Political Analysis

[acharya]

<b> Chapter 11—India, 1911-1945</b>

India was one of the primary concerns of both the Cecil Bloc and Milner Group. The latter probably devoted more time and attention to India than to any other subject. This situation reached its peak in 1919, and the Government of India Act of that year is very largely a Milner Group measure in conception, formation, and execution. The influence of the two groups is not readily apparent from the lists of Governors-general (Viceroys) and Secretaries of State for India in the twentieth century:

Viceroys

Lord Curzon, 1898-1905

Lord Minto, 1905-1910

Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, 1910-1916

Lord Chelmsford, 1916-1921

Lord Reading, 1921-1926

Lord Irwin, 1926-1931

Lord Willingdon, 1931-1936

Lord Linlithgow, 1936-1943

Secretaries of State

Lord George Hamilton, 1895-1903

St. John Brodrick, 1903-1908

John Morley, 1908-1910

Lord Crewe, 1910-1915

Austen Chamberlain, 1915-1917

Edward Montagu, 1917-1922

Lord Peel, 1922-1924

Lord Olivier, 1924

Lord Birkenhead, 1924-1928

Lord Peel, 1928-1929

Wedgwood Benn, 1929-1931

Samuel Hoare, 1931-1935

Lord Zetland, 1935-1940

Leopold Amery, 1940-1945

Of the Viceroys only one (Reading) is clearly of neither the Cecil Bloc nor the Milner Group; two were members of the Milner Group (Irwin and Willingdon); another was a member of both groups (Chelmsford); the rest were of the Cecil Bloc, although in two cases (Minto and Linlithgow) in a rather peripheral fashion. Three of the eight were members of All Souls. According to Lord Esher, the appointment of Lord Hardinge in 1910 was made at his suggestion, by John Morley. At the time, Esher's son, the present Viscount Esher, was acting as unpaid private secretary to Morley, a position he held for five years (1905-1910). From the same source we learn that the Viceroyship was offered to Selborne in 1903 and to Esher himself in 1908. The former failed of appointment because Curzon refused to retire, while the latter rejected the post as of too limited influence.

Of the thirteen Secretaries of State, two were Labour and two Liberals. One of these latter (Morley) was close to the Milner Group. Of the other nine, three were of the Cecil Bloc (St. John Brodrick, Austen Chamberlain, and Lord Zetland), two were of the Milner Group (Hoare and Amery), and four were of neither group.

The political and constitutional history of India in the twentieth century consists largely of a series of investigations by various committees and commissions, and a second, and shorter, series of legislative enactments. The influence of the Milner Group can be discerned in both of these, especially in regard to the former.

Of the important commissions that investigated Indian constitutional questions in the twentieth century, every one has had a member of the inner circle of the Milner Group. The following list gives the name of the commission, the dates of its existence, the number of British members (in distinction from Indian members), the names of representatives from the Cecil Bloc and Milner Group (with the latter italicized), and the command number of its report:

1. The Royal Commission on Decentralization in India, 1907-1909, five members including W. L. Hichens (Cmd. 4360- of 1908).

2. The Royal Commission on Public Services in India, 1912-1915, nine members including Baron Islington, the Earl of Ronaldshay (later Marquess of Zetland), Sir Valentine Chirol, and H. A. L. Fisher. The chairman of this commission, Lord Islington, was later father-in-law to Sir Edward Grigg (Lord Altrincham) (Cmd. 8382 of 1916).

3. The Government of India Constitutional Reform Committee on Franchise, 1919, four members, including Malcolm Hailey.

4. The Government of India Constitutional Reform Committee on

Functions, 1919, four members, including Richard Feetham as chairman.

5. The Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill, 1919, fourteen members, including Lord Selborne (chairman), Lord Midleton (St. John Brodrick), Lord Islington, Sir Henry Craik (whose son was in Milner's Kindergarten), and W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (now Lord Harlech) (Cmd. 97 of 1919).

6. The Committee on Home Administration of Indian Affairs, 1919, eight members, including W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (Lord Harlech) (Cmd. 207 of 1919).

7. The Royal Commission on Superior Civil Services in India, 1923-1924, five members, including Lord Lee of Fareham as chairman and Reginald Coupland (Cmd. 2128 of 1924).

8. The Indian Statutory Commission, 1927-1930, seven members, with Sir John Simon as chairman (Cmd. 3568 and 3569 of 1930).

9. The Indian Franchise Committee, 1931-1932, eight members, including Lord Lothian as chairman and Lord Dufferin (whose brother, Lord Basil Blackwood, had been in Milner's Kindergarten) (Cmd. 4086 of 1932).

10. The three Indian Round Table Conferences of 1930-1932 contained a number of members of the Milner Croup. The first session (November 1930-January 1931) had eighty-nine delegates, sixteen from Britain, sixteen from the Indian States, and fifty-seven from British India. Formed as they were by a Labour government, the first two sessions had eight Labour members among the sixteen from Britain. The other eight were Earl Peel, the Marquess of Zetland, Sir Samuel Hoare, Oliver Stanley, the Marquess of Reading, the Marquess of Lothian, Sir Robert Hamilton, and Isaac Foot. Of these eight, two were of the Milner Croup (Hoare and Lothian) and two of the Cecil Bloc (Zetland and Stanley). The chief adviser to the Indian States Delegation was L. F. Rushbrook Williams of the Milner Group, who was named to his position by the Chamber of Princes Special Organization. Among the five officials called in for consultation by the conference, we find the name of Malcolm Hailey (Cmd. 3778).

The membership of delegations at the second session (September-December 1931) was practically the same, except that thirty-one additional members were added and Rushbrook Williams became a delegate as the representative of the Maharaja of Nawanagar (Cmd. 3997).

At the third session (November-December 1932) there were no Labour Party representatives. The British delegation was reduced to twelve. Four of these were of the Milner Group (Hoare, Simon, Lothian, and Irwin, now Halifax). Rushbrook Williams continued as a delegate of the Indian States (Cmd. 4238).

11. The Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform, appointed in April 1933, had sixteen members from the House of Commons and an equal number of Lords. Among these were such members of the Milner Group as Sir Samuel Hoare, Sir John Simon, Lord Lothian, and Lord Irwin (Halifax). The Cecil Bloc was also well represented by Archbishop Lang of Canterbury, Austen Chamberlain, Lord Eustace Percy, Lord Salisbury, Lord Zetland, Lord Lytton, and Lord Hardinge of Penshurst.

