Milner's Kindergarten

The cohort of young Oxford men Alfred Milner gathered around himself as administrators in South Africa after the Boer War

Also known as: Kindergarten, Milner's Kindergarten, the South African Kindergarten

The informal name for the group of young Oxford graduates — Curtis, Brand, Kerr (later Lothian), Dawson, Grigg, Hichens, Feetham, and a dozen others — whom Milner brought to South Africa as administrators after the Boer War (AAE 43-46). The Kindergarten became the operational core of the post-1909 Milner Group. Quigley's reconstruction of the Group hinges on tracing the Kindergarten alumni into their later positions — at The Times, the Rhodes Trust, the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Round Table magazine, and Chatham House (T&H 132).

Origins in Milner's High Commissionership

Alfred Milner was appointed High Commissioner for South Africa in 1897 — an appointment Quigley attributes to his membership in 'Rhodes's secret society, through the influence of Stead, Brett, and Rhodes' (AAE 43). As High Commissioner he was answerable to Joseph Chamberlain at the Colonial Office, but in practice he controlled both the run-up to the Boer War (1899-1902) and the reconstruction of the conquered Boer republics afterward. To staff the new administration he reached back to Oxford, drawing systematically on young men from All Souls, New College, and Balliol. The result was a recognisable cohort — eleven from New College alone — that the press christened 'Milner's Kindergarten,' first in mockery and then in admiration. Milner himself never used the term, but it stuck. By the time of his farewell speech in March 1905, the Kindergarten was an identifiable cadre with shared training, shared ideology, and shared loyalty to its chief.

Roster

Quigley lists eighteen members of the Kindergarten proper — Milner's civil servants — plus five close affiliates who were in South Africa during the same period but outside the civil service: (AAE 44-45). The proper Kindergarten: Patrick Duncan (later Sir Patrick), Balliol; Philip Kerr (later Lord Lothian), New; Robert Henry Brand (later Lord Brand), New, All Souls 1901-; Lionel Curtis, New, All Souls 1921-; Geoffrey Dawson (until 1917 Robinson), Magdalen, All Souls 1898-1905, 1915-1944; John Buchan (later Lord Tweedsmuir), Brasenose; Dougal Orme Malcolm (later Sir Dougal), New, All Souls 1899-1955; William Lionel Hichens, New; Richard Feetham, New; John Dove, New; Basil Williams, New, All Souls 1924-1925; Lord Basil Blackwood, Balliol; Hugh A. Wyndham, New; George V. Fiddes (later Sir George), Brasenose; John Hanbury-Williams (later Sir John), Wellington (NZ); Main S. O. Walrond, Balliol; Fabian Ware (later Sir Fabian), Univ. of Paris; William Flavelle Monypenny, Balliol. The five close affiliates: Leopold Amery, Balliol, All Souls 1897-1911, 1938; Edward Grigg (later Lord Altrincham), New; H. A. L. Fisher, New; Edward F. L. Wood (later Lord Halifax), Christ Church, All Souls 1903-1910; Basil K. Long, Brasenose. 'Of the twenty-three, nine were in the group which founded, edited, and wrote The Round Table in the period after 1910, five were in close personal contact with Lloyd George (two in succession as private secretaries) in the period 1916-1922, and seven were in the group which controlled and edited The Times after 1912' (AAE 45).

Work in South Africa (1897–1910)

The Kindergarten's South African work fell into two phases: the war years (1899-1902), during which they ran civilian administration in occupied Boer territory, and the post-war years (1902-1910), during which they engineered the constitutional fusion of the four British colonies into the Union of South Africa. Curtis was Town Clerk of Johannesburg from 1902, then Assistant Colonial Secretary of the Transvaal; he wrote the memorandum on imperial relations that became the founding document of the Round Table movement. Feetham was Deputy Town Clerk of Johannesburg, then on the Transvaal Legislative Council. Patrick Duncan was Treasurer of the Transvaal 1901, Colonial Secretary 1903-1906, Acting Lieutenant Governor 1906; he later became Governor-General of South Africa 1936-1946 (AAE 46). Dawson edited the State newspaper in Johannesburg before going to The Times. Brand was Secretary of the Transvaal Inter-Colonial Council. The native-policy framework Milner's administration imposed — labour-recruitment systems, native land segregation, English as the language of administration — would shape South African racial politics for sixty years; Quigley does not address this aspect critically, though his text acknowledges that the Kindergarten's reconstruction was conducted from above and against the wishes of much of the Boer population (AAE 46-48).

Selborne, Smuts, and Union

When Milner returned to England in 1905, Lord Selborne — Salisbury's son-in-law and a Cecil Bloc figure now an honorary Group member — succeeded him as High Commissioner. 'When he was ready to retire from his post, [Milner] recommended that his successor be either Alfred Lyttelton or Lord Selborne. The latter obtained the appointment and not only carried Milner's work to completion but did it with Milner's picked personnel. That personnel regarded Selborne as second leader to Milner in the Group' (AAE 43). Under Selborne the Kindergarten produced the Selborne Memorandum (1907), drafted largely by Curtis, arguing for the political union of the four South African colonies. Jan Smuts, leader of the Transvaal Het Volk party and a former Boer commando general, took up the union project from the Afrikaner side; what looked like Smuts's initiative was, on Quigley's reading, in substantial part the Kindergarten's plan, formally adopted by Smuts. The Union of South Africa was proclaimed 31 May 1910. The Kindergarten dispersed within weeks. Curtis returned to England via Australia and New Zealand to seed Round Table groups; Kerr returned to London to edit The Round Table; most of the rest returned to England to take up posts in the Foreign Office, the Treasury, The Times, and the City.

