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.

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.

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.

Selling The Souls Of Oxford

The Secret Elite held immense power at Oxford University, and through that, control of the writing and teaching of history. [1] Prior to their takeover of All Souls, the Oxford School of History was dominated by medieval and early modern studies and the Oxford historians, like their colleagues in other British universities, were ill equipped for the role ahead. This all changed. Secret Elite investment in the university, All Souls in particular, reaped rich dividends when it came to writing the historical accounts of the First World War. The Secret Elite’s role in the origins of the war and the means by which they deliberately prolonged it beyond 1915 were airbrushed from history. The man they placed in charge of All Souls, Sir William Anson, was steeped in English ruling-class traditions and a close and dedicated friend of the Secret Elite.

Anson oversaw the election of the Prize Fellows, young men drawn overwhelmingly from a small number of elite English private schools and prestigious Oxford Colleges, Eton and Balliol in particular. They dominated the field between 1860 and 1914 at All Souls with thirty-nine Fellows from Balliol and twenty-six from Eton. In addition, Milner’s New College provided ten, and the other highly privileged private school, Harrow, eleven. [2] Important members of the Secret Elite included George Buckle, elected a fellow around 1880, Leo Amery elected in 1897, Geoffrey Dawson,1898, Dougal Malcolm,1899 and Robert Brand in 1901. All Souls Fellows formed the hard core of the college’s Empire builders, ‘a tightly knit coterie, friends from their school undergraduate days who had been elected to All Souls within a year or two of each other and remained close throughout their lives.’ [3] In 1904 Leo Amery persuaded Alfred Beit, both members of the inner core of the Secret Elite, [4] to provide an endowment for a chair of colonial history, together with two supportive lectureships. He had no difficulty in persuading Warden Anson to house the new chair in All Souls. The following year Amery persuaded the college to endow a readership in military history. This was converted to a professorship four years later. [5] So, by 1905, when they had already decided on war with Germany, the Secret Elite had built All Souls into a powerful, well funded institution, and began recruiting modern historians. A significant number of All Souls Fellows became academic historians who wrote and taught history which concealed the deeply sinister secrets of their sponsors, secrets that have endured for a hundred years.

The following list demonstrates clearly how the Secret Elite directed the writing and teaching of their own time through the appointment of All Souls Fellows to senior academic posts. In addition, many became so trusted and valuable that they were inducted into the Secret Elite. The reader will quickly realise that the influence of Oxford spread into the major universities in Britain.

Henry William Carless Davis, a Balliol graduate, was elected to a Fellowship of All Souls in 1895, became a member of the Secret Elite [6] and went on to hold the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Oxford. He was appointed curator of the Bodleian Library in 1914 and was editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB). This authoritative reference book published the biographies of famous politicians, statesmen, financiers, historic families, the aristocracy, literary figures, scientists, churchmen, academics and artists. By controlling the ODNB, they guaranteed that the ‘official’ record of all the individuals within the Secret Elite were written and approved by fellow members, thus ensuring that nothing about their secret activities ever entered the public domain. When war broke out in 1914, Davis played a significant role in the production of the Oxford Pamphlets, the justification for war that was basically academic propaganda. He assumed responsibility as its general editor [7] and wrote the following pamphlets; French Policy since 1871, The Retreat from Mons, The Battle of the Marne and Aisne;  What Europe owes to Belgium, and The Battle of Ypres-Armentieres. Davis later became vice chairman of the Ministry of Blockade under the auspices of the Foreign Office. He also wrote The History of the Blockade which concealed the truth of what actually happened out in the Atlantic, and sections of The History of the Peace Conference, which omitted to mention its domination by Secret Elite members.

Charles Oman, the British military historian at Oxford, was elected a Fellow of All Souls College in 1881 and remained there for his entire career. From 1905 he was Chichele Professor of modern history, president of the Royal Historical Society and Fellow of the British Academy. During the First World War he served in the government’s propaganda Press Bureau and the Foreign Office. He became Conservative MP for the university constituency in 1919 and was awarded a knighthood the following year.

Charles Grant Robertson, educated at Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College from 1893, became a distinguished and influential historian at the university. He wrote the Oxford Pamphlet Germany: The Economic Problem. and went on to become Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham university and Chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the United Kingdom universities.

