Fake History 4: Concealment Of British War-time Documents

The Hoover Institution at Stanford was not the sole depository for the concealment and sifting of incriminatory documents. In his book The History Thieves, Ian Cobain, an investigative journalist with The Guardian newspaper in London, revealed a secret facility just an hour’s drive north of London. Concealed in dense woodland near the tiny hamlet of Hanslope, lies ‘one of the most secure facilities operated by any government, anywhere in the world.’ It is an outpost used by Britain’s domestic and foreign spy agencies, MI5 and MI6 and guarded by a seven-foot-high chain-link fence, just beyond which is a ten-foot-high fence topped with coils of razor wire. Every few yards between the fences are closed-circuit television cameras and floodlights. Cobain wrote, ‘Only from the air can the enormous scale of the compound be comprehended, it measures almost half a mile across … It is a perfect place to bury difficult secrets.’ [1]

And bury difficult secrets they have. Cobain exposed how millions of files containing top secret British government documents are kept at Hanslope Park. They date back further even that the First World War. Some which were recently released, albeit very reluctantly under direct order of the Courts of Law, revealed the true horrors of British colonial rule in Kenya and elsewhere in the world. The Hanslope documents are among those which have survived the bonfires. Cobain described how just prior to Malaya’s independence from Britain, five truckloads of sensitive documents relating to British colonial rule were driven 220 miles from Kuala Lumpur under police escort to the naval base at Singapore ‘and destroyed in the Navy’s splendid incinerator there’.

Papers at the National Archives at Kew ‘testified to a worldwide purge of sensitive or damning documentation: there was correspondence that described the laborious burning of papers; there were telegrams from London giving precise instructions for methods of destruction; there were even “destruction certificates”, signed and witnessed by colonial officials to confirm that certain classes of documents had been incinerated.’ [2] Systematic and institutional vandalism aimed at wiping out the truth.

Controversial files relating to Britain’s colonial outrages were destroyed, and there can be no doubt whatsoever that files incriminating British responsibility for starting WW1, have likewise either been destroyed or hidden in the vaults at Hanslope. ‘Files have been concealed for years, held where no historian or lawyer or interested member of the public could find them.’ [3] Many of these documents have been withheld well beyond the freedom of information time limits for the release of confidential papers. Freedom of Information laws exist, but so many exemptions are applied that it can still prove impossible to access documents that are a century and more old. [4] It is difficult to decide what is the greatest outrage; concealment of the documents or the fact that academic historians and mainstream journalists have remained totally supine when they should be standing up to the Money Power and creating hell about this. Ian Cobain is an exception and we are indebted to him.

The fruits of our research very clearly show that the entire mainstream thesis that Germany was to blame for the war, is a complete fabrication. This leads us to the inevitable but depressing conclusion that, apart from the few notable exceptions, brave and honest war historians are few and far between. Before the First World War had even begun, a dedicated team of ‘eminent’ English court historians was brought together at Oxford University and richly rewarded for creating anti-German propaganda in the form of ‘Oxford Pamphlets.’

They created fake history which blamed a completely innocent Germany while depicting Britain as the saviour of the free world. It was but the beginning of a great lie. The vast majority of academics beyond Oxford unwittingly swallowed the great lie, or were too cowed to question it. The ‘argument from authority’ meant that it was true because an authority figure said so. Little has changed over the intervening century. To this day Court Historians churn out new books about the First World War. They throw in the odd caveat that Germany was not solely to blame, but basically rehash the old lies about German guilt.. These books are extravagantly praised by fellow Court Historians, and puffed and critiqued in the mainstream media as ‘new and radical interpretations’. It is likely that a number of academics outside the charmed circle recognise the falsehood, but comfortable academic careers, incomes and mortgages have to be protected. The quiet life is infinitely better to being hounded out of a job and ridiculed as a ‘conspiracy theory’ crank. We understand that. they have jobs to keep, mortgages to keep, families to feed.

In faking history, lies are created and truth is twisted or suppressed. Revisionists presenting genuine historical information are fiercely criticised and their work publicly ridiculed. Quite ludicrously, the ‘anti-Semitic’ pejorative is thrown around like mud today if one even mentions ‘international bankers’. Our Hidden History has been subjected to attacks on the web by what some consider to be a paid disinformation agent of the Money Power. Bold revisionist historians such as Professor Harry Elmer Barnes who stood virtually alone in revealing the true history of WW1, and Professor Antony Sutton and Dr Guido Preparata, who revealed Wall Street’s role in creating Hitler and WW2, were brilliant American scholars whose careers were ruined for daring to speak truth about the real holders of power.

Thankfully, we are both retired and now have no careers to protect.

The polar opposite of revisionists are the ‘eminent’ historians willing to sell themselves in return for important professorships, stellar careers, lucrative lecture tours, television documentary productions and book publishing deals. These are the individuals carefully selected to create false histories. Glowing critiques of their work in the controlled mainstream media are assured. The odd Pulitzer Prize or knighthood in Britain will be thrown in for good measure. But such acquiescence to falsehood among academic historians is not simply a modern phenomenon. Classics scholar Professor Peter Wiseman relates how ancient historiography is plagued by mendacious writings from ‘modest elaboration of fact to outright, even flagrant, lying.’ [5]

Peter Hoffer, Research Professor of History at the University of Georgia, explained just how difficult it now is for historical truth to prevail: Lying may be rational or illogical or both, but it is a subject that cannot be avoided in any philosophy of history for our time. History itself is replete with lies and lying. The best and worst example is the big lie. The big lie is a simple message of allegedly great importance. Repeated over and over, despite the piling up of counter-evidence, it has a power that truth cannot deflect and evidence to the contrary cannot undo … [however], a lie does not have to be all that big to make a difference in history. [6]

In bygone days such dishonest academics operated under the patronage of Europe’s royal courts and were termed ‘Court Historians’. They related only accounts that were favourable to the monarchy, no matter how false they might be. The power of royalty has greatly diminished, but Court Historians remain a significant entity. They remain the intellectual bodyguards of the State. They shape and defend the ‘official line’ or interpretation on the State’s wars, its presidential regimes, foreign policy or other key historical events and policies. As a result they enjoy high esteem and recognition in the mainstream media and academia. As defenders of the status quo they frequently attack and label their critics as ‘conspiracy theorists, revisionists, isolationists, appeasers, anti-intellectuals, or other bogey men, rather than engage in civil discourse or discussion. [7]

There are, of course, more subtle ways of projecting fake history than the straightforward big lie or concealment/destruction of evidence. John Tosh, Professor of History at Roehampton University, London, and former Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society, has studied the basics of historiography and the problems involved in using primary and secondary sources in ascertaining ‘facts’. Tosh related how many primary sources used in historical works are inaccurate, muddled, based on hearsay or actually ‘intended to mislead’. Indeed, ‘the majority of sources are in some way inaccurate, incomplete or tainted by prejudice and self-interest.’ [8] According to Professor Tosh ‘Historical writing of all kinds is determined as much by what it leaves out as by what it puts in’. [9] Add that to the fact that so many primary sources have been concealed or destroyed, and the honest investigator faces a major barrier to the truth.

The late Cambridge University historian, Professor Herbert Butterfield, warned that omission of important documents from the historical record is not always the fault of historians employed by government. They can only deal with the material they are given. The processes by which official papers are accumulated offers government officials and individual Cabinet Ministers the opportunity to cull these before they are handed over. As Professor Quigley explained, many of these political figures are effectively puppets of the Secret Elite.

Thereafter, when the official histories are read by the public they have no idea what has been suppressed or withheld. It may be that a single document is more important than all the rest – the exclusion of one document out of three hundred is even capable of destroying the clue to the whole series. … It has proved possible in the history of historical science for a release of diplomatic documents to carry students further away from the truth than before, if the release has not been a total one. [10] On the role of ‘official’ government historians Professor Butterfield adds: ‘… Nothing could be more subtle than the influence of upon historians of admission to the charmed circle … a well-run State needs no heavy-handed censorship, for it binds the historian with soft charms and with subtle, comfortable chains.’ [11]

1. Ian Cobain, The History Thieves, pp. 101-103.
2. Ibid., pp. 119-120.
2. Ibid., p. 109.
4. 1bid., p. 160.
5. T.P. Wiseman, Lying Historians: Seven Types of Mendacity. http://liverpool.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.5949/liverpool/9780859893817.001.0001/upso-9780859893817-chapter-4                                                          6. Peter Hoffer, The Historians Paradox, The Study of History in our Time, p.88.
7. http://www.johnccarleton.org/court_historians.html
8. John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History, pp.33, 65-66.
9. Ibid., pp. 136-137.
10. Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations, pp. 201-209.
11. Ibid., p. 198.

Fake History 1: Controlling Our Future By Controlling Our Past

The term ‘Fake News’ has only recently entered common parlance, but it has a long history. Lies masquerading as news are as old as news itself, with royalty, governments, public figures and the mainstream media purveying it to manipulate public opinion. In an Orwellian twist those very same groups now employ it as a pejorative term against the alternative media and truth writers and bloggers as way of dismissing inconvenient truths and crushing dissent. We should all be aware of the state as keeper of the ‘the truth’. “Fake History” is another powerful weapon that has long been used by those in authority to retain that power by keeping the masses in the dark. As the late George Orwell wrote:

‘Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past’.

It is the unelected, unaccountable individuals who control central banking, governments and the mainstream media, who control the writing and teaching of the fake history that enables them to enslave us. After almost seventy years Orwell’s observation may appear somewhat clichéd, but it is now more relevant than ever. The highly perceptive author added: ‘The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.’

If we were able to grasp the truth of our past, could we begin to determine our own future? In the first instance the lies and mythology need to be challenged by honest history, hard but necessary truths and historical revision. ‘Revisionism’, according to Joseph Stromberg in an article he wrote about Professor Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘refers to any efforts to revise a faulty exiting historical record or interpretation.’ [1] Professor Barnes, himself one of the greatest revisionists of the 20th century, wrote that revisionism has been most frequently and effectively applied to correcting the historical record relative to wars because ‘truth is always the first war casualty.’ [2] Hold that important statement close. The emotional abuses and distortions in historical writing are greatest in wartime. Consequently, both the need and the material for correcting historical myths are most evident and profuse in connection with wars.

The present authors’ long years of research into the origins and conduct of the First World War of 1914-18 (though it continued until the signing of peace in 1919) demonstrates just how accurate Professor Barnes understanding was. Mainstream historians tell us that Germany was guilty of starting WW1 and committing the most barbarous crimes throughout. Proud, virtuous Britain, on the other hand, was forced to go to war against this German evil to fight ‘for freedom, civilisation and the integrity of small helpless nations.’ It is all a deliberately concocted lie. Patriotic myths and the victors’ wartime lies and propaganda had been scripted into Britain’s “Official History.” In truth, Britain – or to be more precise, immensely rich and powerful men in Britain – were directly responsible for the war that killed over 20 million people. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Germany did not start the war, did not want war and did what they could to avoid it.

But it is not just First World War history that is involved in the grand deception. Our contention that virtually the entire received history of the twentieth century has been faked, and requires urgent and complete revision, will raise no eyebrows in enlightened circles. It will most definitely elicit howls of derision and cries of “impossible” and “conspiracy theory” from the vast majority. Self interest or cognitive dissonance?

These blogs cannot cover the many thousands of examples of historical falsehoods or omissions we found in our historical research – our books do that – but it explains how the men behind the curtain actually created fake history. Their multifaceted approach ranges from the straightforward destruction or concealment of documents and books, to the more subtle methods of employing Court Historians and the ‘peer review’ system.

Who is responsible for fake history?

