Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 6: What’s To Be Done With A Serious Liability?

Inner-core members of the Secret Elite were very concerned. They had erred in their judgement about Kitchener. Lord Milner, especially so. Yes, he had pushed him into the post of Secretary of State for War in August 1914 expecting an entirely different approach from that of the Boer War and in most respects he had been correct. Kitchener was a member of Asquith’s Cabinet and theoretically subject to both collective responsibility and the authority of the Prime Minister. Had Milner been lulled into complacency by Kitchener’s reassurance that the war would take three years or more? He had been the first to predict a long war. Now Kitchener was reported to be talking about a fair peace. He had said so to Sir William Robertson and confided his intentions to Sir Douglas Haig. Worse still he talked about being one of the ‘English delegates when Peace was made’ to Lord Derby. [1] There were no circumstances in which this could be allowed.

Milner had held a grudge against Kitchener that dated back to his Boer War years. He wrote then, ‘Kitchener, a man of great power, is stale. Worse than that, he is in a hurry. Now the essence of the business in its present form [ending the Boer war] is that it must be done gradually’. These words were penned in 1900 in reference to a different war, [2] but in terms of the Secret Elite’s fundamental aim to crush Germany, Kitchener clearly retained a capacity to interfere about which Milner was deeply suspicious.

What was worse, Kitchener had taken it upon himself to promote a peaceful settlement to the Boer War rather than the clear-cut military victory for which Milner had so yearned. He had wanted an outright victory in South Africa so that he could recast that country just as Bismark had recast Germany. The idea of peace disgusted Alfred Milner. Peace meant compromise, and there was no room for compromise; not with the Boers in 1902, [3] and not with the Germans in 1916. The Secret Elite wanted to recast Germany and re-affirm the primacy of the British Empire. Kitchener’s whispered ambition put all of that, and more, at risk. He had become a very serious liability. But what could be done?

Lord Kitchener knew that the government wanted him out of the way [4] which naturally made him wary of any design which meant he had to leave the country. At the end of April 1916, Asquith first suggested a political mission to Russia to discuss munitions and stiffen the Czar’s resolve to stand firm against Germany. Originally, he nominated Lloyd George to head the visit and it was suggested that Maurice Hankey might accompany him. [5] Not likely.

That same day Hankey claimed to have heard from the War Office that Kitchener wanted to go to Russia [6] and began lobbying to that effect. He wrote in his diary that ‘K[itchener] likely to accept and likely to ask me [to accompany him] – but I shan’t go.’ [7] Hankey stood his ground and refused. Absolutely; but at the same time he actively lobbied for support inside the War Committee in favour of Kitchener. Keep in mind that theoretically Hankey was just the secretary to the Committee. We now know that he was a key figure inside the Secret Elite [8] whose influence grew by the day. Consider the sequence of events. A mission which began as a putative political visit to Russia by the Secret Elite’s men, Lloyd George and Maurice Hankey began to change its shape and purpose. According to his biographers, Kitchener ‘suddenly announced that he would like to head the mission.’ [9] How convenient. Was this really Kitchener’s idea?

Strange forces were at work and not one of them was sudden. The Secret Elite’s man in Petrograd, Sir John Hanbury-Williams, [10] took steps to encourage Kitchener to travel to Russia. He wrote directly to the Secretary of State for War on 12 May to underline the Czar’s ‘pleasure’ on hearing that Kitchener might come to Russia. [11] That was precisely two whole weeks before the War Committee approved the mission. King George V was the surprised recipient of an upbeat telegram from the Czar on 14 May describing Lord Kitchener’s coming visit to Russia as ‘most useful and important’. Someone had jumped the gun. The King demanded clarification. Twelve days would pass before such a decision was ratified. In the meantime, it was suggested that the Russian Ambassador, having heard that Kitchener might visit Russia, had presented the rumour as fact to the Czar’s court in Petrograd. [12]

By all accounts, written, of course, after the fact, and written to suggest that the Germans knew that Kitchener was destined for Petrograd, his impending visit was allegedly common knowledge by the third week in May. [13]

Interesting. In fact no firm decision had been taken by the War Committee in London. When it was, the arrangements were substantially different. Firstly, Lloyd George was removed from the equation. Out of the blue, Asquith decided that he needed Lloyd George to go to Ireland to settle the aftermath of the Easter Rising. [14] He wrote a very brief note to him in secret on 22 May urging him to ‘take up Ireland: at any rate for a short time’. [15] How strange. Lloyd George had never been involved in Irish matters before.