12. The Cripps Mission, 1942, four members, including Reginald Coupland, who wrote an unofficial but authoritative book on the mission as soon as it returned to England (Cmd. 6350).

The chief legislative events in this period were five in number: the two Indian Councils Acts of 1892 and 1909, the two Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935, and the achievement of self-government in 1947.

The Indian Councils Act of 1892 was put through the House of Commons by George Curzon, at that time Under Secretary in the India Office as the protege of Lord Salisbury, who had discovered him in All Souls nine years earlier. This act was important for two reasons: (1) it introduced a representative principle into the Indian government by empowering the Governor-General and Provincial Governors to seek nominations to the"unofficial" seats in their councils from particular Indian groups and associations; and (2) it accepted a "communal" basis for this representation by seeking these nominations separately from Hindus, Moslems, and others. From these two sources flowed ultimately self-government and partition, although it is perfectly evident that neither of these was anticipated or desired by the persons who supported the act.

The nominations for "unofficial" members of the councils provided in the Act of 1892 became elections in practice, because the Governor-General always accepted the suggested nominations as his nominees. This practice became law in the Act of 1909.

The Indian Councils Act of 1909 was passed under a Liberal government and was only remotely influenced by the Cecil Bloc or Milner Group. The Prime Minister, Asquith, was practically a member of the Cecil Bloc, being an intimate friend of Balfour and Rosebery. This relationship had been tightened when he married Margot Tennant, a member of "the Souls," in 1894. Margot Tennant's sister, Laura, had previously married Alfred Lyttelton, and both sisters had been intimate friends of Curzon and other members of "the Souls." Asquith had also been, as we have stated, a close associate of Milner's. Asquith, however, was never a member of the Milner Group. After 1890, and especially after 1915, he increasingly became a member of the Cecil Bloc. It was Balfour who persuaded Asquith to write his Memories and Reflections after he (Balfour) had discussed the matter with Margot Asquith over a tête-à-tête dinner. These dinners were a not infrequent occurrence on the evenings when Asquith himself dined at his club, Asquith usually stopping by later in the evening to get his wife and escort her home. Another indication of Asquith's feeling toward the Cecil Bloc can be found in his autobiography under the date 22 December 1919. On that occasion Asquith told Lady Hartington, daughter of Lord Salisbury, that he "had not expected to live to see the day when the best safeguard for true liberalism would be found in an unreformed House of Lords and the Cecil family."

In 1908-1909, however, the situation was somewhat different, and Asquith could hardly be called a member of the Cecil Bloc. In a somewhat similar situation, although much closer to the Milner Group (through H. A. L. Fisher and All Souls), was John Morley, the Secretary of State for India. Lord Minto, the Governor-General in India, was also a member of the Cecil Bloc in a peripheral fashion but held his appointment through a family claim on the Governor-Generalship rather than by favor of the Cecils.

The Act of 1909, however, while not a product of the groups with which we are concerned, was formed in the same social tradition, drawn up from the same intellectual and social outlook, and put into effect in the same fashion. It legalized the principle of election (rather than nomination) to Indian councils, enlarged their membership to provide majorities of non-officials in the provincial councils, and gave them the power to discuss affairs and pass resolutions. The seats were allotted to communal groups, with the minorities (like Moslems and Sikhs) receiving more than their proportionate share and the Moslems having, in addition, a separate electorate for the incumbents of Moslem seats. This served to encourage extremism among the Moslems and, while a logical development of 1892, was a long step on the road to Pakistan. This Act of 1909 was, as we have mentioned, put through the House of Commons by Sir Thomas Buchanan, a Fellow of All Souls and an associate of the Cecil Bloc.

The Government of India Act of 1919 is outstanding in many ways. It is the most drastic and most important reform made in Indian government in the whole period from 1861 to the achievement of self-government. Its provisions for the central government of India remained in force, with only slight changes, from 1919 to 1946. It is the only one of these acts whose "secret" legislative background is no longer a secret. And it is the only one which indicated a desire on the part of the British government to establish in India a responsible government patterned on that in Britain.

The legislative history of the Act of 1919 as generally known is simple enough. It runs as follows. In August 1917 the Secretary of State for India, Edwin S. Montagu, issued a statement which read: "The policy of H.M. Government, with which the Government of India are in complete accord, is that of the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-government institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire." The critical word here is responsible government, since the prospect of eventual self-government had been held out to India for years. In accordance with this promise, Montagu visited India and, in cooperation with the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, issued the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, indicating the direction of future policy. This report became the basis for the bill of 1918, which, after a certain amount of amendment by Lord Selborne's Joint Select Committee, came into force as the Government of India Act of 1919.

The secret history of this Act is somewhat different, and begins in Canada in 1909, when Lionel Curtis accepted from his friend William Marris the idea that responsible government on the British pattern should be extended to India. Two years later, Curtis formed a study group of six or eight persons within the London Round Table Group. We do not know for certain who were the members of the study group, but apparently it included Curtis, Kerr, Fisher, and probably Brand. To these were added three officials of the India Office. These included Malcolm Seton (Sir Malcolm after 1919), who was secretary to the Judicial Department of the India Office and joined Curtis's group about 1913; and Sir William Duke, who was Lieutenant Governor of Bengal in 1911-1912, senior member of the council of the Governor of Bengal in 1912-1914, and a member of the Council of India in London after 1914. At this last date he joined the Curtis group. Both of these men were important figures in the India Office later, Sir William as Permanent Under Secretary from 1920 to his death in 1924, and Sir Malcolm as Assistant Under Secretary (1919-1924) and Deputy Under Secretary (1924-1933). Sir Malcolm wrote the biographical sketch of Sir William in the Dictionary of National Biography, and also wrote the volume on The India Office in the Whitehall Series (1926). The third member from this same source was Sir Lionel Abrahams, Assistant Under Secretary in the India Office.

