The Round Table

Imperial-federation discussion network and quarterly journal founded 1909–1910 as the semi-public arm of the Milner Group

Also known as: Round Table Group, Round Table Groups, The Round Table, Round Table movement

The Round Table was the semi-public face of the Milner Group. From 1909 onward, Round Table groups in London and the Dominions met to coordinate imperial policy; the quarterly journal The Round Table, founded November 1910 and largely written in its first decade by Philip Kerr, was their voice in the policy press (AAE 99). Organized by Lionel Curtis, Kerr, and Sir William Marris on behalf of Lord Milner (T&H 951), the Round Table network seeded — and then absorbed — the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Institute of Pacific Relations.

Origins (1909–1910)

The Round Table arose directly out of the success of Milner's Kindergarten in federating South Africa. With the Union of South Africa achieved in 1910, the Kindergarten's leadership — Curtis, Philip Kerr, and Sir William Marris — turned to the larger problem of imperial federation. 'We feared that South Africa might abstain from a future war with Germany, on the grounds that they had not participated in the decision to make war,' Curtis wrote in 1917. 'Confronted by this dilemma at the very moment of attaining Dominion self-government, we thought it would be wise to ask people in the oldest and most experienced of all Dominions what they thought of the matter. So in 1909, Mr. Kerr and I went to Canada and persuaded Mr. Marris, who was then on leave, to accompany us' (AAE 99). In Canada Milner's old Balliol friend Arthur Glazebrook organized the first group; Curtis returned to South Africa to start a second; he then sailed to New Zealand and Australia, setting up five study groups in each. Kerr stayed in London editing the journal. By 1915 Round Table groups operated in seven countries — the United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and 'a rather loosely organized group in the United States' (T&H 951). The funding model copied the South African experiment: 'as in South Africa, the original cost of the periodical was paid by Abe Bailey' (AAE 99).

The Round Table Magazine

The quarterly journal The Round Table appeared with the date 15 November 1910. 'It had no names in the whole issue, either of the officers or of the contributors of the five articles. The opening statement of policy was unsigned, and the only address to which communications could be sent was "The Secretary, 175 Piccadilly, London, W." This anonymity has been maintained ever since' (AAE 101). The defended reason was editorial independence; the real reasons, Quigley says, were that the contributors were too few and too obscure at first to be named, and too prominent later. Kerr 'during his editorship always wrote the leading article in every issue' (AAE 101). The journal was 'essentially the propaganda vehicle of a handful of people and could not have carried signed articles either originally, when they were too few, or later, when they were too famous' (AAE 101). Curtis defined the editorial mission in 1920: 'A large quarterly like The Round Table is not intended so much for the average reader, as for those who write for the average reader. It is meant to be a storehouse of information of all kinds upon which publicists can draw' (AAE 102). The first article of the first issue, 'Anglo-German Rivalry,' by Lord Lothian, set the tone — frankly anti-German, framing imperial federation as a precondition for the coming European war (AAE 102). Through the 1920s and 1930s the editorial board remained the same handful: Lothian, Brand, Hichens, Grigg, Dawson, Fisher, Dove; vacancies were filled from All Souls.

Method: Memoranda and Study Groups

The Round Table method was Toynbee's, refined by Curtis. As Benjamin Jowett described the original Toynbee procedure: 'He would gather his friends around him; they would form an organization; they would work on quietly for a time, some at Oxford, some in London; they would prepare themselves in different parts of the subject until they were ready to strike in public' (AAE 10). Curtis applied this on an imperial scale. He drafted a memorandum on imperial relations, printed it with blank pages opposite each leaf for written comments, and distributed it to the study groups in each Dominion (AAE 99-100). The groups met to discuss, returned their reports, and Curtis compiled a comprehensive report which was then circulated for further comment, with the cycle repeated until consensus emerged. 'These reports were to be sent to Curtis, who was to compile a comprehensive report on the whole imperial problem. This comprehensive report would then be submitted to the groups in the same fashion and the resulting comments used as a basis for a final report' (AAE 100). The result was a 1916 book, Curtis's The Problem of the Commonwealth, published anonymously as 'by the Round Table.' Later members denied the Round Table held a single view, but Quigley insists: 'The Group did not contain persons of various points of view but rather persons of unusual unanimity of opinion, especially in regard to goals' (AAE 102). The disagreements were about methods, not ends — the empire's centrality was 'almost axiomatic' (AAE 102).