William G Adams, a Balliol graduate, was a member of the Secret Elite [8] and Fellow of All Souls from 1910. He was Gladstone Professor of Political Theory and Institutions, Oxford (1912-1933) and wrote the Oxford Pamphlet, Why we are at War. He worked in the Ministry of Munitions in 1915, was Secretary to Prime Minister Lloyd George, 1916-1919 and edited the War Cabinet Reports. In a future blog we will show that Adams was only one of the Secret Elite’s men who dominated Lloyd George’s War Cabinet, organised the agendas, wrote the reports, made the crucial decisions and represented Britain at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. Adams was later rewarded for his loyalty and commitment to the cause with the Wardenship of All Souls and so continued the Secret elite’s control of Oxford deep into the twentieth century.

Hugh Edward Egerton, a contemporary of Milner’s at Oxford and a member of the Secret Elite [9], was given the Beit chair of Colonial History and a Fellowship of All Souls in 1905. Among other works he wrote British Colonial Policy in the Twentieth Century, and the Oxford Pamphlets, The British Dominions and the War and The British Empire the Result of Wholesale Robbery?

Lionel Curtis, New College, spent his first decade as a Fellow of All Souls writing his magnum opus, Civitas Dei. It ‘charted the onward march of self-government from the Anglo-Saxons through the British Constitution and the British Commonwealth to a New World Order that would effectively be the Kingdom of God on Earth.’  [10] Curtis had served as secretary to Milner during the Boer War, founded the Secret Elite’s magazine The Round Table in 1910 and was appointed Beit Lecturer in Colonial History at Oxford in 1912. He became a highly influential member of the Secret Elite’s inner core [11] and eventually its leader when Alfred Milner died in 1925.

Sir Reginald Coupland, who studied at New College and became a Fellow of All Souls, was a member of the Secret Elite [12] who went on to become one of the British Empire’s most prominent historians. His career was transformed by his coming into contact with Lionel Curtis at Oxford. Curtis persuaded Coupland to succeed him as Beit lecturer, and to join the Round Table. Coupland subsequently maintained a lifelong connection with the group, editing its journal from 1917 to 1919 and 1939 to 1941, and contributing many anonymous articles. On the eve of the First World War he was employed by Curtis to write the volume of Round Table Studies relating to Canada. In 1920 Coupland was elected to succeed H.E. Egerton as Beit professor and professorial fellow of All Souls College. Under his direction, Oxford became the world centre of Commonwealth history. [13]

H A L Fisher, New College, was a close friend of Sir William Anson, Warden of All Souls and one of the founders of Milner’s Kindergarten. He was an important member of the Secret Elite’s inner core and instrumental, with Milner and Anson, in giving the Secret Elite its powerful hold over All Souls. [14] Fisher decided who would be presented for membership of All Souls and Anson sealed the matter. Awarded the Chichele Lectureship in Foreign History, Fisher wrote the Oxford Pamphlet, The Value of Small States, and other works. He became Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University in 1912. Like Milner himself, H A L Fisher was appointed to Lloyd George’s coalition government in 1916 as President of the Board of Education.

Spenser Wilkinson, Merton College, Oxford, was elected the first Chichele Professor of Military History at Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls in 1909. A close friend of Lord Roberts of the Secret Elite, he was instrumental in forming the Navy League which demanded more battleships and a stronger navy in preparation for war with Germany. [15] He wrote Oxford Pamphlet no 4, Great Britain and Germany.

C R L Fletcher, Eton, Magdalene College, Oxford and Fellow of All Souls, was a tutor and lecturer in History at Oxford where he refused to allow women entry to his lectures. Together with Rudyard Kipling, a man whom we place inside the Secret Elite, he wrote a school text book, A History of England , which was described by the Manchester Guardian as having a ‘most pernicious influence on the minds of children’. He wrote the Oxford Pamphlets, The Germans: Their Empire and How They Have Made It, and The Germans; What they covet.

Keith Grahame Fieling, Marlborough College, Balliol, and Fellow of All Souls. He was a tutor and lecturer in history at Oxford, then later Chichele Professor of Modern History at Oxford. He wrote the Oxford Pamphlet, Italian Policy since 1870.

A L Smith, a contemporary of Milner’s at Balliol, a Fellow of All Souls, and an inner-core member of the Secret Elite, [16] became the prestigious Master of Balliol in 1916. During the war Smith lectured on The Empire and the Future at the University of London under the sponsorship of the Royal Colonial Institute. His biographical sketch in the ODNB was written by K N Bell.