The Curtis study group was not an official committee, although some persons (both at the time and since) have believed it was. Among these persons would appear to be Lord Chelmsford, for in debate in the House of Lords in November 1927 he said:

“I came home from India in January 1916 for six weeks before I went out again as Viceroy, and, when I got home, I found that there was a Committee in existence at the India Office, which was considering on what lines future constitutional development might take place. That Committee, before my return in the middle of March gave me a pamphlet containing in broad outline the views which were held with regard to future constitutional development. When I reached India I showed this pamphlet to my Council and also to my noble friend, Lord Meston, who was then Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces. It contained, what is now known as the diarchic principle.... Both the Council and Lord Meston, who was then Sir James Meston, reported adversely on the proposals for constitutional development contained in that pamphlet.”

Lord Chelmsford then goes on to say that Austen Chamberlain combated their objections with the argument that the Indians must acquire experience in self-government, so, after the announcement to this effect was made publicly in August 1917, the officials in India accepted dyarchy.

If Lord Chelmsford believed that the pamphlet was an official document from a committee in the India Office, he was in error. The other side of the story was revealed by Lionel Curtis in 1920 in his book

Dyarchy. According to Curtis, the study group was originally formed to help him write the chapter on India in the planned second volume of The Commonwealth of Nations. It set as its task "to enquire how self-government could be introduced and peacefully extended to India." The group met once a fortnight in London and soon decided on the dyarchy principle. This principle, as any reader of Curtis's writings knows, was basic in Curtis's political thought and was the foundation on which he hoped to build a federated Empire. According to Curtis, the study group asked itself: "Could not provincial electorates through legislatures and ministers of their own be made clearly responsible for certain functions of government to begin with, leaving all others in the hands of executives responsible as at present to the Government of India and the Secretary of State? Indian electorates, legislatures, and executives would thus be given a field for the exercise of genuine responsibility. From time to time fresh powers could be transferred from the old governments as the new elective authorities developed and proved their capacity for assuming them." From this point of view, Curtis asked Duke to draw up such "a plan of Devolution" for Bengal. This plan was printed by the group, circulated, and criticized in typical Milner Group fashion. Then the whole group went to Oxford for three days and met to discuss it in the old Bursary of Trinity College. It was then rewritten. "No one was satisfied." It was decided to circulate it for further criticism among the Round Table Groups throughout the world, but Lord Chelmsford wrote from New South Wales and asked for a copy. Apparently realizing that he was to be the next Viceroy of India, the group sent a copy to him and none to the Round Table Groups, "lest the public get hold of it and embarrass him." It is clear that Chelmsford was committed to a program of reform along these or similar lines before he went out as Viceroy. This was revealed in debate in the House of Lords by Lord Crewe on 12 December 1919.

After Chelmsford went to India in March 1916, a new, revised version of the study group's plan was drawn up and sent to him in May 1916. Another copy was sent to Canada to catch up with Curtis, who had already left for India by way of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This itinerary was undoubtedly followed by Curtis in order to consult with members of the Group in various countries, especially with Brand in Canada. On his arrival in India, Curtis wrote back to Kerr in London:

“The factor which impressed me most in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia was the rooted aversion these peoples have to any scheme which meant their sharing in the Government of India.... To these young democratic communities the principle of self-government is the breath of their nostrils. It is almost a religion. They feel as if there were something inherently wrong in one people ruling another. It is the same feeling as that which makes the Americans dislike governing the Philippines and decline to restore order in Mexico. My first impressions on this subject were strongly confirmed on my recent visit to these Dominions. I scarcely recall one of the numerous meetings I addressed at which I was not asked why India was not given self-government and what steps were being taken in that direction.”

Apparently this experience strengthened Curtis's idea that India must be given responsible government. He probably felt that by giving India what it and the Dominions wanted for India, both would be bound in loyalty more closely to Britain. In this same letter to Kerr, Curtis said, in obvious reference to the Round Table Group:

“Our task then is to bring home to the public in the United Kingdom and the Dominions how India differs from a country like Great Britain on the one hand and from Central Africa on the other, and how that difference is now reflected in the character of its government. We must outline clearly the problems which arise from the contact of East and West and the disaster which awaits a failure to supply their adequate solution by realizing and expressing the principle of Government for which we stand. We must then go on to suggest a treatment of India in the general work of Imperial reconstruction in harmony with the facts adduced in the foregoing chapters. And all this must be done with the closest attention to its effects upon educated opinion here. We must do our best to make Indian Nationalists realize the truth that like South Africa all their hopes and aspirations are dependent on the maintenance of the British Commonwealth and their permanent membership therein.”

This letter, written on 13 November 1916, was addressed to Philip Kerr but was intended for all the members of the Group. Sir Valentine Chirol corrected the draft, and copies were made available for Meston and Marris. Then Curtis had a thousand copies printed and sent to Kerr for distribution. In some way, the extremist Indian nationalists obtained a copy of the letter and published a distorted version of it. They claimed that a powerful and secret group organized about The Round Table had sent Curtis to India to spy out the nationalist plans in order to obstruct them. Certain sentences from the letter were torn from their context to prove this argument. Among these was the reference to Central Africa, which was presented to the Indian people as a statement that they were as uncivilized and as incapable of self-government as Central Africans. As a result of the fears created by this rumor, the Indian National Congress and the Moslem League formed their one and only formal alliance in the shape of the famous Lucknow Compact of 29 December 1916. The Curtis letter was not the only factor behind the Lucknow agreement, but it was certainly very influential. Curtis was present at the Congress meeting and was horrified at the version of his letter which was circulating. Accordingly, he published the correct version with an extensive commentary, under the title Letters to the People of India (1917). In this he said categorically that he believed: "(1) That it is the duty of those who govern the whole British Commonwealth to do anything in their power to enable Indians to govern themselves as soon as possible. (2) That Indians must also come to share in the government of the British Commonwealth as a whole." There can be no doubt that Curtis was sincere in this and that his view reflected, perhaps in an extreme form, the views of a large and influential group in Great Britain. The failure of this group to persuade the Indian nationalists that they were sincere is one of the great disasters of the century, although the fault is not entirely theirs and must be shared by others, including Gandhi.

