucleus was
made up of former members of Milner's Kindergarten. These included
(Sir) Patrick Duncan, B. K. Long, Richard Feetham, and (Sir) Dougal
Malcolm in South Africa and (Sir) William Marris, James (Lord)
Meston, and their friend Malcolm (Lord) Hailey in India.
The groups in Australia and New Zealand had been recruited by
Stead (through his magazine The Review of Reviews) as
early as 1890-1893; by Parkin, at Milner instigation, in the period
1889-1910, and by Lionel Curtis, also at Milner's request, in
1910-1919. The power and influence of this Rhodes-Milner group in
British imperial affairs and in foreign policy since 1889, although
not widely recognized, can hardly be exaggerated. We might mention
as an example that this group dominated The Times from
1890 to 191, and has controlled it completely since 1912 (except
for the years 1919-1922).
Because The Times has been owned by the Astor family
since 1922, this Rhodes-Milner group was sometimes spoken of as the
"Cliveden Set," named after the Astor country house where they
sometimes assembled. Numerous other papers and journals have been
under the control or influence of this group since 1889. They have
also established and influenced numerous university and other
chairs of imperial affairs and international relations.
Some of these are the Beit chairs at Oxford, the Montague Burton
chair at Oxford, the Rhodes chair at London, the Stevenson chair at
Chatham House, the Wilson chair at Aberystwyth, and others, as well
as such important sources of influence as Rhodes House at
Oxford.
From 1884 to about 1915 the members of this group worked
valiantly to extend the British Empire and to organize it in a
federal system. They were constantly harping on the lessons to be
learned from the failure of the American Revolution and the success
of the Canadian federation of 1867, and hoped to federate the
various parts of the empire as seemed feasible, then confederate
the whole of it, with the United Kingdom, into a single
organization.
They also hoped to bring the United States into this
organization to whatever degree was possible. Stead was able to get
Rhodes to accept, in principle, a solution which might have made
Washington the capital of the whole organization or allow parts of
the empire to become states of the American Union.
The varied character of the British imperial possessions, the
backwardness of many of the native peoples involved, the
independence of many of the white colonists overseas, and the
growing international tension which culminated in the First World
War made it impossible to carry out the plan for Imperial
Federation, although the five colonies in Australia were joined
into the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 and the four colonies in
South Africa were joined into the Union of South Africa in
1910.
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