Kenneth Norman Bell, a tutor and Fellow of Balliol and All Souls (1907), was a member of the Secret Elite [17] who became Beit lecturer in Colonial History. He served on the committee for supervision for the selection of candidates for the colonial administrative service, and co-edited the Selected Documents on British Colonial History. [18] His family controlled the publishing house of G Bell and Sons.

Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier, a man of Jewish descent who emigrated from Russia to England in 1907, became a British citizen and studied at Balliol from 1908. He held the post of Professor of Modern History at Manchester University for 22 years. During the war he served in the Propaganda Department, the Department of Information and in Political Intelligence at the Foreign Office.

Sir Robert Sangster Rait, was educated at Aberdeen University and moved to New College in 1896. He became a tutor at Oxford in 1903. He was a Fellow of New College, as was Alfred Milner, and joined the Secret Elite. [19] He worked closely with A V Dicey and C H Firth, both Fellows of All Souls, in intelligence at the War Office from 1915 to 1918. He was made Professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow and later became Historiographer Royal of Scotland and Principal of Glasgow University.

Sir Alfred Zimmern, New College, was an ‘able and courageous’ member of Milner’s Secret Elite [20] He lectured in Ancient History at Oxford and became a Fellow and tutor at New College. Subsequently he was staff inspector at the Board of Education and a member of the Political Intelligence Department at the Foreign Office. He became the Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford. Zimmern was the member of the Secret Elite who, although sworn to secrecy, divulged much about the cabal to Professor Quigley. [21]

W. Seton-Watson, New College Oxford was a historian who served on the Intelligence Bureau of the War Cabinet, and was responsible for British propaganda against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He became Professor of Central European Studies at University of London and Professor of Czechoslovak Studies at Oxford.

C R M Crutwell, Queens College Oxford, and member of the Milner Group of the Secret Elite [22] was also a Fellow of All Souls. He was a noted Modern European historian and served as Dean, then principal of Hertford College, Oxford. In 1936, Crutwell wrote a popular A History of the Great War 1914-1918. which followed the usual narrow establishment-approved account.

Sir Llewellyn Woodward, Corpus Christi, Oxford, and Fellow of All Souls. He was a member of the Secret Elite, [23]  and was chosen as the Montague Burton Professor of International Relations. When the decision was made to publish an extensive selection of Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1923, Woodward was chosen as general editor of the series. Amongst other works he wrote Great Britain and the War of 1914-18, Great Britain and the German Navy and Volume XIII of Oxford History of England.

As Carroll Quigley pointed out in his seminal work, The Anglo-American Establishment, almost every important member of the Secret Elite which was dominated by Alfred Milner from 1902-1925 was a Fellow of Balliol, New College or All Souls. In addition to their control of the writing and teaching of history, they also dominated Law and Public Affairs. [24.] The triple front penetration of politics, history and the press has been expanded by us to include the powerbrokers in finance and industry, and as the group extended its membership, other important drivers came into play. Inside the Secret Elite’s inner core, All Souls Fellows like Leo Amery progressed into mainstream politics, where in a glittering career, he became First Lord of the Admiralty then Colonial Secretary. Others like Robert Brand enjoyed profitable careers in banking and finance.

Like an octopus, the Secret Elite extended its all-embracing arms out from Oxford into all important departments of government.  Every one of the men listed above, mainly historians, lecturers and professors played additional roles during the war in key government offices. As can be seen from the information above, they served in the Press Bureau, wrote the war pamphlets, were given posts in the Ministry of the Blockade, the Ministry of Munitions, the War Cabinet, the Propaganda Department, in Intelligence departments for the War Office, the Foreign Office and the War Cabinet itself. They controlled the Dictionary of National Biography, and edited and censored official documents so that the history that has been passed down is based on the information they permitted us to have. Through their writings and the kudos of All Souls, they extended their influence into other universities like Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, Birmingham and Edinburgh. They were the high priests of British history and God help anyone who questioned them.

[1] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.197.
[2] S. J. Green and Peregrine Horden, All Souls and the Wider World, p.32.
[3] Ibid., p.161.
[4] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.312.
[5] Green and Horden, All Souls and the Wider World, pp 35-36.
[6] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.313.
[7] Green and Horden, All Souls and the Wider World, p.172.
[8] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.313.
[9] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.87.
[10] Green and Horden, All Souls and the Wider World, p.164.
[11] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.312.
[12] Ibid., p. 313.
[13] Green and Horden, All Souls and the Wider World, p.162.
[14] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp 68-9.
[15] A J A Morris on  Spencer Wilkinson, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[16] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.312.
[17] Ibid., p.314.
[18] Ibid., p.93.
[19] Ibid., p.90.
[20] Ibid., p.89.
[21] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History,  p.16.
[22] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.195.
[23] Ibid., p.313.
[24] Ibid., p.98.

