New Dawn – World's Most Unusual Magazine

Author: Jim MacGregor & Gerry Docherty

  • The Secret Elite & the Balfour Declaration

    The Secret Elite & the Balfour Declaration

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 12 No 3 (June 2018)

    The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has barely been out of the news since the State of Israel was created in 1948. Few people are aware of the secret wheeling and dealing that went on behind the scenes in the lead-up to the fateful decision of the British government to announce its support for the creation of a Jewish homeland. 

    The critical events discussed in the following article took place during World War I, the first global conflict in which millions of young men died on the battlefield. Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty, authors of the book Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, have previously appeared in New Dawn, writing about the real power behind the war, the group they identified as “The Secret Elite” – made up of bankers and politicians.

    In the following exclusive article, they expose the shocking truth behind the controversial Balfour Declaration that justified the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and subsequently the State of Israel.

    LETTER FROM ARTHUR BALFOUR TO LORD WALTER ROTHSCHILD

    Foreign Office, November 2 1917

    ‘Dear Lord Rothschild,

    I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty’s Government the following Declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which have been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet:

    His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

    Yours sincerely,
    (signed) ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR’1

    Arthur James Balfour’s letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, the first public statement by the British government during World War I announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

    The above letter was released by the British Foreign Office and printed in The Times on 9 November 1917.

    Why at this critical juncture did the British War Cabinet decide publicly to favour Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people? There was a war on, and it wasn’t going particularly well. What was their purpose? Where did this fit into the Secret Elite’s strategy to crush Germany and advance its globalist ambition? How had it come about that a homeland for one specific religious group appeared on the agenda as if it was a solution to an unstated problem? Even if anyone believed the lie that the Allies were fighting for the rights of smaller nations, why had religious identity suddenly become an issue of nationhood? Had anyone considered giving Catholics such rights in Ireland or Muslims such rights in India? Was the world to be divided into exclusive religious territories? Of course not. 

    Lord Walter Rothschild

    To complicate matters further, one nation (Britain) solemnly promised a national home to what would become in time a second nation (the Jewish State of Israel) on land which belonged to another people (Palestinian Arabs) while it was still an integral part of a fourth (the Ottoman/Turkish Empire).2 In pandering to a relatively small group of Zionists, the Balfour Declaration was bizarre, deceitful and a deliberate betrayal of the loyal Arabs fighting in the desert war against the Turks. Perfidious Albion had rarely plumbed such duplicitous depths.

    The absolute destruction of Germany and her Ottoman allies promised to pave the way for a post-war re-drawing of maps and spheres of influence which would advance the Secret Elite’s overall strategy – namely the control of the English-speaking elect over the world. The strategic sands of Arabia and the oil-rich lands of Persia, Syria and Mesopotamia had long been prime targets. These were the first in a number of prerequisites which would shape the Middle East after 1919 to the advantage of Britain in particular. Critically, as a neutral, America had to be very careful about open intervention even after she had entered the war in 1917, and to an extent Britain acted as her proxy in putting markers down for a new world order. It is important to remember that when early discussions about the future of a Jewish homeland in Palestine were in progress, little mention was made of American involvement. The truth is otherwise. America was directly involved in secret intrigues.

    So, too, were small but influential groups of politicians and businessmen, English, American, French, Russian, men and women of the Jewish faith spread literally across the world, who supported a growing movement to establish a permanent homeland in Palestine. They were called Zionists. Take care with this term. Initially it included a range of Jewish groups which held different views and aspirations. Some saw Zionism as a purely religious manifestation of ‘Jewishness’. A small but intensely vocal group fostered political ambitions. This latter form of Zionism included those determined to ‘reconstitute’ a national home for their co-religionists. In the words of the former Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, “a national home for the Jewish race or people” implied a place where the Jews could be reassembled as a nation, and where “they [would] enjoy the privileges of an independent national existence.”3

    There were a small number of suggested sites for the proposed new homeland, including one in Uganda, but in the first years of the twentieth century a more determined Zionist element began to focus their attention on the former land of Judea in the Middle East. They spoke of the creation in Palestine of an autonomous Jewish State, a political entity composed of Jews, governed by Jews and administered mainly in their interests. In other words, the recreation of a mythical Jewish State as was claimed to exist before the days of the so-called ‘diaspora’.4 Few voices were raised to ask what that meant, on what evidence it was predicated, or how it might be justified? It was an assumed biblical truth. Not every Jew was a Zionist; far from it, and that’s an important factor which must be borne in mind.

    Frequently, historians write versions of history which imply an event ‘just happened’. In other words, they begin at a point that creates the impression there was no essential preamble, no other influence which underwrote the central action. One example is the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. For generations, school pupils have been taught this murder caused World War I. Such nonsense helped deflect attention away from the true culprits. Another example can be found in the usual interpretation of the Balfour Declaration which has been described as the British Government’s note of approval for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people, as if it turned up one day on the Foreign Secretary’s desk and was signed like the other items in his out-tray. It has been downplayed, granted but a minor mention in the memoirs and diaries of the politicians who carefully orchestrated its single sentence. The Balfour Declaration was much more than a vague promise made by British politicians under the pressure of war’s contingency. Such a simple interpretation has conveniently masked the international pressures which the hidden powers on both sides of the Atlantic asserted in favour of a monumental policy decision that opened the door to the eventual establishment of the State of Israel.

    ‘The Zionist Movement’

    At the 261st meeting of the British War Cabinet on 31 October 1917, with Prime Minister Lloyd George in the Chair, the membership comprised Lord Curzon, Lord Alfred Milner, Andrew Bonar Law, (Conservative leader) Sir Edward Carson, G N Barnes (Labour Party), the South African General Jan Smuts and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour. This was the inner-circle formed mainly from the Secret Elite’s political agents to run the war.5 They remained behind the closed doors of 10 Downing Street after other war business had been completed. The military and naval representatives were dismissed before the War Cabinet’s inner cabal proceeded to discuss the on-going issue of ‘The Zionist Movement’. As always, Lloyd George’s War Cabinet secretary, Sir Maurice Hankey, recorded the minutes. This coterie of British imperialists, and Secret Elite members and associates, agreed unanimously that “from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made.”6 To that end a carefully constructed form of words was tabled and the War Cabinet authorised Foreign Secretary Balfour “to take a suitable opportunity of making the following declaration of sympathy with the Zionist aspiration.” It was no co-incidence that some five days previously the editor of The Times had urged them to make this statement.7

    Members of the British War Cabinet (July 1917). 

    Two days after the War Cabinet’s decision, a letter was sent from the Foreign Office to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild (2nd Baron Rothschild) in London asking that he “bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.” It was signed Arthur James Balfour, and henceforth was known as the Balfour Declaration, though it was the product of many more minds than solely that of the British Foreign Secretary.8 Its precise wording was publicised across Jewish communities who hailed the letter as the beginning of a new epoch in their history. Despite the apparent care with which the War Cabinet attempted to lay down conditions to protect non-Jewish communities, in particular the rights of the Palestinian Arabs to whom the country belonged, the event was celebrated by Zionists across the world as a National Charter for a Jewish homeland.9 The genie was out of the bottle.

    In truth, the letter was the product of years of careful lobbying in both Britain and America. It was neither a beginning nor an end-point. Though the communication was essentially between the British government and the Zionist Federation in Britain, it had an almost casual feel to it as if it was simply a letter between two members of the English gentry, Balfour and Rothschild. The Declaration was far from casual and much more contrived than a gentleman’s agreement.

    By all known processes of law and morality, it was ridiculous. Consider the unprecedented nature of the proposal. Britain held no sovereign right whatsoever over Palestine or authority to dispose of the land.10 As if this would not cause sufficient confusion, the British Foreign Office had already promised parts of Palestine to the French, to the Arabs who owned the land, and finally, to the international Jewish community. Was there ever a better example of the wanton arrogance of the British imperialist ruling class? The very wording of the Balfour Declaration was ambiguous; the conditions set were impossible. What was meant by the phrase, “a national home”? It had no clearly defined meaning in international law. How could a foreign government promise to achieve world-wide approval for a national home for Jews in an Arab country without automatically prejudicing the rights of the Arabs whose ancestors had lived there for thousands of years?11 Its vagueness gave rise to interpretations and expectations which were certain to cause bitter dispute. What was going on?

    Secret Discussions

    The answer can be found by examining earlier versions of this controversial document and the extent to which Zionists on both sides of the Atlantic strove to nurture and protect it. Far from any notion of their sudden conversion to Zionism, the political drive to establish a Jewish homeland in the sands of the desert, British politicians had been engaged in such discussions for several years. This fact had been conveniently omitted from official histories, memoirs and government statements.

    A previous War Cabinet meeting on 4 October 1917 had considered an almost identical draft declaration from Lord Alfred Milner, the most influential leader of the inner circle of the Secret Elite. He included the words “favour the establishment of a National Home for the Jewish Race.”12 The capitalisation of the term National Home was later altered, as was the very Milnerite phrase, “Jewish Race.” Lord Milner was a very precise thinker. While the words National Home implied that the Jewish people throughout the world should have a defined area to call their own, his version favoured “the establishment” of such a place. It did not imply a return to a land over which they had assumed rights. Secondly, Alfred Milner held race in great esteem. He defined himself with pride as a British “Race Patriot.”13 His wording was a mark of respect. Others feared it was a dangerous phrase which might be interpreted aggressively. It clashed with the concept of Jewish assimilation, like Jewish-Americans, and hinted that as a faith group, Jews belonged to a specific race of peoples. Consequently, his version was toned down.

    Secretly, the War Cabinet decided to seek the opinion on the final wording of the declaration from both representative Zionists (their phrase) and those of the Jewish faith opposed to the idea of a national homeland. It is crucial to clearly understand that inside the international Jewish community there was a considerable difference of opinion, in favour of and against, this idea of a Jewish ‘homeland’. That these groups were apparently given equal standing suggested the Jewish community in Britain was equally split on the issue. They were not. The number of active Zionists was relatively small, but very influential. 

    US  President Woodrow Wilson, with his “alter ego” Colonel Edward Mandell House (right).

    Furthermore, the War Cabinet sought the American President’s opinion on the proposed Jewish homeland in Palestine.14 The minutes of the 245th meeting of the War Cabinet in London revealed that Woodrow Wilson was directly involved in the final draft of the Declaration. So, too, was his minder, Colonel Edward Mandell House,15 and the United States’ only Jewish Chief Justice, Louis Brandeis,16 both of whom telegrammed different views to the British government.17 On 10 September, Mandell House indicated that the President advised caution; on 27 September, Judge Brandeis cabled that the President was in entire sympathy with the declaration. Much can change in politics over two and a half weeks.

    As each layer of the onion is slowly peeled away from the hidden inner core of the eponymous Declaration, it becomes apparent that the given story has glossed over key figures and critical issues. There are hidden depths to this episode that mainstream historians have kept from public view and participants have deliberately misrepresented or omitted from their memoirs.