The Round Table as Kindergarten Project

Tragedy and Hope compresses the Kindergarten-to-Round-Table transition into a single paragraph: 'In 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 semisecret groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the chief British dependencies and the United States' (T&H 132). The Round Table magazine, founded November 1910, was edited and almost entirely written in its early years by Kindergarten alumni — Kerr, Brand, Hichens, Grigg, Dawson, Fisher, Dove, with later contributions from Coupland, Zimmern, and Arnold Toynbee (AAE 103). The technique of study groups distributing memoranda for comment — Curtis's signature method — was the Kindergarten's South African working procedure, adapted to imperial scale.

Dispersion: Three Continents

The Kindergarten's later careers fan out across the British and post-British world. In Britain itself: Brand to Lazard Brothers and the Bank of England; Kerr/Lothian to the Rhodes Trust and the Washington Embassy; Curtis to All Souls and the Royal Institute of International Affairs; Dawson to The Times; Amery to Parliament, the Cabinet, and India. In South Africa: Duncan to Governor-Generalship; Feetham to the Supreme Court of South Africa and the Irish Boundary Commission; Wyndham to the Union Parliament. In Canada: Glazebrook (Milner's old correspondent, not a Kindergarten member but the organizing figure of the Canadian Round Table). In India: William Marris and James Meston (Lord Meston) — both 'former members of Milner's Kindergarten,' the nucleus of the Indian Round Table group (T&H 132). The dispersal was systematic. By 1925 the Kindergarten was no longer a cohort in South Africa but a network spanning the imperial system, communicating constantly through correspondence and annual visits, and continuously refreshed at the All Souls high table. Quigley reckons the Kindergarten the longest-running operational cadre in modern British public life — a single Oxford generation supplying three High Commissioners, two Times editors, three Rhodes Trust secretaries, two Lazard Brothers managing directors, two Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretaries, and one ambassador to Washington.

Inner Circle and Outer Helpers

Quigley uses the Kindergarten as the diagnostic core of the Milner Group. 'Eleven of these twenty-three men, plus others whom we have mentioned, formed the central core of the Milner Group as it has existed from 1910 to the present' (AAE 45). Of those eleven, six held All Souls fellowships for an aggregate of 169 years — 'an average of over twenty-eight years each' (AAE 45). When Quigley speaks of the Group's 'inner circle' in the inter-war and wartime periods, he means in the first instance these men. 'This inner circle continued to be largely monopolized by the group that had been in South Africa in the period before 1909' (AAE 77). All Souls recruited successors but did not promote them into the inner core; outside acquisitions (Coupland, Astor, Lady Astor, Arnold Toynbee, H. V. Hodson) were rare. The closure of the inner circle to non-Kindergarten members had political consequences — it produced the generational narrowing that, on Quigley's reading, characterized the appeasement decisions of 1934-1939. The men who could not see that Hitler's Germany was different from Stresemann's were the same men who had seen the Boer War as a moral struggle thirty-five years earlier.

Cited in

anglo-american-establishment · p. 5 Quigley
During the second and third decades of its existence it was known as 'Milner's Kindergarten' (1901-1910) and as 'the Round Table Group' (1910-1920).
anglo-american-establishment · p. 43 Quigley
The appointment as High Commissioner of South Africa was the turning point in Milner's life. It was obtained, apparently, through his membership in Rhodes's secret society, through the influence of Stead, Brett, and Rhodes.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 43 Quigley
As High Commissioner, Milner built up a body of assistants known in history as 'Milner's Kindergarten.'
anglo-american-establishment · p. 45 Quigley
Of the twenty-three, nine were in the group which founded, edited, and wrote The Round Table in the period after 1910, five were in close personal contact with Lloyd George (two in succession as private secretaries) in the period 1916-1922, and seven were in the group which controlled and edited The Times after 1912.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 45 Quigley
Eleven of these twenty-three men, plus others whom we have mentioned, formed the central core of the Milner Group as it has existed from 1910 to the present.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 62 Quigley
The work of the Kindergarten in South Africa is not so well known as might be expected. Indeed, until very recently the role played by this group, because of its own deliberate policy of secrecy, has been largely concealed.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 77 Quigley
This inner circle continued to be largely monopolized by the group that had been in South Africa in the period before 1909. The only persons who were not in South Africa, yet reached the inner circle of the Milner Group, would appear to be Coupland, Lord Astor, Lady Astor, Arnold Toynbee, and H. V. Hodson.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 99 Quigley
The second important propaganda effort of the Milner Group in the period after 1909 was The Round Table. This was part of an effort by the circle of the Milner Group to accomplish for the whole Empire what they had just done for South Africa.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 132 Quigley
In 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.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 132 Quigley
Under Milner in South Africa they were known as Milner's Kindergarten until 1910.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 145 Quigley
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.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 951 Quigley
After Milner's death in 1925, the leadership was largely shared by the survivors of Milner's Kindergarten, that is, the group of young Oxford men whom he used as civil servants in his reconstruction of South Africa in 1901-1910. Brand was the last survivor of the Kindergarten.