"Months ago," he said, "we pressed strongly upon the Commander-in-Chief to hand over to us the colonial forces then under his direction. We thought that if we got them into our possession, not only defraying the cost of their maintenance, but taking charge of certain parts of the Colony, we could keep those districts clear of the enemy. We were continually putting that view before the Commander-in-Chief, and also before the High Commissioner, Lord Milner, but still the matter hung, and we had communications going backwards and forwards till at last the High Commissioner communicated with me, and he said, 'I think the only way to come to an understanding in this matter is, if we have a conference. If you could manage to meet Lord Kitchener and myself, I have great hopes we should be able to arrange what you desire.' I asked then if Lord Kitchener and Lord Milner could come to meet me half-way, but Lord Kitchener said it was not possible for him to leave Pretoria at that time, but he would be only too delighted if I could come up and meet him and Lord Milner upon the question. The result of that was that I went up with two of my colleagues. It has been put about all over the country that we were ordered by Lord Kitchener to proceed to Pretoria, but, so far from that being the case, it was our suggestion that we should take over the command of certain portions of the country, and we went up to Pretoria to secure that object. And in that we were successful, and the result of it has been published very lately."[286]
Second visit to England.
These events, revealing the slow and laborious progress of the Imperial troops in a South Africa rent by war from end to end, account sufficiently for the postponement of the work of active administrative reconstruction in the new colonies, to which Lord Milner owed the opportunity for his second visit to England. On April 3rd, 1901, he telegraphed a request that he might be allowed to return home at an early date, on leave, since he feared that, unless he had a short rest, he would approach the onerous duty of superintending the work of reconstruction with lessened efficiency. "I have now been continuously in harness," he said, "without a day's holiday, for more than two years ... and it is, undoubtedly, better for the public service, if I am to get such a rest at all, that I should take leave immediately while military operations still continue and the work of civil administration is necessarily curtailed, rather than when it will be possible to organise civil government in a more complete fashion, and when many important problems which are for the moment in abeyance will have to be dealt with." To this request Mr. Chamberlain replied that, although His Majesty's Government greatly regretted that it was necessary for Lord Milner to leave South Africa at present, they quite recognised that it was unavoidable that he should take the rest which the severe strain of the last two years had made imperative.[287] He was, therefore, to take leave as soon as he found it possible to do so.
Civil affairs in new colonies.
None the less the little that could be done to develop the inchoate machinery of administration which marked the transition from military to civil order in the new colonies, was done, and done well, before Lord Milner left Johannesburg. On May 4th, 1901, Sir H. Gould-Adams was able to report that the chief departments of the administration of the Orange River Colony had been transferred from military to civil officials, and reorganised on a permanent basis. In the Transvaal the departments of finance, law, mines, and that of the Secretary to the Administration, had been organised, and were gradually taking over an increasing volume of administrative work from the military officials. Even more significant was the establishment by proclamation (May 8th), of a nominated Town Council for the management of the municipal affairs of Johannesburg, and the consequent abolition of the office of Military Governor, with the transfer of the departments hitherto controlled by him to a Government Commissioner and other officials of the civil administration. This step was rendered possible by the circumstance that a certain number of the principal residents, of whom twelve were nominated for service on the Council, had now returned to their homes. It marked the recommencement of the industrial life of the Rand, which had followed the permission, given by Lord Kitchener in April, for three mines to resume work. From this time forward the Uitlander refugees began to return; although, as we have seen,[288] it was not possible to allow the general mass of the inhabitants to leave the coast towns until the following November. And, in addition to this, Lord Milner had obtained statements of the views of the Cape and Natal Governments on the question of the settlement of the new colonies. Mr. Chamberlain had attached great importance to this interchange of opinions; rightly holding that, in determining the conditions and methods of the settlement of the conquered territories, the British South African colonies should be taken into the counsels of the Imperial Government. Lord Milner had, therefore, submitted to the colonial Governments the draft of the Letters Patent, under which the system of Crown Colony government was to be established in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, before they were issued.[289] As the result of these consultations the terms of surrender granted to the Boers at Vereeniging, and the consequent administrative arrangements arising out of them, embodied decisions based not merely on the judgment of the Imperial Government, but on what was virtually the unanimous opinion of the loyal population of South Africa. In this, as in the crisis of the negotiations before the war, the loyalists found in Lord Milner their "representative man."
Milner in England.