Before we examine how history is faked we need to understand who fakes it and why. In this regard, the most important influences on our work were books by Professor Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, A History of The World In Our Time and The Anglo-American Establishment.

The astonishing 1,300 page tome Tragedy and Hope, published in 1966, revealed the existence of secret society initially created by Cecil Rhodes in London in 1891. Its aim was to expand the British Empire to all habitable parts of the world. The enlarged empire would be run by wealthy upper class elites and based on English ruling class values. These people felt obliged to rule the entire world because they considered the vast majority of the human race was too ignorant to do so themselves. In the decades following Rhodes death in 1902, the secret society evolved. It became transnational as the singularly British elite merged with the American money-power; Quigley’s Anglo-American Establishment.

This would aim to become a world government. The geographical axis moved from London to New York. Later the U.N. was created as one of its instruments towards one world government. Members of the secret society controlled the United States, the White House, the Federal Reserve System and Wall Street. They likewise controlled Britain, Downing Street, the Bank of England and the City, the financial district of London. They ruled from behind the scenes and were not necessarily the major political players known to everyone. They selected major political figures and funded and controlled them. They would not be the great teachers or historians, but they decided who would be elevated to the great chairs of learning. They funded historians who wrote the fake histories. This secret group has been the world’s major historical force since before World War 1 and, according to Professor Quigley, every major event in history since then has been dominated by them. [3]

The secret society was … one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century. Indeed, the Group is of such significance that evidence of its existence is not hard to find, if one knows where to look. [4]

We looked, followed the clues, trails and names presented by Professor Quigley and were utterly astonished to find that a secret cabal actually existed, with unfettered powers in Britain and the United States. Quigley called them the ‘Group’; we have termed them the Secret Elite, but they are also variably known as the Money Power, the Deep State, the Men behind the Curtain and so forth. The shocking evidence went much deeper than that exposed by Quigley, and proved to us beyond all doubt that the individuals involved in the cabal – in both London and New York – were responsible for starting, and unnecessarily prolonging, the First World War. Through enormous wealth, power and control of Oxford University, they were able to cover their tracks and fabricate a history which blamed Kaiser Wilhelm II and Germany. A century later, that fake history is still presented as truth by ‘eminent’ mainstream historians with links to Oxford.

1. Quote from Jeff Riggenbach, Why American History is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, p. 72.
2. Ibid., p. 73.
3. For an excellent summary of the role of the secret society see G. Edward Griffin’s talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynVqPnMQ2sI
4. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. ix-x.

Prolonging The Agony 1

We are lied to. We know that more than ever today, but the lies and misrepresentations about the first World War have been accepted as truth. Arm yourself with the awful facts.

Part Two in the Hidden History series by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor.

At last, having spent ten years working together on the origins and management of the First World War, our second book, Prolonging the Agony, How the Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WW1 by Three-and-a Half Years, has been published, and is available to our readers from TrineDay in the U.S. and Amazon and other book sellers across the world.

It had never been our intention to divide the history into two parts, but our original publisher, Mainstream of Edinburgh, convinced us that it was the best way forward. Mainstream was sold to Random House shortly after Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War was published, and this proved problematic for us. Random House declined to either promote the book or take up the option for our second book. However sales remained strong and Hidden History was translated and published in both German and French. A Swedish edition is also currently being considered. To our delight TrineDay in Oregon offered to publish Prolonging the Agony and we are indebted to Kris Milligan and his team for encouraging and supporting us. It is heartening that within weeks of the book’s release, both the German and French publishers have indicated that they will also be publishing it.

So what is it about?

Prolonging the Agony lays before the reader a vast amount of evidence which reveals how enormously rich and powerful men in Britain and the U.S. deliberately prolonged WW1 while reaping even greater fortunes from it. It retraces the major lies and malevolent propaganda generated in Britain and America to justify war against Germany, and the reason it was prolonged beyond the spring of 1915 in order to crush her. The Secret Elite, the cabal which worked endlessly to bring war to Europe with a view to creating a new world order, was responsible. To cover their tracks, the elites and their agents ensured that a false history was created to justify all that happened. Prolonging the Agony deconstructs that false history page by page.

It examines in detail how the British government borrowed on an unprecedented scale from Wall Street bankers to fund the munitions of death. The links between leading players – such as the Rothschild banking family and their JP Morgan banking associates on Wall Street – were formalised to a point where the British economy was literally handed to this money-power cabal. We demonstrate the extent of the anti-German lies and propaganda emanating from Oxford University, the academic home of the Secret Elite in Britain, and how it lead to millions of young British men enlisting to fight under totally false pretences . Winning the hearts and minds of the American public, so that they aligned with the financiers, proved a more difficult task, but the fact that the United States would enter the war was guaranteed from the outset by their place-man in the White House, President Woodrow Wilson and his minder, Edward Mandel House.

Lies concocted in 1914 to blacken Germany in every way are still circulated today as fact. This False History lives on through the British Court Historians who repeat the nonsense. We prove absolutely that while Nurse Edith Cavell – the great British heroine of the war who was executed by a German firing squad in Belgium in 1915 – was indeed a brave patriot, she was secretly and intimately associated with a Belgian spy ring linked to the British Secret Service. Edith Cavell and her Belgian associates helped repatriate hundreds of British and French soldiers who were stranded behind enemy lines in the first months of the war. They also passed vital information about German deployment to the  War Office in London. But Edith threatened to endanger the secret agreements about food supply by revealing the scandal through he connections with the Times. For generations that fact was buried so that her execution would look like an act of brutality by the German commanders against an innocent, humanitarian nurse. The truth is otherwise.

In a similar vein, lies and propaganda were circulated about the sinking in 1915 of the ocean liner Lusitania by a German U-boat. Received history turned this act into German malevolence in order to cause outrage in America and swing public opinion there towards the Allies. 1,195 lives were lost including 140 Americans. Only now, after sustained detective work by Mitch Peeke and his Liverpool team in tracking down the cargo manifest of the Lusitania, are the authorities in both Britain and the U.S. obliged to admit their complicity in creating and maintaining false accounts of the sinking. The recently uncovered manifest proves that the ‘passenger liner’ was secretly carrying many thousands of rounds of ammunition and tons of U.S. explosives to Britain. It also proves that the German authorities were right. Britain and America were flouting the clear-cut regulations about neutrality. Their well-publicised advice to passengers to avoid the Lusitania was both justified and ignored. Shockingly, elements within the British Admiralty knew full well that the German U-boat was waiting in the exact path of the Lusitania as she passed the southern coast of Ireland, yet withdrew her naval escorts and failed to warn her captain. Why? We believe they were complicit in the sinking for their own purposes.

Bad as this was, our sustained research through documents, records, and published books and texts which were dismissed in the post-war years, turned our dismay to utter disgust. Again and again we found secret agreements, understandings, practices and deliberate actions taken in order to prolong the war and prolong the agony. And it is this fact, which was repeatedly stated from many quarters during the conflict, which hit us hardest.

We have amassed proof of the unprecedented scale on which the war was unnecessarily prolonged. It could have been drawn to a conclusion by December 1915 and millions of victims would have been spared the misery of mutilation or horrendous death. But the war was prolonged mercilessly so that profits would surpass the dreams of Midas and Germany crushed as a rival.

Amongst many disturbing examples, Prolonging the Agony examines the scandal of the French Briey Basin iron and steel mines and forges which the French army could either have occupied on the first day of the war or destroyed, in order to stop them falling into German hands. Despite repeated calls for the French army to destroy the forges, the French authorities would not allow it. An expedition to bomb the forges was slapped down by the French High Command. Who gave the orders? Who made the profits? To whose instructions was the French government answerable? It was a scandal which has been swept under the carpet to avoid accountability. Had Briey been destroyed, Germany would not have had the raw materials and munitions to fight beyond 1915.

What is the truth of the so-called blockade of the North Sea passages which allegedly starved Germany of its resources? A truly brave and remarkable small fleet comprising very old vessels, none of which was built for the high seas task, sat out in the unforgiving Atlantic and North Sea to stop all contraband getting into Germany from August 1914 onwards. What happened? Virtually every ship they brought into port under escort was allowed to continue its journey by order of the Admiralty in London. Yet the public and parliament believed that Germany was being starved of its war necessities. They believed the lie because Winston Churchill said a full blockade was in place and that Germany would surrender in nine months.

The inner-elite of the British cabinet had no intention of ending the war until Germany was crushed … not just beaten. The facts presented are drawn from archived evidence and Admiralty papers. Our thesis endorses and builds on the outrage expressed by the Admiralty’s representative in Scandinavia during WW1, Naval Attaché Rear-Admiral Consett. He detailed how the Allies were secretly supplying Germany through Scandinavian ports and prolonging the conflict. Had a blockade been properly undertaken the war would have ended by 1915. What was a going on? Prolonging the Agony explains precisely that.

We also raise the issue which is omitted from mainstream analysis: where was Germany procuring her vital oil supplies? She had no natural reserves herself, and her access to oil could easily have been stopped. Our book investigates the multiple abuses in oil provision and traces the ownership of these oil fields. The compliance of the owners and shareholders, British and American, demonstrated the importance of war profits at any cost.

To hell with your countrymen who had to be sacrificed.

In our next blog we will outline the impact of other major influences and agencies who had a vested interest in Prolonging the Agony

Concluding Thoughts 1

A decade ago when we first took up the challenge of Professor Carroll Quigley from his seminal works, Tragedy and Hope and The Anglo American Establishment to look for evidence of the secret cabal [1] and how they grew into the Secret Elite we were stunned by the facts which had been ignored amazed by the ease with which important figures had been air-brushed from history and angered by the repetition of old lies about the causes and conduct of the First World War. Researchers are still denied access to records and official papers which remain under lock and key or have been burned or shredded. Yet, after many years of dogged research we have proved without doubt that the Secret Elite caused the war against Germany and, in conjunction with their associated international bankers and political allies in London and New York, deliberately prolonged the carnage beyond 1915. They were determined to break up forever the old empires which threatened the imperial power of Great Britain. Germany had to be destroyed. As the Romans had insisted that Carthage had to be destroyed to ensure the primacy of Rome, so the Secret Elite and their agents focussed their might on the destruction of Germany. For almost a century the myth that Germany deliberately started that war has been repeated like a mindless mantra.

Over the last few years there has been a noticeable move towards a softer approach, the most recent of which being Christopher Clark’s interpretation that Europe sleepwalked into war. [2] Not so. We cannot repeat too often, the hard fact that millions of men were sacrificed by evil profiteers and malignant power-brokers in a determined effort to bring about their new world order.

Chapter by chapter we have produced clear evidence that the war was prolonged, deliberately and unnecessarily. This accusation was made repeatedly in the British parliament, in the French assembly and in contemporary reports. Such protestations were ignored, rejected or deemed groundless. The misery of the war in Europe, in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, on the high seas and in the air, was justified by propaganda and lies, while those who suffered the deprivations and agony were sacrificed to a dark cause about which they knew nothing.

The United States, though posturing as a neutral, was essentially an active but secret ally for the British and French governments from the early days of the conflict. The money-power and the presidential minders who controlled U.S. foreign policy would never have allowed Germany to succeed. J.P. Morgan and his Rothschild backers, the Rockefellers, Kuhn Loeb and Warburgs made unprecedented profits on the back of the sheer hell of the trenches, and poverty and deprivation on the home front. Though Britain was assured of support from the Anglo-American banking fraternity from the first day of the war, it was no easy task to turn the average American citizen from isolation and a deeply entrenched anti-war sentiment to active involvement. The financial clout of the American banks, the munitions industries and the essential food producers unquestionably ensured an Allied victory, though, for most of the war the American people had no inkling of their government’s complicity.