    Secret Elite Fully Involved

    The minutes of the War Cabinet Committee held on 3 September 1917 show that the earlier meeting had also been crammed with Secret Elite members and associates including Leo Amery, formerly Milner’s acolyte in South Africa.18 Item two on the agenda revealed that “considerable correspondence… has been passed between the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs [A J Balfour] and Lord Walter Rothschild… on the question of the policy to be adopted towards the Zionist movement.”19 What? “Considerable correspondence” had been exchanged between Lord Rothschild and the Foreign Office; not a letter or enquiry, but considerable correspondence. A copy of one of these letters sent from the Rothschild mansion at 148 Piccadilly on 18 July 1917 has survived in the War Cabinet minutes. What it reveals shatters the illusion that the British government’s promise of support for a Jewish national home in Palestine stemmed exclusively from the Foreign Office under the pen of Arthur Balfour. Lord Rothschild’s letter began: 

    “Dear Mr. Balfour,

    At last I am able to send you the formula you asked me for. If his Majesty’s Government will send me a message on the lines of this formula, if they and you approve of it, I will hand it on to Zionist Federations and also announce it at a meeting called for that purpose…”20

    The United Nations General Assembly decided in 1947 on the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem to be an internationalised city. Due to the outbreak of hostilities the plan was abandoned.

    He enclosed his (Rothchild’s) recommendation for a draft declaration. It comprised two sentences: “(1) His Majesty’s Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people. (2) His Majesty’s Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist Organisations.”21

    Balfour’s reply “accepted the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted… and will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which the Zionist Organisation may desire to lay before them.” What? How do you “reconstitute” a country? It might be interesting to consider the precedent that was being set. Could this mean that one day America might be reconstituted as a series of native Indian reserves or parts of England as Viking territory? Astonishingly, the Zionist movement was invited to dictate its designs for British foreign policy in Palestine.22 This was not some form of loose involvement. It was complicity. Lloyd George’s government, through the war cabinet, colluded with the Zionist Federation to concoct a statement of intent that met their (Zionist)approval. Furthermore, it was agreed that such an important issue, namely the future of Palestine, should be discussed with Britain’s allies, and “more particularly with the United States.”23 This action had all the hallmarks of an international conspiracy.

    How many lies have been woven around the design and origins of the Balfour Declaration? Lord Walter Rothschild was the chief intermediary between the British government and the Zionist Federation. In this capacity he had been involved in the process of creating and formulating a new and explosive British commitment to the foundation of a Jewish home in Palestine. More than that, Rothschild and his associates sought to control “the methods and means” by which it would be created. 

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    The Balfour Declaration was part of a process which was not bound by the convenience of time frames that shunts history into segments. Politically it served the Secret Elite ambitions both in the short and long terms. They understood that a pro-British Palestine would protect the vital sea route along the Suez Canal; that a declaration in support of Zionism would unlock the treasures which they desperately needed to crush Germany; that in both America and Britain, young Jewish men would come forward to join the dwindling rank and file in their armies. In all of this it is generally forgotten that unless powerful figures supported the Zionist claims before the war ended and established some vehicle through which they could influence the carving up of the Ottoman Empire, a rapid end to World War I would have been disastrous to their long-term ideals.

    In our book Prolonging the Agony, this whole question is carefully dissected to reveal the double-dealing and double standards which were cruelly visited on the Arabs of Palestine, and the rank complicity of the British and American governments. Most pertinently we produce documented evidence that clearly shows the manner in which an early attempt to encourage the Turkish Ottomans to abandon the war in 1917 was stopped dead in its tracks because no basis had yet been established for Zionist inclusion in any post-war settlement. 

    The Balfour Declaration was no gentleman’s agreement. 

    Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty’s book Prolonging the Agony: How The Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-and-a-Half Years, citing original source documents, proves that World War I was deliberately and unnecessarily prolonged by the Secret Elite. The book is a fully documented exposé – a true history of the terrible events and shameful lies.

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    Footnotes

    1. Cabinet Papers: CAB 23/4 WC 261, p. 6
    2. The original quotation from which this observation is taken was made by Arthur Koestler in Promise and Fulfilment, Palestine 1917–1949, p. 4
    3. National Archives, War Cabinet Memorandum GT 2406.
    4. Cabinet Papers: CAB 24/30; War Cabinet Memorandum GT 2406, p. 1
    5. ‘The Great British Coup’ on author’s blog: firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com
    6. Cabinet Papers: CAB 23/4, WC 261 p. 5
    7. The Times, 26 October 1917, p. 7
    8. Letter from A J Balfour to Lord Rothschild, 2 November 1917
    9. ‘Great Britain, Palestine and the Jews. Jewry’s Celebration Of Its National Charter’,Anonymous pamphlet, 1917
    10. Sol M. Linowitz, ‘Analysis of a Tinderbox: The Legal Basis for the State ofIsrael’, American Bar Association Journal, Vol. 43, 1957, p. 523
    11. Arthur Koestler, Promise and Fulfilment, Palestine 1917–1949, p. 4
    12. Cabinet Papers: CAB 23/4/19 WC 245, p. 6
    13. A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 401
    14. Cabinet Papers: CAB 23/4/19 WC 245, p. 6
    15. War Cabinet Memorandum: GT 2015
    16. War Cabinet Memorandum: GT 2158
    17. Cabinet Papers: CAB 23/4/19 p. 5
    18. Cabinet Papers: CAB 23/4/1. WC. 227, p. 1
    19. War Cabinet Memorandum: 1803 – The Zionist Movement.
    20. Ibid.
    21. Ibid.
    22. Cabinet Papers: CAB 24/24/4
    23. Cabinet Papers: CAB 23/4/1. WC 227, p. 2

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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  • The Secret Elite & the Origins of the New World Order

    The Secret Elite & the Origins of the New World Order

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 9 No 4 (Aug 2015)

    Secret societies, the unseen hands that steer national and international affairs from the shadows, go back to the dawn of Western civilisation. The individual most famously linked to these occult forces is Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830), a Jesuit trained philosopher and lay professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt in southern Germany. On 1 May 1776 Weishaupt founded a secret society called the ‘Perfectilibists’ (which soon became known as the ‘Order of the Illuminati’.) The Illuminati recruited over 2,000 influential followers, but apparently lasted only until March 1785 when the Bavarian Government uncovered the conspiracy, exiled Weishaupt and outlawed the Order.

    Some investigators suggest that rather than being wound up in 1785, the Illuminati (‘enlightened ones’) continued in existence to the present day. For the past 200 years controversy persisted over its role in influencing global affairs. In 1798 John Robison, professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, published Proofs of Conspiracy, a book alleging an Illuminati/Freemasonry plot to conspire against all religions, kings and governments of Europe.1 According to Robison, the Illuminati had been instrumental in fomenting the worst excesses of the French Revolution. That same year the Jesuit Abbé Augustin de Barruel published Memoires pour Servir a l’Histoire de Jacobinisme which supported Robison’s thesis.2 A century and a half later, Nesta Webster and William Guy Carr revived conspiracy theories about the Illuminati.

    Nesta Webster (1876-1960), who was linked to the British Union of Fascists, wrote that rather than being banished, the Illuminati remained active and within a few years had “multiplied its hotbeds all through the south of Germany, and as a consequence in Saxony, in Prussia, in Sweden, and even in Russia.”3 William Guy Carr, an English born Canadian naval officer and lay Christian preacher, supported this thesis, maintaining that Weishaupt had been retained by moneylenders, including the House of Rothschild. Carr claimed there was an evil force at the forefront of an international conspiracy to destroy religious institutions and national governments in order to bring about a “Satanic One World Government.”4

    According to Carr, the conspirators use a variety of methods to help them accomplish their aims, including:

    1) Monetary and sex bribes to obtain control of individuals already occupying important positions. Such recruits are then held in bondage through blackmail, threats of financial ruin, public exposure or physical harm or death of their loved ones.

    2) Illuminati in colleges and universities recruit students possessing exceptional mental ability.

    3) Individuals trapped into Illuminati control are placed behind the scenes of all governments as ‘experts’ and ‘specialists’ who advise adoption of policies which serve the secret plans for one world government.

    4) Control of the press and all other agencies which distribute information to the public.5

    However, Illuminati researcher Dr. Tony Page says that Webster and Carr totally misrepresented the situation and were anti-Semites indulging in madcap conspiracy theory. Page translated Weishaupt documents from the original German and presents him as a much maligned moral and virtuous man whose intentions were “assuredly high minded and benign.” A man who “strove for far nobler and morally exalted goals than are properly ascribed to him. In fact, his intention (naive perhaps) but in my view, sincere, was to promote and disseminate human virtue, equality and freedom, and the happiness and dignity that flow from them.”6

    Today, some see the Illuminati “as a major factor and influence in international power politics, allegedly fomenting wars, civil disorder and revolutions in their attempt to establish a one-world government.”7 It appears the jury is still out on whether the Illuminati is an ongoing occult force.

    What we can say is that in our own intensive research over the past 10 years on the true origins of the First World War, we found no direct connection whatsoever to Weishaupt’s creation. The secret society that we identify as responsible for the war employed similar tactics, but was a very different, very English creation. Furthermore, it remained concealed until exposed by the late Professor Carroll Quigley in the latter half of the 20th century. Quigley (1910-1977) was a highly esteemed American historian who moved in Establishment circles, lectured at top universities, including Harvard, Princeton and Georgetown, and was a trusted consultant to both the US Department of Defense and US Navy. He studied this secret network for 20 years and was permitted to examine its records. In 21st century parlance, Carroll Quigley was the whistle-blower par-excellence.

    THE QUIGLEY ENIGMA

    Professor Quigley wrote that the Rhodes secret society, or the ‘Milner Group’ as he called it after Cecil Rhodes’s death, was “one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century” and of such significance that “evidence of its existence is not hard to find, if one knows where to look.”8 The ‘Milner Group’ exposed by Quigley is now widely recognised and variably named by others as the ‘Hidden Power’, the ‘Money Power’, the ‘Deep State’, or ‘the men behind the curtain’. All these labels are pertinent, but we call them, collectively, the Secret Elite.

    Without Quigley’s revelations, the lid on this secret society would still be closed today. By opening Pandora’s Box and revealing some of the evils therein, he enabled others to see the truth. His work exposing this powerful group has been enhanced and developed through years of careful research by other investigators into an explanation of how control of the civilised world has steadily been acquired through wars, economic manipulation and political chicanery by generations of privilege and money.

    Our own work, including the book Hidden History: The Secret Origins of The First World War, closely examines the men involved and reveals their nefarious global influence was greater even than Quigley believed. We garnered solid evidence that its members were directly responsible for taking the world to war in 1914 and deliberately prolonged the terrible carnage for over four long years while making massive fortunes from it. The immensely rich and powerful Secret Elite controlled the British and US governments from behind the scenes, then as now, and much of the global mayhem over the last century arose at their instigation.