The Mobilisation Of Oxford

In the first week of August, as events on the Continent were about to explode, many academics who valued their long-standing ties with Germany and German Universities recoiled at the prospect of war with a country which had contributed so much to European civilization. A letter signed by several Cambridge professors and other leading academics was printed in The Times on 1 August. It made the following appeal:

‘We regard Germany as a nation leading the way in the Arts and Sciences and we have all learned and are learning from German scholars.  War against her in the interest of Serbia and Russia will be a sin against civilization. If by reason of honourable obligations we be unhappily involved in a war, patriotism might still our mouths, but at this juncture we consider ourselves justified in protesting against being drawn into a struggle with a nation so near akin to our own, and with whom we have so much in common.’ [1]

The invasion of Belgium altered the parameters of the debate but there was a still a degree of ‘pro-German’ sentiment which persisted even after the outbreak of hostilities, partly in Britain itself and even more so in neutral countries. The potential consequences alarmed the Secret Elite and their Oxford academic division which supported the war. They retaliated immediately.

The solution was a series of short pamphlets, explaining their version of both the long- and short-term causes of the war. But who was to provide the appropriate material? Oxford historians, like their colleagues in other British universities, should have been ill- prepared for the role of semi-official apologists for the British declaration of war in August 1914. [2] Yet through the conquest of Oxford [ note] the Secret Elite quickly mobilised their All Souls battalion which promptly rose to the challenge of justifying the war and vilifying Germany.

Oxford University was by then the academic bastion of the Secret Elite and its philosophy [note] and many of its inner core membership were chosen from All Souls and Balliol Colleges. [3] Given that, it was hardly surprising that the learned professors and teaching staff stamped their intellectual approval on the declaration of war, pronounced their justifications on the causes of the war, and berated the Germans for their alleged  war aims, in specially commissioned Oxford Pamphlets. [4] In total there were 87 titles, some of which enjoyed a profitable tenth reprint, with translations into French, Italian, Spanish, German, Danish and Swedish. The Oxford Pamphlets often contained authentic information to which the authors willingly gave a patriotic interpretation in the guise of an objective analysis. It was all about smoking mirrors and muddied waters. Make the populace believe. Convince the alien neutrals. These pamphlets stemmed from, what was reckoned to be, the best brains in Britain. It was the gospel according to the University of Oxford, and the pamphlets, published in London, Edinburgh, New York, Toronto, Melbourne and Bombay could be purchased individually or in sets, at affordable prices. [5]

Alfred Milner’s Kindergarten group from his Boer War days had formed the ‘Round Table’ [note] a quasi political think-tank of Empire Loyalists dedicated to the ultimate aim of an English-race domination of the world. Funded by the wealthy financiers and inner-core members of the Secret Elite, Sir Abe Bailey and Sir Alfred Beit, [6] they waded into the mire of anti-German propaganda with a special war edition in September 1914  entitled, Germany and the Prussian Spirit,  targeted at the middle  and upper-classes. It dealt in stereotypes, with biased historical background and crudely delineated images of an older idyllic Germany,  now dominated by a new ruthless Prussian steel, whose ‘rapid glacier-torrent’ had carried ice into the heart of the old Rhineland. [7] The irony of their message was completely ignored in the British press, and its hypocrisy plummeted new depths. According to the Round Table it was not the business of the State ‘to mould the general will of its citizens, but to represent it’. The accusation levied against the German State was that its people followed absolutely the ‘paternalism of Prussian Nationalism’. [8]

And this from the direct disciples of Ruskin and the heirs of Rhodes, who sought to mould the world into a British Race power-block dominated by English ruling class elites, the very men who privately despised democracy. [9] It is surely instructive that the Round Table’s conclusion  was that ‘the ultimate aim of German Imperialism is indeed nothing less than the destruction of British power, the humiliation of England and the partition of the British Empire.’ [10] In truth the Secret Elite’s ultimate aim was the destruction of German power, the humiliation of Germany and the partition of their Empire. They were dressing the Prussians in their own obsessive megalomania for global control. Britain declared war on Germany.  France and Russia mobilised first against Germany, but truth has long been acknowledged as the first casualty of war. [11]

The authors of the Oxford Pamphlets read like a roll-call of Balliol and All Souls fellows, supplemented by men of whom they approved, still mainly from Oxford colleges and all known to Milner and the Round Table. Professor Quigley has shown how closely the inter-woven connections between Balliol, All Souls and Oxford and the Secret Elite worked, so it is hardly surprising that they rallied immediately to the bugle-call of war justification, to ‘prove’ the academic, legal, theological, military, naval and national reasons why Britain had to be involved.