Lies and deceit continued unabated. Cleverly staged propaganda justified the loss of civil liberty which was imposed by the British government. The Secret Elite have no respect for democracy. We live in a strange era of alternative fact and fake news, but do not imagine that this is some new invention. Hitherto much that was faked in history lay unquestioned.

President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected in 1916 on the boast that “he kept America out of the war”. Barely three months after his second inauguration he completely reversed his policy and effectively ended any slim chance of Germany’s success. This is precisely how Elites have always worked. Lie to the people. Engage them in wars about which they know nothing and care nothing, but do not let them vote on the issue. Goodness me, NO. But wrap a war around a banner which claims Duty, Loyalty and promises to deliver a better Civilisation, and wars become popular. They remain popular as long as the price is acceptable to the powers that be. Should the war prove an unmanageable disaster, the elites do not pay. Politicians fall and are replaced. Profits are still made.

Given all that she was up against, Germany could never have won the First World War once the Kaiser’s armies had failed to take Paris in the first forty days of the war. Putting aside the military and logistical reasons, and there were many, American investment in the war became so complete that an Allied failure would have been an absolute disaster for the bankers and financiers, the holders of war bonds and the makers of munitions.

Should any doubt remain about the power, largely unelected power, exercised by the men identified at the end of the nineteenth century by Professor Quigley as Rhodes’s secret cabal, consider the following. By the year 1919, Cecil Rhodes and WT Stead were dead, but Rhodes’s fortune had been placed in the hands of Alfred Milner and his associates, and the press in Britain was dominated by the Secret Elite-approved, Lord Northcliffe. Natty Rothschild succumbed to ill health in 1915, but his successors, and in particular, his son Walter and nephew James de Rothschild had been thrust to the fore of an emerging force called Zionism. Above all, was Alfred Milner, Viscount and Oxford University alumni. The man who saved Rothschild’s gold and diamond mines in South Africa in the Boer War became the unelected permanent member of the War Cabinet under Lloyd George after 1916.

Milner the mastermind; Milner the “Race Patriot”; Milner who commanded the loyalty of the senior ranks in the British Army; Milner who had given Lloyd George his support to lead the government; Milner whose acolytes controlled Lloyd George’s policy from their Downing Street offices; Milner, the man who personally bade farewell to the last Czar. A man so important to the creators of the new world order that his influence has been airbrushed from history. Had you previously heard of Alfred Milner? Was his name ever mentioned in the classroom or lecture hall when you were studying history? Has his place in all that happened been acknowledged by those who control the official commemorations for the First World War? No. It was he who had the steel to “disregard the screamers”, phrase he used in the 1890s to put steel into the resolve of wavering politicians. He urged his followers to hold out for the destruction of Germany.

That was the whole point of the First World War. Victory was not enough.

What too of the imposter, Herbert Hoover? The great American who appeared from the ether to rescue the poor and the starving, the stranded and the needy, provided someone paid. He was re-invented as a great humanitarian between 1914-1919, but his success was backed by the men who wanted to prolong the war. The Commission for Relief in Belgium was not his great achievement; nor was his role as Food Administrator for the American government.

While the Germans will be remembered for the burning of Louvain, and its historic library in 1914, a crime against civilisation, they said, Hoover literally stole the history of Europe from before the war until 1919, and took it half way round the world to place it under lock and key. Ah, but he was a good-guy. He did it for posterity, did he not? Shame that the evidence, or what remains of it, has been condemned to eternal darkness; that all of his shipping and distribution papers have disappeared; that the entire narrative of Belgian Relief has been left exclusively to Hoover’s apologists. It is disgusting to admit that the secret papers concerning the causes of the war in Europe were exchanged by desperate men for food. That is the level to which the man who would be 31st President of the United States of America sank.

1. Carrol Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.15.
2. Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers, How Europe Went To War in 1914.

The Great Coup of 1916, 7: The End Of Democracy

Lloyd George immediately accepted the King’s invitation to form a government on 7 December 1916. His own version of events dripped insincerity, giving the impression that the onerous task of leading the government was thrust upon him suddenly, as if by magic. ‘As soon as the King entrusted me with the task of forming an Administration in succession to the Ministry that had disappeared, I had to survey the tasks awaiting me …’ [1] What arrant nonsense. ‘The ministry that had disappeared.’ This was not a Harry Potter. Perhaps he was thinking more in terms of a mafia ‘disappearance’. He would have been at home with the Mafiosa.

One of Lloyd George’s first moves was to summon Maurice Hankey to the War Office to ‘have a long talk about the personnel of the new Govt., the procedure of the select War Ctee., and the future of the war.’ [2] He asked Hankey to write a memo giving his view on the state of the war and as early as 9 December, Hankey spent the whole day with the new War Cabinet. [3] How more central could he have been to all of the discussions which finally approved Lloyd George’s decisions? [4] Unlike many of his contemporaries, Maurice Hankey was not surprised to find that Milner had been appointed directly to the inner-sanctum of Britain’s war planning. Unelected, unknown to many ordinary men and women, Lord Milner appeared as if out of the ether to take his place among the political elite charged with managing the war to ultimate victory. [5] Lloyd George claimed, laughably, that ‘I neither sought nor desired the Premiership’ and explained Milner’s inclusion as representing the ‘Tory intelligentsia and Die-Hards.’ [6] What lies. Lloyd George had always exuded unbridled ambition and had been plotting the coup against Asquith with Milner’s cabal for months. [7] His premiership was conditional on their support. Lord Milner was to have a place by his side.

The myth of Lloyd George’s ‘lightening rapidity’ in assembling around him ‘all that is best in British Life’ was coined by Lord Northcliffe in an article printed by the international press on 10 December. [8] Northcliffe had been highly influential in supporting Lloyd George, largely, but not exclusively through his editor at the Times, Geoffrey Dawson.

Although he thought nothing of telephoning the new prime minister in person, [9] the owner of the Times could not stop other influences obligating Lloyd George to retain what Northcliffe called ‘has-beens’ in cabinet posts. [10] His Daily Mail and Evening News called for the removal of Arthur Balfour and his cousin, Lord Robert Cecil to no avail. Did Northcliffe not know that both men were deeply entrenched inside the Secret Elite?

Let there be no doubt, the coup was devised and executed by members and agents of the Secret Elite. Once Asquith had been replaced, they permeated the new administration with Milner’s acolytes and associates from top to bottom, and on all sides as well. [11] Let Lloyd George be the figurehead, but the Monday Night Cabal and their Secret Elite supporters were absolutely determined to place themselves and their trusted allies in all of the major offices of state. Furthermore, Lloyd George was subtly but securely scrutinised at every turn. He would not be given free rein. Thus their chosen men were placed in key positions, with a smattering of useful Conservative and Labour MPs given office in order to guarantee that the government could survive any parliamentary vote. On his return to London on 10 December, Hankey ‘had to see Lord Milner by appointment’. He noted in his diary ‘I have always hated his [Lord Milner’s] politics but found the man very attractive and possessed of personality and [we] got own like a house on fire’. [12] Of course they did. Hankey would not have survived otherwise. He was well aware of Milner’s power and influence.

Another myth still widely accepted is that Lloyd George’s very special cabinet, which literally took control of every strand in the prosecution of the war, was assembled at break-neck speed by the Welsh genius. It had taken months of deliberation and consultation before appointments and tactics were finally agreed inside the closed ranks of the Monday Night Cabal. The final selection which bore Lloyd George’s alleged stamp reflected the Secret Elite’s approval of men in whom they had faith. The War Committee initially comprised prime minister Lloyd George, who had been in the Secret Elite’s pocket since 1910, [13] Viscount Alfred Milner, the most important influence inside that secret movement [14] George Curzon of All Souls and twice Viceroy of India, [15] Andrew Bonar Law, still the formal leader of the Tories and the Labour MP Arthur Henderson, an outspoken champion of the war effort. [16] This central core took charge. They held daily meetings to better manage the war. Sometimes two and three meetings took place in a single day. These five men alone were supposedly the supreme governors of the State. [17] But they were not in any sense, equals.

The old order of senior Liberal politicians was mercilessly purged. Out went Asquith despite his years of loyal service. Sir Edward Grey had forfeited his right to office when he began to consider possibilities of peace with the Americans. He was put out to pasture. Reginald McKenna, long a thorn in Lloyd George’s side was dismissed. Lord Crewe remained loyal to Asquith and was not considered. To his great disappointment, Winston Churchill was not deemed suitable.  He had many enemies in the Tory  party. One Liberal Party stalwart, Samuel Montagu, who took over at the Ministry of Munitions when Lloyd George moved to the War Office in July 1916, had to go in order to find room for other appointees, but his patience was to be rewarded some short months later when he was made Viceroy of India. [18] This is precisely how the Secret Elite adjusts its favours and looks after its own. It still does.

The Secret Elite stamped their authority over every important level of government. With Sir Edward Carson at the Admiralty and Arthur Balfour at the Foreign Office, Lord Derby became Secretary of State for War and Lord Robert Cecil continued in his position as Minister of Blockade. Home Secretary, Sir George Cave took office barely months after he and FE Smith had successfully prosecuted Sir Roger Casement and refused his right to appeal to the House of Lords. [19] Secret Elite agents, every one.

Milner ensured that his close friends were given positions of influence and authority. Take for example the meteoric rise of Rowland Prothero. He claimed to know only two men ‘prominent in public life’. [20] It transpired that these were Lords Milner and Curzon. In 1914 Prothero was first elected to parliament as one of Oxford University’s MPs. In late 1915 he served on a Committee on Home Production of Food with Alfred Milner. In 1916, Milner’s friend was given the cabinet post of President of the Board of Agriculture. [21] It took him a mere two and a half years to move from new recruit to cabinet minister. In addition, Arthur Lee, who had accommodated many of the secret meetings which foreshadowed the coup, was appointed Director-General of food production. Other known members and supporters of the Secret Elite who shamelessly benefitted from the coup included H.A.L. Fisher, President of the Board of Education, [22] Walter Long as Colonial Secretary and Sir Henry Birchenough at the Board of Trade. [23] They were everywhere … and not just politicians.

Lloyd George had risen to high office through the unseen patronage of the Secret Elite. His performance at the Board of Trade [24] guaranteed him the benevolent approbation of leading figures in shipping and ship-building. As Chancellor he laid claim to saving the City [25], took advice from Lord Rothschild, financiers and insurance brokers, linked the British economy to America through Morgan-Grenfell and met and socialised with the great mine-owners and manufacturers of the time. In December 1916 he revolutionised government control of production by bringing businessmen into political office. Unfortunately the appointment of interested parties to posts from which their companies could reap great profit was not a success.

Sir Joseph Maclay was appointed in charge of shipping. As a Scottish ship-owner and manager, Maclay had been critical of the government’s concessions to trade unions and he opposed the nationalization of shipping. The Admiralty treated Maclay with deep hostility, and opposed his idea of convoys after the onset of Germany’s unrestricted submarine offensive in February 1917. Maclay was proved right [26] though shipowners still reaped unconscionable fortunes.

The new prime minister made Lord Devonport food controller. Chairman of the Port of London Authority (1909-25), he broke the dockers’ strike in 1912, causing great distress and hardship in East London. Imagining that his hard-man image equated to strength of character, Lloyd George appointed Minister of Food Control. [27] Not so. Devonport protected his own grocery interests and resisted the introduction of rationing until May 1917. 