    While Professor Quigley did mankind a great service, he remains an enigma. He exposed this ruthless, anti-democratic, totalitarian organisation and anguished over their determined attempts to suppress his writings, yet back-tracked on some of his original findings as if in fear of his life. He also side-stepped a number of key issues and failed to discuss the Secret Elite’s role in the genesis of the 1914-18 war, or their audacious coup d’etat in 1916 whereby they literally took over the British government. Rather bizarrely, Quigley stated that he agreed with their goals and aims.9 He did, however, disagree with their methods.

    Their tendency to place power and influence into hands chosen by friendship rather than merit, their oblivion to the consequences of their actions, their ignorance of the point of view of persons in other countries or of persons in other classes in their own country – these things, it seems to me, have brought many of the things which they and I hold dear close to disaster. In this Group were persons… who must command the admiration and affection of all who knew them. On the other hand, in this Group were persons whose lives have been a disaster to our way of life. Unfortunately, in the long run, both in the Group and in the world, the influence of the latter kind has been stronger than the influence of the former.… I feel that the truth has a right to be told, and, once told, can be an injury to no men of good will.10

    There is something deeply puzzling about Quigley’s assertion that while their methods brought much of what he held dear “close to disaster,” he agreed with their goals and aims for global control. These powerful men intended to replace democratically elected governments, arguing that their rule would be the rule of the best, whether or not the people wanted it.

    A few researchers raise the possibility that Quigley was at some stage an actual member of the secret society, but failed to admit it. We believe it far more likely his strange statements of support were down to self-preservation. In his major works – Tragedy and Hope and The Anglo-American Establishment – he narrated a history peopled by men who successfully concealed their power and influence, their connivance and common purpose. These individuals (and their descendants and agents ever since) conspired in secret towards the establishment of a world government that ultimately they, and they alone, would control.

    It is worth noting that Quigley’s histories have themselves been subject to suppression. Tragedy and Hope was removed from bookstore shelves by unknown persons and withdrawn from sale shortly after its release. His publisher, the Macmillan Company, destroyed the book’s original plates and lied to him for the next six years.11 Quigley believed that powerful people suppressed the book because it exposed matters they did not want known. In this instance, unlike his exposure of the British Establishment, he did not name his tormentors.

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    IN THE BEGINNING

    The opening passage of Quigley’s The Anglo-American Establishment may read like a John le Carré thriller, but it is no spy fiction:

    One wintry afternoon in February 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London. From that conversation were to flow consequences of the greatest importance to the British Empire and to the world as a whole.

    The staunch British imperialists who met that day – Cecil Rhodes, William Stead and Lord Esher – were well-known public figures but it should be noted from the outset that each was linked to infinitely greater wealth and influence. They were joined weeks later by Lord Alfred Milner and Lord Nathaniel Rothschild, the international merchant banker and richest man in the world. He was inducted together with Lords Salisbury and Rosebery, whose families had for generations controlled the Conservative and Liberal parties in Britain and ruled the country as their personal fiefdom. Rothschild provided the financial clout while Salisbury and Rosebery provided the long-standing patronage and political networks.12

    Cecil Rhodes, in association with Rothschild, had made his fortune in the gold and diamond mines of South Africa. Stead was the most prominent English journalist of the day and a moral crusader of great standing. Esher represented the interests of the monarchy from Queen Victoria’s final years, through the exuberant excesses of King Edward VII, to the more sedate but pliable King George V. It was through Esher that the monarch was kept fully appraised of Secret Elite business.13

    Alfred Milner, a contemporary of Rhodes at Oxford University, was a self-made man of ability and ideas who began his working life as an aspiring lawyer, turned to journalism, led the political agitation against the Boer separatists in South Africa, and eventually emerged as an immensely powerful and successful power-broker. Milner was the master manipulator, the iron-willed assertive intellectual who offered that one essential factor: strong leadership. On Cecil Rhodes’s death in 1902, he became the undisputed leader of the world’s most powerful and far reaching secret society. These were the founding fathers of what we recognise today as the ‘New World Order’ movement.

    They met at private town houses and magnificent stately homes. These might be lavish weekend affairs or dinners in private clubs which provided suitable London bases for their intrigues. The heady mix of international finance, political manipulation and the control of government policy was at the heart of this small clique who set out to dominate the world. They drew up their plan for a secret society that would take political control in Britain and, later by extension, the United States of America. They renewed the Anglo-Saxon bond between the two countries – the ‘special relationship’ – expanding their power base to bring Anglophile Americans into the secret brotherhood; men who would go on to dominate the world through financial institutions, global corporations and dependent governments. Wars, revolutions and other major events of the last 100 years are directly attributable to these individuals. The Boer War and the destruction of Germany in 1914-18 were merely the first steps in their long-term strategy.

    The secret society comprised concentric circles with an inner core of trusted associates known as “The Society of the Elect” who unquestionably knew that they were members of an exclusive cabal devoted to taking and holding power worldwide. A second circle “The Association of Helpers” was larger and quite fluid in its membership. A third outer ring comprised members who may or may not have been aware they were either an integral part of, or inadvertently being used by, a secret society, though “it is more likely they knew it.”14

    The overlapping rings are themselves concealed, hidden behind formally organised groups of no obvious political significance. As Quigley put it, the group was able to “conceal its existence quite successfully, and many of its influential members, satisfied to possess the reality of power rather than the appearance of power, are unknown even to close students of British history.”15 In the early 20th century its tentacles spread throughout the British Empire to America, Russia, France, the Balkans and South Africa. Their targets were agents in the highest offices of foreign governments who were bought and nurtured for future use.

    What’s more, they had the power to control history, to turn history from enlightenment to deception. The Secret Elite dictated the writing and teaching of history from the ivory towers of academia down to the smallest of schools. They carefully controlled the publication of official government papers, the selection of documents for inclusion in the official version of history, and refused access to any evidence that might betray their covert existence. Incriminating documents were burned, removed from official records, shredded, falsified or deliberately rewritten, so that what remains for genuine researchers and historians is carefully selected material. Their ambitions overrode humanity and the consequences of their actions have been minimised, ignored or denied.

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    SPREADING THEIR TENTACLES

    One of the problems facing anyone who turns to Quigley’s seminal The Anglo American Establishment is that it makes for a difficult read. Like several of the early chapters of the Christian Bible, his inter-connecting lists name many from the aristocracy, big business, high finance, politics and the press. Some were linked by matrimonial alliances while others by their gratitude for titles and positions of power.20 He devotes an entire chapter revealing how the Secret Elite controlled The Times (then Britain’s most influential newspaper) for more than 50 years with the exception of the period 1919-1922.21

    A list of Oxford graduates, especially those given fellowships at All Souls College, included Milner’s heir apparent, Lionel Curtis, and numerous others who later gained positions of great significance and power. Indeed, they all did, every single name listed by Quigley. Oxford gave the Secret Elite access to influential professorships, some of which they created and funded themselves, such as the Beit Chair of Colonial History, established in 1905. It remains a serious concern that Carroll Quigley was absolutely correct when pointing an accusing finger at those who monopolised “so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period.”22 There is no ambivalence in his accusation. The Secret Elite controlled the writing and teaching of history through numerous avenues including the press, but none more effectively than at Oxford University where they held huge influence over Balliol, New College and All Souls, and largely dominated the intellectual life of Oxford in the field of history.23 They ensured we learn only those ‘facts’ that support their version of history. The influence was so powerful that they controlled the Dictionary of National Biography, meaning the Secret Elite wrote the biographies of its own members. They created their own official history of key members for public consumption, striking out any incriminating evidence and portraying the best public-spirited image that could be safely manufactured. Has anything changed?

    Oxford University was also the Secret Elite base for the Rhodes Scholarships, funded by the legacy left by Cecil Rhodes when he died in 1902. Rhodes’s wish was to create a “worldwide” secret group devoted to English ideals and to the Empire as the embodiment of these ideals,24 and the scholarships brought that international dimension to the society. They “were merely a facade to conceal the secret society, or, more accurately, they were to be one of the instruments by which members of the secret society could carry out his purpose.” Professor Quigley leaves us in no doubt that the secret society is the real power behind the scholarships.25 From its inception, Rhodes Scholarships favoured American students, with 100 places allocated, two for each of the 50 states and territories, whereas only 60 were made available for the entire British Empire and, strangely, several from Germany. The ‘best talents’ from the ‘best families’ were to be nurtured at Oxford University and imbued with an appreciation of ‘Englishness’ and the importance of the “retention of the unity of the Empire.”

    In The Anglo-American Establishment, Quigley concluded that the secret cabal advanced its power-base through a triple-front penetration in politics, the press and education.26 We would go further, and can but wonder why he omitted banking and the military-industrial complex from his analysis. Politicians will always be easy targets. Ambition, greed and sexual proclivity can be nurtured and harnessed. Sometimes men of real stature come to the fore and bring strong leadership to the cause. In the early years Alfred Milner assumed that mantle. Fired by a zeal forged by Ruskin at Oxford, he was consumed by the need to establish the primacy of upper-class Englishness at the pinnacle of world power. He believed in the need to bring the British Empire and the American ideal together to sweep aside any rival for world domination.

    Milner went to South Africa in 1897 to save it from falling to the Boers. He deliberately started the Boer War and saved the diamond and gold mines for fellow Secret Elites Rhodes, Rothschild, Beit and Bailey. He was idolised by Cecil Rhodes who placed his legacy in Milner’s safekeeping, and he was rewarded by the King with a knighthood and then a Viscountcy. Critically, in South Africa between 1897 and 1905, he built a personal following of young carefully chosen civil servants who loyally followed his every decision behind the scenes in British and world politics. Lord Alfred Milner was arguably the most important man living in the first decades of the 20th century, yet his name remains virtually unknown outside academic and political circles. Why?

    MILNER’S LEGACY

    To demonstrate the privileged path that the Secret Elite created in their quest to establish a ‘New World Order’, we have chosen to follow the trail that began with Alfred Milner, the undisputed leader for 23 years following Rhodes’s death in 1902. Critically, his most important achievement in South Africa was the creation of a network of extremely able acolytes to whom he entrusted the future direction of his cause: the domination of the world by the Anglo-Saxon race. His secretariat in South Africa comprised young men of “breeding, ability and conviction” from Oxford University, All Souls College in particular. Dubbed “Milner’s Kindergarten,” they absorbed his commitment to Ruskin’s philosophy, his disdain for career politicians and his concern that democracy as it had developed in the Western world was corrupt and untrustworthy. It was akin to “a religious brotherhood like the Jesuits, a church for the extension of the British Empire.”27

    From 1909 Milner began expanding the Kindergarten into a highly secretive organisation called the “Round Table,” with branches in South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and, crucially, the United States. (It is not to be confused with a benign charitable organisation of the same name.) The grand Arthurian title suggested equality of rank and importance, nobility of purpose and fairness in debate, but was nothing of the kind. Milner, and most of the Group, held democracy in contempt, and far inferior to rule by those who had an “intellectual capacity for judging the public interest” and “some moral capacity for treating it as paramount to their own.”28 Wealth, of course, also counted and “the key to all economics and prosperity was considered to rest with banking and finance”29 which the Secret Elite controlled. Alfred Milner acted as both elder statesman and father figure to the Round Table with his role described as “President of an Intellectual Republic.”