The list of pamphleteers included; Spencer Wilkinson, First Chichele Professor of Military History at Oxford; W.G.S. Adam, Professor of Political Theory and Institutions at Oxford; C.R.L. Fletcher the conservative, imperialist historian, was in conjunction with Rudyard Kipling in 1911, the author of A School History of England, which libelled the Spanish as vindictive, the West Indians as lazy and vicious, and the Irish as spoilt and ungrateful; [12]  Henry W C Davis, Regius Professor of Modern History, who was called to work in the War Trade Intelligence Department and the Ministry of Blockade, was later editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; C Grant Robertson, the academic historian went on to be Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham University. Every one of the above was a Fellow of All Soul’s.

Balliol men included Sir Keith Feiling , later Chichele Professor of Modern History; F F Urquhart, historian, later Dean of Balliol; A D Lindsay, former president of the Oxford Union, taught philosophy at Balliol, and when he reached the pinnacle of his academic career as Master of Balliol College, emerged as Lord  Lindsay of Birker. Arnold J Toynbee, the historian, nephew of the more famous Arnold Toynbee, Milner’s best friend when he attended Balliol, served in the political intelligence department of the Foreign Office ‘undoubtedly’ [13] because of his uncle’s association with the all-powerful Lord Milner. Lesser lights like Ramsay Muir wrote on National Principle and the War. Ernest Barker presented the philosophical argument in Nietzsche and Treitschke. They were all Balliol men.

The Secret Elite inner-core member, H A L Fisher, [14] historian and tutor in modern history at Oxford, had his say on the Value of Small States with an academic reminder of the incalculable debt that civilisation owed to the smaller nations. He was soon to be promoted by Lloyd George to the post of President of the Board of Education. Gilbert Murray, Professor of Greek at Oxford wrote on the moral question, How can war ever be right? He found a suitably acceptable answer.

These myth-makers of history were not restricted to the university. The Oxford Pamphlets were supplemented by journalistic heavies such as Secret Elite member, Sir Valentine Chirol, [15] who from 1897-1912 was foreign editor for the Times. His two pamphlets, Serbia and the Serbs and Germany and the Fear of Russia were basically an indictment of Austrian policy towards Serbia and an accusation that Germany encouraged Austria in order to bring about war. This was typical of the lie that was repeated so often that it became ‘fact’, the more so because it had the stamp of Oxford University’s approval. Another powerful figure, Rear-Admiral Sir James Thursfield, a naval historian and journalist, a man close to Lord Fisher, lectured regularly at the Robert’s Academy at Camberley, and was the first editor of the Times Literary Supplement. His pamphlet, the Navy and the War boasted of the silent pressure maintained on Germany by the Fleet, and warned of the dangers of pacifism. And the pro-British American lawyer, James M Beck, a vehemently anti-German Republican politician, contributed a valuable pamphlet, The Double Alliance versus the Triple Entente, whose partisan, pro-British judgement on the conflicting alliances was both welcomed and praised. It amounted to a complete endorsement of Britain’s actions.

Although there was no named general editor for the complete series of pamphlets, it is now known that Henry W C Davis played this role. An influential figure in Oxford, he was a member of the General Board of Faculties in 1913 and curator of the Bodleian Library in 1914. The early contributors, who were all based in Oxford, appear to have been approached by word of mouth and many of them had close personal links with Davis. [16] He was a man with a mission and wrote to the former editor of the Times, Sir Valentine Chirol on 14 September 1914 describing his intentions:

‘The series is intended for the intelligent working man and therefore the method of treatment is simple, even elementary…The contributors belong to very different schools of political opinion, but they are all anxious to confirm the ordinary elector in his present admirable attitude towards the war, and to warn him against the dangers of making peace on terms which settle nothing.’  [17]

