Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner
British colonial administrator who reorganized Rhodes's secret society into the Milner Group (1854-1925)
Also known as: Milner, Lord Milner, Alfred Milner, Milner's, Viscount Milner
Alfred Milner (1854-1925) was a British colonial administrator, journalist, and statesman whom Quigley names as the central organizing figure of the The Milner Group. As High Commissioner for South Africa (1897-1905) he prosecuted the Boer War and assembled the cadre — Milner's Kindergarten — that would staff the The Round Table, the Rhodes Trust, the RIIA, and key British government positions for the next forty years. After Rhodes's death in 1902 he became 'the chief controller of his vast estate' (AAE 7), inheriting the secret society and reshaping it into a coordinated, decentralized network.
Life and rise
Born in 1854 in Giessen, Germany, to an English father and an Anglo-German mother, Milner was educated at King's College London and Balliol College, Oxford, where he came under the spell of John Ruskin and joined the cohort that included Arnold J. Toynbee. After a brief legal career he worked as a journalist at the Pall Mall Gazette under W. T. Stead (1885), serving as Stead's assistant editor — a relationship that put him into the orbit of Rhodes via Stead. His administrative career began as private secretary to G. J. Goschen (Chancellor of the Exchequer in Salisbury's government), then as chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue in Egypt. In 1897 he was appointed High Commissioner for South Africa, the post from which he prosecuted the South African War (1899-1902) and reorganized the conquered Boer republics.
Quigley's framing: the chief organizer
Quigley places Milner at the center of his AAE narrative. Of the original 1891 secret society 'the real power was to be exercised by the leader, and a "Junta of Three." The leader was to be Rhodes, and the Junta was to be Stead, Brett, and Alfred Milner. In accordance with this decision, Milner was added to the society by Stead shortly after the meeting we have described' (AAE 4). After Rhodes's death in 1902 and the eclipse of Stead during the Boer War, Milner became 'the leader' from 1902 to 1925 — the longest of the Group's four periods (AAE 4). Quigley describes the third period, from 1901 to 1922, as 'the New College period' and as centering about Milner (AAE 6). He treats Milner as the architect who took Rhodes's romantic dream and rebuilt it as a sustainable institutional network — a circle of capable young men placed at the documentary nodes (Cabinet secretariat, Foreign Office, Colonial Office, The Times, All Souls College, the Rhodes Trust).
Milner's Kindergarten
Between 1901 and 1910 Milner administered the conquered Transvaal and Orange River Colony with 'a civil service of young men recruited for the purpose. This group, known as "Milner's Kindergarten," reorganized the government and administration' (T&H 151). The Kindergarten alumni — Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr, Robert Brand, Baron Brand, Geoffrey Dawson, Patrick Duncan, Lord Lovat, F. S. Oliver, and others — became the operational core of the The Milner Group after Milner's return to London. They went on to draft the South Africa Union constitution (1909), to found The Round Table magazine (1910), to staff Lloyd George's wartime Cabinet secretariat (1916-1922), to negotiate the Versailles settlement, and to found the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1919). Of Milner himself, Quigley records Stead's note that 'two friends, now members of the Upper House, who were thoroughly in sympathy with the gospel according to the Pall Mall Gazette and who had been as my right and left hands during my editorship of the paper' — Milner and Brett — entered the society at Stead's invitation (AAE 36).
War cabinet and post-war
Milner returned to British politics in 1916 when Lloyd George brought him into the small War Cabinet without portfolio — 'the chief influence in Lloyd George's war administration in 1917-1919' (AAE 5). He served as Secretary of State for War in 1918 and then as Secretary of State for the Colonies (1918-1921), with Leopold Amery as his assistant. From the Colonial Office he negotiated Egyptian independence, presided over the disposition of the German colonies via the mandate system, and supervised the Indian and Irish settlements through his protégés (Curtis drew up the Government of India Act of 1919 and was Adviser on Irish Affairs through 1921, as Quigley notes at T&H 159). He died in 1925, and after his death — Quigley argues — the Group's center of gravity shifted to All Souls College, with Lothian, Brand, and Curtis as the dominant inner-circle figures (AAE 6).
Quigley's personal assessment
Of all the figures in his book, Milner draws Quigley's most direct admission of sympathy. 'In this Group were persons like Esher, Grey, Milner, Hankey, and Zimmern, who must command the admiration and affection of all who know of them. On the other hand, in this Group were persons whose lives have been a disaster to our way of life' (AAE 3). Quigley spent years working through Milner's private papers and found, contra the conspiracy literature, 'no evidence to support' the Birch-Society claim that Milner had financed the Bolsheviks (Professor Who Knew Too Much, 5). The character of the Group, for Quigley, ultimately reflects Milner's own: 'the Group still reflects the characteristics of its chief leader and, through him, the ideological orientation of Balliol in the 1870s' (AAE 6).
Cited in
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 2 Quigley
this secret society was created by Rhodes and his principal trustee, Lord Milner, and continues to exist to this day. To be sure, this secret society is not a childish thing like the Ku Klux Klan, and it does not have any secret robes, secret handclasps, or secret passwords.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 4 Quigley
the real power was to be exercised by the leader, and a 'Junta of Three.' The leader was to be Rhodes, and the Junta was to be Stead, Brett, and Alfred Milner. In accordance with this decision, Milner was added to the society by Stead shortly after the meeting we have described.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 6 Quigley
Although the membership of the Milner Group has slowly shifted with the passing years, the Group still reflects the characteristics of its chief leader and, through him, the ideological orientation of Balliol in the 1870s.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 146 Quigley
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.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 151 Quigley
Milner took over the two defeated Boer republics and administered them as occupied territory until 1905, using a civil service of young men recruited for the purpose. This group, known as 'Milner's Kindergarten,' reorganized the government and administration.
- professor-who-knew-too-much · p. 5 Quigley
they constantly misquote me to this effect: that Lord Milner (the dominant trustee of the Cecil Rhodes Trust and a heavy in the Round Table Group) helped finance the Bolsheviks. I have been through the greater part of Milner's private papers and have found no evidence to support that.
- book-reviews · p. 5 Quigley
It goes back even before the armistice of 1918 and may be seen at that time in such straws in the wind as Lord Milner's warning, in October 1918, that Germany must not be crushed in the war's end and the peace settlement in order to preserve a balance of power in Europe.