| Milner | Alfred Milner | | | Born on March 23rd, 1854, and is the only son of Charles Milner, MD, and of Mary, daughter of Major General Ready, sometime Governor of the Isle of Man. He was educated at Tubingen, in Germany, where his father was for many years resident, and subsequently at King's College, London; and at the age of eighteen was elected to a scholarship at Balliol, where he was more or less contemporary with Mr Asquith, Mr St John Brodrick, Dr Gore (the Bishop of Birmingham), Sir Thomas Raleigh, and many other men since distinguished in public life. He has been a Fellow of New College, Oxford, since 1877. At Oxford he carried off the Hertford, Craven, Eldon, and Derby Scholarships, in addition to obtaining Firsts in Moderations and Greats. He was successively Treasurer and President of the Union Debating Society—then in its palmiest days— and a weighty contributor to its debates. As an undergraduate he was a Liberal tempered with the Imperial sentiment, and was an intimate friend of Arnold Toynbee, of whose career he has written a charming monograph. Following upon his Oxford days, a period of indecision came as to his future. He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1881, and for three or four years—from 1882 to 1885—was principally engaged in journalism, under such stimulating editors as Mr John Morley and Mr W T Stead, from whom Lord Milner now differs so completely on political lines of thought. But although journalism attracted him more than the Bar, Milner was altogether too big a man to be bound by the limitations of the Press. At the General Election in 1885 he unsuccessfully contested the Harrow Division as a Liberal, and in Jan, 1887—on the occasion when Lord Randolph Churchill forgot Goschen—he became private secretary to the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had heard and admired young Milner as an undergraduate at the Union. The Right Hon G J Goschen, as he then was, was not a man to place his confidence recklessly but when once he did so it was done unreservedly, and in the result he formed the highest opinion of Milner, who, in return, repaid his chief by the most devoted service, in the course of which time the subject of our sketch received many flattering offers of advancement, which he only refused out of loyalty to his chief. During this period Lord Goschen conceived and carried out his famous conversion scheme, which gave the name of 'Goschens' to a large part of the British Public Debt. His health becoming impaired, Lord Milner in 1889 entered the Egyptian service as Under-Secretary of State for Finance. Three years of administrative experience in Egypt supplied him with the material of his well-known book, England in Egypt, published at the end of 1892, to the later editions of which his friend Sir Clinton Dawkins, who succeeded him in Egypt, and subsequently Sir Eldon Gorst, contributed appendices. The work went through many editions, and is still regarded as one of the most valuable contributions to Anglo African literature, and one that has completely altered the views of Britons as regards the work of their countrymen on the Nile. It is written in a fine literary style, with a brilliancy of local colouring, and displays a close insight into matters of high polities and finance, with a keen appreciation of England's mission in what the author called the Land of Paradox, engendering a healthy confidence in the faculty possessed by Englishmen of doing good work under the most untoward circumstances. In 1892 Mr Milner (as he still was) was appointed Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, in succession to Lord Iddesleigh and Sir Algernon West, and in that important position he rendered valuable assistance to Sir William Harcourt, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in rearranging the Death Duties. In 1897 the Colonial Secretary was called upon to find some one to succeed Lord Rosmead in the dual office of Governor of the Cape of Good Hope and High Commissioner for South Africa—one of the most arduous, responsible, and difficult positions in the gift of the Crown, and a position which demanded sagacity above the average asked of colonial administrators, foresight, courage, tenacity of purpose, and impartiality, tempered with a conciliatory, but at the same time resolute, spirit. These high qualities Mr Chamberlain found in Sir Alfred Milner, who had been knighted some two years previously. Men of all shades of opinion united at the outset in commending Mr Chamberlain's choice, and the High Commissioner received a singular proof of his popularity in the shape of a dinner given in his honour under the presidency of Mr Asquith. Nominally the feast was private and personal, but, to use Mr Balfour's phrase on another occasion at the Athenaeum, the gathering was one of such undiluted distinction that the light thereof could not be hid under a bushel. There were no fewer than fifteen former Presidents of the Oxford Union present, the guest himself being the sixteenth. Mr Balfour, Mr Chamberlain, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Mr John Morley, and even Mr Leonard Courtney—who was afterwards to describe Milner as a lost mind— were there. The exciting days of the raid were not long passed, and a still more eventful epoch awaited Lord Milner's arrival at Table Bay. A careful study of the South African problem on the spot led the High Commissioner to arrive at certain conclusions, which were not altogether to the taste of the Afrikander Bond, or of a section of the Radical party in England. The abortive Bloemfontein Conference with President Kruger took place in the summer of 1899—a time when matters in the Transvaal were particularly complicated. Sir Alfred Milner took a very grave view of the issues which were at stake. The policy of President Kruger appeared to him to threaten the total extinction of British influence in South Africa. He made, however, every effort to secure a peaceful solution, short of surrendering what he regarded as the vital interests of his country. But after four months of ceaseless and harassing negotiations an agreement with the Beer Republic proved impracticable, and in October, 1899, the Transvaal and Orange Free State put an end to further discussion by abruptly presenting Great Britain with an aggressive ultimatum, and after forty-eight hours' notice invading Cape Colony and Natal. During the war which followed Lord Milner's administrative ability was strained to the utmost in dealing with the internal affair of Cape Colony, where a large section of the population were in sympathy with the enemy while some 10,000 of them went into open rebellion. Lord Roberts has borne eloquent testimony to the great assistance which he received from the High Commissioner in the conduct of the war. Early in 1901, while the war was still in progress, Sir Alfred Milner was transferred from the Governorship of Cape Colony to that of the newly annexed Boer States henceforward known as the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies, while retaining the office of High Commissioner. From that time onwards till his departure from South Africa four years later his headquarters were at Johannesburg. During a visit to England in the summer of 1901, which he paid nominally on leave, but mainly in order to confer with the Government on the future conduct of affairs in the newly annexed but not yet completely subdued States, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Milner and made a member of the Privy Council. He returned to Johannesburg in August, 1901, and in the following May he conducted, together with Lord Kitchener, the negotiations with the Boar leaders which resulted in the surrender of all the Boer forces and the termination of the war (May, 1902). In connection with these events he was raised to the rank of Viscount. No sooner was the war ended than Lord Milner Vi as called upon to undertake the difficult and delicate work, first of repatriation, end then of national reconstruction, in the new colonies. The fhree years which followed were even more arduous than those immediately preceding. All the threads of administration centered in Lord Milner's hands, and he had at one and the same time to provide for the restoration of the whole Boer population, who ha | Unknown |