In the first few months of 1917, Curtis consulted groups of Indians and individual British (chiefly of the Milner Group) regarding the form which the new constitution would take. The first public use of the word "dyarchy" was in an open letter of 6 April 1917, which he wrote to Bhupendra Nath Basu, one of the authors of the Lucknow Compact, to demonstrate how dyarchy would function in the United Provinces. In writing this letter, Curtis consulted with Valentine Chirol and Malcolm Hailey. He then wrote an outline, "The Structure of Indian Government," which was revised by Meston and printed. This was submitted to many persons for comment. He then organized a meeting of Indians and British at Lord Sinha's house in Darjeeling and, after considerable discussion, drew up a twelve-point program, which was signed by sixty-four Europeans and ninety Indians. This was sent to Chelmsford and to Montagu.

In the meantime, in London, preparations were being made to issue the historic declaration of 20 August 1917, which promised "responsible" government to India. There can be no doubt that the Milner Group was the chief factor in issuing that declaration. Curtis, in Dyarchy, says: "For the purpose of the private enquiry above described the principle of that pronouncement was assumed in 1915." It is perfectly clear that Montagu (Secretary of State in succession to Austen Chamberlain from June 1917) did not draw up the declaration. He drew up a statement, but the India Office substituted for it one which had been drawn up much earlier, when Chamberlain was still Secretary of State. Lord Ronaldshay (Lord Zetland), in the third volume of his Life of Curzon, prints both drafts and claims that the one which was finally issued was drawn up by Curzon. Sir Stanley Reed, who was editor of The Times of India from 1907 to 1923, declared at a meeting of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1926 that the declaration was drawn up by Milner and Curzon. It is clear that someone other than Curzon had a hand in it, and the strongest probability would be Milner, who was with Curzon in the War Cabinet at the time. The fact is that Curzon could not have drawn it up alone unless he was unbelievably careless, because, after it was published, he was horrified when the promise of "progressive realization of responsible government in India" was pointed out to him.

Montagu went to India in November 1917, taking Sir William Duke with him. Curtis, who had been moving about India as the guest of Stanley Reed, Chirol, Chelmsford, Meston, Marris, and others, was invited to participate in the Montagu-Chelmsford conferences on several occasions. Others who were frequently consulted were Hailey, Meston, Duke, and Chirol. The Montagu-Chelmsford Report was written by Sir William Marris of Milner's Kindergarten after Curtis had returned to England. Curtis wrote in Dyarchy in 1920: "It was afterwards suggested in the press that I had actually drafted the report. My prompt denial has not prevented a further complaint from many quarters that Lord Chelmsford and Mr. Montagu were unduly influenced by an irresponsible tourist.... With the exception of Lord Chelmsford himself I was possibly the only person in India with firsthand knowledge of responsible government as applied in the Dominions to the institutions of provinces. Whether my knowledge of India entitled me to advance my views is more open to question. Of this the reader can judge for himself. But in any case the interviews were unsought by me." Thus Curtis does not deny the accusation that he was chiefly responsible for dyarchy. It was believed at the time by persons in a position to know that he was, and these persons were both for and against the plan. On the latter side, we might quote Lord Ampthill, who, as a former acting Viceroy, as private secretary to Joseph Chamberlain, as Governor of Madras, and as brother-in-law of Samuel Hoare, was in a position to know what was going on. Lord Ampthill declared in the House of Lords in 1919: "The incredible fact is that, but for the chance visit to India of a globe-trotting doctrinaire, with a positive mania for constitution-mongering, nobody in the world would ever have thought of so peculiar a notion as Dyarchy. And yet the Joint Committee tells us in an airy manner that no better plan can be conceived."

The Joint Committee's favorable report on the Dyarchy Bill was probably not unconnected with the fact that five out of fourteen members were from the Cecil Bloc or Milner Group, that the chairman had in his day presided over meetings of the Round Table Groups and was regarded by them as their second leader, and that the Joint Committee spent most of its time hearing witnesses who were close to the Milner Group. The committee heard Lord Meston longer than any other witness (almost four days), spent a day with Curtis on the stand, and questioned, among others, Feetham, Duke, Thomas Holland (Fellow of All Souls from 1875 to his death in 1926), Michael Sadler (a close friend of Milner's and practically a member of the Group), and Stanley Reed. In the House of Commons the burden of debate on the bill was supported by Montagu, Sir Henry Craik, H. A. L. Fisher, W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, and Thomas J. Bennett (an old journalist colleague of Lord Salisbury and principal owner of The Times of India from 1892). Montagu and Craik both referred to Lionel Curtis. The former said: "It is suggested in some quarters that this bill arose spontaneously in the minds of the Viceroy and myself without previous inquiry or consideration, under the influence of Mr. Lionel Curtis. I have never yet been able to understand that you approach the merits of any discussion by vain efforts to approximate to its authorship. I do not even now understand that India or the Empire owes anything more or less than a great debt of gratitude to the patriotic and devoted services Mr. Curtis has given to the consideration of this problem."

Sir Henry Craik later said: "I am glad to join in the compliment paid to our mutual friend, Mr. Lionel Curtis, who belongs to a very active, and a very important body of young men, whom I should be the last to criticize. I am proud to know him, and to pay that respect to him due from age to youth. He and others of the company of the Round Table have been doing good work, and part of that good work has been done in India.”

Mr. Fisher had nothing to say about Lionel Curtis but had considerable to say about the bill and the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. He said: "There is nothing in this Bill which is not contained in that Report. That Report is not only a very able and eloquent State Paper, but it is also one of the greatest State Papers which have been produced in Anglo-Indian history, and it is an open-minded candid State Paper, a State Paper which does not ignore or gloss over the points of criticism which have since been elaborated in the voluminous documents which have been submitted to us." He added, a moment later: "This is a great Bill." (2) The Round Table, which also approved of the bill, as might be imagined, referred to Fisher's speech in its issue of September 1919 and called him "so high an authority." The editor of that issue was Lionel Curtis.

In the House of Lords there was less enthusiasm. Chief criticism centered on two basic points, both of which originated with Curtis: (1) the principle of dyarchy—that is, that government could be separated into two classes of activities under different regimes; and (2) the effort to give India "responsible" government rather than merely "self-government"—that is, the effort to extend to India a form of government patterned on Britain's. Both of these principles were criticized vigorously, especially by members of the Cecil Bloc, including Lord Midleton, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Selborne, Lord Salisbury, and others. Support for the bill came chiefly from Lord Curzon (Leader in the Upper House) and Lord Islington (Under Secretary in the India Office).

