Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War.

by Gerry Docherty

  The post-war reconstruction of South Africa coordinated by the Kindergarten generated a general boom in work throughout the country and further huge profits for the Secret Elite. There was no incentive for the African workforce to return to the old jobs down the mines because higher paid work was plentiful elsewhere. Furthermore, mining was very dangerous work, with scant regard paid to workers’ safety. Deaths in the mines averaged seventy-one per thousand workers in 1903, with the figures in July that year exceeding one man killed for every ten miners. ‘Human life was being sacrificed, after a purgatory of toil and torture, for a wage of fifty cents a day.’93 But investor profits were good. Milner and the mine owners were so desperate to augment the declining workforce that drastic measures were agreed. They looked to China, where there was a large source of surplus cheap labour.

  The Chinese were lured to the South African mines with false promises and outrageous lies. They were led to understand that they would be living in pleasant garden cities where, once settled, families might join them. Fit and healthy applicants were selected and kept in sheds until embarkation. Then, under armed guard, they were loaded into the holds of ships for the journey.94 The first ship to sail, the 3,400-ton iron-hulled SS Ikbal, left China on 30 June 1904 with over 2,000 men crammed in the hold like a classic eighteenth-century slave ship. It was mid-summer, with the temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, as the Ikbal headed out for its 26-day voyage through the tropics. By the time it arrived in Durban, 51 men had died and their bodies dispatched overboard. The deaths proved no great loss to the organisers, however, for they had insured each man for $125 and netted a tidy profit from the insurance company.95

  On arrival, the men were tagged like pieces of meat and sealed in railroad cars for the 30-hour journey to the Transvaal. The garden cities were a myth. In reality, the Chinese workers lived in huge hutted compounds beside the mines with 20 men in each small shack. They were unable to leave the compounds without a special permit and were fined for the slightest breach of the rules. The men worked ten hours a day for a wage of twenty-five cents. In addition, they had to work at lower rates for at least six months to pay back the costs of their passage from China. If any man failed to carry out his allocated work, he could be flogged and given a heavy fine. Although it was illegal, Milner approved the flogging of the Chinese workers as a necessary sanction, and the Conservative government backed him.96 It was an act of classic, old-fashioned imperialism. Many who could not keep up with the backbreaking toil were in perpetual debt to the mines. If still alive after three years, they were to be shipped back to China like spoiled returned goods. ‘These Chinese were brought over in the prime of life to be broken on the wheel within three years for the purpose of grinding out ever greater profits for the monsters of greed who owned them.’97

  The problem for Milner was that he underestimated the impact that allegations of slavery and reports of vicious floggings would have on even his trusted Liberal friends like Asquith. Indeed, Milner was at times such a driven man that he failed to take account of the weight of opposition ranged against him. He warned his friend, Richard Haldane: ‘If we are to build up anything in South Africa, we must disregard, and absolutely disregard, the screamers.’98 It takes a very strong man to disregard the screamers: to ignore moral indignation, to put the cause before humanitarian concerns. Some frontline politicians find it all but impossible to stand against a torrent of public outrage, but those behind the curtain in the secret corridors of power can easily ignore ‘sentimentality’. Remember those words. They will reverberate through the pages of this book: ‘absolutely disregard the screamers’.

  By 1905, public opinion in Britain had clearly turned against Milner, and with a general election due he decided that the best way forward was for him to withdraw from South Africa. Officially, the word was that his health was suffering under the strain of the momentous task of reconstruction; he was allegedly burnt-out.99 Always in charge, Milner chose his moment carefully. It was vital to the Secret Elite that a change of government did not result in a change of imperial policy. Secret negotiations that would have long-term implications for British foreign policy were already taking place behind closed doors in London. Milner was needed there. His African quest could be left safely to his trusted Kindergarten, and Milner went so far as to nominate his Secret Elite friend, the Earl of Selborne, as his successor. In fact, Selborne was not too happy at being sent to South Africa, but he obeyed Milner, who wrote directly to Prime Minister Balfour saying that Selborne’s appointment left him feeling the ‘greatest possible relief’.100 Yet again it was the leader of the Secret Elite who chose his own trusted man to continue the fight in South Africa, even though he did not particularly want the post.

  Viscount Milner was well rewarded by his banking and industrialist friends for the tireless work he did to reinstate and increase their profits. Within a year of his return to England in 1905 he was made a member of the board of the London Joint Stock Bank (later the Midland Bank), a director, later chairman, of Rothschild’s Rio Tinto Co., a director of the Mortgage Company of Egypt and of the Bank of British West Africa. So many lucrative posts were offered to him that he was forced to refuse, amongst others, a directorship of both The Times and the armaments giant Armstrongs.101

  Milner had a political vision for a Union of South Africa based on a great influx of British immigrants who would magically transform the language and the culture, but a severe drought wasted much of the agricultural land in 1903 and 1904, and his dream never materialised. While the veneer of British supremacy covered the reality of Afrikaner consolidation in the longer term, the mines were back in full production once the Chinese labourers were in place, and profits flowed back to the grateful international bankers who underwrote the investments. Political pressure from London and other parts of the Empire appeared to restore much of the autonomy of the former Boer Republics, and it was considered that a Liberal government would continue such a process, but Milner’s war had not been in vain.