Lord Rhondda, the Welsh coal magnate and industrialist was entrusted with the Local Government Board and his popularity grew when he was asked to take over the role of the incompetent Devonport as minister of food control. He grasped the nettle, by fixing food prices and ensuring government purchases of basic supplies. [28] Compared to the others, he was a shining light.

Westman Pearson, later Viscount Cowdrey, was placed in charge of the Air Board. Pearson had acquired oil concessions in Mexico through his questionable relationship with the Mexican dictator, Diaz. [29] His ownership of the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company (which became part of Royal Dutch Shell in 1919) guaranteed Pearson vast profits throughout the war.

Sir Alfred Mond, elevated by Lloyd George in 1916 to Commissioner of Works was the managing director of the Mond Nickel Company and a director of the International Nickel Company of Canada. Nickel hardens armour and special steels. Basically it is a strategic material which came to the fore in the so-called naval race prior to 1914. [30]

The Mond companies made great profits during the prolonged war. In 1915 Britain sent twelve times the amount of nickel to Sweden that it had in 1913. [31] There, it was either manufactured into war materials and sold to Germany, or re-exported in its raw state. Incredibly, the Chairman of one of the Empire’s most important metal processing and exporting businesses, which was directly and indirectly supplying Germany, was created Commissioner of Works. Questionable deals were subsequently negotiated between the British government and the British-American Nickel Corporation which were strongly criticised in parliament [32] but Alfred Mond ended his career as Lord Melchett of Landforth. You couldn’t make this up.

In addition, Milner and his Secret Elite associates literally took over Lloyd George’s private office. As early as 10 December Hankey realised that he was not to be the only member of the new prime minister’s secretariat. At Milner’s request, Leo Amery, his loyal lieutenant in South Africa, was unaccountably placed on the staff of the War Cabinet, but not as joint Secretary. Hankey remained secure in Lloyd George’s trust in charge of the War Cabinet organisation. [33]

A curious new chapter in Downing Street’s history was created outside the prime minister’s residence. Literally. Temporary offices were constructed in the Downing Street garden to accommodate a select group of trusted administrators who monitored and directed all contact between Lloyd George and departments of government. [34] The man in charge throughout its existence was Professor W.G. S. Adams, an Oxford Professor and member of Milner’s entourage [35] who later became editor of War Cabinet Reports and Warden of All Souls in Oxford. [36] This appointment was swiftly followed by that of two former members of Milner’s famous Kindergarten; [37] Philip Kerr became Lloyd George’s private secretary and Lionel Curtis, another of Milner’s loyal acolytes, was also drafted into service. It did not stop there. Waldorf Astor and Lord Northcliffe’s younger brother, Cecil Harmsworth followed shortly afterwards.

To complete the pack, Milner insisted that Lloyd George reconsider appointing John Buchan to his staff after Haig’s apologist had been turned down for a post. In a private letter which has survived because it comes from the Lloyd George archives, rather than Milner’s much culled and carefully shredded papers, he wrote:
‘My Dear Prime Minister, Don’t think me too insistent! I wish you would not turn down John Buchan, without seeing him yourself…. I am not satisfied to have him rejected on hear-say, & ill informed hear-say at that.’ [38]
Buchan was appointed to the prime minister’s staff as Director of Information. And historians would have us believe that these were Lloyd George’s appointments.

It was as if the Monday Night Cabal had kidnapped the prime minister. Just as Alfred Milner had captured, then captivated, the nascent talent of young imperialists from Oxford University at the turn of the century and taken them to South Africa to help him govern and renovate the post Boer-War Transvaal and Cape colonies, so now, the very same men ‘guided’ Lloyd George and filtered the information which flowed to Downing Street. They were not Lloyd Georg’s men … they were Lord Milner’s. He was in charge.

To the anguish of Asquith’s political allies, this new bureaucracy had metamorphosed into an undemocratic monster fashioned by Alfred Milner. They could see it and railed against it. What we need to know is, why has this wholesale coup d’etat been studiously ignored by mainstream historians? Why do they continually write about Lloyd George’s government and Lloyd George’s secretariat when his very position was bound and controlled by Milner and his Garden Suburb minders? The radical journalist, H W Massingham published a vitriolic attack on Milner’s organisation in early 1917:

‘… A new double screen of bureaucrats is interposed between the War Directorate and the heads of [government] Departments, whose responsibility to Parliament has hitherto been direct … The first is the Cabinet Secretariat … the second is a little body of illuminati, whose residence is in the Prime Minister’s garden …These gentlemen stand in no sense for a Civil Service Cabinet. They are rather a class of travelling empirics in Empire, who came in with Lord Milner … The governing ideas are not those of Mr. Lloyd George … but of Lord Milner … Mr George has used Toryism to destroy Liberal ideas; but he has created a Monster which, for the moment, dominates both. This is the New Bureaucracy which threatens to master England …’ [39]

It was indeed. This was the Secret Elite’s most successful coup so far, accomplished by the critical silence and complicity of a compliant press. Elected parliamentary government had been purged. The Secret Elite spurned democracy because they ordained that democracy did not work. Their dictatorship was masked by Lloyd George, happy to pose and strut as the man who would win the war. Perhaps you were taught that he did? It is a self-serving myth. He operated inside a political straitjacket and fronted an undemocratic government.

And the sacrifice of youth continued.  And the profits of war grew ever larger.

[1] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 620.
[2] Hankey, Diary 10 December 1916.
[3] War Cabinet 1, CAB 23/1/1 discussed the cost of loans from America which were running at $60 million per week. Messrs. Morgan, Grenfell and Co. continued as the conduit for all American payments. Hankey also recorded in these minutes that the Press had been informed that the War cabinet would meet every weekday.
[4] Lord Vansittart recorded that Hankey ‘progressively became secretary of everything that mattered. He grew into a repository of secrets, a chief Inspector of Mines of information.’ Robert Gilbert Vansittart, The Mist Procession, p. 164.
[5] While Lloyd George spends many pages expressing his opinion on most of his colleagues, he curiously omits a pen-picture on Lord Milner. Possibly the Censor removed it. Either way it is interesting to note how carefully Milner’s contribution to Lloyd George’s ascent to the premiership has been airbrushed.
[6] Lloyd George, Memoirs, p. 596.
[7] See blog, The Great Coup of 1916: 4 The Monday Night Cabal, 3 August 2016.
[8] The Times estimated that Lord Northcliffe’s lengthy article in praise of Lloyd George had been carried in one thousand American, Australian, Canadian, South African, French, Italian and other journals. [Times 11 December, 1916]
[9] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 329.
[10] The Times, 11 December 1916, p. 4.
[11] Gollin, Proconsul, p. 376.
[12] Ibid., p. 329.
[13] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 164-5.
[14] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 6-9 and pp. 140- 47.
[15] The place of All Souls college at Oxford as the centre of the Secret Elite intelligentsia in Britain was identified by Professor Quigley. See The Anglo-American Establishment pp. 20-26.
[16] In August 1914 Arthur Henderson had been outspoken in his objection to war, but he changed his position absolutely within weeks.
[17] Gollin, Proconsul, p. 391.
[18] E.S. Montagu was both a friend of Asquith’s and respected colleague of Lloyd George. To most observers his omission from Asquith’s cabinet in 1916 spelled the end of his political career. But this is not how the Secret Elite work. In stepping down temporarily, Montagu earned the right to be promoted to the prestigious position of Viceroy of India in 1917.
[19] Thomas S. Legg, Marie-Louise Legg, ‘Cave, George, Viscount Cave (1856–1928)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[20] Lord Ernle, Whippingham to Westminster, p. 248.
[21] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 27.
[22] Ibid., p. 312.
[23] Ibid.
[24] President of the Board of Trade was Lloyd George’s first cabinet post in 1906. During his tenure there he became popular with the business class whose interests he often championed.
[25] Lloyd George, Memoirs, p. 61.
[26] Ibid., pp. 688-95.
[27] Richard Davenport-Hines, ‘Kearley, Hudson Ewbanke, first Viscount Devonport (1856–1934)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[28] John Williams, ‘Thomas, David Alfred, first Viscount Rhondda (1856–1918)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[29] Geoffrey Jones, Westman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdrey, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[30] Gordon H. Boyce, Co-operative Structures in Global Business, pp. 84-5.
[31] Rear Admiral MWWC Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, p. 201.
[32] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 14 January 1918 vol. 101 cc5-6.
[33] Maurice Hankey, Supreme Command, vol. II, p. 590.
[34] John Turner, Lloyd George’s Secretariat, p. 1.
[35] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 313.
[36] Ibid., pp. 91-93. All Souls College in Oxford has been closely associated with the Rhodes/Milner group so integral to the Secret Elite in England.
[37] The title Milner’s Kindergarten was given to the group of young Oxford University graduates whom Milner attracted to help him rebuild South Africa after the Boer War. They subsequently enjoyed stellar careers in journalism, politics, banking and finance every area of Secret Elite influence. Further reading – Walter Nimocks, Milner’s Young Men.
[38] Milner to Lloyd George 17 January 1917, in the Lloyd George Papers.
[39] H.W. Massingham, The Nation 24 February, 1917.

John Buchan 1: Proving his Worth to the Secret Elite

The next four blogs will concentrate on the Scottish novelist John Buchan.  Both of us knew of him in different ways. Like Jim, Buchan was an alumnus of Glasgow University. Gerry has recently directed an adaptation of his most famous works, The Thirty-Nine Steps and had read all of the Richard Hannay novels as a youngster. Neither of us knew of his links to the Secret Elite. Any background information accompanying his novels omits his propaganda work and even in the twenty-first century, a veil has been drawn over his role as a writer of falsified history. That he became a member and agent of the Secret Elite offers the perfect example of how young men of talent were groomed and richly rewarded by the secret cabal.

Have you ever wondered how John Buchan, one of Scotland’s most successful novelists, though no literary giant like Sir Walter Scott, ended his life as Governor General of Canada? How a man with no diplomatic background was elevated to one of the top administrative positions in the post-war British Empire? Does it surprise you to learn that this writer of ‘shockers’ was appointed to the War Office Staff at the General Headquarters in France and by 1918 was Deputy Head of the Ministry of Information? [1] Perhaps, like me, you thought he merely wrote fictional stories about spies.

It was John Buchan’s good fortune to gain a scholarship to Oxford and enter Brasenose College in 1895, at the same time as a veritable powerhouse of talent and privilege. A son of the manse, he first won a scholarship to Glasgow University before going on to Oxford. There he befriended such rising stars as FE Smith, John Simon, Leo Amery and Lord Halifax, [2] all of whom played key roles in or for the Secret Elite. Herbert Asquith’s son, Raymond was his close friend, and he came to know the Prime Minister personally.

Buchan played the society game in London in the first year of the twentieth century, joining younger men’s clubs whose membership was confined to Oxbridge graduates. He actively pursued social advancement, seeking invitations to grand dinner parties ‘where there was far too much to eat, but where men sat long at table and there was plenty of good talk.’ [3] He met elder statesmen and politicians, wrote articles for the Spectator and enjoyed week-ends as a guest at ‘great English dwellings’.  This was precisely the route taken by every aspiring member of the elite who was not sufficiently fortunate to be born into a titled household. At which point, according to his autobiography, Buchan was suddenly jolted out of his comfortable rut, like one of the characters in his later novels. [4] In fact his step forward on the rung of privileged access came about through the recommendation of his Oxford friend, Leo Amery.