    The Round Table groups across the world kept in touch through regular correspondence and a quarterly journal called The Round Table that was controlled by the Secret Elite. They saw Britain as the defender of all that was fine or civilised in the modern world. Her “civilising mission” was to be carried out by force if necessary, for the “function of force is to give moral ideas time to take root.” Asians, for example, would be compelled to accept “civilisation” on the grounds they would be better off under British rule than that of fellow Asians. “To be sure, the blessings to be extended to the less fortunate peoples of the world did not include democracy.” They would simply be educated up to a level where they could appreciate and cherish “British ideals.”30 The ‘White Man’s Burden’ is indeed great.

    Milner, his Round Table, and the Secret Elite generally saw the new Germany with its economic, industrial and commercial strength as the great threat to their global ambitions. In The Round Table journal of August 1911, Lord Lothian, a member of the Secret Elite’s inner core, wrote: “There are at present two codes of international morality – the British or Anglo-Saxon and the continental or German. Both cannot prevail.”31 Alliances with France and Russia were created for the specific task of destroying Germany through a prolonged war.32 These men had no fear of war, though they rarely put themselves in the direct firing line.

    EXPANDING THE ANGLO-AMERICAN PRIMACY

    Cecil Rhodes had long dreamed of Anglo-American unity, and in 1891 actually discussed the possibility of achieving it by Britain joining the United States.33 On his death, the Secret Elite developed an even greater appreciation of America’s vast potential and the need for closer union. They adjusted the original concept of British race supremacy to Anglo-Saxon supremacy, so that Rhodes’s dream had only to be slightly modified. They created a common ideology and world outlook among the peoples of the United Kingdom and the United States, and the instruments and practices of cooperation in order to pursue parallel policies.34

    Alfred Milner believed these goals should be pursued by a secret political and economic elite influencing “journalistic, educational and propaganda agencies” behind the scenes. The flow of money into the United States during the 19th century advanced industrial development to the immense benefit of the millionaires it created: Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt and their associates. The Rothschilds represented British interests, either directly through front companies or indirectly through agencies they controlled. Small groups of massively rich individuals on both sides of the Atlantic knew one another well, and the Secret Elite in London initiated the very select and secretive dining club, the Pilgrims, that brought them together on a regular basis. On 11 July 1902, an inaugural meeting was held at the Carlton Hotel of what became known as the London Chapter of the Pilgrims Society. It was to have a select membership limited by individual scrutiny to 500. Ostensibly, The Pilgrims was created to “promote goodwill, good friendship and everlasting peace” between Britain and the United States, but its highly secretive and exclusive membership leaves little doubt as to its real purpose.35

    Seven months later the American chapter was formally created on similarly exclusive lines. This was the pool of wealth and talent that the Secret Elite drew together to promote its agenda in the years preceding the First World War. Behind an image of the Pilgrim Fathers, the persecuted pioneers of Christian values, this elite cabal advocated the idea that “Englishmen and Americans would promote international friendship through their pilgrimages to and fro across the Atlantic.” It presented itself as a spontaneous movement to promote democracy across the world, and most of the membership probably believed that. But the Pilgrims included a select collective of the wealthiest figures in both Britain and the United States who were deeply involved with the Secret Elite. They shared Rhodes’s dream and wanted to be party to it.36

    In Britain, at least 18 members of the Secret Elite, including Lords Rothschild, Curzon, Northcliffe and Esher, and Sir Edward Grey and Arthur Balfour, attended Pilgrims dinners, though the regularity of their attendance is difficult to establish. Such is the perennial problem with secret groups. We know something about the guests invited to dinner but not what was discussed between courses. In New York, members included both the Rockefeller and Morgan dynasties, and many men in senior government posts. The power elite in America was New York centred, carried great influence in domestic and international politics, and was heavily indulgent of Yale, Harvard and Princeton universities. Within a short period of time they created an American version of what Carroll Quigley termed the triple-front penetration of politics, the press and education. The Pilgrims Society brought together American money and British aristocracy, royalty, presidents and diplomatic representatives. It was indeed a special relationship.37

    Because closer ties with the United States were considered of such crucial importance, a Round Table group was also established in New York to further develop links between Westminster and Washington, and high finance in the City of London and Wall Street. It was supported by Rockefeller and Morgan, managed in secret, hidden from the electorate and the politicians, and normally its meetings went unreported in the press. Members aimed to gain political influence and set the political agenda in the US, but they were rarely willing to speak out in public. All was to be carried out in secret.38 How dangerous are those who believe they have the capacity to think and plan for the world’s good, impervious to the will of the people and disdainful of democracy itself?

    The first American to be directly associated with the Round Table was George Louis Beer, an outspoken Anglophile academic and writer who contributed reports and articles to their magazine for many years. Beer called Alfred Milner “the intellectual leader of the most progressive school of imperial thought throughout Europe,” and was one of the chief supporters of America’s intervention in the First World War. His link to the Secret Elite opened many associated doors and Beer became the recognised expert on colonial questions at the Paris Peace Conference in 1918-19. In the manner which typifies how these powerful men write their own histories, Beer and his Secret Elite compatriot, Lord Eustace Percy, later drew up the outline plan for the History of the Peace Conference. In other words, the Secret Elite made sure that the record for future generations was one they dictated. They supported Beer’s appointment to the head of the Mandate Group of the League of Nations and he was one of the creators of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London (Chatham House), its American branch, The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and sister organisation the Institute of Pacific Relations.39 Lest there be any doubt, these were all Secret Elite creations. Milner’s Kindergarten had been expanded into the Round Table and that, in turn, had been expanded into the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, the CFR in New York, and other Institutes across the globe.

    The dominant role of the CFR in controlling American policy and politics cannot be overstated because almost all of America’s leadership has stemmed from this elite group. That includes US presidents and their advisors, cabinet members, ambassadors, members of the board of the Federal Reserve, directors of the largest banks and financial houses, presidents of universities and heads of metropolitan newspapers, news services, and television networks. “It is not an exaggeration to describe this group as the hidden government of the United States.”40 It is no less than a carbon copy of how the Secret Elite took control of Britain in the 20th century. These organisations were direct extensions of the Round Table Groups and have helped drive the Secret Elite agenda through the 20th century and beyond.

    Carroll Quigley was the trailblazer in unmasking the Secret Elite, and it is plain to see they still dominate the British and American governments among others; still control banking and finance, politics, the press, the military-industrial complex, the universities and the key offices of state.

    Wherever you live, ask yourself this, “is it happening here?” The grotesque plan set in motion by Rhodes and Milner at the end of the 19th century rolls on. Can it be stopped from reaching its ultimate destination – totalitarian, elite-controlled one world government? The challenge is to reach beyond what Gore Vidal described as a conditioned response to the word ‘conspiracy’ where people react with a smirk and a chuckle; where historical analysis and contemporary evidence that demonstrates the power these people wield is dismissed as the product of ‘nuts and loners’ or fringe extremists.41 If we give up trying to educate the doubters, give up telling it as it really is, we the people are doomed to an Orwellian nightmare.

    Readers are encouraged to obtain a copy of the authors’ book Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War and visit the authors’ blog at firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com. Hidden History is available from all good bookstores and online retailers.

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    Footnotes

    1. E-book available at www.sacred-texts.com/sro/pc/pc03.htm
    2. E-book available at https://books.google.com.pe/books/about/M%C3%A9moires_pour_servir_a_l_histoire_du_ja.html?id=y8NWAAAAMAAJ
    3. Nesta H Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, HRP edition, 254
    4. William Guy Carr, Pawns in the Game, X
    5. Ibid., X-XI
    6. Tony Page, A Brief Justification of My Intentions by Adam Weishaupt, www.amazon.com/Brief-Justification-Intentions-Adam-Weishaupt-ebook/dp/B00M4TL9RS
    7. ‘The Enlightened Ones: The Illuminati and the New World Order’ by Michael Howard, New Dawn Special Issue 11
    8. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, IX-X
    9. Ibid., XI
    10. Ibid., IX-X
    11. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuF8rYgJPk
    12. Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor, Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, 17-29
    13. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, 137
    14. Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, X
    15. Ibid., 4-5
    16. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuF8rYgJPk
    17. D. J. Markwell, ‘Zimmern, Sir Alfred Eckhard (1879–1957)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37088
    18. Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, X
    19. Docherty & Macgregor, Hidden History, 14
    20. Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, 15
    21. Ibid., 101-116
    22. Ibid., 197
    23. Ibid., 84-100
    24. Ibid., 37
    25. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 131
    26. Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, 15
    27. Ibid., 34
    28. Ibid, 134
    29. Ibid., 122
    30. Ibid., 133-6
    31. Ibid., 329
    32. Docherty & Macgregor, Hidden History, 75-96
    33. Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, 38
    34. Ibid., 150
    35. Docherty & Macgregor, Hidden History, 210-224
    36. Ibid.
    37. Ibid.
    38. Ibid.
    39. Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, 168
    40. G. Edward Griffin, The Creature From Jekyll Island, 110
    41. Gore Vidal, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
    For our reproduction notice, click here.

  • The Secret Origins of the First World War

    The Secret Origins of the First World War

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 9 No 1 (Feb 2015)

    The history of the First World War (1914–1918) is a deliberately concocted lie. Not the sacrifice, the heroism, the horrendous waste of life or the misery that followed. No, these were very real, but the truth of how it all began and how it was unnecessarily and deliberately prolonged beyond 1915 has been successfully covered up for a century. A carefully falsified history was created to conceal the fact that Britain, not Germany, was responsible for the war. Had the truth become widely known after 1918, the consequences for the British Establishment would have been cataclysmic.1

    To the victors go the spoils, and their judgment was reflected in the official accounts. At Versailles in 1919 Britain, France and the United States claimed that Germany had planned the war, deliberately started it, and rejected all Allied proposals for conciliation and mediation. Millions of documents were destroyed, concealed or falsified to justify that verdict. Germany rightly protested she had been forced into war by Russian aggression. German delegates at Versailles, under threat of occupation, dismemberment and starvation, were left with little choice but to accept the blame and agree to massive reparations. As The Economist put it, the Treaty of Versailles was the final crime whose harsh terms would ensure a second war.2

    Our research proves that the true origins of the war are to be found not in Germany, but in England. In the late nineteenth century a secret society of immensely rich and powerful men was established in London with the stated aim of expanding the British Empire across the entire world. They deliberately caused the South African War of 1899–1902 in order to grab the Transvaal’s gold from the Boers. Their responsibility for that war, and the horror of British concentration camps in which 20,000 children died,3 have been airbrushed from official histories. The second stage of their global plan was the destruction of the rapidly developing industrial and economic competitor, Germany.