As a result of this extensive criticism, the bill was revised considerably in the Joint Committee but emerged with its main outlines unchanged and became law in December 1919. These main outlines, especially the two principles of "dyarchy" and "responsibility," were, as we have said, highly charged with Curtis's own connotations. These became fainter as time passed, both because of developments in India and because Curtis from 1919 on became increasingly remote from Indian affairs. The refusal of the Indian National Congress under Gandhi's leadership to cooperate in carrying on the government under the Act of 1919 persuaded the other members of the Group (and perhaps Curtis himself) that it was not possible to apply responsible government on the British model to India. This point of view, which had been stated so emphatically by members of the Cecil Bloc even before 1900, and which formed the chief argument against the Act of 1919 in the debates in the House of Lords, was accepted by the Milner Group as their own after 1919. Halifax, Grigg, Amery, Coupland, Fisher, and others stated this most emphatically from the early 1920s to the middle 1940s. In 1943 Grigg stated this as a principle in his book The British Commonwealth and quoted with approval Amery's statement of 30 March 1943 to the House of Commons, rejecting the British parliamentary system as suitable for India. Amery, at that time Secretary of State for India, had said: "Like wasps buzzing angrily up and down against a window pane when an adjoining window may be wide open, we are all held up, frustrated and irritated by the unrealized and unsuperable barrier of our constitutional prepossessions." Grigg went even further, indeed, so far that we might suspect that he was deprecating the use of parliamentary government in general rather than merely in India. He said:

“It is entirely devoid of flexibility and quite incapable of engendering the essential spirit of compromise in countries where racial and communal divisions present the principal political difficulty. The idea that freedom to be genuine must be accommodated to this pattern is deeply rooted in us, and we must not allow our statesmanship to be imprisoned behind the bars of our own experience. Our insistence in particular on the principle of a common roll of electors voting as one homogeneous electorate has caused reaction in South Africa, rebellion or something much too like it in Kenya, and deadlock in India, because in the different conditions of those countries it must involve the complete and perpetual dominance of a single race or creed.”

Unfortunately, as Reginald Coupland has pointed out in his book, India, a Re-statement (1945), all agreed that the British system of government was unsuited to India, but none made any effort to find an indigenous system that would be suitable. The result was that the Milner Group and their associates relaxed in their efforts to prepare Indians to live under a parliamentary system and finally cut India loose without an indigenous system and only partially prepared to manage a parliamentary system.

This decline in enthusiasm for a parliamentary system in India was well under way by 1921. In the two year-interval from 1919 to 1921, the Group continued as the most important British factor in Indian affairs. Curtis was editor of The Round Table in this period and continued to agitate the cause of the Act of 1919. Lord Chelmsford remained a Viceroy in this period. Meston and Hailey were raised to the Viceroy's Executive Council. Sir William Duke became Permanent Under Secretary, and Sir Malcolm Seton became Assistant Under Secretary in the India Office. Sir William Marris was made Home Secretary of the Government of India and Special Reforms Commissioner in charge of setting up the new system. L. F. Rushbrook Williams was given special duty at the Home Department, Government of India, in connection with the reforms. Thus the Milner Group was well placed to put the new law into effect. The effort was largely frustrated by Gandhi's boycott of the elections under the new system. By 1921 the Milner Group had left Indian affairs and shifted its chief interest to other fields. Curtis became one of the chief factors in Irish affairs in 1921; Lord Chelmsford returned home and was raised to a Viscounty in the same year; Meston retired in 1919; Marris became Governor of Assam in 1921; Hailey became Governor of the Punjab in 1924; Duke died in 1924; and Rushbrook Williams became director of the Central Bureau of Information, Government of India, in 1920.

This does not indicate that the Milner Group abandoned all interest in India by 1924 or earlier, but the Group never showed such concentrated interest in the problem of India again. Indeed, the Group never displayed such concentrated interest in any problem either earlier or later, with the single exception of the effort to form the Union of South Africa in 1908-1909.

The decade 1919-1929 was chiefly occupied with efforts to get Gandhi to permit the Indian National Congress to cooperate in the affairs of government, so that its members and other Indians could acquire the necessary experience to allow the progressive realization of self-government. The Congress Party, as we have said, boycotted the elections of 1920 and cooperated in those of 1924 only for the purpose of wrecking them. Nonetheless, the system worked, with the support of moderate groups, and the British extended one right after another in steady succession. Fiscal autonomy was granted to India in 1921, and that country at once adopted a protective tariff, to the considerable injury of British textile manufacturing. The superior Civil Services were opened to Indians in 1924. Indians were admitted to Woolwich and Sandhurst in the same year, and commissions in the Indian Army were made available to them.

The appointment of Baron Irwin of the Milner Group to be Viceroy in 1926—an appointment in which, according to A. C. Johnson's biography Viscount Halifax (1941), "the influence of Geoffrey Dawson and other members of The Times' editorial staff" may have played a decisive role—was the chief step in the effort to achieve some real progress under the Act of 1919 before that Act came under the critical examination of another Royal Commission, scheduled for 1929. The new Viceroy's statement of policy, made in India, 17 July 1926, was, according to the same source, embraced by The Times in an editorial "which showed in no uncertain terms that Irwin's policy was appreciated and underwritten by Printing House Square."

Unfortunately, in the period 1924-1931 the India Office was not in control of either the Milner Group or Cecil Bloc. For various reasons, of which this would seem to be the most important, coordination between the Secretary of State and the Viceroy and between Britain and the Indian nationalists broke down at the most crucial moments. The Milner Group, chiefly through The Times, participated in this situation in the period 1926-1929 by praising their man, Lord Irwin, and adversely criticizing the Secretary of State, Lord Birkenhead. Relationships between Birkenhead and the Milner (and Cecil) Group had not been cordial for a long time, and there are various indications of feuding from at least 1925. We may recall that in April 1925 a secret, or at least unofficial, "committee" of Milner Group and Cecil Bloc members had nominated Lord Milner for the post of Chancellor of Oxford University. Lord Birkenhead had objected both to the candidate and to the procedure. In regard to the candidate, he would have preferred Asquith. In regard to the procedure, he demanded to know by what authority this "committee" took upon itself the task of naming a chancellor to a university of which he (Lord Birkenhead) had been High Steward since 1922. This protest, as usual when Englishmen of this social level are deeply moved, took the form of a letter to The Times. It received a tart answer in a letter, written in the third person, in which he was informed that this committee had existed before the World War, and that, when it was reconstituted at the end of the war, Mr. F. E. Smith had been invited to be a member of it but had not seen fit even to acknowledge the invitation.