Lord Milner—then Sir Alfred Milner—left Capetown on May 8th, and reached England on the 24th. On his arrival in London he was met at the station by Lord Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain, and immediately conducted to the King, who was at that time still residing at Marlborough House. At the end of a long audience His Majesty announced his intention of raising him to the peerage, the first of many marks of royal favour, including his elevation to the Privy Council, which were shown to the High Commissioner during his stay in England. The warm demonstrations of popular regard with which he had been welcomed upon his arrival in London, were followed by a luncheon given on the next day (Saturday, May 25th) in his honour by Mr. Chamberlain, his official chief. The speech elicited by this notable occasion is one in which a graceful humour is characteristically blended with deep emotion. Those who have had the good fortune to hear many of Lord Milner's speeches—speeches sometimes turning a page of history, sometimes mere incidents of official or administrative routine—know that they are all alike distinguished by the high quality of sincerity.[290] But this was an occasion upon which even adroitness of intellect and integrity of purpose might well have sought the shelter of conventional expressions. Lord Milner dispenses with any such protection. "In a rational world," he said, it would have seemed better to everybody that he, "with a big unfinished job awaiting him," and many of his fellow workmen unable to take the rest which they both deserved and needed, "should have arrived, and stayed, and returned in the quietest possible manner." But it was an age in which it "seemed impossible for many people to put a simple and natural interpretation on anything; and his arrival in this quiet manner would have been misconstrued to a degree, which would have been injurious to the public interests." If his "hard-begged holiday" could have been represented as a "veiled recall," then of course it was obvious that, having taken the proverbial hansom from Waterloo to his own chambers, this very harmless action would have been "trumpeted over two continents as evidence of his disgrace."
"It is hard, it is ludicrous," he continued, "that some of the busiest men in the world should be obliged to occupy their time, and that so many of my friends and well wishers should be put to inconvenience—and on a day, too, when it would be so nice to be in the country—merely in order to prove to persons with an ingrained habit of self-delusion that the British Government will not give up its agents in the face of the enemy, or that the people of this country will not allow themselves to be bored into abandoning what they have spent millions of treasure and so many precious lives to obtain. All I can say is, that if it was necessary (I apologise for it: I am sorry to be the centre of a commotion from which no man could be constitutionally more averse than myself), I can only thank you heartily for the kindness and the cordiality with which the thing has been done. I feel indeed that the praises which have been bestowed, the honours which have been heaped on me, are beyond my deserts. But the simplest thing to do under these circumstances is to try to deserve them in the future. In any case I am under endless obligations. It is difficult to say these things in the face of the persons principally concerned, but I feel bound to take this opportunity, especially in view of the remarks which have been made in certain quarters, to express my deep sense of gratitude for the manner in which His Majesty's Government, and especially my immediate chief, have shown me great forbearance, and given me support most prompt at the moment when it was most needed, without which I should have been helpless indeed. And I have also to thank many friends, not a few of them here present, and some not present, for messages of encouragement, for kindly words of suggestion and advice received at critical moments, some of which have been of invaluable assistance to me, and have made an indelible impression on my heart. I am afraid, if I were to refer to all my benefactors, it would be like the bidding prayer—and you would all lose your trains.
"But there is one hint I may take from the bidding prayer. Not only in this place, but at all times and in all places, I am specially bound to remember the devotion of the loyalists—the Dutch loyalists, if you please, and not only the British—the loyalists of South Africa. They responded to all my appeals to act, and, harder still, to wait. They never lost their cheery confidence in the darkest days of our misfortunes, they never faltered in their fidelity to a man of whose errors and failings they were necessarily more conscious than anybody else, but of whose honesty of purpose they were long ago, and once for all, convinced. If there is anything most gratifying to me on this memorable occasion it is the encouragement which I know the events of yesterday and of to-day will give to thousands of our South African fellow-countrymen, like minded with us, in the homes and in the camps of South Africa.
"Your Royal Highness,[291] Mr. Chamberlain, ladies, and gentlemen—I am sure you will not desire me to enter into any political questions to-day. More than that, I really have nothing to add to what I have already said and written, I fear with wearisome reiteration. It seems to me we are slowly progressing towards the predestined end; latterly it has appeared as if the pace was somewhat quickening, but I do not wish to make too much of that or to speak with any too great confidence. However long the road, it seems to me the only one to the object which we were bound to pursue, and which seems now fairly in sight. What has sustained me personally—if your kindness will allow me to make a personal reference—what has sustained me personally on the weary road is my absolute, unshakable conviction that it was the only one which we could travel.