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A war cabinet is a committee formed by a government in a time of war to efficiently and effectively conduct that war. It is usually a subset of the full executive cabinet of ministers, although it is quite common for a war cabinet to have senior military officers and opposition politicians as members.
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, was a British statesman and colonial administrator who played a very important role in the formulation of British foreign and domestic policy between the mid-1890s and early 1920s. From December 1916 to November 1918, he was one of the most important members of Prime Minister David Lloyd George's War cabinet.
Edwin Samuel Montagu PC was a British Liberal politician who served as Secretary of State for India between 1917 and 1922. Montagu was a "radical" Liberal and the third practising Jew to serve in the British cabinet.
George Geoffrey Dawson was editor of The Times from 1912 to 1919 and again from 1923 until 1941. His original last name was Robinson, but he changed it in 1917. He married Hon. Margaret Cecilia Lawley, daughter of Arthur Lawley, 6th Baron Wenlock, in 1919.
Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey, 1st Baron Hankey, was a British civil servant who gained prominence as the first Cabinet Secretary and later made the rare transition from the civil service to ministerial office. He is best known as the highly-efficient top aide to Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the War Cabinet, which directed Britain during the First World War.
Violet Georgina Milner, Viscountess Milner was an English socialite of the Victorian and Edwardian eras and, later, editor of the political monthly National Review. Her father was close friends with Georges Clemenceau, she married the son of Prime Minister Salisbury, Lord Edward Cecil, and after his death, Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner.
Milner's Kindergarten is the informal name of a group of Britons who served in the South African civil service under High Commissioner Alfred, Lord Milner, between the Second Boer War and the founding of the Union of South Africa in 1910. It is possible that the kindergarten was Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain's idea, for in his diary dated 14 August 1901, Chamberlain's assistant secretary Geoffrey Robinson wrote, "Another long day occupied chiefly in getting together a list of South African candidates for Lord Milner – from people already in the (Civil) Service". They were in favour of the unification of South Africa and, ultimately, an Imperial Federation with the British Empire itself. On Milner's retirement, most continued in the service under Lord Selborne, who was Milner's successor, and the number two-man at the Colonial Office. The Kindergarten started off with 12 men, most of whom were Oxford graduates and English civil servants, who made the trip to South Africa in 1901 to help Lord Milner rebuild the war torn economy. Quite young and inexperienced, one of them brought with him a biography written by F.S. Oliver on Alexander Hamilton. He read the book, and the plan for rebuilding the new government of South Africa was based along the lines of the book, Hamilton's federalist philosophy, and his knowledge of treasury operations. The name, "Milner's Kindergarten", although first used derisively by Sir William Thackeray Marriott, was adopted by the group as its name.
A ginger group is a formal or informal group within an organisation seeking to influence its direction and activity. The term comes from the phrase ginger up, meaning to enliven or stimulate. Ginger groups work to alter the organisation's policies, practices, or office-holders, while still supporting its general goals. Ginger groups sometimes form within the political parties of Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Pakistan.
The Supreme War Council was a central command based in Versailles that coordinated the military strategy of the principal Allies of World War I: Britain, France, Italy, the United States, and Japan. It was founded in 1917 after the Russian Revolution and with Russia's withdrawal as an ally imminent. The council served as a second source of advice for civilian leadership, a forum for preliminary discussions of potential armistice terms, later for peace treaty settlement conditions, and it was succeeded by the Conference of Ambassadors in 1920.
The Bloemfontein Conference was a meeting that took place at the railway station of Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State from 31 May until 5 June 1899. The main issue dealt with the status of British migrant workers called "Uitlanders", who mined the gold fields in Transvaal.
The Doullens Conference was held in Doullens, France, on 26 March 1918 between French and British military leaders and governmental representatives during World War I. Its purpose was to better co-ordinate their armies' operations on the Western Front in the face of a dramatic advance by the German Army which threatened a breakthrough of their lines during the war's final year. It occurred due to Lord Alfred Milner, a member of the British War Cabinet, being dispatched to France by Prime Minister Lloyd George, on 24 March, to assess conditions on the Western Front, and to report back.
Frederick Scott Oliver, known as F. S. Oliver, was a prominent Scottish political writer and businessman who advocated tariff reform and imperial union for the British Empire. He played an important role in the Round Table movement, collaborated in the downfall of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith's wartime government and its replacement by David Lloyd George in 1916, and pressed for "home rule all round" to resolve the political conflict between Britain and Irish nationalists.
The Socialist National Defence Committee also known as the Socialist National Defence League was a pro First World War socialist faction.
The War Policy Committee was a small group of British ministers, most of them members of the War Cabinet, set up during World War I to decide war strategy. The committee was created at the request of Lord Milner on 7 June 1917, through a memorandum he circulated with his peers on the British War Cabinet. Its members included the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, Lord Milner, Edward Carson, Lord Curzon and Jan Smuts. The committee was formed to discuss the strategic matter of the Russian Revolution, and the new entry of The United States. Coincidentally or not, the timing of Lord Milner's memo coincided with the detonation of 19 underground mines filled with explosives on the Western Front, which created the largest human explosion of all time. The night before this explosion, General Harington said to reporters "Gentleman, I don't know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change the geography". In Milner's memo, he stressed that the allies must act together for the common good, and not devolve to piecemeal arrangements that satisfied specific countries. The War Policy Committee was formed, and it discussed every major initiative taken by the allies until the end of the war. It was chaired by Lord's Milner and Curzon, with Jan Smuts as its Vice Chairman.