In consequence, he made a brief attempt to forge some consensus in Ireland, promising the Unionists that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule and the Nationalists that any such arrangement would only be temporary. [16] The serpent spoke with false tongue, and slithered out of his Russian commitment. As he put it: ‘Much against my own inclination, I decided that I could not refuse Mr Asquith’s request [to switch his priority from Russia to Ireland.]’ [17] Lloyd George never did anything that was not in his own best interest. Thus, by 26 May it had been decided that Kitchener would go alone accompanied by his personal staff. [18] Allegedly, this was already common knowledge in Petrograd. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Final authorisation for Kitchener’s mission to Russia was approved on 26 May by the War Committee. One day later, Hanbury-Williams was given notice that Lord Kitchener and his staff (including three servants) would set sail for the Russian port of Archangel. [19] Kitchener was clearly keen to meet the Czar but was suspicious of the government’s intentions once he was out of the country. He left Lord Derby with a private code by which he could be informed of any further changes which might take place while he was away. [20] He had every right to suspect dirty deeds. Alerted in early June to the possibility that his proposed visit to Russia might have to be put back several weeks to accommodate the Russian Finance Minister, Herbert Kitchener almost abandoned the mission. He wrote to Hanbury-Williams warning that ‘ owing to the military situation’ he could not spare time later in the year and if the visit was postponed, it would have to be abandoned altogether. [21]

He knew the timing of the proposed summer offensive in France and was determined to be back at his desk in the War Office before the action began. Here was an unexpected twist. Kitchener was prepared to abandon the mission unless it remained set in its allotted time frame. Hanbury-Williams moved fast. He immediately assured Kitchener that he had spoken to the Czar who ‘repeated twice that he wished you to come’ and thought ‘your visit one of importance and would be of benefit to both countries.’ [22] They desperately wanted Kitchener to go to Russia. But why? If Kitchener was in position to call off the visit to Russia as late as 3 June 1916, [23] it could hardly have been deemed important.

Look what had happened. The so-called political mission by Lloyd George and Hankey to Russia had been transformed into a personal visit to the Czar by Field Marshal the Earl Kitchener. What’s more, the mission was represented as the Czar’s idea. On 26 May Kitchener informed the Russian Ambassador that the War Council had agreed that he should accept the Czar’s invitation to Russia. [24] How clever. At a stroke, should anyone ask awkward questions about the purpose of Kitchener’s visit, the answer was that he had been personally invited by Czar Nicholas II.

The Secret Elite agents who had originally been asked to lead the mission had slipped away to concentrate on other ‘priorities’. Kitchener was to go alone. Why?

[1] Randolph Churchill, Lord Derby, King of Lancashire, pp. 209-10.
[2] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, p. 469.
[3] Ibid. p. 551.
[4] Churchill, Lord Derby, p. 210.
[5] Stephen Roskill, Hankey Vol. I, 1877-1918, p. 268.
[6] ibid. p. 269.
[7] Nationals Archives, CAB 42/13 4/5/16.
[8] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 153-60 and p. 313.
[9] That it suddenly became Kitchener’s idea is promoted by several historians including Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma p. 356 , and in John Pollock, Kitchener, p. 469.
[10] Sir John Hanbury-Williams was Lord Milner’s military secretary in South Africa before becoming secretary to the Secretary of State for War in 1900. He acted as Chief of the British Military Mission to Russia (1914-1917 ) and was instrumental in requesting that Britain attacked the Dardanelles on behalf of the Czar’s government. See blog
[11] PRO 30/ 57/ 67.
[12] Pollock, Kitchener, p. 469.
[13] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 357.
[14] This was an unexpected request which temporarily took Lloyd George out of the equation for the proposed trip to Russia. He had absolutely no experience of Irish matters. He had always voted in favour of Home Rule and his strange intervention in 1916 changed nothing. According to the Irish historian, Jonathan Brandon, his duplicity sealed the fate of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
[15] Secret letter from Asquith to Lloyd George, 22 May 1916, quoted in Lloyd George’s War Memoirs, p. 419.
[16] Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes, p. 450.
[17] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 420.
[18] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 357.
[19] PRO 30/57/67, 27 May 1916.
[20] Randolph Churchill, Lord Derby, p. 210.
[21] Sir John Hanbury-Williams, The Emperor Nicholas II, as I knew him, p. 98.
[22] Ibid., p. 99.
[23] Ibid., pp. 98-99.
[24] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 358.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 1: The Man They Could Not Do Without