    Carefully falsified history? Twenty thousand children dying in British concentration camps? A secret society taking control of the world? Britain responsible for the First World War? Should you jump immediately to the conclusion that this is some madcap conspiracy theory, please consider the work of Professor Carroll Quigley, one of the twentieth century’s most highly respected historians. Quigley’s greatest contribution to our understanding of modern history is presented in his book The Anglo-American Establishment. It carries explosive details of how the secret society of international bankers, aristocrats and other powerful men controlled the levers of politics and finance in Great Britain and the United States. Quigley explains that very few people knew about this because the society was able to conceal its existence and “many of its most influential members are unknown even to close students of British history.”4

    Plotting to Destroy the ‘Teutonic menace’

    Cecil Rhodes, the South African diamond millionaire, formed the secret society in London in February 1891.5 Its members aimed to renew the bond between Great Britain and the United States, spread all they considered worthy in English ruling-class values, and bring all habitable portions of the world under their influence and control. They believed that ruling-class men of Anglo-Saxon descent rightly sat at the top of a hierarchy built on predominance in trade, industry, banking and the exploitation of other races.

    Victorian England sat confidently at the pinnacle of international power, but could it stay there forever? That was the question exercising serious debate in the great country houses and smoke-filled parlours of influence. The elites harboured a deep rooted fear that unless they acted decisively, British power and influence across the world would be eroded and replaced by foreigners, foreign business, foreign customs and laws. The choice was stark. Either take drastic steps to protect and further expand the British Empire, or accept that the new, burgeoning Germany might reduce it to a minor player on the world’s stage. In the years immediately after the Boer War, the decision was reached. The ‘Teutonic menace’ had to be destroyed. Not defeated, destroyed.

    The plan began with a multi-pronged attack on the democratic process. They would: (a) Wield power in administration and politics through carefully selected and compliant politicians in each of the major political parties; (b) Control British foreign policy from behind the scenes, irrespective of any change of government; (c) Draw into their ranks the increasingly influential press-barons to exercise influence over the avenues of information that create public opinion, and (d) Control the funding of university chairs, and completely monopolise the writing and the teaching of the history of their own time.6

    Five principal players, Cecil Rhodes, William Stead, Lord Esher, Lord Nathaniel Rothschild and Alfred Milner, were the founding fathers, but the secret society developed rapidly in numbers, power and presence in the years before the war. Influential old aristocratic families that had long dominated Westminster were deeply involved, as was King Edward VII who operated within the inner core of the Secret Elite. The two great organs of imperial government, the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office, were infiltrated, and control established over their senior civil servants. They likewise took over the War Office and the Committee of Imperial Defence. Crucially, they also dominated the highest echelons of the armed forces through Field Marshall Lord Roberts7 in what we have termed the “Roberts Academy.”8 Party-political allegiance was not a given prerequisite for members; loyalty to the cause of Empire was. They have been referred to obliquely in speeches and books as ‘the money power’, the ‘hidden power’ or ‘the men behind the curtain’. All of these labels are pertinent, but we have called them, collectively, the Secret Elite.

    Leading Role Played by Alfred Milner

    The leading figure in the Secret Elite from around 1902 until 1925 was Alfred (later Viscount) Milner. Remarkably, few people have ever heard his name. Professor Quigley noted that all biographies of Milner had been written by members of the Secret Elite and concealed more than they revealed. In his view, this neglect of one of the most important figures of the twentieth century was part of a deliberate policy of secrecy. Milner became the undisputed leader of the Secret Elite. On his return from South Africa in 1905 he set about preparing the British Empire for war with Germany. Though not a member of parliament, he sat in the inner-circle of Lloyd George’s Imperial War Cabinet from 1916 onwards.9 What was so precious about Lord Alfred Milner that he has been virtually airbrushed from history?

    In goading the Boers into war, Milner displayed the cold objectivity that drove the cause. War was unfortunate but necessary. It had to be. The very future of the Secret Elite’s global ambitions depended on a victorious outcome. By May 1902, the Transvaal’s gold was in their hands at the cost of 32,000 deaths in the concentration camps. Though the Boer War finally ended in victory it came at a cost greater than the 45,000 Empire troops killed or wounded.10 Britain had fewer friends than ever. Up to that point, Britain didn’t care. Living in ‘splendid isolation’ and devoid of binding treaties with any other nation had not been viewed as a handicap as long as no other power on earth challenged the Empire.

    But in the early years of the twentieth century there was a serious challenger. If the Secret Elite were to achieve their dream of world domination, the first step had to be the removal of the upstart German competitor and destruction of her industrial and economic prowess. This presented considerable strategic difficulty. Friendless in her isolation, Britain could never destroy Germany on her own. As an island nation her strength lay in her all-powerful navy. Friendship and alliances were required. “It would have been impossible for Britain to have defeated Germany by itself. Therefore, it needed the large French army and the even larger Russian army to do most of the fighting on the continent.”11 Diplomatic channels had to be opened and overtures made to old enemies Russia and France. This was no mean task since Anglo-French bitterness had been rife over the previous decade and war between them a real possibility in 1895.12

    Step forward the Secret Elite’s most special weapon, Edward VII, whose greatest contribution lay in engineering the much-needed realignments, and addressing the Secret Elite’s prerequisite need to isolate Germany. Ultimate responsibility for British foreign policy lay, by precedent, with the elected government and not the sovereign, but it was the King who enticed both France and Russia into secret alliances within six short years. The great armies of France and Russia were integral to the mammoth task of stopping Germany in her tracks. Put simply, the Secret Elite required others to undertake much of their bloody business, for war against Germany would certainly be bloody.

    The treaty with France, the Entente Cordiale, was signed on 8 April 1904, marking the end of an era of conflict that had lasted nearly a thousand years. The talk was of peace and prosperity, but secret clauses signed that same day aligned the two against Germany. The Secret Elite then drew Russia into their web with a promise they never intended to deliver – Russian control of Constantinople and the Black Sea Straits following a successful war with Germany. This empty promise was the root cause of the Gallipoli disaster.

    Secret Elite Control Both Sides of Politics

    British democracy, with regular elections and changes of government, was portrayed as a reliable safety net against despotic rule. It has never been this. Both the Conservative and Liberal parties had been controlled since 1866 by the same small clique that consisted of no more than half a dozen chief families, their relatives and allies, reinforced by an occasional incomer with the ‘proper’ credentials.

    The Secret Elite made an art form out of identifying potential talent and putting promising young men, usually from Oxford University, into positions that served their future ambitions. With the demise of the Conservative government in 1905, the Secret Elite had already selected their natural successors in the Liberal Party: reliable and trusted men immersed in their imperial values. Herbert Asquith, Richard Haldane and Sir Edward Grey were Milner’s chosen men. Grey moved into the Foreign Office and Haldane the War Office, and within two years Asquith was Prime Minister. Continuity in foreign policy was assured. A complete root-and-branch reorganisation of the War Office began in preparation for the coming war with Germany. How the Secret Elite must have laughed in their champagne at the notion of parliamentary democracy.

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    Secret Elite’s Propaganda Arm: The Press

    Control of politics had never been a problem, nor was control of the press. Lord Northcliffe, the most powerful press-baron, was a valuable contributor to the Secret Elite in their drive to vilify Germany and prepare the nation for eventual war. His ownership of The Times and Daily Mail allowed them to create the impression that Germany was the enemy. In story after story, the message of the German danger to the British Empire, to British products, to British national security, was constantly regurgitated. Not every newspaper followed suit, but the right-wing press was particularly virulent. A large and influential section of the British press worked to the rabid agenda of poisoning the minds of the nation. It was part of a propaganda drive sustained right up to, and throughout, the First World War. If The Times was their intellectual base, the popular dailies spread the gospel of anti-German hatred to the working classes. From 1905 to 1914, spy stories and anti-German articles bordered on lunacy in what was an outrageous attempt to generate fear and resentment.

    Tapping the Colonies for Cannon Fodder

    Sir Alfred Milner set himself the mammoth task of preparing the Empire for war. Britain had only a small, highly trained Expeditionary Force, but the Empire remained a vast untapped source with over six million men of military age. Milner knew that when war came he had to be sure Australia, New Zealand and Canada would stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain. A Colonial Conference was held in London in 1907 to wrap the Union Jack around the Empire. Australia’s Prime Minister Alfred Deakin was Milner’s prime target. They shared a platform at the Queen’s Hall on which Milner praised Deakin and Australia’s commitment to the Empire and stressed the links of race and loyalty that bound the two nations. They adopted a plan to organise the dominion military in line with the reorganised British army so that they could be integrated in “an emergency.” This led to the complete reorganisation of the Australian and New Zealand forces.13

    Canada, likewise, had a huge reserve of young men, and in 1908 Milner undertook a coast to coast rail tour praising Canadian spirit, patriotism and loyalty to the Empire.14 In June 1909 he threw his energies into an Imperial Press Conference in London that brought together over 60 newspaper owners, journalists and writers from across the Empire. Every effort was made to impress – indeed, overawe – the visitors, with lavish praise and hospitality. He was determined to rally the support of the Empire for the mother country in time of war. Travelling by private first class train, they visited armaments factories in Manchester and a shipyard in Glasgow where destroyers were being built for Australia. Honorary degrees were conferred on several leading newspapermen from Canada, Australia, India and South Africa. In the keynote address Lord Rosebery, a member of the Secret Elite, warned that never before in the history of the world was there “so threatening and overpowering a preparation for war.”15 Though Germany was not mentioned by name, the clear inference was that the Kaiser was preparing for war, and Britain and the Empire must quickly to be made ready. Lord Rosebery called on the delegates “to take back to your young dominions across the seas” the message that “the personal duty for national defence rests on every man and citizen of the Empire.”16 Milner later sent his most trusted acolytes to organise influential local groups throughout the Empire. Their message repeated the mantra of loyalty, duty, unity and the benefits of Empire… Empire… Empire. In the final analysis, Australia placed its navy under British command, and a total of 332,000 Australians went to war. New Zealand sent 112,000 men. The Empire did ‘its duty’, yet what have you ever heard about Lord Alfred Milner?

    A Convenient Assassination

    Two conditions had to be met before the Secret Elite could start their war. Firstly, Britain and the Empire had to be made ready. Secondly, in order to heap blame on Germany, she had to be goaded into making the first move. The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 provided the excuse for monstrous manipulation. It has often been cited as the cause of the First World War. What nonsense. On its own it was just one more political assassination in an era of such murders. The blame rested with a group of Serbian officials who trained, armed and aided the assassins, and Austrian retribution was generally accepted as a valid reaction. What we have demonstrated in our book, Hidden History, is that connections linked the Serbians, the Russian Ambassador in Belgrade, the Foreign Office in St. Petersburg and the Secret Elite in London.17 Austria demanded the Serbian government take specific action against the perpetrators and allow Austrian involvement in the investigation. Serbia refused. Russia, having assumed the spurious role of protector, voiced total support for Serbia.