The X Committee was established during World War I by Lord Alfred Milner as a way of managing and providing strategic direction to the Great War. Its members included Prime Minister Lloyd George, Lord Milner, General Henry Wilson, and Maurice Hankey as its Secretary. Hankey delegated his responsibility to Leo Amery. Meetings were held at 10 Downing Street, sometimes once, sometimes twice daily. Amery says the X Committee "really ran the war during the critical spring and summer months" of 1918. The X Committee's first meeting was held on 15 May 1918, and its last meeting on 25 November 1918. From a biography written about his father, the son of Jan Smuts revealed that the words "X Committee" stood for "Executive Committee", and that Lord Milner must have learned about it during his time in South Africa (1897–1905).
The Monday Night Cabal was a 'ginger group' of influential people set up in London by Leo Amery at the start of 1916 to discuss war policy. The nucleus of the group consisted of Lord Milner, George Carson, Geoffrey Dawson, Waldorf Astor and F. S. Oliver. The group got together for Monday night dinners and to discuss politics. Throughout 1916 their numbers and influence grew to include Minister of Munitions David Lloyd George, General Henry Wilson, Philip Kerr, and Mark Jameson. It is thought that word of the Ginger Group reached Douglas Haig, prompting him to invite Lord Milner to France in November for an 8-day tour of the Western Front. It was through the Ginger Group that Times editor Geoffrey Dawson published a December 4, 1916 news story titled "Reconstruction" that set in motion events that caused Prime Minister H. H. Asquith to resign, signaling the rise of the Lloyd George Ministry. Among the group's primary objectives was the formation of a small war cabinet within government to fight the war against the German Empire effectively. This point was advanced by The Times as early as April 1915, so it is unknown if the Ginger Group, or one its predecessor elements was responsible for the idea behind Lloyd George's decision to create a War Cabinet on the day he was appointed Prime Minister. However, his surprise choice of Lord Milner as one of the War Cabinet's five members shows the influence of the ginger group on him.
The onset of the 20th century saw England as the world's foremost naval and colonial power, supported by a 100,000-man army designed to fight small wars in its outlying colonies. Since the Napoleonic Wars nearly a century earlier, Britain and Europe had enjoyed relative peace and tranquility. The onset of World War I caught the British Empire by surprise. As it increased the size of its army through conscription, one of its first tasks was to impose a complete naval blockade against Germany. It was not popular in the United States. However, it was very important to England.
Sir Lancelot Storr was a British Army officer and an assistant war cabinet secretary during World War I. He served on the personal staff of Lord Kitchener at the War Office (1914-1916), and as a secretary on the Committee of Imperial Defence (1916-1921). With Kitchener's help, Storr was transferred to the staff of Sir Maurice Hankey at the end of 1916, as part of the reforms promised by Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Working on Hankey's staff, he served as assistant secretary to the British War Cabinet (1916), the Imperial War Cabinet (1917-1918), and the British Section of the Supreme War Council at Versailles (1917-1918) during World War I. Along with Hankey and assistant war cabinet secretary Leo Amery, Storr is prominently featured in the Imperial War Cabinet photograph of 1917. He also participated in the San Remo conference in 1920. He was knighted and retired from the Army in 1921.
The RMS Kildonan Castle was a Royal Mail Ship and passenger liner that went into service with Castle Line, and its successor, the Union-Castle Line. She was built to run the mail route from Southampton, England to Cape Town, South Africa starting in 1900. However, she began her life early, in December 1899, being requisitioned by the government to carry 3,000 troops to Cape Town at the start of the Boer War, and was temporarily used in South Africa to house POW's. She returned to England in 1901 for an outfitting to carry passengers and mail. She was one of nine ships on the England-South Africa run. At the outbreak of World War I, she replenished the South African Army with arms and ammunition. She also served as a hospital ship during the Dardanelles Campaign, outfitted with 603 beds, and converted in March 1916 to an armed merchant cruiser. In January 1917, she took Lord Milner and 51 VIP delegates from England, France and Italy to Murmansk, Russia, on the Petrograd Mission. She then undertook convoy duties in the North Atlantic, returning to her normal South African mail run after the war.
The Rue Nitot meeting was an important First World War event, when the British Empire delegates at the Peace Conference in Versailles got together to register the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and tried to soften the conditions for peace with Germany. The meeting was held at Prime Minister David Lloyd George's flat, 23 Rue Nitot, in Paris, on June 1, 1919.
References
- Amery, Leo, My Political Life, Vol. II, War and Peace (1914-1929), London: Huchinson, 1953
- Gollin, Alfred, Proconsul in Politics, London: Blond, 1964
- Hankey, Maurice, The Supreme Command, Volume II (1914-1918), London: Allen, 1961
- Hochschild, Adam, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion: 1914-1918, Boston: Houghton, 2011
- Lloyd George, David, The Truth About the Peace Treaties, Vol. I, London: Gollancz, 1938
- Marlowe, John, Milner, Apostle of Empire, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1976
- Roskill, Stephen, Hankey, Man of Secrets, Volume I, (1877-1918), London: Collins, 1970
- Turner, John (1977). "The Formation of Lloyd George's 'Garden Suburb': 'Fabian-Like Milnerite Penetration'?". The Historical Journal. 20 (1): 165–184. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00010980. JSTOR 2638594. S2CID 159931130.
- Turner, John (1980). Lloyd George's Secretariat . Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22370-9.