In 1901, John Buchan was asked by Lord Alfred Milner, then High Commissioner for South Africa to join him there, not as a salaried official, ‘but individually working for me [Milner] and directly under me’. The Lord High Commissioner had been given funds, most likely by his ardent admirer, Cecil Rhodes [5] to bring together an exceptionally talented group of young men to help him reconstruct South Africa after the Boer War. Milner made an independent arrangement with each one, ‘the terms of which I should prefer not to have divulged.’ [6] He offered John Buchan the princely sum of £1,200 per annum. [7] (approximately £116,500 at current prices.) [8]

Alfred Milner’s hand-picked men, Lionel Curtis, Lionel Kitchens, Robert Brand, Philip Kerr, Patrick Duncan and Geoffrey Dawson were John Buchan’s companions. Loyalty to Milner and his ‘Credo’ became a central theme for the remainder of all of their lives. Lionel Curtis held senior posts in South Africa, India, China and Ireland; Lionel Hitchens went on to become head of a great shipbuilding company; Robert Brand to a career in Merchant Banking; Philip Kerr headed up Lloyd George’s Secretariat in 1916 and went on, as Lord Lothian, to be British Ambassador at Washington, and instrumental in the formation of the Round Table. [9] Patrick Duncan was Governor General of South Africa; Geoffrey Dawson for many years was the editor of The Times.

All of his chosen men proved their loyalty to Lord Milner and there was much for which the High Commissioner had reason to be grateful to his acolytes. Bound to his coat-tails, all were included in the ranks of the Secret Elite. It was only fitting that John Buchan too reaped a rich reward for his years of commitment to Milner, the Empire and the Secret Elite’s global ambition. [10]

He shared the deep-rooted philosophy of Milner’s brand of imperialism.

‘I dreamed of a world-wide brotherhood with the background of a common race and creed, consecrated to the service of peace; Britain enriching the rest out of her culture and traditions … Our creed was not based on antagonism to any other people. It was humanitarian and international … we believed that we were laying the basis of a federation of the world. As for the native races under our rule, we had a high conscientiousness; Milner and Rhodes had a far sighted native policy.’ [11]

That common race was to be British-dominated; the creed was the so-called ‘English ruling-class’ values expounded by John Ruskin at Oxford. [12] The sheer hypocrisy of this philosophy is best exemplified by the notion that it was ‘consecrated to the service of peace … that it ‘was not based in antagonism’ while in reality it sought to crush its main economic rival, Germany, through a devastating war.

John Buchan joined the ranks of what would later be called Miler’s Kindergarten and immediately proved his worth to the Secret Elite. The governor-general was in serious political trouble in 1901. Herbert Kitchener’s policy of burning farm after farm in the Veld and transporting all women, children and black servants and workers to make-shift concentration camps resulted in deprivation, starvation, rampant disease, dehydration and appalling mortality rates. When the extent of these atrocities were brought to the attention of the Liberal leader in the House of Commons, Campbell-Bannerman attacked the government over their ‘methods of barbarism.’ [13] It was certainly barbaric.

In the aftermath of the scandalous revelations and international rebuke on the plight of civilian concentration camps run by the army in South Africa, Milner was instructed by the Secretary for the Colonies in London to take charge of the camps and reduce the devastatingly criminal mortality rates. Although even Milner described Kitchener’s system [14] of herding Boer women and children into inadequately sheltered ‘camps’ without sufficient food as ‘a grave error’, [15] he refused to criticise him personally.

A total of 45 concentration camps had been ‘built’ for Boer internees and 64 for native Africans. By October 1901, the numbers interned reached 118,000 ‘white persons’ and 43,000 ‘coloured persons’. [16] At least 20,000 Boer civilians, mostly women and children, died there and 12,000 Africans suffered the same fate. [17] Buchan’s account of his time in South Africa omitted any reference to Emily Hobhouse whose investigation into concentration camps in early 1901 caused outrage in liberal Britain. According to the official line, ‘the truth was that while the concentration system caused far less misery than, and loss than would have been suffered had the families remained on the veld, the way in which it was carried out was open to much criticism. [18] Whitewashed nonsense.

Criticism? It was a crime which outraged opinion in Britain and abroad. Milner called them ‘refugee camps’. What he and the British government lamented was the bad publicity which in their eyes allowed the Boers to make political capital from the condition of the camps. Their rebuttal was that ‘in parts these complaints were insincere, for it is abundantly clear that they [the Boers] were heartily glad to be relieved of the responsibility for the maintenance of their families’. [19] The Secret Elite apologists closed ranks around the debacle. Flora Shaw, (later Lady Lugard) a correspondent for The Times investigated the ‘so-called “concentration camps” which she claimed were ‘an inducement to the Boers to surrender’ and a ‘refuge for women’. [20] She inquired into the ‘sorrowfully high child mortality rate and learned that it was ‘due almost entirely to heat.’ [21] What? It was an act of God rather than lack of drinking water, adequate food, shelter, sanitation and basic hygiene, not to mention a crippling epidemic of measles? These abuses of historic fact are typical of how Secret Elite historians and journalists rewrote history to their own benefit.

Few assistant private secretaries have ever started their careers as civilian administrator of a host of disease-ridden concentration camps where, in 1901, the death-rate hit a scandalously high 344 per thousand of the population. [22] Buchan took charge at the height of this unqualified disaster, a blight on any civilised nation, but it takes more than a creative mind to claim, as he did, that ‘in our period of administration we turned them [the camps] into health resorts’. [23] Health resorts! Incredibly he was referring to concentration camps.

To his credit Buchan seconded medical personnel from the Indian Army and introduced reforms recommended by the ‘committee of English Ladies under Dame Millicent Fawcett’. [24] According to The Times History of the War in South Africa, the establishment’s officially approved version of the Boer War, written by Lord Milner’s young men, the death rate fell thereafter to 69 per thousand in February 1902 and by May, to 20 per thousand. [25]

Reflecting later, Buchan wrote that ‘the camps gave us a chance of laying the foundation of a new system of elementary education.’ [26] Fact and fiction was regularly intermixed in all of John Buchan’s writings, but this claim is surely as insensitive as it was ridiculous.

Buchan and his ‘kindergarten’ colleagues worked assiduously to repatriate Boers after the war in South Africa had ended, resettle the estranged population and create a scheme of land settlement for newcomers. Here again, John Buchan was Milner’s ‘fixer’. Using tactics which bordered on impropriety, he operated a clandestine scheme whereby his agents posed as private land dealers to buy up land from unsuspecting, and often desperate Boers. Buchan’s men were allowed access to the concentration camp victims to make offers to landowners in dire circumstances and buy up their property at very low prices. The ultimate aim was to provide cheap land for the government’s resettlement programme so that more British emigrants might be attracted to South Africa. [27] So much for ‘cultural enrichment’.

On returning to London in 1903, John Buchan claimed to be disturbed to find that both political parties were blind to the true meaning of Empire. [28] Inspired as he was by Milner’s disdain for politics and convinced that the British Empire had to assert itself or lose its international position, he had ‘an ugly fear that the Empire might decay at the heart.’ [29] Buchan became very close to the Liberal Imperialist politician, Richard Haldane, a fellow Scot, whose loyalty to  Milner was unbending. Clearly Alfred Milner had spoken admiringly of Haldane whom, according to John Buchan, ‘Milner thought the ablest man in public life, abler even than Arthur Balfour’, [30] who was then the prime minister.

Haldane had proved his loyalty to Milner by publicly defending the High Commissioner’s policy of importing Chinese labour to serve in slave-like conditions down the gold mines of the Rand. [31] He was equally prepared to accentuate the positive in Milner’s reconstruction in South Africa by writing numerous reviews anonymously in the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. [32] Loyalty to Milner, to the Empire, to a philosophy which understood the essential need for the British way of life to triumph over any alternative power, was utterly essential for those brought into and nurtured inside the Secret Elite.

Buchan was deeply upset by the treatment, as he saw it, of Ulster Unionists and had sufficient clout to bring F.E. Smith, Lord Robert Cecil and Alfred Lyttelton to speak for his campaign to be elected as the Conservative candidate for the Peebles and Selkirk  constituency before war was declared and elections postponed. He was also very close to Lord Rosebery, the former Liberal Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. From his Oxford Days onwards Buchan met him on regular occasions and they would ‘foregather every autumn at his moorland house at Rosebery’. [33] Rosebery, like many others in the Secret Elite, distrusted anything in the nature of a ‘plebiscitary democracy’. According to Buchan, this pre-eminent former statesman confided in him that Britain was on a razor edge internationally, and had lost all its dignity and discipline in domestic affairs.

Such self-indulgent elder-statesman reflection is typical of all epochs and ages desperate to hold and protect what advantages they have. Cato could have sat in their midst moaning about Carthage just as these elites denigrated the Kaiser and Germany. Inside the rarified ranks of the upper echelons of the Secret Elite, John Buchan found a place, though his natural talent for writing fiction was yet to elevate his usefulness to a higher level. Buchan had neither the finance nor breeding nor political position to be placed in the inner circle of the Secret Elite, but he was most certainly intimately associated with them, trusted by them, allocated specific tasks by them and rewarded handsomely for his loyalty and dedication. [34] He was ‘of them’, if not quite in the inner sanctum. [35]

[1] Kate MacDonald, John Buchan and the Idea of Modernity, p. 100.
[2] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.57.
[3] John Buchan, Memory Hold the Door, p. 93.
[4] Ibid., p. 94.
[5] The multi-millionaire Cecil Rhodes was, in company with Alfred Milner, one of the founding fathers of the secret cabal identified by Professor Carroll Quigley. (The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 31 – 50.) He admired Milner above all of his colleagues and friends though it should be acknowledged that Milner’s funding could equally have been underwritten by the De Beers millionaire Sir Alfred Beit or Lord Rothschild. Alfred Milner’s plan was backed by some of the richest men in the world.
[6] Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan and his world, p. 34.
[7] Milner to Buchan, 18 August 1901.
[8] https: http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/relativevalue.%5D
[9] The Round Table group was part of the plan to influence and control British foreign policy through local same-minded people at home and across the Empire whose opinion they moulded to agitate for imperial and pro-British interests. They helped in the vital task of preparing the Empire for war against Germany. [ Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 117-139.]
[10] Buchan, Memory Hold The Door, p. 104.
[11] Ibid p. 125.
[12] Ruskin was the nineteenth century Oxford professor whose philosophy was built on his belief in the superiority and the authority of the English ruling classes acting in the best interests of their inferiors.
[13] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, p. 504.
[14] The Times History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902, Vol. V., pp. 86-7.
[15] J. Lee Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 184.
[16] The Times History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902, Vol. V., p. 252.
[17] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, p. 517.
[18] The Times History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902, Vol. V. p. 253.
[19] Ibid., p. 252.
[20] E. Moberly Bell, Flora Shaw, p. 237.
[21] Ibid., p. 239.
[22] Smith, John Buchan and his world, p. 37.
[23] Buchan, Memory Hold The Door, p. 108.
[24] There were two ‘investigations’ into the conditions in the concentration camps. The first, unofficial, was carried out by Emily Hobhouse. Her subsequent book, ‘The Brunt of War and Where It Fell’ outraged the Liberals in Parliament and created an embarrassing scandal which damaged the Conservative government. The second report by Dame Millicent Fawcett was much more sympathetic to Lord Milner and the attempts through Buchan to improve conditions.
[25] The Times History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902, Vol. VI. p. 25.
[26] Ibid., p. 108.
[27] Michael Redley, John Buchan And The South African War, in Kate MacDonald, Reassessing John Buchan, pp. 68-9.
[28] Buchan, Memory Hold The Door, p. 127.
[29] Ibid., p. 128.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid., p. 131.
[32] Kate MacDonald, Reassessing John Buchan, chapter by Michael Redley, John Buchan and the South African War, p. 73.
[33] Buchan, Memory Hold The Door, p. 156.
[34] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 313.
[35] Ibid., p. 56.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 6: Creating The Structure

One of the main problems with which Hoover and his Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) had to contend was the proliferation of relief funds and war charities. Collections for Armenia, for the American Red Cross, for Jews suffering through the war, for prisoners of war, for the French wounded were among the many that sprung up like mushrooms in the United States. [1] Hoover had no time for other groups which were competing for charitable donations, and his major concern was the Rockefeller Foundation which was independently organising food and supplies for Belgium. To make matters worse,  a well respected New York philanthropist, Robert de Forest, formed yet another  independent Belgian Relief Committee in America just days before the CRB was established. Keeping control of such organisations in the United States was much more problematic than holding a monopoly in Europe.