    In London, the Secret Elite purposefully fanned the orchestrated antagonisms into a crisis. When Serbia and Austria squared up to each other in what should have been a localised conflict, Russia, with the full support of London and Paris, began in secret to mobilise her massive armies on Germany’s eastern border. Everyone was aware that once the general mobilisation of an army began, it meant war and there was no turning back. Germany faced invasion along her eastern front, and, as the French army mobilised to the west, the Kaiser repeatedly made valiant attempts to persuade his cousin the Tsar to stand down his armies. In the full knowledge that France had promised to join with her immediately, and that Britain, though not openly admitting her collusion, was secretly committed to war, the Tsar refused. Russia’s dream of taking Constantinople could at last be realised.

    Backed into a corner and forced into a defensive war, Germany was the last power in Europe to mobilise her army. In order to deal with the French who had secretly mobilised to the west, the Kaiser ordered the German army to advance into France through Belgium. He had little other option. Continental Europe was at war.

    The Secret Elite watched and waited. Though joint preparations for war had been ongoing since 1905, they had been kept so secret that only five out of twenty Cabinet ministers in the British government knew of Britain’s commitments. Sir Edward Grey addressed the House of Commons on 3 August and promised that no action would be taken without the approval of parliament, yet that approval was never put to a vote. The crux of his argument lay in Belgian neutrality though he knew full well that such neutrality was a grotesque charade. Among others, the American writer Albert J Nock later revealed that Belgium had been a secret, but solid ally of Britain, France and Russia long before August 1914.18 The fiction of Belgian neutrality provided the legal and popular excuse for Britain to declare war on Germany on 4 August 1914. Sir Edward Grey, loyal servant of the Secret Elite, lied the British Empire into war.

    Documentary Evidence Destroyed & History Falsified

    Over the last 100 years facts have been twisted and falsified by court historians. Members of the Secret Elite took exceptional care to remove traces of their conspiracy, and letters, telegrams, official reports and cabinet minutes which would have revealed the truth have disappeared. Letters to and from Alfred Milner were removed, burned or otherwise destroyed. Incriminating letters sent by King Edward were subject to an order that, on his death, they must be destroyed immediately.19 Lord Nathan Rothschild, a founder member of the Secret Elite, likewise ordered that his papers and correspondence be burned posthumously lest his political influence and connections became known. As his official biographer commented, one can but “wonder how much of the Rothschild’s political role remains irrevocably hidden from posterity.”20

    Professor Quigley pointed an accusatory finger at those who monopolised “so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period.” There is no ambivalence in his damning accusation. The Secret Elite controlled the writing and teaching of history through numerous avenues but none more effectively than Oxford University. Milner’s men largely dominated Balliol College, New College and All Souls which, in turn, largely dominated the intellectual life of Oxford in the field of history. They controlled the Dictionary of National Biography which meant the Secret Elite wrote the biographies of its own members. They created their own official history of key members for public consumption, striking out any incriminating evidence and portraying the best public-spirited image that could be safely manufactured. They paid for new chairs of history, politics, economics and, ironically, peace studies.21

    There was a systematic conspiracy by the British government to cover all traces of its own devious machinations. Official memoirs covering the origins of the war were carefully scrutinised and censored before being released. Cabinet records for July 1914 relate almost exclusively to Ireland, with no mention of the impending global crisis. No effort has been made to explain why crucial records are missing. In the early 1970s, the Canadian historian Nicholas D’Ombrain noted that War Office records had been “weeded.” During his research he realised that as much as five-sixths of “sensitive” files were removed as he went about his business.22 Why? Where did they go? Who authorised their removal? Were they sent to Hanslope Park, the government repository behind whose barbed-wire fences over 1.2 million secret files, many relating to the First World War, remain concealed today?23 Incredibly, this was not the worst episode of theft and deception.

    Herbert Hoover, the man who fronted the Belgian Relief Commission and was later the 31st President of America, was closely linked to the Secret Elite. They gave him the important task of removing incriminating evidence from Europe, while dressing it in a cloak of academic respectability. Hoover persuaded General John Pershing to release 15 history professors and around 1,000 students serving with the American Forces in Europe and send them, in uniform, to the countries his agency was feeding. With food in one hand and reassurance in the other, these agents faced little resistance in their quest. They made the right contacts, “snooped” around for archives and found so many that Hoover “was soon shipping them back to the US as ballast in the empty food boats.” The removal of documents from Germany presented few problems. Fifteen carloads of material were taken, including “the complete secret minutes of the German Supreme War Council” – a “gift” from Friedrich Ebert, first president of the post-war German Republic.24 Hoover explained that Ebert was “a radical with no interest in the work of his predecessors,” but the starving man will exchange even his birthright for food. Where now is the vital evidence to prove Germany’s war guilt, had they been guilty? Had there been proof it would have been released immediately. There was none. What has been hidden or destroyed will never be known, and it is a startling fact that few if any war historians have ever written about this illicit theft of European documents: documents that relate to arguably the most crucially important event in European and world history. Why?

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    Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War

    The evidence for every statement in this article can be found in our book, Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War. In addition, we have been blogging regular articles since June 2014 on what really happened 100 years ago, not the pre-packaged history on which the British government would like us to concentrate. Amongst the disturbing ‘history’ to be exposed as a lie is the disgraceful Gallipoli campaign, a sordid and unworthy ‘distraction’ which resulted in tragic consequences for so many Anzac lads. A few historians have questioned why the attack on the Straits was so badly mismanaged but we go further, much further. In our next article for New Dawn, we will prove that the Gallipoli disaster was not due to misjudgement in London or the incompetence of naval and military leaders on the spot. Young men from Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand were needlessly sacrificed on the damned beaches and slopes of the Dardanelles to serve a very different purpose. Gallipoli was deliberately designed to fail.

    After a century of propaganda, lies and brainwashing about the First World War, cognitive dissonance renders us too uncomfortable to bear the truth that it was a small, socially advantaged group of self-styled English race patriots, backed by powerful industrialists and financiers in Britain and the United States, who caused the First World War. The determination of this London-based Secret Elite to destroy Germany and take control of the world was ultimately responsible for the deaths of millions of honourable young men who were betrayed and sacrificed in a mindless, bloody slaughter to further a dishonourable cause.

    Today, tens of thousands of war memorials across the world bear witness to the great lie, the betrayal, that they died for ‘the greater glory of God’ and ‘that we might be free’. It is a lie that binds them to a myth. They were the victims. They are remembered in empty roll calls erected to conceal the war’s true purpose. What they deserve is the truth, and we must not fail them in that duty.

    To read exclusive extracts from their book Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War and also their latest research, please visit the authors’ blog at firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com. Hidden History is available from all good bookstores and online retailers.

    The authors contributed the article “Gallipoli: The Untold Story – ‘The first casualty of war is truth’” for New Dawn 149, March-April 2015.

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    Footnotes

    1. Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor, Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, Mainstream Publishing, 2013, 11
    2. The Economist, 31 December 1999
    3. www.sahistory.org.za, politics and society, 20th Century South Africa
    4. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, G S G & Associates Pub, 1981, 4
    5. Ibid, 3
    6. Ibid, 197
    7. Nicholas D’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, Oxford University Press, 1973, 143
    8. Docherty & Macgregor, Hidden History, 194-202
    9. A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics: Study of Lord Milner, Blond, 1964, 390-441
    10. Will Podmore, British Foreign Policy since 1870, Xlibris Corporation, 2008, 29-30
    11. Pat Walsh, The Events of 1915 in Eastern Anatolia in the Context of Britain’s Great War on the Ottoman Empire: A Talk Given by Dr. Pat Walsh at the London School of Economics on February 15th 2013, 4
    12. Niall Ferguson, The Pity Of War: Explaining World War I, Basic Books, 1999, 41
    13. J. Lee Thompson, Forgotten Patriot: A Life of Alfred, Viscount Milner of St. James’s and Cape Town, FDU Press, 2007, 257
    14. Viscount Milner, Speeches delivered in Canada in the Autumn of 1908, 1-12, https://archive.org/details/cihm_72889
    15. J. Lee Thompson, Northcliffe: Press Baron in Politics 1865-1922, John Murray, 2000, 168
    16. Ibid, 169
    17. Docherty & Macgregor, Hidden History, 242-251
    18. Albert J Nock, The Myth of a Guilty Nation, B.W. Huebsch, 1922, 36-7
    19. Lord Arbuthnott Fisher, Memories and Records, Vol. 1, George H. Doran company, 1920, 21
    20. Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: Volume 1: Money’s Prophets: 1798-1848, Penguin Books, 1999, 319
    21. An in-depth analysis of the extent of this control can be found in our blogs of 18-19 June 2014 at firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/
    22. Nicholas D’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, Oxford University Press, 1973, xiii
    23. firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/
    24. http://whittakerchambers.org/articles/time-a/hoover-library/

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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  • Gallipoli: The Untold Story – ‘The first casualty of war is truth’

    Gallipoli: The Untold Story – ‘The first casualty of war is truth’

    From New Dawn 149 (Mar-Apr 2015)

    The truth about Gallipoli has, unlike its victims, been buried deep. Historians like Peter Hart who describe it as “an idiocy generated by muddled thinking”1 are justified in their anger, but not their conclusions. The campaign was conceived in London as a grotesque, Machiavellian strategy to fool the Russians into believing that Britain was attempting to capture Constantinople for them. The paradox of its failure lay in its success. Gallipoli was purposefully designed to fail.

    A secret cabal of immensely rich and powerful men – the Secret Elite – was formed in England in 1891 with the explicit aim of expanding the British Empire across the entire globe. They planned a European war to destroy Germany as an economic, industrial and imperial competitor and, to that end, drew France then Russia into an alliance termed the Entente Cordiale. Their massive land armies were needed to crush Germany. France would be rewarded with Alsace and Lorraine, while Russia was conned into believing she would get Constantinople.2 Thereafter, seizing the Ottoman capital became a “widespread obsession, bordering on panic” in St Petersburg.3

    Had Britain encouraged the friendship of Turkey in 1914, the disaster of Gallipoli would never have happened.4 The Turks generally disliked the Germans and their growing influence,5 and made three separate attempts to ally with Britain. They were rebuffed on each occasion.6 They also pleaded in vain with the French to accept them as an ally,7 and protect them against their old enemy, Russia.8 Poor fools. The French and British alliance with Russia was at the expense of the Turks, not an alliance with the Turks to save them from Russia. Britain and France planned to carve up the oil rich Ottoman Empire. To that end, the Turks had to be pushed into the German camp and defeated.

    In July 1914 the majority of the Turkish cabinet was still well disposed towards Britain,9 but their faith was shattered by the seizure of two battleships being built for them in England. As an essay in provocation it was breathtaking.10 “If Britain wanted deliberately to incense the Turks and drive them into the Kaiser’s arms she could not have chosen more effective means.”11 Winston Churchill (a loyal servant of the Secret Elite) seized the dreadnoughts because they were “vital to Britain’s naval predominance.”12 The truth ran much deeper.

