The initial aim of the movement was closer union between Britain and the fully self-governing colonies, indeed per Lionel Curtis in the form of imperial federation, though key contributors such as Leo Amery and later consensus called merely for co-operation.
Curtis hoped that he would be able to produce a collective volume arguing the case for imperial federation; but agreement proved impossible, and in 1916 he published The Problem of the Commonwealth under his name only.
In the course of his studies, Curtis developed the 'principle' of a Commonwealth as involving the progressive enlargement of self-government among its members, an idea which already held or gained more favour among the Round Table groups than federation.
After self-determination was fully exercised by such nations in the 1980s, with the technical exception of the very low-lying Chagos Archipelago whose people had been displaced decades earlier, the movement continues to be a banner for occasional talks and forums which reflect on the future shared activities, practices and extent of the Commonwealth.
Prominent members of the Round Table 'moot' included:[9] Georgetown University Professor and Council on Foreign Relations archivist Carroll Quigley published what he regarded as documented proof that the Round Table Group was the front for a secret society for a global conspiracy of control set up by Cecil Rhodes named the Society of the Elect[10] to implement Rhodes's plan (detailed in his will) to unite all English-speaking nations,[11] and further believed that the elite of the British Empire had an undue influence on the American elite.
[12] As one writer noted in a journal of arts, politics and letters published triannually by of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars, the "tragedy of Quigley was his conviction that he was outside of an inner circle that itself did not exist"[13]