Ideology: Imperial Federation to Commonwealth

The Round Table's founding goal was imperial federation: a single federal government for the United Kingdom, the Dominions, and ultimately the United States. This proved politically impossible. The 1917 Imperial Resolution at the Imperial War Cabinet — engineered by Milner — formally excluded federation as a solution and recognized 'the complete equality of the Dominions and the United Kingdom under one King' (AAE 130). Curtis pivoted accordingly. On a 1909 walk through the Canadian Rockies, Marris had convinced him that 'self-government, however far distant, was the only intelligible goal of British policy in India' (AAE 99). Curtis recast the project: 'I have ceased to speak of the British Empire and called the book in which I published my views The Commonwealth of Nations' (AAE 99). The name 'British Commonwealth of Nations,' Quigley records, was 'publicized and named' by the Group in the period 1908-1918 (AAE 5). India received full self-government in 1947; the Commonwealth was renamed 'Commonwealth of Nations' in 1948. 'There can be no doubt that both of these events resulted in no small degree from the influence of Lionel Curtis and the Milner Group, in which he was a major figure' (AAE 99).

Sister Institutions: RIIA, CFR, IPR

After 1919 the Round Table architecture was extended into a transatlantic system. 'At the end of the war of 1914,' Quigley writes, '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' (T&H 951-952). The original plans for both RIIA and CFR were drawn up jointly at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 by Milner Group members and the J. P. Morgan 'experts' attached to the American delegation. The Council of the RIIA was 'dominated by the dwindling group of Milner's associates' until 1960; the journal's office was 'edited from the back door of Chatham House grounds in Ormond Yard, and its telephone came through the Chatham House switchboard' (T&H 952). In 1925 Curtis added a third network — the Institute of Pacific Relations — spanning ten countries; in each Commonwealth nation it shared offices and personnel with the RIIA branch (T&H 953).

Economic Doctrine and the 1931 Inflection

Quigley devotes substantial attention to the Round Table's economic doctrine because, in his analysis, the Group's editorial line shaped British government policy from 1919 to 1945. Through the 1920s the doctrine was that of late-Victorian financial capitalism: sound money, balanced budgets, the gold standard. The chief expositor was Robert Brand, partner at Lazard Brothers, whose War and National Finance (1921) collected his Round Table articles into a single anti-inflationary tract (AAE 103). Milner himself, alone within the Group, had argued the opposite case — tariff protection, government direction, national capitalism — in his Questions of the Hour (1923). Quigley judges Milner's ideas 'progressive, even unorthodox, in 1935' and Brand's 'old-fashioned in 1905' (AAE 103). When Britain went off gold in September 1931, the Round Table's businessmen turned. 'In the years after 1931 the businessmen of the Milner Group embarked on a policy of government encouragement of self-regulated monopoly capitalism. This was relatively easy for many members of the Group because of the distrust of economic individualism which they had inherited from Toynbee and Milner' (AAE 103). When P. Horsfall of Lazard Brothers asked John Dove in April 1932 to write a Round Table defense of individualism, Dove demurred — 'the Group regarded individualism as obsolete' (AAE 103).