    Back in February, Russia laid plans for her Black Sea fleet to take Constantinople by landing 127,500 troops and heavy artillery from Odessa. Arrival of the dreadnoughts from England would destroy this plan.13 Russia’s Foreign Minister Sazonov issued a thinly veiled warning to London on 30 July: “It is a matter of the highest degree of importance that… these ships must be retained in England.”14 Fearful that Russia would renege on her commitment to war should the ships be released, the Secret Elite withheld them. It kept Russia on board and helped drive Turkey into the German camp (they signed a treaty on 2 August), but it created a major problem. How to prevent the Russian Black Sea fleet from seizing Constantinople? Two German warships provided the answer. On 4 August, while off the coast of Algeria, the battle cruiser Goeben and attendant light cruiser Breslau received orders to head for Constantinople.

    Vastly outnumbered (73 to 2) by French and British warships, the escape of the German cruisers to Constantinople, 1,200 miles away, is described as a “fiasco of tragic errors” by “fumbling” British Admirals.15 The British Admiralty supposedly had no idea where they were heading, but the reality was very different. On 3 August, Kaiser Wilhelm telegraphed King Constantine to say that both warships would be proceeding to Constantinople. This information was transmitted to London,16 and to the British naval mission in Athens.17 Naval Intelligence in London had intercepted and decrypted the actual encoded message from Berlin to Goeben: “Alliance concluded with Turkey. Goeben and Breslau proceed to Constantinople.” The Admiralty knew,18 but relayed information to the Mediterranean fleet that “was either useless or inaccurate.”19 Goeben and Breslau were allowed to escape in order to neutralise the Russian Black Sea fleet. Foreign Secretary Sazonov was outraged that the Royal Navy had failed to prevent it.20

    The Ottoman Ambassador in Berlin summed it up perfectly: “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.”21 Safe arrival of the Goeben rendered a Russian amphibious operation well-nigh impossible,22 and the British Ambassador at Constantinople admitted that their presence served British interests, since “they protected the straits against Russia.”23

    On 9 September Admiral Arthur Limpus, head of the British naval mission in Turkey, was recalled. Turkey, although still neutral, closed and mined the Dardanelles. In late October Goeben and Breslau bombarded Sevastopol and other Black Sea ports. Infuriated, Tsar Nicholas insisted on war with Turkey and the seizure of Constantinople for Russia. British and French fears that he would make peace with Germany if Constantinople was denied him gave the Tsar overwhelming diplomatic leverage, and it was agreed that Turkey must now be brought into the war.24

    War Declared & the Secret Elites Initiate Gallipoli Campaign

    On 2 November Russia declared war on Turkey. Britain and France followed suit three days later. “November 1914 brought a kind of holy war fever to the Russian Foreign Ministry.”25 With over one million Russian casualties for no gain, anti-war protests and revolution stalked the streets of Petrograd. In London, fear of Russia signing a peace treaty with Germany loomed large. How was Russia to be kept in the war with the promise of Constantinople, without actually allowing it? The solution, an attack on Gallipoli, was fraught with pitfalls. The Tsar had to be tricked into believing Britain was generously responding in his hour of need by mounting an all-out effort to take Constantinople for Russia.

    The Gallipoli campaign supposedly arose from an urgent call for help from the Russian commander-in-chief Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich on 31 December. Would Britain create a diversion to relieve pressure on Russian troops fighting in the Caucasus?26 This widely held view is wrong. The suggestion came not from Nikolaevich, but from the British military attaché at Petrograd, Sir John Hanbury-Williams. Intimately linked to the Secret Elite and their leader Lord Alfred Milner,27 Hanbury-Williams was frequently in close contact with Nikolaevich. He expressed anxiety about Russia’s domestic morale, but never even mentioned the Dardanelles. It was Hanbury-Williams who planted the idea of a British demonstration against the Ottoman Empire.28 Next day this was presented to the British War Council and magically transformed into a desperate plea for help from Russia.

    Having already decided their strategy to keep the Russians out of Constantinople, the Secret Elite now cleverly made it appear that the idea came from Russia. It was all pre-planned, “long before any kind of military imperative in the Ottoman theatre was apparent.”29 The Secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defence, Maurice Hankey, proposed a solution that met all requirements, and it is no coincidence that Hankey was himself a member of the Secret Elite.30 The Gallipoli campaign would be mounted as a sop to the Russians, but set up to fail.

    Days later the military dynamic changed. The Turkish 3rd Army was decimated in the Caucasus and, irrespective of whose suggestion it had been, there was no need whatsoever for any British intervention to help Russia. Nonetheless, on 20 January Britain informed Russia that she would undertake not just a demonstration, but a complete operation to penetrate the Dardanelles and Gallipoli. The Russians desperately wanted to take part, but were told to concentrate all efforts against Germany on the Eastern Front. The Secret Elite moved into top gear. An objective that required long months of careful preparation was rushed ahead at breakneck speed with disregard for the basic prerequisites for success.

    Churchill assumed command and chose men for their ineptitude rather than ability. He turned to Vice-Admiral Sackville Carden, recently appointed commander of the Mediterranean Squadron after years in a desk-bound job, as superintendent of the Malta dockyards. Slow and ineffective,31 Carden was tasked with drawing up a plan for a naval attack on the Dardanelles, and relaying it to Churchill within days for presentation to a War Council meeting.32 On 15 January Carden was informed that his plan had been accepted33 and that he would be in command. What had happened? The ‘plan’, rapidly cobbled together on the back of an envelope by a second rate officer, was to be used as the blueprint for the Gallipoli campaign. The reluctant Carden was given no option other than to get on with it,34 and was effectively set up to take the blame when it failed. For fail it must.

    Rear-Admiral Arthur Limpus, an eminently more experienced and knowledgeable man who had spent years in Turkey advising on all naval matters, including the defence of the Dardanelles, was overlooked.35 Here was the man “who knew the Turks and the Dardanelles intimately,”36 yet Churchill shunned him because “the Turks might be offended” and it would be “unfair and unduly provocative” to place in command a man with an inside knowledge of the Turkish fleet.37 Limpus “knew all their secrets,”38 and more about the Dardanelles and the Turkish navy than any other naval officer, yet we are asked to believe that he wasn’t given command because it was considered ungentlemanly – “not quite cricket.”39 Limpus had been sent to the Malta dockyards to sit at Carden’s old desk. Outrageous stupidity or cold calculation?

    Limpus was opposed to Churchill’s plan,40 stressing that the first stage must be an amphibious landing, not a naval attack.41 He was not alone in his opposition. In 1906, naval chiefs considered a naval assault too risky.42 Any attack on Gallipoli would “have to be undertaken by a joint naval and military expedition,”43 and Churchill himself stated in 1911 that it was “no longer possible to force the Dardanelles.”44 Rear-Admiral Carden was ignorant of the fact that any chance of success at Gallipoli was absolutely dependent on a combined naval and military operation. Without long, detailed joint planning, and a sufficient number of troops, it was impossible. Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War, refused to make troops available and Carden was ordered to proceed with a naval attack.

    The Russians were turning the screw. Pressure for immediate action influenced the War Council’s decision.45 On 14 February, Sazonov stated that the time for moderation had passed. Tsar Nicholas agreed, informing the French ambassador that his people were making terrible sacrifices in the war without reward. Constantinople must be incorporated into his empire.46 Sazonov implied to the British ambassador that he would resign, and be replaced by Sergei Witte, a pro-German sympathiser who would immediately seal a treaty with Germany.47 All warnings against a purely naval attack were ignored. The navy’s objective was to “bombard and take the Gallipoli peninsula with Constantinople as the objective.”48 After the disastrous failure the Dardanelles Commission asked, “How can a fleet take a peninsula? And how could it have Constantinople as its objective? If this meant… that the Fleet should capture and occupy the city, then it was absurd.”49 It was all absurd.

    Naval bombardment of the outer forts of the Dardanelles began on 19 February and ran for six days. It caused some damage but destroyed all hope of surprise and merely led the Turks to strengthen their defences.50 The main naval attack took place on 18 March. On the previous day Vice-Admiral De Robek had to take charge when Carden suffered a nervous breakdown. It was no surprise. He was never fitted for the task and felt completely undermined by the Admiralty’s refusal to provide custom-built minesweepers. They were utterly essential but he was given only North Sea trawlers that could barely make headway against the strong 5-6 knot current. Eight powerful destroyers, which could have been fitted with sweeps, remained idle that fateful day while the officers sat playing cards,51 and only two out of a total of 387 mines were cleared.52 A fleet of 16 British and French battleships bombarded the coast, but were unable to penetrate the minefield and six battleships were sunk or disabled by mines. The Bouvet sank within two minutes with over 600 men trapped inside. It was the disaster predicted as far back as 1906.

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    A Campaign That Could Never Succeed

    Orchestrated chaos shrouded a campaign that could never succeed. Kitchener meantime had changed his mind and agreed to make troops available for a combined attack, but the naval assault had gone ahead before their arrival. Maurice Hankey, acting more as strategic adviser to the War Council than its Secretary,53 stated, “combined operations require more careful preparation than any other class of military enterprise. All through our history such attacks have failed when the preparations have been inadequate.”54 He listed ten points to be met if a joint attack was to succeed. Was he saying, “it will fail as long as we do not take the following measures”? According to the War Council minutes, Hankey’s plan was not even discussed.55 In the event, every point he made was studiously ignored.

    Military leadership, like naval, was barely functional. General Sir Ian Hamilton, a man in the twilight of his career who “knew little of the Dardanelles, the Turkish army or of modern warfare,” was chosen to command.56 Scared of Kitchener, and hamstrung by his long-subservience,57 he noted in his diary, “It is like going up to a tiger and asking for a small slice of venison.” During the Boer War he had witnessed Kitchener respond to an officer’s appeal for reinforcements by taking half his troops away.58 The genial Hamilton, like poor Carden, was a scapegoat made to order.

    Summoned by Kitchener on 12 March, Hamilton was brusquely informed, “We are sending a military force to support the fleet now at the Dardanelles and you are to have command.” Hamilton was stunned, later admitting, “My knowledge of the Dardanelles was nil, of the Turk nil, of the strength of my own forces next to nil.” When asked if a squadron of modern aircraft with experienced pilots and observers could be made available, Kitchener testily replied, “Not one.” 150,000 men was the minimum required strength for the task, but Kitchener insisted that “half that number” would do handsomely.59 No attempt was made to co-ordinate intelligence about the defences at Gallipoli, not even at strategic level.60 Hamilton was given a cursory briefing, two small tourist guidebooks and old, inaccurate maps.61 Detailed reports from Admiral Limpus and Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Cunnliffe-Owen, another officer with considerable knowledge of Gallipoli, were kept from him.62 Hamilton set off within 48 hours, together with some inexperienced members of staff who did not even know “how to put on their uniforms.”63 So much for detailed preparation.