Put another way, Davis was admitting that he intended the pamphlets to ‘dumb down’ the arguments, encourage the readers to support the war and ensure that the peace-mongers were undermined. Such patronising propaganda is unworthy of any university, far less one that would call itself a world-leader. Henry Davis continued in the same vein throughout the remainder of 1914, sometimes bracketing the intelligent workingman with primary school teachers.  Although some of the Oxford Pamphlets employed rhetorical flourishes inappropriate in the ‘driest’ of scholarly works, they rarely managed to achieve a populist touch. The possible exception to that rule was C.R.L. Fletcher, whose capacity to describe the world in damning stereotypes had been so amply evidenced in his School History of England.  On 14 September, Fletcher wrote, ‘I give Davis carte blanche to alter my tracts, only don’t let him make them too judicial and fair minded.  It’s no time for respecting the enemy’s feelings.’ [18] He need not have worried. Fair-mindedness was never the objective.

By the end of October 1914, approximately 100,000 copies had been sold.

No-one should underestimate the importance of this quasi-intellectual onslaught. Letters were sent to the Oxford University Press from ‘war lecturers’ asking for more detailed material to help them with their talks. These fatuous pamphlets were seen as the new gospels, the ‘evidence’ that the British Empire was fully justified in taking up arms against Germany. Their capacity to influence opinion in neutral countries, especially the United States, was of even greater importance.   Government agencies moved to maximise their impact. At C F Masterman’s secret London propaganda headquarters at Wellington House [19], the section run by Sir C Schuster had special responsibility for manipulating opinion in the neutral countries. A close working relationship developed between Schuster’s office and the Oxford Pamphlets, influenced no doubt by the fact that Schuster was C.R.L. Fletcher’s brother in law. [20] Although he never commissioned any of the Oxford series directly, Schuster willingly distributed them overseas, ordering as many as 35,000 copies of Paul Vinogradoff’s Russia, the Psychology of a Nation. The Secret Elite had great and continued need to justify the alliance with Russia so that the German armies were tied up in the east of Europe.

Great care was taken to avoid the impression that the Oxford Pamphlets were part of the propaganda campaign, which is why they were mainly distributed and sold ‘in the ordinary way of trade’. [21] Oxford University Press usually charged between 1 penny and 3 pence per pamphlet and a hardback series could be purchased for one shilling in 1915. Naturally the pamphlets were hailed for their authenticity and the Saturday Review wrote that  ‘these little books are easily the best books of the war accurate, quietly written, full of knowledge and unspoiled by vainglory or bitterness.’ [22] Well, little changes. Oxford histories can still rely on positive reviews from Oxford alumni.

We should remember Professor Quigley’s admonition that no country that values its safety should allow a small secret cabal, by that we mean the Secret Elite, to exercise complete control over the publication of documents, over the avenues of information that create public opinion and then monopolise the writing and teaching of history.[23] This was precisely what was happening. Virtually every British contributor to the Oxford Pamphlets was in some way linked directly or indirectly to the Secret Elite and their grand design. The ‘truth’ was defined by them and for them.

[1] The Times. 1 August 1914, p. 6.
[2] S.J.D. Green and Peregrine Horden All Souls and the Wider World, p 171.
[3] Note on previous blog.
[4] The Oxford Pamphlets, 1914-15
[5] https://archive.org/stream/27to54oxfordpam00londuoft#page/n1/mode/2up
[6] Carroll Quigley,  The Anglo-American Establishment, p.312.
[7] The Round Table, Special War Number, Germany and the Prussian Spirit p.15.
[8] Ibid., p.30.
[9] Quigley, The Anglo American Establishment, p. 85.
[10] The Round Table, Special War Number, Germany and the Prussian Spirit, p.37.
[11] Quotation credited generally to Arthur Ponsonby MP.
[12] The School History was hailed as the chief literary event of the coronation year by the Church Family Times and as a most pernicious influence on the minds of children by the Manchester Guardian. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[13] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 7.
[14] Ibid., p. 312.
[15] Ibid., p. 313.
[16] Green and Horden, All Souls and the Wider World p 172.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.,  p, 173.
[19] See blog
[20] Green and Horden, All Souls and the Wider World p 176
[21] Ibid.
[22] https://archive.org/stream/27to54oxfordpam00londuoft#page/n5/mode/2up
[23] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 197.