Hoover was concerned that the Rockefeller Foundation intended to establish an independent relief channel into Belgium which would supplant his own, [2] an intolerable situation given that it would undermine the Secret Elite plan to supply Germany. There was a financial consideration too. Had the Rockefeller Foundation won the day, they would have operated through Rockefeller banks rather than the Morgan Guaranty Trust Bank through which future funds were to be channelled to Hoover. A  counterattack was launched through the same channels Hoover had used to grab control of the American Citizens’ Committee in London. He lied and misrepresented his status in precisely the same manner, and called on his powerful political connections to enable him to have his way. Ambassador Page dutifully dispatched a blunt cable to the Rockefeller Foundation which, in all probability, was ghost-written by Hoover himself. [3] The telegram insisted that the CRB was the ‘only organisation’ recognised by both belligerents in the war, and the only one capable of co-ordinating support from all parts of the world. Hoover was absolutely insistent that shipping be organised by the CRB and wanted guarantees that the Rockefeller Foundation would restrict itself to the purchase and collection of food. [4] He would deal with the funds or, rather, Secret Elite associate J P Morgan Jnr would through his Guaranty Trust Bank of New York.

As part of his orchestrated move against the Rockefeller Foundation, Hoover had asked his friend and long term business associate, Lindon Bates, to open a branch office in New York to handle all shipping and transportation in the United States. While Hoover sought to give the CRB the appearance of inclusion by offering both the Rockefeller Foundation and de Forest representation on his Commission, he had no intention of sharing control with them. He informed Bates in a private letter that he did not ‘propose to be dictated to by any little hole in the corner organisation in New York’ [5] Hoover sent the Rockefeller Foundation a cable declaring that he had received a loan from the Belgian bankers which was absolutely conditional on his complete control of shipping and transportation. [6] Lie after lie. Dishonesty and deceit. Does this read like a humanitarian venture?

Hoover’s close ties to the Anglo-American establishment had given him access to the sympathetic American Ambassadors, Walter Page in London and Brand Whitlock in Brussels. They stirred every issue to the advantage of the CRB, portraying a sense of immediate urgency either to the US government or the press. In October Whitlock sent an alarming message to President Wilson advising that ‘in two weeks the civil population of Belgium will face starvation’. He sought urgent support ‘to provide foods for the hungry ones in the dark days of the terrible winter that is coming on.’ [7] It all made good copy and Hoover’s backers won the day.

To permit the smooth running of the CRB, agreements were co-ordinated through diplomatic channels that operated well above the scope and level of access to which any ordinary citizen was normally accustomed. At Hoover’s request, Ambassador Page asked the British Foreign Office to designate a sufficiently important link with the Commission to obviate the red tape which constantly slowed down effective decision making. His personal friend, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, duly appointed Lord Eustace Percy. A member of the British Establishment and the Secret Elite’s Grillion’s Club, [8] Percy fully co-operated with Hoover and enabled CRB members to go directly to senior government officials rather than wait for diplomatic permission. [9]

The British Foreign Office liaised with the Belgians to rubber-stamp agreements between German military authorities and the neutral representatives, namely the American and Spanish Ambassadors in Belgium. The Spanish Ambassador, the formidable Marquis de Villalobar, an old-school aristocrat, ‘mad and touchy’, according to Brand Whitlock, [10] was considered ‘ornamental’ by Hoover [11] but that was both unfair and typical of Hoover’s dismissive nature. The Spanish Ambassador proved to be exceptionally hard working on a day to day basis, and had no fear whatsoever of Prussian arrogance. That, he could meet with his own. [12] He threw himself into the work believing it to be a grand humanitarian effort and we have found no evidence to connect him to the Secret Elite.

The conditions under which the relief for Belgian civilians were permitted to operate were set in October 1914 and explained in a letter to Ambassador Page from the Foreign Office:

‘Sir Edward Grey has written to Baron Lambert [a leading Belgian banker in the Comite National and related by marriage to the Rothschilds] telling him that we are not stopping any food supplies going to Rotterdam – from neutral countries in neutral ships – which we are satisfied are not for the use of the German Government or Army, and we shall not therefore interfere with the food supplies for the civil population of Belgium unless we have reason to suppose that the assurance given by Marshal von der Goltz to the American and Spanish Ministers is not being carried out.’ [13]

The Foreign Office, the Secret Elite’s strongest arm in government, thus made it plain that Hoover’s organisation had their blessing. But Grey’s letter was deliberately vague. As far as the British public were concerned, the Commission for Relief in Belgium was only permitted to operate under a series of strict and binding guarantees. The Germans guaranteed that they would not requisition supplies destined for the civil population. [14]  Neutral governments, in this case America, Spain and Holland, agreed to monitor the relief agency, and the Belgian government in exile was required to approve the whole process. Neutral ships would  carry the produce to a neutral port where the Comite Central (later the Comite National) would deal with its distribution. Ambassadors and Heads of Legations in Washington, Madrid, London, Berlin and Brussels were directly involved in a flurry of permits and promises.

A group of American students drawn from Oxford University, Rhodes scholars, were employed as neutral observers. They were supposed to check the imported produce, where it went and how it was disbursed so that the CRB could prove that the international conditions were met. In truth, if all twenty-five of them concentrated on a single ship-load, there was no certainty that they had the necessary skills to understand what was happening.

At no stage was the task of the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) easy or straightforward. Despite all of the advantages of his connections both with the Secret Elite and the American and Belgian diplomatic corps, Hoover had to fight hard to establish his absolute control.  He had then to ensure that it, and it alone, had a monopoly of foodstuffs supplied through Rotterdam to Belgium, and, most importantly of all, to Germany. That was the unspoken part of this complicated equation. You will find no reference in the official histories of supplies being directed to Germany but they certainly were.  Irrefutable proof from German sources will be presented in future blogs.

By the end of the first six months of the war, the structure was more of less in place. The CRB’s headquarters in London was controlled absolutely by Hoover at no. 3 London Wall Buildings in the heart of the financial district. What grace of fortune kissed his venture and granted him rent-free premises two doors away from his own company offices in the very same prestigious London Wall Buildings? [15] Even more fortuitously, the firm which signed off the final accounts covering October 1914 to September 1920, Deloitte, Plender, Griffiths & Co., were registered at 5 London Wall Buildings. Amazing. A Century later these premises remain part of the JP Morgan empire in London. [16]

In many ways the organisation that Hoover led was utterly unique. The CRB was unincorporated, had no legal status in commercial law, was unanswerable to any shareholders, had no prospectus or annual general meetings, no business plan or set targets, yet it signed up to international agreements, engaged in worldwide transactions and spent huge sums of money for which successful international banks which willingly co-operated. It ran its own fleet of ships with its own flag.  It made claim to be American but that, as we shall demonstrate, was also a flag of convenience. What Hoover constructed was described as ‘a piratical state organised for benevolence’ [17]

More appropriately we would describe it as a piratical state organised for and by unaccountable men who masked the immense benefits they reaped for themselves behind the good works of others. They also masked their true objective – a war of sufficient length to crush Germany’s economic prowess and remove her as a threat to Anglo-Saxon pre-eminence across the globe.

All that was required was the money to pay for it.

[1] There are many pertinent examples. A number can be found in the New York Times throughout July 1916, from which those mentioned in the text are drawn.
[2] George Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917 p. 52.
[3] Ibid., p. 49.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Hoover to Bates, 13 November 1914, Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 54.
[6] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 55.
[7] Whitlock to Bryan, 16/10/14, Gay and Fisher. Doc. 8, cited in the American Journal of International Law, p. 314.
[8] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 31.
[9] Tracey Barrett Kittredge, The History of the Commission for Relief in Belgium – Primary Source Edition, p. 56.
[10] Brand Whitlock, Letters and Journals 10 December 1914 http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Whitlock/bw05.html
[11] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 80.
[12] A perusal of Brand Whitlock’s Letters and Journals shows just how involved and useful the Marquis was on a daily basis in Brussels. http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Whitlock/bw05.html
[13] George I Gay and HH Fisher, Public Relations for the Commission  for Relief in Belgium, p.13  Letter from Sir Arthur Nicolson, 20 October 1914 to Ambassador Page. http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/CRB/CRB1-TC.htm
[14] Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 4 March, 1915, p. 1.
[15] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 34.
[16] The Commission for Relief in Belgium, Balance Sheet and Accounts, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t04x5vs3b;view=1up;seq=7
[17] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, p. 5. http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/CRB/CRB1-TC.htm

Gallipoli 5: Admiralty Clerk Declares War On Austria

The true story of Goeben’s escape is very different from that presented by the mainstream. Historians blandly state that Churchill and the British government knew nothing of the secret agreement that Turkey signed with Germany on 2 August, or that the German warships were heading towards Constantinople. Apparently, no-one even considered the possibility that Goeben and Breslau were engaged in a political mission that would profoundly affect and prolong the course of the war. [1] In fact, British Intelligence had for some considerable time intercepted messages between the German embassy in Constantinople and Berlin. It is quite astonishing that the treaty between Turkey and Germany was kept secret from most of the Turkish cabinet, yet British and French Intelligence knew of it almost at once. [2]

On 3 August the Kaiser advised King Constantine of Greece by telegram that the Turks had thrown in their lot with Germany and that the two German warships presently in the Mediterranean would proceed to Constantinople. The strongly pro-British Greek prime minister, Elephtherios Venizelos, passed this information to the British charge d’affaires who in turn cabled the news to London. [3] Lest there be any doubt, King Constantine also shared the information in confidence with Admiral Kerr of the British naval mission in Athens. [4] Thus key officials in both the Foreign Office and the Admiralty knew about the enemy’s intention before war was declared.

Indeed it is perfectly possible that the plans approved by Berlin were known in London before Admiral Souchon had sight of them on board the Goeben. Public Records Office files in London reveal that naval intelligence had decrypted the encoded radio-message sent from Berlin to Souchon on 4 August. The brief instruction read; ‘Alliance concluded with Turkey, Goeben and Breslau proceed at once to Constantinople.’ The information which was passed from Greece on 3 August was instantly confirmed by the encoded radio-message on the 4th. London knew that Souchon had been instructed to set course immediately for the Dardanelles . [5] There was no ambiguity.

There was another source which constantly monitored all that was happening in and around Constantinople. By 1914 Russia’s intelligence on Turkey was uniformly good and manifestly better than that of Britain. As Souchon headed across the Mediterranean, ‘the Russians knew perfectly well where he was going and why.’ [6] Russian Foreign Secretary Sazonov had informants inside the Ottoman cabinet meetings, and Mikhail Girs, the Russian Ambassador at Constantinople, was exceptionally well informed. [7] Given the dire consequences for Russia if the Goeben and Breslau sailed unmolested into Constantinople, and the fact that they had no warships of their own in the Mediterranean to stop them, it is inconceivable that the Russian Foreign Ministry would not have immediately passed the crucial information to British Intelligence. Indeed Sazonov was in ready contact with Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, demanding and expecting effective action. The German cruisers had to be sunk. Russian imperial ambition required the immediate removal of the menace, but to further Britain’s own geopolitical strategy, the Secret Elite had to ensure that Goeben and Breslau reached their destination safely. Their strategy enabled Turkey to replace the dreadnoughts which Britain had commandeered with two German warships. At a stroke, the Russian Black Sea fleet was effectively neutralised and Russia kept out out of Constantinople.