    The chaos continued. There was no discussion, no plan, no naval/military coordination. Indeed, it was a worse situation than preceded the naval operation.64 Gallipoli was to be invaded with a mixed force of 80,000 men from Britain, France and the Empire. Raw Anzac troops and unseasoned French recruits were to be thrown into battle for the first time. Marshall Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, was profoundly opposed to the whole operation and initially refused to provide troops. Political expediency forced his hand.65 A French army Colonel who had spent years in Constantinople also opposed the attack, but like everyone else with intimate knowledge of the area, its topography and defences, he was dismissed.66 Lieutenant-Colonel Cunnliffe-Owen, the British military attaché at Constantinople in 1914, who had personally conducted a detailed survey of Gallipoli, was likewise deliberately overlooked. In London when staff were being scratched together for Hamilton’s team, Cunnliffe-Owen was passed over. His detailed reports on the peninsula were never shown to General Hamilton.67

    Kitchener agreed to the deployment of 18,000 men from the British army’s 29th Division. Its commander, Shaw, had served with distinction at Mons and was considered a highly competent and “impressively professional soldier.” Two days before leaving for Gallipoli, when continuity was all-important, Shaw was inexplicably replaced by Major-General Hunter-Weston. He immediately rejected his allocated ship because it lacked first class accommodation, and was transferred to the luxury liner Andania.68 Major-General Shaw suffered the same fate as Admiral Limpus. A competent, knowledgeable man was rejected in favour of Hunter-Weston, a laughing-stock in the British Army,69 spectacularly incompetent, and “one of the most brutal commanders of the First World War.”70 Ask yourself, what was going on?

    Hamilton arrived to find his army scattered in confusion over much of the Mediterranean. Some battalion commanders couldn’t trace their companies. Ships came from Britain with such poorly written orders that captains did not know their destination.71 On their arrival at Mudros, the ships were found to be loaded in a shambolic fashion, and had to be taken 700 miles to Egypt to be unloaded and repacked.72 Such was the lack of preparation that even the simplest questions could not be answered. “Was there drinking water on Gallipoli? What roads existed? Were troops to fight in trenches or the open? What sort of weapons were required? What was the depth of water off the beaches? What sort of boats were needed to get the men, the guns and stores ashore? What casualties were to be expected? How were they to be got off to the hospital ships? It was simply a case of taking whatever came to hand and hoping for the best.”73

    An “Amateurish, Do-It-Yourself Cock-Up”

    You couldn’t make it up. There was a shortage of guns, ammunition, aircraft and, above all, troops. Hamilton’s requests for additional supplies and reinforcements were either ignored or refused.74 Gallipoli veteran Charles Watkins described the campaign as an “amateurish, do-it-yourself cock-up.”75 It was designed to be exactly that. The quality of preparation and leadership guaranteed it. General Ian Hamilton was the Secret Elite’s Patsy-in-Chief, unwittingly abetted by the incompetent Admiral Carden. These were the men chosen to fail.

    The Gallipoli landings went ahead on 25 April 1915 with the terrible slaughter and wounding of many incredibly brave young men, dispensable pawns on Imperial Britain’s chessboard. Despite the fleet now having some thirty powerful destroyers equipped to sweep the mines, and many officers totally confident that the fleet could now get through, no further attempt was made to force the Dardanelles. The navy would play no further part other than ferrying the men ashore, taking off the wounded, and providing a safe haven off-shore for the likes of Hunter-Weston. Successful mine sweeping had always been the key to a successful naval assault, and with the new minesweepers and a clear run through to the Straits, the fleet could have greatly assisted the army with controlled bombardments of Turk positions from within the channel. It would, of course, also have been able to cripple Goeben and Breslau. For the above stated reasons, that would not be allowed to happen.

    For years knowledgeable men had insisted that a well planned and resourced combined naval and military attack was the only type of operation that might succeed, but never at any point in the entire Gallipoli campaign was a joint assault carried out. The elites in London ordered the shambolic attack by the navy when they knew it was bound to fail, and now ordered an equally shambolic attack by the army in the full knowledge that it too could never succeed.

    Gallipoli was a lie within the lie that was the First World War. The campaign ended in military defeat, but geo-strategic victory for the British Empire. By late 1915, with Russian forces pushed back on the eastern front and any likelihood of their intervention in Constantinople gone, the British government began planning withdrawal from the corpse strewn peninsula. The last Allied troops were taken off on 9 January 1916, leaving behind 62,266 of their comrades. The majority of the dead on both sides have no known graves. Many of the 11,410 Australians and New Zealanders who died76 suffered unspeakable deaths, deliberately sacrificed on the altar of British imperialism.

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    A Myth Obscures the terrible Truth

    Over the last century, in both Britain and Australia, Gallipoli has been turned into a heroic-romantic myth,77 a myth promoted by court historians and pliant journalists in order to hide the stark truth. It was a ruse, a sop to the Russians to keep them in the war in the belief that allied forces would capture Constantinople on their behalf. Put into the hands of incompetent generals and admirals, starved of troops, determined leadership, ill-equipped, ill-advised and certain to fail, the attack on Gallipoli as an integral part of the imperial strategy was a stunning success.

    We are aware of at least one renowned Gallipoli historian and writer in Australia who agrees with our thesis. Like us, he proposes that “it was the intention of the British and French governments of 1915 to ensure that the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli campaign would not succeed” and was “conceived as a ruse to keep the Russians in the war…” He believes that while the proposition has circumstantial evidence to support it, there is “little or no documentary evidence.”78 He is very unlikely to find it. As revealed in our book Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, masses of crucial documents relating to the First World War were shredded or burned, or have been kept hidden away to this very day in a high security establishment at Hanslope Park in England. The individuals responsible for the war, responsible for Gallipoli, were many things, but they weren’t so stupid as to leave incriminating evidence lying around. Historians in Australia and New Zealand must stop protecting their comfortable careers and start acknowledging the terrible truth about Gallipoli. Peddling mythology as truth is an insult to the memory of those brave young men.

    Just as in Britain, the Government of Australia seeks to be the guardian of public memory, choreographing commemoration into celebration,79 ritually condemning war while the rhetoric gestures in the opposite direction.80 The War Memorial in Sydney’s Hyde Park proudly exhorts, “Let Silent Contemplation Be Your Offering,” yet the deafening prattle of political expediency mocks the valiant dead with empty words and lies. Don’t be fooled. Those young men died for the imperial dreams of wealthy manipulators, not for ‘freedom’ or ‘civilisation’. They died deceived, expendable, and in the eyes of the power-brokers, the detritus of strategic necessity. Remember that.

    To read exclusive extracts from their book Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, including their latest research on Gallipoli, please visit the authors’ blog at firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com. Hidden History is available from all good bookstores and online retailers.

    The authors contributed the article “The Secret Origins of the First World War” to New Dawn Special Issue Vol 9 No 1.

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    Footnotes

    1. Peter Hart, Gallipoli, vii
    2. David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, 138; Niall Ferguson, The Pity Of War, 61
    3. Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War, p.28.
    4. J Laffin, The Agony of Gallipoli, 3
    5. Robert Rhodes James, Gallipoli, 8
    6. Hew Strachan, The First World War, 102
    7. Friedrich Stieve, Isvolsky and the World War, 177
    8. W W Gottlieb, Studies in Secret Diplomacy, 34
    9. Dan Van Der Vat, The Dardanelles Disaster, 28
    10. L A Carlyon, Gallipoli, 42
    11. Gottlieb, Studies, 42
    12. W.S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 221-2
    13. Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War, 30-34
    14. Ibid., 102
    15. Ulrich Trumpener, ‘The Escape of the Goeben and Breslau’, Canadian Journal of History, September 1971, 171
    16. Ibid., 178-9
    17. Geoffrey Miller, The Straits, ch. 16
    18. 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, 101
    19. Ulrich Trumpener, ‘The Escape of the Goeben and Breslau’, Canadian Journal of History, September 1971, 181-7
    20. Gottlieb, Studies, 45
    21. Ibid., 46
    22. McMeekin, The Russian Origins, 105-106
    23. Strachan, The First World War, Vol. 1, 674
    24. McMeekin, The Russian Origins, 96-97
    25. Ibid., 115
    26. Ronald P Bobroff, Roads to Glory, Late Imperial Russia and the Turkish Straits, 125
    27. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, 56
    28. McMeekin, The Russian Origins, 129-30
    29. Ibid., 121
    30. Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, 313
    31. Tim Travers, Gallipoli, 20-21
    32. Laffin, The Agony, 21-22
    33. Robin Prior, Gallipoli, The End of A Myth, 22
    34. Ibid., 52
    35. Rhodes James, Gallipoli, 63
    36. B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, 213
    37. Laffin, The Agony, 9
    38. Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli, 60
    39. Michael Hickey, Gallipoli, 27
    40. Harvey Broadbent, Gallipoli, The Fatal Shore, 21
    41. Laffin, The Agony, 9
    42. Memorandum by the General Staff, 19 December 1906, National Archives, PRO. CAB/4/2/92
    43. Hickey, Gallipoli, 28
    44. James, Gallipoli, 3-4
    45. Broadbent, Gallipoli, The Fatal Shore, 28
    46. Ronald P Bobroff, Roads to Glory, Late Imperial Russia and the Straits, 126-131
    47. McMeekin, The Russian Origins, 130-131
    48. Laffin, The Agony, 15-22
    49. Moorehead, Gallipoli 40
    50. Laffin, The Agony, 31
    51. Travers, Gallipoli, 29
    52. Prior, Gallipoli, 53
    53. Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Vol. 1, 156
    54. Ibid., 163
    55. War Council Minutes, 19 March, 1915, CAB 42/2
    56. Prior, Gallipoli, 67
    57. Peter Hart, Gallipoli, 63
    58. Laffin, The Agony, 39
    59. Ibid., 30
    60. Ibid., 19
    61. Ibid., 31
    62. Hickey, Gallipoli, 67
    63. Laffin, The Agony, 31
    64. Prior, Gallipoli, 70
    65. Laffin, The Agony, 35
    66. Edmond Delage, The Tragedy of the Dardanelles, 109
    67. Laffin, The Agony, 12-13
    68. Hickey, Gallipoli, 57-58
    69. Denis Winter, Haig’s Command, 140
    70. Prior, Gallipoli, 80
    71. Laffin, The Agony, 31
    72. Moorehead, Gallipoli, 90
    73. Prior, Gallipoli, 242
    74. Moorehead, Gallipoli, 117
    75. Laffin, The Agony, 217
    76. Prior, Gallipoli, 242
    77. Jenny Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli, 7-14
    78. ‘Gallipoli: one great deception?’ by Harvey Broadbent, ABC, 29 Sep 2010, www.abc.net.au/news/2009-04-24/30630
    79. James Brown, Anzac’s Long Shadow, 19-22
    80. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, What’s Wrong With Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History, 8

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