Appeasement and Reputation

The Round Table's foreign-policy line in the 1930s — revision of Versailles, appeasement of Germany — has become the public face of the Group, conflated in journalistic shorthand with the Cliveden Set. Quigley insists the appeasement line was not a 1930s aberration. 'The Milner Group, which was the reality behind the phantom-like Cliveden Set, began their program of appeasement and revision of the settlement as early as 1919' (AAE 193). The Group's earlier anti-German line in The Round Table (1910 to 1914) and its later pro-appeasement line did not reflect a change of heart but a single consistent priority: 'They were neither anti-German in 1910 nor pro-German in 1938, but pro-Empire all the time, changing their attitudes on other problems as these problems affected the Empire' (AAE 102). The Group split badly over the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and worse over Hitler's seizure of Czechoslovakia on 16 March 1939, after which appeasement could no longer be defended (AAE 6). Lord Lothian, dying in Washington in 1940 as British Ambassador, was the most prominent Round Table casualty of the policy his own journal had advocated.

Continuity and Decline

By the time Quigley returned to the subject in Tragedy and Hope (1966), the Round Table apparatus had thinned. 'After Milner's death in 1925, the leadership was largely shared by the survivors of Milner's Kindergarten' (T&H 951). Brand, the last Kindergarten survivor, died in 1963 — the year Quigley was finishing his manuscript. 'Since his death, the greatly reduced activities of the organization have been exercised largely through the Editorial Committee of The Round Table magazine under Adam Marris' (T&H 951), Brand's successor as managing director of Lazard Brothers. The journal continues to publish today. But the operational center of the Anglo-American network had migrated to the United States — to the CFR, to the foundations that succeeded the Rhodes Trust as paymasters (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford), and to the Bilderberg meetings (which Quigley does not discuss in detail). The Round Table's specific contribution, in Quigley's reckoning, was the demonstration that a small, anonymous group of well-placed editors and trustees could, over a generation, redirect the foreign policy of two great powers.

Cited in

anglo-american-establishment · p. 5 Quigley
It founded the British Empire periodical The Round Table in 1910, and this remains the mouthpiece of the Group.
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.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 99 Quigley
The leaders were Philip Kerr in London, as secretary of the London group, and Lionel Curtis throughout the world, as organizing secretary for the whole movement.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 99 Quigley
As in South Africa, the original cost of the periodical was paid by Abe Bailey. This journal, issued quarterly, was called The Round Table, and the same name was applied to the local groups.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 101 Quigley
The first issue appeared with the date 15 November 1910. It had no names in the whole issue, either of the officers or of the contributors of the five articles. The opening statement of policy was unsigned.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 101 Quigley
The Round Table was essentially the propaganda vehicle of a handful of people and could not have carried signed articles either originally, when they were too few, or later, when they were too famous.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 102 Quigley
The Group did not contain persons of various points of view but rather persons of unusual unanimity of opinion, especially in regard to goals.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 102 Quigley
They were neither anti-German in 1910 nor pro-German in 1938, but pro-Empire all the time, changing there their attitudes on other problems as these problems affected the Empire.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 103 Quigley
These ideas of the Group (until 1931, at least) were those of late-nineteenth-century international banking and financial capitalism.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 103 Quigley
In the years after 1931 the businessmen of the Milner Group embarked on a policy of government encouragement of self-regulated monopoly capitalism.
anglo-american-establishment · p. 193 Quigley
The Milner Group, which was the reality behind the phantom-like Cliveden Set, began their program of appeasement and revision of the settlement as early as 1919.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 132 Quigley
In 1909-1913 they organized semisecret groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the chief British dependencies and the United States. These still function in eight countries.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 132 Quigley
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.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 950 Quigley
This network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 951 Quigley
The Round Table Groups were semi-secret discussion and lobbying groups organized by Lionel Curtis, Philip H. Kerr (Lord Lothian), and (Sir) William S. Marris in 1908-1911.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 951 Quigley
By 1915 Round Table groups existed in seven countries, including England, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and a rather loosely organized group in the United States.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 952 Quigley
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.
tragedy-and-hope · p. 952 Quigley
Until 1960 the council at Chatham House was dominated by the dwindling group of Milner's associates, while the paid staff members were largely the agents of Lionel Curtis.