The bad relationship between the Milner Group and Lord Birkenhead was not the result of such episodes as this but rather, it would seem, based on a personal antipathy engendered by the character of Lord Birkenhead and especially by his indiscreet and undiplomatic social life and political activity. Nonetheless, Lord Birkenhead was a man of unquestioned vigor and ability and a man of considerable political influence from the day in 1906 when he had won a parliamentary seat for the Conservatives in the face of a great Liberal tidal wave. As a result, he had obtained the post of Secretary of State for India in November 1924 at the same time that Leopold Amery went to the Colonial Office. The episode regarding the Milner candidacy to the Oxford Chancellorship occurred six months later and was practically a direct challenge from Birkenhead to Amery, since at that time the latter was Milner's active political lieutenant and one of the chief movers in the effort to make him Chancellor.

Thus, in the period 1926-1929, the Milner Group held the Viceroy's post but did not hold the post of Secretary of State. The relationship between these two posts was such that good government could not be obtained without close cooperation between them. Such cooperation did not exist in this period. As far as the constitutional development was concerned, this lack of cooperation appeared in a tendency on the part of the Secretary of State to continue to seek a solution of the problem along the road marked by the use of a unilateral British investigatory commission, and a tendency on the part of Irwin (and the Milner Group) to seek a solution along the newer road of cooperative discussion with the Indians. These tendencies did not appear as divergent routes until after the Simon Commission had begun its labors, with the result that accumulating evidence that the latter road would be used left that unilateral commission in an unenviable position.

The Government of India Act of 1919 had provided that an investigation should be made of the functioning of the Act after it had been in effect for ten years. The growing unrest of the Indians and their failure to utilize the opportunities of the Act of 1919 persuaded many Englishmen (including most of the Milner Group) that the promised Statutory Commission should begin its work earlier than anticipated and should direct its efforts rather at finding the basis for a new constitutional system than at examining the obvious failure of the system provided in 1919.

The first official hint that the date of the Statutory Commission would be moved up was given by Birkenhead on 30 March 1927, in combination with some rather "arrogant and patronizing" remarks about Indian politics. The Times, while criticizing Birkenhead for his additional remarks, took up the suggestion regarding the commission and suggested in its turn "that the ideal body would consist of judicially minded men who were able to agree." This is, of course, exactly what was obtained. The authorized biography Viscount Halifax, whence these quotations have been taken, adds at this point: "It is interesting to speculate how far Geoffrey Dawson, the Editor, was again expressing Irwin's thoughts and whether a deliberate ballon d'essai was being put up in favor of Sir John Simon."

The Simon Commission was exactly what The Times had wanted, a body of "judicially minded men who were able to agree." Its chairman was the most expensive lawyer in England, a member of the Cecil Bloc since he was elected to All Souls in 1897, and in addition a member of the two extraordinary clubs already mentioned, Grillion's and The Club. Although he was technically a Liberal, his associations and inclinations were rather on the Conservative side, and it was no surprise in 1931 when he became a National Liberal and occupied one of the most important seats in the Cabinet, the Foreign Office. From this time on, he was closely associated with the policies of the Milner Group and, in view of his personal association with the leaders of the Group in All Souls, may well be regarded as a member of the Group. As chairman of the Statutory Commission, he used his legal talents to the full to draw up a report on which all members of the commission could agree, and it is no small example of his abilities that he was able to get an unanimous agreement on a program which in outline, if not in all its details, was just what the Milner Group wanted.

Of the six other members of the Commission, two were Labourite (Clement Attlee and Vernon Hartshorn). The others were Unionist or Conservative. Viscount Burnham of Eton and Balliol (1884) had been a Unionist supporter of the Cecil Bloc in Commons from 1885 to 1906, and his father had been made baronet and baron by Lord Salisbury. His own title of Viscount came from Lloyd George in 1919.

The fifth member of the Commission, Donald Palmer Howard, Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, of Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, had no special claim to fame except that he had been a Unionist M.P. in 1922-1926.

The sixth member, Edward Cecil Cadogan of Eton and Balliol (1904), was the sixth son of Earl Cadogan and thus the older brother of Sir Alexander Cadogan, British delegate to the United Nations. Their father, Earl Cadogan, grandnephew of the first Duke of Wellington, had been Lord Privy Seal in Lord Salisbury's second government and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Salisbury's third government. Edward, who was knighted in 1939, had no special claim to fame except that he was a Unionist M.P. from 1922 to 1935 and was Chairman of the House of Commons under the National Government of 1931-1935.

The seventh member, George R. Lane-Fox (Baron Bingley since 1933) of Eton and New College, was a Unionist M.P. from 1906 to 1931 and Secretary of Mines from 1922 to 1928. He is a brother-in-law and lifelong friend of Lord Halifax, having married the Honourable Mary Wood in 1903.

The most extraordinary fact about the Simon Commission was the lack of qualification possessed by its members. Except for the undoubted advantages of education at Eton and Oxford, the members had no obvious claims to membership on any committee considering Indian affairs. Indeed, not one of the eight members had had any previous contact with this subject. Nevertheless, the commission produced an enormous two-volume report which stands as a monumental source book for the study of Indian problems in this period. When, to the lack of qualifications of its members, we add the fact that the commission was almost completely boycotted by Indians and obtained its chief contact with the natives by listening to their monotonous chants of "Simon, go back," it seems more than a miracle that such a valuable report could have emerged from their investigations. The explanation is to be found in the fact that they received full cooperation from the staff of the Government of India, including members of the Milner Group.