  He left behind an impressive structure of able administrators dedicated to rebuilding the colonies. Furthermore, the Secret Elite’s agents were in place throughout South Africa. The most compelling evidence that Jan Smuts was one of them is to be found in his activities after the Boer War. Professor Quigley revealed that Smuts was in the secret society’s inner core and ‘gained international fame chiefly because of this membership’.102 Just as he had done before his supposed defection to the Boer cause, Smuts worked diligently for a union of South Africa under the British flag. Although the prime minister of the Transvaal was General Louis Botha, Jan Smuts was the dominant political figure. When the first cabinet of the new Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, it was largely Boer, with Louis Botha as prime minister. The real power, however, was retained by Jan Smuts, who held three out of nine important portfolios and completely dominated Botha.103 Years later, the Secret Elite held a banquet in Smuts’ honour in the Houses of Parliament, with Milner sitting at his right-hand side.104 Smuts was always one of them.

  And what of Jameson, butcher of the Matabele and leader of the shambolic raid? Without even a blush of embarrassment, Milner made him prime minister of Cape Colony, a suitable reward for his loyal service and silence.

  An attempt was made in 1906 by Liberal Members of Parliament to put down a parliamentary motion that would name Viscount Milner and publicly shame him for permitting Chinese labourers to be flogged in the Transvaal. It was intended as a severe censure from the House of Commons but was subtly amended by Winston Churchill, who had by this time reinvented himself as a Liberal Member of Parliament. He deliberately gave the impression that Milner had been sufficiently punished, was without income and no longer had influence over anything or anyone. Churchill told Parliament:

  Lord Milner has gone from South Africa, probably for ever. The public service knows him no more. Having exercised great authority, he now exerts no authority. Having held high employment, he now has no employment. Ha
ving disposed of events which have shaped the course of history, he is now unable to deflect in the smallest degree the policy of the day. Having been for many years, or at all events for many months, the arbiter of the fortunes of men who are ‘rich beyond the dreams of avarice,’ he is to-day poor, and I will add, honourably poor. After twenty years of exhausting service under the Crown he is to-day a retired Civil servant, without pension or gratuity of any kind whatever.105

  Churchill’s assurance that Milner had been retired permanently to some mythical poorhouse was a monumental deception. Milner would know public service again when he decided. He was not poor and never would be poor. The men whom Churchill deemed ‘rich beyond the dreams of avarice’ made sure of that. But of all the spurious parliamentary claims that Churchill made in defence of Alfred Milner, the most outrageous was that he was no longer able to ‘deflect’ the policies of the day. It was the very image behind which the master-manipulator could continue the work he had set himself to guide the Empire to a ‘necessary war’. It mattered not a jot what Parliament thought of him.

  Perhaps the most difficult fact with which the reader has to contend is that the Secret Elite had an absolute belief that elected, democratic government was no alternative to the kind of ‘rule of the superiors’ which Milner’s Oxford mentor, Ruskin, had advocated. Just as Ruskin held a deep-rooted disbelief in democracy and saw the true instrument of social progress in the goodwill and intelligence of the upper classes,106 so Milner held an absolute contempt for the British parliamentary system. He spelled it out in a letter he wrote in May 1902:

  Our political organisation is thoroughly rotten, almost non-existent. Never was there such an absurd waste of power, such ridiculous inconsequence of policy, not for want of men, but for want of any effective central authority, or dominant idea to make them work together.107

  This self-styled British race patriot learned many lessons during the Boer War that shaped the Secret Elite’s future action. The lack of backbone inside the British Cabinet to stand up to the voices clamouring against the continuation of the war in South Africa deeply annoyed him. The power given to Kitchener and the manner in which the military commander made rash promises to placate the Boers frustrated his long-term ambitions for the country. Forthcoming elections, public opinion, newspaper campaigns and political opportunism from Liberals like Campbell-Bannerman and Lloyd George turned his stomach. The ultimate success of the British race could not be left to the whim of political parties or changing government policy. Someone had to have the conviction to make hard decisions: to stand up to the ‘screamers’ and disregard them. Milner was that man, and members of the secret society endorsed him without reservation. He continued to generate Secret Elite strategy and control political decision making in Britain from behind the drawn curtain. He would go on to shape the course of history with a determination that was unbending, fuelled by the conviction of the ‘race patriot’.108

  SUMMARY: CHAPTER 2 – SOUTH AFRICA – DISREGARD THE SCREAMERS

  Cecil Rhodes accrued a great fortune in gold and diamonds in South Africa thanks to the massive investment made by the Rothschild family.