The Conquest Of Oxford

From the very earliest days of the First World War, the Secret Elite in London set about fabricating history in order to conceal their guilt and heap responsibility on Germany. Their version is still presented as truth in the present day and regurgitated by generations of undergraduates for the simple reason that it was written by professors at Oxford University, reputedly the greatest academic institution in the world. Professor Carroll Quigley revealed, however, that Alfred Milner (the most influential leader within the Secret Elite) and his faction had such power and control over Oxford University that it was able to completely monopolise the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period. [1]

It is a brave man indeed who questions the veracity of history as recorded by the eminent men within Oxford’s ivory towers. One courageous historian who attacked their myths and worked wholeheartedly on behalf of the truth, Professor Harry Elmer Barnes, was ostracised from academic circles and saw his life’s work trashed. It was a harsh lesson that has been heeded since by those intent on academic careers in modern history. Professor Barnes died before the term ‘conspiracy theory’ was invented as a term of contempt for critical thinkers who examined explanations other than those presented by the establishment. Coined in the 1960’s by the CIA, it was a means to discredit independent researchers like the New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, who bravely questioned the official narrative of the Kennedy assassination. Indeed our own book which challenged and frequently dismissed establishment accounts of WW1 has been subjected to this abusive term but, as the American author Peter Hof succinctly responded: ‘the conspiracy theory pejorative is a favourite refuge for the misinformed’.

Professor James Tracy of the Florida Atlantic University stated that ‘conspiracy theory’ is a term that strikes fear and anxiety in the hearts of almost every public figure, particularly journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events off limits to inquiry or debate. [2]

Fearing for their livelihoods, historians have place themselves in academic straitjackets while, much to the discomfort of the powers that be, a new breed of independent investigator has pushed the boundaries in revealing the truth. Prof. Tracy added that research carried out by the hoi polloi and independent researcher ‘is a clear danger to those who wish to wield uncontested political authority. Indeed, the capacity to freely disseminate and discuss knowledge of government malfeasance is the foremost counterbalance to tyranny. Since this ability cannot be readily confiscated or suppressed, it must be ridiculed, marginalized, even diagnosed as a psychiatric condition. [3] Knowing that the establishment would ridicule their work with the tired ‘conspiracy theory’ label, dismiss them as cranks and ruin their careers, most historians have failed to challenge the Oxford accounts of the First World War. The problem that they will always face is caused by their inability to accept justified reason unless they have the documented evidence. This means that in stealing, shredding and otherwise destroying the evidence about the First World War, the establishment view is all that they can accept. It is surely a most uncomfortable straight-jacket.

Secret Elite control of Oxford was firmly established long before the outbreak of war. In 1905, Alfred Milner had returned from South Africa and constructed a ‘propaganda and patronage machine’ at the university [4] where he was a Fellow of New College. Oxford had long been the spiritual home of the cabal, and from the 1890s its central power-base was All Souls College which comprised well-to-do, upper-class and frequently titled men, many of whom were educated at Eton and Harrow, schools at the hub of the English ruling class. Professor Quigley had no hesitation in stating that by the mid twentieth century the secret cabal (we term them the Secret Elite) had been the most powerful single influence in All Souls, Balliol, and New College at Oxford for more than fifty years. [5]

All Souls, unlike Balliol and the other Oxford Colleges, had no undergraduates, and its members were rarely there to study for a higher degree. It had been founded in 1437 by a substantial endowment from Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, but by the nineteenth century it had established itself as a very select club of like minded individuals from, or acceptable to, the English ruling class. Entrance was strictly limited and tightly controlled. The College gathered information about candidates from a variety of ‘distant sources’ and election of ‘fellows’ was decided in an informal meeting in the Common Room. The discussion focussed not so much on the results of examinations but on personal habits and social connections. Did the candidate dress well? Did he possess friend in high places? Did he have impeccable manners? Was he an agreeable companion? In short, would he make a suitable member of a refined and aristocratic society? [6] It is safe to assert that that the Fellow of All Souls was a man marked out for a position of authority in public life. Many had common undergraduate associations, close personal relationships, similar interests and ideas, and surprisingly similar biographical experiences. By 1900, the Milner group was the chief, if not the controlling influence at All Souls [7] abetted by its warden, the influential Sir William Anson.