It is clear that by the end of 1928 the Milner Group, as a result of the strong Indian opposition to the Simon Commission, the internal struggle within that commission between Simon and Burnham (because of the latter's refusal to go as far as the former desired in the direction of concessions to the Indians), and their inability to obtain cooperation from the Secretary of State (as revealed in the steady criticism of Birkenhead in The Times), had decided to abandon the commission method of procedure in favor of a round-table method of procedure. It is not surprising that the Round Table Groups should prefer a roundtable method of procedure even in regard to Indian affairs, where many of the participants would have relatively little experience in the typical British procedure of agreement through conference. To the Milner Group, the round-table method was not only preferable in itself but was made absolutely necessary by the widespread Indian criticism of the Simon Commission for its exclusively British personnel. This restriction had been adopted originally on the grounds that only a purely British and purely parliamentary commission could commit Parliament in some degree to acceptance of the recommendations of the commission—at least, this was the defense of the restricted membership made to the Indians by the Viceroy on 8 November 1927. In place of this argument, the Milner Group now advanced a somewhat more typical idea, namely, that only Indian participation on a direct and equal basis could commit Indians to any plans for the future of India. By customary Milner Group reasoning, they decided that the responsibility placed on Indians by making them participate in the formulation of plans would moderate the extremism of their demands and bind them to participate in the execution of these plans after they were enacted into law. This basic idea—that if you have faith in people, they will prove worthy of that faith, or, expressed in somewhat more concrete terms, that if you give dissatisfied people voluntarily more than they expect and, above all, before they really expect to get it, they will not abuse the gift but will be sobered simultaneously by the weight of responsibility and the sweetness of gratitude—was an underlying assumption of the Milner Group's activities from 1901 to the present. Its validity was defended (when proof was demanded) by a historical example—that is, by contrasting the lack of generosity in Britain's treatment of the American Colonies in 1774 with the generosity in her treatment of the Canadian Colonies in 1839. The contrast between the "Intolerable Acts" and the Durham Report was one of the basic ideas at the back of the minds of all the important members of the Milner Group. In many of those minds, however, this assumption was not based on political history at all but had a more profound and largely unconscious basis in the teachings of Christ and the Sermon on the Mount. This was especially true of Lionel Curtis, John Dove, Lord Lothian, and Lord Halifax. Unless this idea is recognized, it is not possible to see the underlying unity behind the actions of the Group toward the Boers in 1901-1910, toward India in 1919 and 1935, and toward Hitler in 1934-1939.

These ideas as a justification of concessions to India are to be found in Milner Group discussions of the Indian problem at all periods, especially just before the Act of 1919. A decade later they were still exerting their influence. They will be found, for example, in The Round Table articles on India in September 1930 and March 1931. The earlier advocated the use of the round-table method but warned that it must be based on complete equality for the Indian members. It continued: "Indians should share equally with Great Britain the responsibility for reaching or failing to reach an agreement as to what the next step in Indian constitutional development should be. It is no longer a question, as we see it, of Great Britain listening to Indian representatives and then deciding for herself what the next Indian constitution should be.... The core of the round table idea is that representative Britons and representative Indians should endeavour to reach an agreement, on the understanding that if they can reach an agreement, each will loyally carry it through to completion, as was the case with Ireland in 1922." As seen by the Milner Group, Britain's responsibility was

“her obligation to help Indians to take maximum responsibility for India's government on their own shoulders, and to insist on their doing so, not only because it is the right thing in itself, but because it is the most certain antidote to the real danger of anarchy which threatens India unless Indians do learn to carry responsibility for government at a very early date There is less risk in going too fast in agreement and cooperation with political India than in going at a more moderate pace without its agreement and cooperation. Indeed, in our view, the most successful foundation for the Round Table Conference would be that Great Britain should ask the Indian delegates to table agreed proposals and then do her utmost to accept them and place on Indian shoulders the responsibility for carrying them into effect.”

It is very doubtful if the Milner Group could have substituted the round-table method for the commission method in quite so abrupt a fashion as it did, had not a Labour government come to office early in 1929. As a result, the difficult Lord Birkenhead was replaced as Secretary of State by the much more cooperative Mr. Wedgewood Benn (Viscount Stansgate since 1941). The greater degree of cooperation which the Milner Group received from Benn than from Birkenhead may be explained by the fact that their hopes for India were not far distant from those held in certain circles of the Labour Party. It may also be explained by the fact that Wedgewood Benn was considerably closer, in a social sense, to the Milner Group than was Birkenhead. Benn had been a Liberal M.P. from 1906 to 1927; his brother Sir Ernest Benn, the publisher, had been close to the Milner Group in the Ministry of Munitions in 1916-1917 and in the Ministry of Reconstruction in 1917-1918; and his nephew John, oldest son of Sir Ernest, married the oldest daughter of Maurice Hankey in 1929. Whatever the cause, or combination of causes, Lord Irwin's suggestion that the round-table method be adopted was accepted by the Labour government. The suggestion was made when the Viceroy returned to London in June 1929, months before the Simon Report was drafted and a year before it was published. With this suggestion Lord Irwin combined another, that the government formally announce that its goal for India was "Dominion status." The plan leaked out, probably because the Labour government had to consult with the Liberal Party, on which its majority depended. The Liberals (Lord Reading and Lloyd George) advised against the announcement, but Irwin was instructed to make it on his return to India in October. Lord Birkenhead heard of the plan and wrote a vigorous letter of protest to The Times. When Geoffrey Dawson refused to publish it, it appeared in the Daily Telegraph, thus repeating the experience of Lord Lansdowne's even more famous letter of 1917.

Lord Irwin's announcement of the Round Table Conference and of the goal of Dominion status, made in India on 31 October 1929, brought a storm of protest in England. It was rejected by Lord Reading

and Lloyd George for the Liberals and by Lord Birkenhead and Stanley Baldwin for the Conservatives. It is highly unlikely that the Milner Group were much disturbed by this storm. The reason is that the members of the Croup had already decided that "Dominion status" had two meanings—one meaning for Englishmen, and a second, rather different, meaning for Indians. As Lord Irwin wrote in a private memorandum in November 1929:

“To the English conception, Dominion Status now connotes, as indeed the word itself implies, an achieved constitutional position of complete freedom and immunity from interference by His Majesty's Government in London.... The Indian seems generally to mean something different. . . . The underlying element in much of Indian political thought seems to have been the desire that, by free conference between Great Britain and India, a constitution should be fashioned which may contain within itself the seed of full Dominion Status, growing naturally to its full development in accordance with the particular circumstances of India, without the necessity—the implications of which the Indian mind resents—of further periodic enquiries by way of Commission. What is to the Englishman an accomplished process is to the Indian rather a declaration of right, from which future and complete enjoyment of Dominion privilege will spring.” (3)

This distinction, without any reference to Lord Irwin (whose memorandum was not published until 1941), was also made in the September 1930 issue of The Round Table. On this basis, for the sake of appeasement of India, the Milner Group was willing to promise India "Dominion status" in the Indian meaning of the expression and allow the English who misunderstood to cool off gradually as they saw that the development was not the one they had feared. Indeed, to the Milner Group, it probably appeared that the greater the rage in Britain, the greater the appeasement in India.