This next series of blogs concentrates on Field Marshal, the Earl Kitchener, the Empire’s most decorated and famous soldier. Controversy still surrounds his appointment in 1914, his performance as Secretary of State for War, especially over armaments, and the circumstances of his untimely death in 1916. Some deeply valid questions still remained unanswered a century after his death.

Official histories would have us believe that at the outset of the war, Herbert Kitchener was, by chance, in Britain. His biographer, Sir George Arthur termed it ‘an almost accidental presence’. [1] Not so. Kitchener was in England at the behest of King George V. He had been elevated to an Earldom by royal command in July, [2] and was still in England, on leave from his post as Consul General in Egypt, in early August. The story that Herbert Kitchener just happened to be ready and available to serve his country in its moment of dire need in August 1914 is part of the mystique and folklore which has conveniently camouflaged the secret preparations that had been made for war against Germany. Nothing was left to chance, least of all, Kitchener’s presence and availability to step into the vacant post of Secretary of State for War. Had he been asked to take office in July when he first arrived, the message which would have been instantly translated to Berlin would warn of war to come; Germany would have immediately recognised that Britain was intent on war despite the lies and protestations made by Sir Edward Grey that Britain intended to stay out of the impending conflict [3] . As in all circumstances, the Secret Elite required the enemy to strike first to provide the excuse for action. They waited. Kitchener had to be patient.

For the job lay vacant. After the refusal of senior military figures to prepare to take action against Ulster in March 1914, (commonly called The Curragh Mutiny) John Seely, then Secretary of State for War had been obliged to resign. Herbert Asquith still hesitated to fill the post and undertook all its associated duties, as well as those of prime minister. By any standards it was a ridiculous workload, but there was little else he could do.

Asquith’s problem was disconcerting. No member of his existing Cabinet could be trusted with the War Office. The prime minister confessed so in writing to his beloved Venetia Stanley on 5 August. [4] The few who knew that war had been ordained against Germany already held key Cabinet Posts. Churchill at the Admiralty could not be moved. Neither could Sir Edward Grey from the Foreign Office nor Lloyd George from the Treasury. Richard Haldane, Asquith’s life-long friend and former War Office incumbent, would have been his perfect choice for re-appointment, but Haldane had been unfairly tainted by the press as pro-German, and his appointment would have caused disquiet. [5]

Any incomer would have to be briefed about the preparations for war. The well-structured plans from the Committee of Imperial Defence and the military ‘discussions’ that had been ongoing with France and Belgium for more than eight years were still more guarded than any other state secret. [6] His dilemma centred on the fact that there was no politician in his government whom Asquith dared trust with such knowledge, and certainly no Liberal back-bencher. On the positive side of this strange equation, a vacant post suggested that Britain was ill-prepared for war and had no intention of engaging in war. In the aftermath of the near revolt of the army over its possible involvement in restraining Ulster and the unprecedented tensions in Ireland, it seemed that the War Office had been downgraded; subsumed into a mere department of the prime minister’s office.

Random chance is a poor excuse why, as war was about to unfold, the most famous and decorated British military officer of the age was in London, not Cairo. His biographer claimed that Kitchener only realised how imminent a European war was, after he lunched at the German Embassy on 21 July. [7] He met with Churchill over dinner ‘two or three times’ in the week before the war and discussed ‘all the possibilities as far as we could see them.’ [8] The imminent war was why they met, the First Lord of the Admiralty and the most popular and high-profile military figure in the Empire. And we are asked to believe that these were chance factors. One has to remember that in the public domain Kitchener ‘was looked upon as a martial demigod, different and superior to other men, a brilliant soldier who could act as a national saviour in the effete councils of the Liberal politicians.’ [9] And the public has always loved a hero.