The aristocratic Anson was educated at Eton and Balliol, where he gained a double first in Classics and had himself been elected as a Fellowship of All Souls. Elected Warden of All Souls from 1881 until his death in 1914, Anson was the most influential figure in the management of its fortune and selection of its members. Now widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent public figures of Edwardian England, Anson also served as Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor. During his tenure he transformed All Souls ‘from an inert academic backwater into a valuable mediator between the university and the outside world, and a recognised citadel for studies of History and Law.’ [8] All Souls was a relatively poor college, and during the 1880’s a lack of funds prevented it from fully implementing an earlier promise to promote higher scholarship. Suddenly circumstances changed. Co-incident with the Milner Group takeover, All Souls grew rich. The official version of events was that  ‘good fortune’ struck. The College had long owned large estates which, over a century of extended suburban growth, had turned into north-west London. Unlike all of the other colleges at Oxford, its income rose markedly between 1889 and 1909.  [9]

In reality, the ‘good fortune’ arrived at All Souls door when the Secret Elite saw in this academic backwater a means through which they could take control of Oxford University. They rapidly converted it to a ‘citadel’ of ‘academic excellence’ through which they could turn their long-term plans into action and control the writing and teaching of history. Through considerable investment and active self-promotion the college was presented as a national institution of enormous prestige. When the Secret Elite began planning their great war to destroy Germany, Sir William Anson set about providing the means through which the college would control the writing and teaching of the history of the war. All Souls had enjoyed no great reputation over the previous 400 years and had been considered irrelevant by many Oxford academics. Once Milner and the Secret Elite took control, money poured into its coffers and professorial chairs were established for hand-picked trusted historians who would write the war’s history, and others who would lend them academic credence. Few, if any, academics would ever dare challenge the veracity of such allegedly ’eminent’ professors who had instant access to the Oxford University Press and guaranteed approval from the Times Literary Supplement.

The ‘gift’ of new chairs in history at that time offers a perfect example of Milner’s men in action. Alfred Beit, South African millionaire and inner core member of the Secret Elite [10] set the pace by establishing the Beit Trust which paid for the Beit Professorship and Beit Lectureships. The first Beit Professor of Colonial History at Oxford was Hugh Egerton (1905-1920). A contemporary of Milner’s at Oxford, Egerton was a member of the Secret Elite and their Round Table Group. He constantly supported Milner in his professional work and remained committed to the cause until his death in 1927. [11]

Just how far reaching their power over Oxford extended can be gleaned from the following list of Chancellors of the University: Lord Salisbury (1869-1903), Lord Goschen (1903-1907), Lord Curzon (1907-1925) Lord Milner (1925), Lord Grey of Fallodon (1928-33) and Lord Halifax (1933). All were very senior members of the Secret Elite’s inner core. [12]

According to professor Quigley, ‘the Beit Chairs at Oxford had been controlled by the Milner Group from the beginning,’ and ‘both have interlocking membership with the Rhodes Trust and the College of All Souls’. (likewise controlled by the secret Elite) By controlling All Souls and the two professorships, the Milner Group included five out of seven electors to the Beit professorship.’ [13] Quigley added, ‘the Milner group never intended to influence events by acting through any instruments of mass propaganda, but rather to work on opinions of the small group of ‘important people’ who in turn could influence wider and wider circles of persons. This was the basis on which the Milner group itself was constructed; it was the theory behind the Rhodes scholarships; it was the theory behind the Round Table and the Royal Institute of International Affairs; it was the theory behind the efforts to control All Souls, new College, and Balliol, and through these three to control Oxford University…’ [14] This was also the theory behind their ownership of the Times. What mattered to them was the influence they commanded over ‘important people’ and by controlling Oxford, the Secret Elite were able to control the writing and teaching of history. They had achieved that already in the official Times History of the Boer War. In 1914 they began the assault on truth through the immediate publication of the Oxford Pamphlets.

[1] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.197.
[2] James F Tracy, “Conspiracy Theory”: Foundations of a Weaponized Term. Subtle and Deceptive Tactics to Discredit Truth in Media and Research. http://www.globalresearch.ca/
[3] http://www.globalresearch.ca/cracking-conspiracy-theorys-psycholinguistic-code-the-witch-hunt-against-independent-research-and-analysis/5383108
[4] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.84.
[5] Ibid., pp.5-6.
[6] S.J.D. Green and Peregrine Horden,  All Souls and the Wider World, pp.14-15.
[7] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp.21-22.
[8] Green and Horden,  All Souls and the Wider World, edited by pp.1-2.
[9] Ibid., p.7.
[10] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p.313.
[11] Ibid., p.87.
[12] Ibid., p.99.
[13] Ibid., p.88.
[14] Ibid., p.113.