Accordingly, the first session of the Round Table Conference was called for November 1930. It marked an innovation not only because of the status of equality and responsibility which it placed on the Indians, but also because, for the first time, it tried to settle the problem of the Indian States within the same framework as it settled the constitutional problem of British India. This was a revolutionary effort, and its degree of success was very largely due to the preparatory work of Lord Irwin, acting on the advice of Malcolm Hailey.

The Indian States had remained as backward, feudalistic, and absolutist enclaves, within the territorial extent of British India and bound to the British Raj by individual treaties and agreements. As might be expected from the Milner Group, the solution which they proposed was federation. They hoped that devolution in British India would secure a degree of provincial autonomy that would make it possible to bind the provinces and the Indian States within the same federal structure and with similar local autonomy. However, the Group knew that the Indian States could not easily be federated with British India until their systems of government were raised to some approximation of the same level. For this reason, and to win the Princes over to federation, Lord Irwin had a large number of personal consultations with the Princes in 1927 and 1928. At some of these he lectured the Princes on the principles of good government in a fashion which came straight from the basic ideology of the Milner Group. The memorandum which he presented to them, dated 14 June 1927 and published in Johnson's biography, Viscount Halifax, could have been written by the Kindergarten. This can be seen in its definitions of the function of government, its emphasis on the reign of law, its advocacy of devolution, its homily on the duty of princes, its separation of responsibility in government from democracy in government, and its treatment of democracy as an accidental rather than an essential characteristic of good government.

The value of this preparatory work appeared at the first Round Table Conference, where, contrary to all expectations, the Indian Princes accepted federation. The optimism resulting from this agreement was, to a considerable degree, dissipated, however, by the refusal of Gandhi's party to participate in the conference unless India were granted full and immediate Dominion status. Refusal of these terms resulted in an outburst of political activity which made it necessary for Irwin to find jails capable of holding sixty thousand Indian agitators at one time.

The view that the Round Table Conference represented a complete repudiation of the Simon Commission's approach to the Indian problem was assiduously propagated by the Milner Group in order to prevent Indian animosity against the latter from being carried over against the former. But the differences were in detail, since in main outline both reflected the Group's faith in federation, devolution, responsibility, and minority rights. The chief recommendations of the Simon Commission were three in number: (1) to create a federation of British India and the Indian States by using the provinces of the former as federative units with the latter; (2) to modify the central government by making the Legislative Assembly a federal organization but otherwise leave the center unchanged; (3) to end dyarchy in the provinces by making Indians responsible for all provincial activities. It also advocated separation of Burma from India.

These were also the chief conclusions of the various Round Table Conferences and of the government's White Papers of December 1931 (Cmd. 3972) and of March 1933 (Cmd. 4268). The former was presented to Parliament and resulted in a debate and vote of confidence on the government's policy in India as stated in it. The attack was led by Winston Churchill in the Commons and by Lords Lloyd, Salisbury, Midleton, and Sumner in the House of Lords. None of these except Churchill openly attacked the government's policy, the others contenting themselves with advising delay in its execution. The government was defended by Samuel Hoare, John Simon, and Stanley Baldwin in the Commons and by Lords Lothian, Irwin, Zetland, Dufferin, and Hailsham, as well as Archbishop Lang, in the Lords. Lord Lothian, in opening the debate, said that while visiting in India in 1912 he had written an article for an English review saying that the Indian Nationalist movement "was essentially healthy, for it was a movement for political virtue and self-respect," although the Indian Civil Servant with whom he was staying said that Indian Nationalism was sedition. Lord Lothian implied that he had not changed his opinion twenty years later. In the Lower House the question came to a vote, which the government easily carried by 369 to 43. In the majority were Leopold Amery, John J. Astor, John Buchan, Austen Chamberlain, Viscount Cranborne, Samuel Hoare, W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, Lord Eustace Percy, John Simon, and D. B. Somervell. In the minority were Churchill, George Balfour, and Viscount Wolmer.

Practically the same persons appeared on the same sides in the discussion regarding the White Paper of 1933. This document, which embodied the government's suggestions for a bill on Indian constitutional reform, was defended by various members of the Milner Group outside of Parliament, and anonymously in The Round Table. John Buchan wrote a preface to John Thompson's India: The White Paper (1933), in which he defended the extension of responsible government to India, saying, "We cannot exclude her from sharing in what we ourselves regard as the best." Samuel Hoare defended it in a letter to his constituents at Chelsea. Malcolm Hailey defended it before the Royal Empire Society Summer School at Oxford, in a speech afterwards published in The Asiatic Review. Hailey had resigned as Governor of the United Provinces in India in order to return to England to help the government put through its bill. During the long period required to accomplish this, Samuel Hoare, who as Secretary of State for India was the official government spokesman on the subject, had Hailey constantly with him as his chief adviser and support. It was this support that permitted Hoare, whose knowledge of India was definitely limited, to conduct his astounding campaign for the Act of 1935.

The White Paper of 1933 was presented to a Joint Select Committee of both Houses. It was publicly stated as a natural action on the part of the government that this committee be packed with supporters of the bill. For this reason Churchill, George Balfour, and Lord Wolmer refused to serve on it, although Josiah Wedgwood, a Labour Member who opposed the bill, asked to be put on the committee because it was packed.

The Joint Select Committee, as we have seen, had thirty-two members, of whom at least twelve were from the Cecil Bloc and Milner Group and supported the bill. Four were from the inner circles of the Milner Group. The chief witnesses were Sir Samuel Hoare; who gave testimony for twenty days; Sir Michael O'Dwyer, who gave testimony for four days; and Winston Churchill, who gave testimony for three days. The chief witness was thus Hoare, who answered 5594 questions from the committee. At all times Hoare had Malcolm Hailey at his side for advice.

The fashion in which the government conducted the Joint Select Committee aroused a good deal of unfavorable comment. Lord Rankeillour in the House of Lords critici