The crucial information which the Admiralty knew about Souchon’s inentions was withheld from the Royal Navy squadrons in the Mediterranean, and most of the information they received from London ‘was either useless or inaccurate.’ [8] Milne apparently laboured under the impression that Souchon intended to turn back west after coaling at Messina. Appearances can be deceptive. Was Milne part of the conspiracy? It would certainly explain some of the bizarre events in this strange tale. It would account for the fact that the three cruisers which closely shadowed the Goeben, handicapped by her defective boilers, ‘lost’ their prey just a few hours before the 11 pm declaration of war. It would explain why he positioned the cruiser squadrons to the west of Sicily, and by the island of Cephalonia, while placing only one totally inadequate warship to guard Souchon’s escape route to the east. Had it been sent by semaphore, Milne’s message to Souchon could hardly have been clearer; ‘We are not preventing your passage to the Dardanelles’. Look again at the geographic position of the hunters and the hunted. The Germans were prevented from sailing west into the Mediterranean, or north to the Adriatic. The reasonable conclusion such tactics warrant is that Souchon was purposefully being shepherded towards the Aegean and Constantinople. This suggestion is not as outrageous as it might first appear. Admiral Milne was a favourite of the British monarchy and had been close to the late King Edward VII, a man who was himself intimately linked to the inner core of the Secret Elite. [9]

When Goeben and Breslau left Messina on 6 August, the proverbial fly in the Admiralty’s ointment was Captain Howard Kelly in HMS Gloucester. Although comprehensively outgunned by Goeben, Kelly stubbornly trailed the German cruisers east. Milne signalled Gloucester to give up the chase. Why? Was it to protect the Gloucester or to allow the German ships to disappear into the safety of the eastern Mediterranean? Whichever, Kelly defied the Admiral’s instructions and continued in pursuit. Souchon was forced to order Breslau to confront the small British cruiser, but the defiant Gloucester opened fire. Eventually all three warships engaged in the fight, but no hits were scored by either side. At 4.30 in the afternoon, when Goeben rounded Cape Matapan and entered the Aegean Sea, the fearless Kelly finally turned back. At the end of the day he was the only British naval officer to emerge with any credit. Strangely, rather than facing a court-martial for disobeying an order from the Admiral, Kelly was given a CB (Companion of the Bath) and went on to enjoy a glittering naval career.

Early on 7 August Admiral Milne informed the Admiralty that as soon as his three battle cruisers, Inflexible, Indefatigable and Indomitable, and the light cruiser Weymouth had completed coaling at Malta he would follow Goeben and Breslau into the Eastern Mediterranean. He received no response. Despite all the intelligence it held on Goeben’s plans and whereabouts, Milne allegedly remained ‘entirely without information’ as to the whereabouts and intentions of his opponent. Later that afternoon, at 5:40, the Admiralty received another signal from Milne repeating his intentions. At this point the saga became even murkier. Evidence ‘unfortunately disappeared’ from the Admiralty file on this exchange. [10] Despite two reports from different sources that Goeben had been seen at the Aegean island of Syra and had asked to coal, these were filed away at the Admiralty without comment and the information was not passed to Milne. The only report he received was that Goeben had passed Cape Matapan on the 7th, intelligence that he had previously sent himself to the Admiralty. [11]

Desperate for coal, and confirmation that he could sail into the Straits, Admiral Souchon lingered in the Greek archipelago for approximately sixty hours, during which ‘the British Mediterranean fleet had ample time to make up for all previous errors and catch up with their prey.’ [12] And herein lies another conundrum. After his escape from Messina, Souchon requested permission from the Greek government to take on much needed coal when he reached the Aegean. Had they denied him fuel, or procrastinated long enough for the Mediterranean fleets to catch him, the matter might well have ended there and then. Instead, prime minister Venizelos ‘agreed at once’ to release 800 tons from the sequestered stock of German coal at Piraeus. The British Foreign Office later suggested that the staunchly pro-British Venizelos, a friend of Lloyd George, had simply ‘acted out of a desire to be fair to all sides.’ [13] What rubbish. British intelligence knew well in advance where Souchon was headed, and what he required in order to escape to Constantinople. They opened the doors; they approved the fuelling; they ensured that the German ships continued in comparative safety. Most importantly, they hid all this from the Russians.

Venizelos had immediately informed Rear-Admiral Mark Kerr, that Goeben would rendezvous with a coal ship at Denusa in the days ahead. Kerr, a staunch British patriot, had previously been seconded from Britain to head the Greek navy. We are asked to believe that he did not pass on the information about Goeben’s whereabouts to London. Incredible. Considered from another angle, Kerr, like the Admiralty, knew that the Goeben and Breslau had been ordered to Constantinople. King Constantine had personally shown him the telegram of 3 August from the Kaiser authorising this. [14] That he kept it to himself, or lingered long before eventually telling the Admiralty, is fanciful. It was part of the smoke-screen, part of the post-event blame-game which deflected any focus on the British Admiralty or Foreign Office. Above all else, under no circumstances could Russia be made aware about the depth of British culpability in this charade of a chase.

While Souchon was more or less marooned in the south Agean Sea, Admiral Milne took his three heavy cruisers and a light cruiser east towards the Aegean. He headed in a direction that would have led him to the German ships. En-route he received a message from the Admiralty that Austria had declared war on Britain. In accordance with long-standing and explicit orders detailing what he should do if Austria entered the war, Milne broke off his pursuit and headed north for the Adriatic to blockade the Austrian fleet. He was later informed that the report was false and back-tracked east, but 24 hours had been lost and Milne spent the whole day in a fruitless search of the western Aegean. Thus historians could record that Souchon ‘might well have been searched out and destroyed had not the Admiralty sent Milne on August 8th the false report…’ [15] According to Winston Churchill, the misinformation was instigated in error. ‘ The fates moved a blameless, punctilious Admiralty clerk to declare war upon Austria.’ [16] Oh, dear; how calamitous. A ‘blameless’ clerk just happened to send Admiral Milne, and Milne alone, an erroneous message to the effect that Britain was at war with Austria. Inside this unfortunate misunderstanding, secret orders immediately took effect and changed, not just Admiral Milne’s course, but the course of history. Are you prepared to accept that? It is a wonder that the Russians did.

Against overwhelming odds, and thanks to the Secret Elite, Goeben and Breslau entered the Dardanelles at 5pm on 10 August and arrived unscathed at Constantinople the next day. According to the All Souls and Oxford historian CRMFC Crutwell, they carried with them ‘graver destinies than any other vessels in modern history.’ [17] They immediately rendered Russia’s ageing Black Sea fleet strategically useless. There would be no amphibious landing of Russian forces at Constantinople.  Sir Louis Mallet, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, later revealed the truth when he stated that the presence of the Goeben and Breslau acted in British interests because they protected the Straits against Russia. [18] Russian Foreign Secretary Sergei Sazonov was furious. In a telegram to London, he raged that Souchon’s success was all the more regrettable because Britain could have prevented it. [19] Had he learned that far from preventing the ‘escape’, Britain had deliberately facilitated it, Russian involvement in the First World War would have been over immediately.

The Ottoman ambassador in Berlin telegraphed home: ‘Considering the displeasure and complications which a Russian attack on Constantinople would produce in England, the British navy having enabled the German ships to take cover in the Sea of Marmora, has, with the Machiavellianism characteristic of the Foreign Office, foiled any possibility of action by the Russian Black Sea Fleet. [20] And he was absolutely correct.

[1] Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, p. 150.
[2] John Laffin, The Agony of Gallipoli, pp. 6-7.
[3] Ulrich Trumpener, The Escape of the Goeben and Breslau, Canadian Journal of History, September 1971, pp. 178-9.
[4] Geoffrey Miller, The Straits, ch. 16.
[5] Alberto Santini, The First Ultra Secret: the British Cryptanalysis in the Naval Operations of the First World War, Revue internationale d’histoire militaire, vol 63 1985, p. 101.
[6] Sean McMeekin , The Russian Origins of the First World War, p. 109.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Trumpener, The Escape of the Goeben and Breslau, Canadian Journal of History, September 1971, pp. 181-7.
[9] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 64.
[10] Trumpener, The Escape of the Goeben and Breslau. Canadian Journal of History 1971, pp. 179-183.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., p. 181.
[13] Ibid., p. 175.
[14] Geoffrey Miller, Superior Force, Chapter 11. http://www.superiorforce.co.uk
[15] CRMF Crutwell, A History of the Great War, p. 72.
[16] Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, p. 209.
[17] Crutwell, A History, p. 72.
[18] Hew Strachan, The First World War, p. 674.
[19] WW Gottlieb, Studies in Secret Diplomacy, p. 45.
[20] Ibid.

Sins Of The Fathers

In addressing the Anglican Bishops and senior clergy at Church House, Westminster in February 1915, the Archbishop of Canterbury stated the old justification that he did not “entertain any doubt that our nation could not, without sacrificing principles of honour and justice more dear than life itself, have stood aside and looked idly on the present world conflict.’ [1] He was repeating, almost word for word, Sir Edward Grey’s statement of 3 August 1914. The concept of a Christian duty to fight was virtually universal among the Anglican clergy. Few if any said otherwise from within the ranks of the Church of England. Given such unanimous support for the war by even the most liberal of Anglicans, it is not surprising that the pulpit became an adjunct for the recruiting office. The Archbishop went so far as to state that it was their sacred privilege to bid men ‘to respond ungrudgingly to their country’s call’. [2]

Ponder these words for a moment. Young men, sitting in quiet country churches or great gothic cathedrals were exhorted to go to war, to do their duty, to accept the sacrifices. Their emotions were constantly battered by sermons drawn from the Old Testament that extolled the wrath of an avenging God. How did they feel when the pastoral shepherd dropped the mantle of Christ the Peacemaker and became a bitter recruiting sergeant? Priests and Pastors would often stress duty and equate fighting for Britain and the Empire with fighting for Christ. [3] Others railed against cowardice. The master of St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge said of those who refused to volunteer,

‘It is a pity that we cannot brand that sort of man “Made in fear of Germany.” Would to God we had known when they were born that they would eat our bread and grow and live amongst us, trusted and approved, and yet cowards. We need not have prayed and worked for them.’ [4]

Can you imagine hearing your own brother or son described in such outrageous terms? With what sense of self worth would a young man be left, who internalised these damning words? It was moral blackmail of a nefarious kind.

In the early months of the war a further disconcerting practice of church recruiters was to appeal to the female relatives of potential recruits to take up the cause at home. Men who had not enlisted were ridiculed in the street by middle-class women inspired from the pulpit to taunt and embarrass them into the recruitment centre. At the same time, parents whose sons had enlisted were praised, and bathed in their reflected glory until the true nature of the war was revealed in the lists of dead and missing.

But the most outrageous proponent of the ‘virtuous war’, the prelate who stepped well over the line of Christian decency was the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram. He was an Oxford man who worked hard for the poor in the East End of London and was consequently popular with the people of Bethnal Green. With the blessing of Lord Salisbury in 1901, Winnington-Ingram was appointed to the Bishopric of London and enthroned at St Pauls Cathedral where he remained for thirty eight years. [5] He was one of the most outspoken and patriotic advocates of the war, beloved by the War Office and the Admiralty, who feted him on his visits to front line troops and naval installations.