Even so, Asquith was tempted to defy public opinion and reappoint Richard Haldane. The Secret Elite inner-core was not. Whatever his previous difficulties over the ending of the Boer War, (Milner had been very annoyed by Kitchener’s willingness to accept compromises with the Boer leaders in 1901.) Alfred Milner considered Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener as the only man with enough driving force for the job. [10] Kitchener already knew that war with Germany was in an advanced stage of preparation. Asquith had approved his membership of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) some years before, [11] and we know that Winston Churchill regularly updated him. Yet Asquith hesitated to break with tradition and appoint a Field Marshal to his Cabinet. Sir Henry Wilson, at that point a Brigadier-General, and the most knowledgeable military ‘expert’ on the long planned war against Germany relayed the prime minister’s hesitations to Alfred Milner and his Secret Elite colleagues. They were also dismayed when the dithering prime minister failed to dispatch the British Expeditionary Force to France immediately. Asquith was infamous for his indecision. Fearing a tardiness that might mortally damage their plans, Milner and his Secret Elite took direct action.

A newspaper campaign in favour of Kitchener’s appointment had gathered quick momentum. On the morning of 3 August, hours before Sir Edward Grey’s infamous Statement to Parliament, The Times carried an article by their military correspondent, Colonel Repington [12] demanding Kitchener’s appointment. [13] On the following day a Times Editorial trumpeted public confidence in him and pressed the prime minister to make a formal appointment ‘at least for the term of the war’. [14] The Westminster Gazette and Northcliffe’s Daily Express insisted on Kitchener’s appointment. Rumours that Asquith intended to return Haldane to the War Office were later denied by him with a sarcastic parliamentary swing at his critics; ‘Lord Kitchener’s appointment was received with universal acclamation, so much so indeed that it was represented as having been forced upon a reluctant Cabinet by the overwhelming pressure of an intelligent and prescient Press’ [15]

Asquith’s bold claims do not hold true in the light of later memoirs. The appointment of a new Secretary of State for War remained in the balance. One of the inner-core of the Secret Elite, Leopold Amery, [16] revealed that Milner had literally put Kitchener into a taxi to confront Asquith in Downing Street and demand his appointment. Kitchener was instructed to tell the prime minister that he would return immediately to Egypt unless Asquith gave him the War Office. [17] As ever, the Secret Elite held sway and Asquith was left to reconcile his Cabinet colleagues to the highly unusual presence of a Field Marshal in a Liberal Cabinet.

A War Council was held on 5 August. It comprised select politicians [18] and the top men from the ‘Roberts’ Academy’. [19]Lord Roberts himself was present with Kitchener, Sir John French, Douglas Haig, Haldane, Grey, Asquith and, since it was essentially an extension of the Committee of Imperial Defence, its secretary, and Secret Elite member, Maurice Hankey [20] Though he had retired from his post ten years previously, Lord Roberts’ presence was a reflection of the power he still exercised within the British army.

This was the Secret Elite War Council and their chosen military marionettes, an exclusive cabal of men who had planned the war, prepared the nation for war and proposed to run the war. Their task was to crush Germany, a mighty ambition that they knew would take years to achieve. Still the general expectation that it would all be over by Christmas boosted morale and hundreds of thousands of willing volunteers who would be sacrificed to that end, flocked to the colours.

It was not to be so straightforward, for the perfect candidate had a mind and approach of his own.

[1] Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, Vol III, p. 1.
[2] Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, Vol II, p. 346.
[3] Mensdorff to Bechtold, 29 July 1914, in Imanuel Geiss, July 1914, p. 277.
[4] Michael and Eleanor Brock, HH Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 157.
[5] Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years Vol.II, pp. 286-287.
[6] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 186-188.
[7] Arthur, Kitchener, Vol. III, p. 2.
[8] Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911-1918, p. 190.
[9] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 240.
[10] J Lee Thomson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 309.
[11] Stephen Roskill, Hankey, 1877-1918, p. 134.
[12] The Times’ military correspondent, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Repington was allowed privileges accorded to no other journalist. As Lord Northcliffe’s man, he was regularly given access to the most senior military staff, even on the Western Front. He had his own desk at the War Office.
[13] Brock, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 152.
[14] The Times, 4 August, 1914, p. 5.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 68 and p. 312.
[17] Leopold Amery, My Political Life, Vol. II, pp. 21-23.
[18] Brock, Letters to Venetia Stanley, pp. 157-8.
[19] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, pp. 194-202.
[20] National Archives, CAB 21/ 1/ 1.

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.