A War Time Love Affair:The Round TableandThe New Republic, c.1914–1919

Abstract

AbstractAgainst the backdrop of the Great War a seemingly unlikely transatlantic romance blossomed between the deeply imperialistRound Tablejournal founded by “Milner’s Kindergarten,” a cadre of young former colonial administrators in Great Britain, and the American progressive standard-bearerThe New Republic. The rhetoric ofThe New Republicin these years was deeply influenced by political Anglo-Saxon thought, as exemplified inThe Round Table. Political Anglo-Saxonism was the belief that Anglo-Saxons were uniquely prepared for both self-governance and colonial governance. Adherents judged others’ capacity to self-govern against idealized Anglo norms. BothThe Round Table(1910) andThe New Republic(1914), from their inaugural issues on, sought national solutions for national problems utilizing a shared rhetoric of national efficiency. During the Great War this shared nationalist-progressivism drew the two groups together facilitatingThe New Republic’s founders’ early (1915) embrace of American intervention in the war. These connections are illuminated here through the interactions ofThe New Republicfounders: Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl with key members of the British Round Table set, including Lionel Curtis, Philip Henry Kerr, Alfred Zimmern, and the prominent American “imperial school” historian George Louis Beer.