  He was granted a Royal Charter for the British South Africa Company which permitted a private police force and army that was used brutally to grab more and more native territory.

  The Boer Republics were basically farming communities until the discovery of gold in the Transvaal transformed their absolute worth.

  Determined to take control of the Transvaal’s gold, Rhodes and his associates hatched a hare-brained scheme to invade the colony. Its embarrassing failure threatened to expose the involvement of the Secret Elite in South Africa and London.

  Though the subsequent parliamentary select committee of inquiry whitewashed the conspirators, Rhodes’ leadership was fatally damaged. Alfred Milner took the reins and had himself appointed high commissioner in Cape Colony.

  His objective was to provoke war, even though the colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain advocated a no-war policy. Milner’s Secret Elite network neutralised Chamberlain, and Milner advised his associates that war was absolutely necessary.

  With the experience of the Jameson fiasco in mind, Milner used political agents to stir up unrest in the Transvaal.

  Jan Smuts, once Rhodes’ close friend and confidant, allegedly defected to the Boers and was quickly promoted to the position of advisor to Kruger. Strangely, both he and Alfred Milner wanted exactly the same outcome: war.

  Despite tales of a Boy’s Own nature garnishing Winston Churchill’s self-penned story of a glorious escape from a Boer prison camp, the war went badly from the start, with the British Army proving beyond doubt that it was not fit for war in the Veldt.

  Kitchener was drafted in to South Africa to win the war and settle the Boers, but he was not a team player and his objectives did not match Milner’s. Kitchener wanted surrender and conciliation; Milner wanted to crush the Boers and begin reconstruction under the British flag.

  Milner appointed administrators of the highest quality, trawled mostly from Oxford, and they shared his vision of an all-imposing Empire controlling the world.

  Two major ‘problems’ emerged that damaged Milner’s reputation. The first was his acceptance of the concentration-camp system that caused the deaths of 32,000 women and children. The second was the system of immigrant Chinese labour employed to get the gold mines back into full production. The use of flogging as a form of punishment caused public outrage in Britain.

  Milner returned to Britain in 1905, having left South Africa in the hands of his trusted placemen. The changing nature of European alliances became an issue that required his presence in London. But many valuable lessons were learned by Milner and the Secret Elite during the war in South Africa.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Edward Conspiracy – First Steps and New Beginnings

  THOUGH THE BOER WAR HAD finally ended in victory, with South Africa’s gold and diamonds in the hands of the Secret Elite, it came at a cost greater than the number of lives lost. Britain had fewer friends than ever before. Living in ‘splendid isolation’, devoid of binding treaties with any other nation, had not been viewed as a handicap for as long as no other power on earth could challenge the primacy of British rule. However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, one European nation alone was rapidly gaining a position which threatened that dominance. Britain retained its immense global financial power and still ruled the waves in terms of the size of its navy and merchant marine, but industrial leadership and pre-eminence was passing to Germany with a rapidity that caused undeniable concern.

  Following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Kingdom of Prussia and surrounding principalities had merged to form Germany. When the bold Prussians defeated France, many in Britain, including the half-German Queen Victoria and her very German husband, Albert, were delighted that the upstart French, the traditional enemy of England, had been put in their place.1 But the ‘honest Teutons’ did not stop there. The rapid scientific and industrial expansion of their newly unified nation was the most important single development in the half-century before the First World War.2 Unification had given Germany a new standing in continental Europe, and from 1890 there was no question that she was outstripping both Britain and France.3

  First one British industry then another fell behind German output, capacity or invention. Modern machinery, highly trained technical skills, application of scientific discoveries to production techniques and a will to adapt to the purchaser’s wishes were just some of the reasons why Germany forged ahead. Her extraction of coal quadrupled between 1871 and 1906, production in pig iron quintupled and steel output rose from half a million tons in 1871 to twelve million in 1907.4

  Germany, itself a former market for British products, had been transformed into a self-sufficient industrial nation. Then, having taken charge of the home market, its industries began to assert themselves abroad. Worried reports to the British Foreign Office confirmed that German iron and ste
el were being exported to areas of the world that Britain had long held as her own preserve, including Australia, South America, China and even Britain itself. In 1871, the German fleet consisted of a few sailing vessels plying the Baltic, but by 1900 the situation had changed dramatically, with over 4,000 ships carrying her merchandise across every ocean. In fact, the Hamburg-American shipping line became the largest in the world.

  The Foreign Office viewed this competition in shipping much more seriously than rivalry in trade because it was a point of honour that Britannia ruled the waves. In addition, the mercantile navy had always served as a nursery for men of the fighting navy, and the rapid expansion in German naval activity alarmed the Secret Elite. The German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (referred to as Chancellor Bethmann from this point on in the text), stated that the British ‘looked upon a Germany that kept on growing as an unwanted and troublesome intruder on the sanctity of British supremacy over the commerce and oceans of the world’.5 The troublesome intruder had to be confronted.