the "ROOM" as predecessor of the OSS

[Peter Lemkin]

Roundtable Group Established
As governor-general and high commissioner of South Africa in the period 1897-1905,
Milner recruited a group of young men, chiefly from Oxford and from Toynbee Hall, to
assist him in organizing his administration. Through his influence these men were able to
win influential posts in government and international finance and became the dominant
influence in British imperial and foreign affairs up to 1939. Under Milner in South Africa
they were known as Milner's Kindergarten until 1910. In 1909-1913 they organized semisecret
groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the chief British dependencies and the
United States. These still function in eight countries. They kept in touch with each other
by personal correspondence and frequent visits, and through an influential quarterly
magazine, The Round Table, founded in 1910 and largely supported by Sir Abe Bailey's
money.
The Royal Institute and Council on Foreign Relations Are Set Up
In 1919 they founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) for
which the chief financial supporters were Sir Abe Bailey and the Astor family (owners of
The Times). Similar Institutes of International Affairs were established in the chief
British dominions and in the United States (where it is known as the Council on Foreign
Relations) in the period 1919-1927. After 1925 a somewhat similar structure of
organizations, known as the Institute of Pacific Relations, was set up in twelve countries
holding territory in the Pacific area, the units in each British dominion existing on an
interlocking basis with the Round Table Group and the Royal Institute of International
Affairs in the same country. In Canada the nucleus of this group consisted of Milner's
undergraduate friends at Oxford (such as Arthur Glazebrook and George Parkin), while
in South Africa and India the nucleus was made up of former members of Milner's
Kindergarten. These included (Sir) Patrick Duncan, B. K. Long, Richard Feetham, and
(Sir) Dougal Malcolm in South Africa and (Sir) William Marris, James (Lord) Meston,
and their friend Malcolm (Lord) Hailey in India. The groups in Australia and New
Zealand had been recruited by Stead (through his magazine The Review of Reviews) as
early as 1890-1893; by Parkin, at Milner instigation, in the period 1889-1910, and by
Lionel Curtis, also at Milner's request, in 1910-1919. The power and influence of this
Rhodes-Milner group in British imperial affairs and in foreign policy since 1889,
although not widely recognized, can hardly be exaggerated. We might mention as an
example that this group dominated The Times from 1890 to 191, and has controlled it
completely since 1912 (except for the years 1919-1922). Because The Times has been
owned by the Astor family since 1922, this Rhodes-Milner group was sometimes spoken
of as the "Cliveden Set," named after the Astor country house where they sometimes
assembled. Numerous other papers and journals have been under the control or influence
of this group since 1889. They have also established and influenced numerous university
and other chairs of imperial affairs and international relations. Some of these are the Beit
chairs at Oxford, the Montague Burton chair at Oxford, the Rhodes chair at London, the
Stevenson chair at Chatham House, the Wilson chair at Aberystwyth, and others, as well
as such important sources of influence as Rhodes House at Oxford.
Roundtable Groups Seek to Extend the British Empire
From 1884 to about 1915 the members of this group worked valiantly to extend the
British Empire and to organize it in a federal system. They were constantly harping on
the lessons to be learned from the failure of the American Revolution and the success of
the Canadian federation of 1867, and hoped to federate the various parts of the empire as
seemed feasible, then confederate the whole of it, with the United Kingdom, into a single
organization. They also hoped to bring the United States into this organization to
whatever degree was possible. Stead was able to get Rhodes to accept, in principle, a
solution which might have made Washington the capital of the whole organization or
allow parts of the empire to become states of the American Union. The varied character
of the British imperial possessions, the backwardness of many of the native peoples
involved, the independence of many of the white colonists overseas, and the growing
international tension which culminated in the First World War made it impossible to
carry out the plan for Imperial Federation, although the five colonies in Australia were
joined into the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 and the four colonies in South Africa
were joined into the Union of South Africa in 1910.
Egypt and the Sudan to 1922
Disraeli's purchase, with Rothschild money, of 176,602 shares of Suez Canal stock for
£3,680,000 from the Khedive of Egypt in 1875 was motivated by concern for the British
communications with India, just as the British acquisition of the Cape of Good Hope in
1814 had resulted from the same concern. But in imperial matters one step leads to
another, and every acquisition obtained to protect an earlier acquisition requires a new
advance at a later date to protect it. This was clearly true in Africa where such
motivations gradually extended British control southward from Egypt and northward
from the Cape until these were joined in central Africa with the conquest of German
Tanganyika in 1916.
The extravagances of the Khedive Ismail (1863-1879), which had compelled the sale
of his Suez Canal shares, led ultimately to the creation of an Anglo-French condominium
to manage the Egyptian foreign debt and to the deposition of the khedive by his suzerain,
the Sultan of Turkey. The condominium led to disputes and finally to open fighting
between Egyptian nationalists and Anglo-French forces. When the French refused to join
the British in a joint bombardment of Alexandria in 1882, the condominium was broken,
and Britain reorganized the country in such a fashion that, while all public positions were
held by Egyptians, a British army was in occupation, British "advisers" controlled all the
chief governmental posts, and a British "resident," Sir Evelyn Baring (known as Lord
Cromer after 1892), controlled all finances and really ruled the country until 1907.
Inspired by fanatical Muslim religious agitators (dervishes), the Mahdi Muhammad
Ahmed led a Sudanese revolt against Egyptian control in 1883, massacred a British force
under General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon at Khartoum, and maintained an independent
Sudan for fifteen years. In 1898 a British force under (Lord) Kitchener, seeking to protect
the Nile water supply of Egypt, fought its way southward against fanatical Sudanese
tribesmen and won a decisive victory at Omdurman. An Anglo-Egyptian convention
established a condominium known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in the area between
Egypt and the Congo River. This area, which had lived in disorder for centuries, was
gradually pacified, brought under the rule of law, irrigated by extensive hydraulic works,
and brought under cultivation, producing, chiefly, long staple cotton.