Winnington-Ingram claimed to have added ten thousand men to the armed services with his sermons and other recruiting crusades. He made no estimate of how many died or were maimed needlessly because of his work for God and country. As Bishop of London, he never shrank from the enthusiastic endorsement of the righteousness of the war and the British cause and the important role the Church of England must play in the whole affair. His favourite text was; ‘better to die than see England a German province’. In return, he was given the second highest award for chivalry for his war service by King George V  who appointed him Knight Commander of the Victorian Order, [6]

Winnington-Ingram’s pronouncements veered from the concerned to the banal. Speaking at a ‘Rally without Shame’ at Westminster Church House in February 1915, he said that the Church had to foster and increase the fortitude of the nation; to comfort the mourners and inculcate a happier and brighter view of death. [7] What  did that involve? Cheer up, your only son is dead? Don’t get too upset; it was all in a good cause? His concept of comforting the mourners did not extend to the enemy. It was an odd kind of Christianity. Winnington-Ingram will long be remembered for words of a very different kind.

 After a year of war, the Bishop called for the men of England to

“band in a great crusade -we cannot deny it- to kill Germans. To kill them, not for the sake of killing, but to save the world; to kill the good as well as the bad; to kill the young men as well as the old, to kill those who have showed kindness to our wounded as well as those fiends who crucified the Canadian sergeant, who superintended the Armenian massacres, who sank the Lusitania… and to kill them lest the civilisation of the world should itself be killed.” [8]

Apologists have claimed that these words have been taken out of context, but it is difficult to imagine any context at all in which they could comfortably sit. Dress these words any way you can but they will still reflect a blood-thirsty crusade against Germany. Winnington-Ingram went further by adding, ‘as I have said a thousand times, I look upon it as a war for purity, I look upon everyone who dies in it as a martyr.’ [9] British, of course; one can only assume that Germans went to hell. This is a theme he returned to time and again. He wrote in his sermons, ‘this nation has never done a more Christ-like thing than when it went to war in August 1914…the world has been redeemed again by the precious blood shed on the side of righteousness.’ [10] In words that have been repeated to spur the modern-day jihadist, Bishop Ingram invoked the God of war.

He was also ready to absorb every word of anti-German propaganda and repeated stories of atrocities without caution. His reference to the crucified Canadian soldier was one such myth that circulated early in the war. It was a vicious lie wrapped in fear and loathing to inspire vengeance. Propaganda was an important source for the tales of unforgivable German wickedness the Churches were willing to perpetuate. Clergymen of all faiths became both participants in and victims of propaganda. Many Anglican ministers found it hard to believe that civilized Germans could be responsible for the atrocities claimed in the initial stories. However, the burning of Louvain and especially the university library, the horrors of the Bryce Report [see blog of 10 September] and the sinking of the Lusitania were all instrumental in changing their minds. Once their faith in German civilization had been breached, nearly every atrocity story in circulation was accepted and transmitted to their flocks. [11] They took their texts from a different Bible, one written by the propagandist at Wellington House or an unnamed journalist from the Northcliffe stables.

Perhaps the last word should go to Brigadier-General F P Crozier, who wrote in his book, ‘A Brass Hat in No-Man’s Land’:  ‘The Christian churches are the finest blood-lust creators which we have, and of them we made free use.’

[1] The Times, 10 February 1915, page 5.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Kevin Christopher Fielden,, “The Church of England in the First World War.”
[4] C.H.W. Johns, “Who is on the Lord’s Side?”  Sermons for the Times  no. 9 (1914), p.14.
[5] Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Jeremy Morris, ‘Ingram, Arthur Foley Winnington [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36979.
[6] Marrin, Albert. The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War. p.181.
[7] The Times 10 February, 1915, p.5.
[8] Annette Becker, A Companion to World War 1, pp., 237-238.
[9] Winnington-Ingram, The Potter and the Clay, p. 42.
[10] Ibid., p. 229.
[11] Fielden, , “The Church of England in the First World War. p.42.

The Judas Kiss

In a spirit of reconciliation and humility there is great cause for the Church of England to reflect on its behaviour during the war, and apologise. Not since Jesus was betrayed in Gethsemane has Christianity been so wilfully sold out.

If the Church of England was ‘the Conservative Party at prayer’, [1] the most senior prelates and professors of divinity who headed that Church represented the Secret Elite in conclave. Promoted and championed by inner-circle power brokers like the Earl of Roseberry, the men who in August 1914 hailed the ‘Holy and Righteous War’ [2] owed their allegiance to God, All Souls, Oxford and the Secret Elite, though not necessarily in that order. They saw their role as teachers and leaders, to state the given causes for the war, to explain the meaning of the war, to maintain morale on the home front and to remind the public that the primary obligation of young men was to enlist. [3] In other words, it was Germany’s fault, Britain had to save civilisation, the war had to be seen through no matter the sacrifice and it was every man’s duty to serve.

Before examining the role of the Church of England from 1914 onwards, we should understand that its political power rested both with a select section of the chosen hierarchy and with the Prime Minister and senior members of the House of Lords who appointed them. The C. of E. was represented in the House of Lords by the two archbishops, York and Canterbury, the bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester, and 21 diocesan bishops in order of seniority.  It was a system steeped in English history, a by-product of Henry Tudor’s reformation. The real control of the Church had once rested with the Crown but had been slowly transferred to Parliament between the fifteenth and seventeenth century. The Prime Minister appointed bishops, though they had to be approved by a ‘cathedral chapter’ or council of high church officials, [4] a strange anachronism given that a Presbyterian such as Campbell-Bannerman, or the Welsh non-conformist, Lloyd George, could be involved in the process of election.

The Church of England was the religious preserve of the middle and upper classes, with its ministry drawn from university graduates, traditionally from Cambridge and Oxford. [5] In the very class-conscious world of pre-war Britain, it aimed to place an educated gentleman in every parish church across the kingdom [6] which aligned well with John Ruskin’s philosophy of a ruling class oligarchy, but alienated many working class Christians. Indeed, the vast majority of Anglican churchmen were openly hostile to Trades Union and labour movements and they feared the social unrest which was assumed to accompany them.

On the eve of what might have been the first general strike in England, William Randolph Inge, the Dean of St. Paul’s, summed up the alarm felt by his associates when he ‘denounced the unions as criminal combinations whose leaders deserved to be executed as rebels against society.’ [7] This was the same Dean Inge who profited from the war while extolling it as God’s work. His lucrative shareholding in Vickers Ltd was not unusual. A roll-call of Bishops who invested in the armaments firms like Vickers Ltd., Armstrong-Whitworth Ltd. or John Brown and Co., included the bishops of Adelaide, Chester, Hexham, Newcastle and Newport. [8]

There can be no question about the Secret Elite pedigree of the most important Anglican clerics in August 1914. [9] Cosmo Gordon Lang was recruited from All Souls by Lord Roseberry, and enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks of the church. His parish work in Leeds was followed by a quick promotion to Dean of Divinity at Magdalen College in Oxford. Cosmo Lang became the suffragan (assistant) Bishop of Stepney from which comparatively lowly post he shot to the Archbishopric of York in 1908.

At the invitation of prime minister Herbert Asquith, it took Lang a mere 18 years to rise to the second most esteemed office in the Anglican Church. He decreed that the war was ‘righteous’ [10] and was supported in this by all of his fellow Bishops.  Another influential cleric, the Dean of Durham, Henley Henson was similarly an All Souls man. His War Times Sermons, published in 1915, extolled the allied cause and by 1918 he was controversially installed as the Bishop of Durham and therefore became a Member of the House of Lords. The interlocking association between the Church of England hierarchy and the Secret Elite was again demonstrated in the elevation of the Editor of the Church Quarterly Review, Arthur Cayley Headlam, a fellow of All Souls for around forty years, to the professorship of Divinity at Oxford. He was later to be appointed Bishop of Gloucester. Headlam’s brother was deeply involved with Viscount Alfred Milner and took charge of the Department of Information during the war. The links go ever on. A.L. Smith, inner core member of Secret Elite, produced a number of pamphlets including The Christian Attitude to War.  It basically encouraged Christians, like himself, to put aside the teachings of the New Testament and the Prince of Peace, and give their all to the war effort

When war was declared the Oxford Dons amassed an extensive 87 pamphlet assault on every aspect of learned justification to ‘prove’ German guilt. This was met by a heartfelt cry from German theologians to American newspapers that a systematic network of lies emanated from Britain to blame Germany for the war to the extent that they denied the right of Germans to invoke the assistance of God. Ah, there we have it; God was an Englishman. The pamphlet, To Christian Scholars of Europe and America; A Reply from Oxford to German Address to Evangelical Christians by Oxford Theologians published on 9 September 1914, was a perfect example of the extent of Secret Elite influence. They immediately enlisted 14 theologians at Oxford, including five professors of divinity, to write the above named pamphlet dismissing the claims from German theologians as nonsense. The Oxford ‘Divines’ condescendingly admonished the Germans for failing to study the events that led up to the war and concluded, ‘Will not the Christian scholars of other lands share our conviction that the contest in which our country has engaged is a contest on behalf of the supreme interests of Christian civilization.’ [11] Consider the arrogance and self-glorification of this argument. Oxford could pronounce that Germany had no right to ask God’s blessing on their war, had failed to study the true causes of the war or the political ‘utterances’ of their own countrymen, while Britain and the Empire were fighting for the ‘supreme interests of Christian civilisation’. The supreme interests for which British soldiers were sacrificed were those of the bankers, financiers, armaments producers, politicians and charlatans who comprised the Secret Elite.

A commonly repeated theme among Anglican leaders was exemplified in a sermon given by Cosmo Lang in October 1914. Archbishop Lang alluded to the German philosopher Nietzsche and the common British interpretation of his writings to conclude that ‘might makes right.’ He insisted ‘there could be no peace until this German spirit had been crushed” and thus paradoxically appealed to ‘friends of peace… to be supporters of our war’. [12] Note the language. German spirit had to be crushed; not beaten, crushed. It is interesting to note that those who took a stance against the war were few in number and drawn from ‘an important cluster of socialists, Liberals [and] philosophical pacifists,’ while there was virtually a total lack of resistance to the war by any vicar of the Church of England. [13] Indeed not. Time and again church leaders denied the very basis of Christian teaching, discarded the tenet of man’s conscience and denied that objection to the war was an acceptable stance for any Christian. They followed the Bishop of Oxford’s blunt message: ‘I do not hold the views of those who are seeking exemption to military service on the grounds of conscientious objection to war under any circumstances.’ [14] Amen.

[1] The Times 17 July 1917, p.3. (Maude Roythen)
[2] The Times, 31 August, 1914, p.4.
[3] Albert Marrin, The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War. p. 179.
[4] Kevin Christopher Fielden, “The Church of England in the First World War.” (2005). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1080. http://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1080
[5] Hugh McLeod,. Religion and Society in England, 1850-1914. p.20.
[6] Marrin, The Last Crusade. p. 12.
[7] Christian Times, 11 July 1914.
[8] Henry Newbold, War Trust Exposed, pp. 14–15.
[9] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 25.
[10] J.G. Lockhart, Cosmo Gordon Lang (1949) p. 246.
[11] Oxford Pamphlets, 1914-1915; To Christian Scholars of Europe and America; A Reply from Oxford to German Address to Evangelical Christians by Oxford Theologians.
[12] The Times 12 October 1914, p. 5.
[13] Arthur Marwick, The Deluge; British Society and the First World War, p. 33.
[14] The Times 16 March 1916, p. 9.