30 AUGUST 1935, Page 3

The Mentor of the Commonwealth The completion. by the Round

Table of a hundred quarterly numbers is a far more notable achievement than the mere successful achievement of twenty-five years of existence . implies. For through that period. the. Round Table, founded in 1910 by that remarkable group known as " Milner's young men " (Lord -Lothian, Mr. Lionel Curtis, Mr. Geoffrey Dawson, Mr. Lionel Hichens, Mr. Robert Brand, Prof. Basil Williams, and many. others), has .moulded. thought within this country. and outside more surely . and effectively than any com- parable publication—if indeed any publication is com- parable' at all. Its achievement, in a word, is to have turned the idea of Empire into the idea of Commonwealth,: and the idea of Commonwealth rights into the idea 'of a Commonwealth mission. Its method of production= each article representing the pooled wisdom. of a .group rather than the dogmatic assertions of an individual—. is unique, and it is no mere accident that the development Of the Commonwealth through a quarter of a century has corresponded so closely to the doctrines preached through that period by' the Round Table. Never, it may be added, was the grey quarterly more vigorous or more' valuable than today, When it has widened its horizons to bring the world, and particularly the League of Nations,. within the scope of its collective study.