298 



The Review of Reviews 



March 30, 1906. 



IN PRAISE OF LORD MILNER. 



By an Old " Pall Maller." 



I owe Mr. F. Edmond Garrett very hearty thanks 

 for the article (reprinted from T/ie Empire and 77/t' 

 Century) which appears in tlie National Review. I 

 am grateful to my old colleague on the Pall Mall, 

 not merely for one of the most brilliant and elo- 

 quent pieces of English writing published of late 

 years, but for the balm which it affords to a sorely 

 wounded conscience. I still feel remorse for the 

 frightful and disastrous mistake which I made when 

 I nominated Milner, much to his surprise, for the 

 High Commissionership ; but, for the first time for 

 many years, I experienced a little consolation when 

 I read Mr. Garrett's tribute to his former chief. 

 For the article proves that after all, making allow- 

 ance for the one fatal mistake which led him to re- 

 solve upon forcing on war with the Boers, Milner 

 was the man I believed him to be, and that there 

 was really some excuse for my blunder. Of course 

 ample allowance must be made for the fact that 

 Mr. Garrett in defending Milner's policy is in reality 

 defending himself, for no one will ever know huw 

 much Mr. Garrelt had to do in spurring Milner on 

 to extremities ; but when all deductions are made, 

 enough remains to show that Milner possessed great 

 qualities, and spent himself unsparingly in what he 

 believed to be the service of the Empire. 



It is true that much the best of the work which 

 Mr. Garrett describes was simply the desperate en- 

 deavour of a ruler to mitigate the horrible misfor- 

 tunes which his own reckless Bismarckism brought 

 about — Bismarckism alas ! without any of Bismarck's 

 careful preparation in advance to support by arms 

 the challenge he provoked by policy. Mr. Garrrtt 

 says : — 



Milner and his men, official and unofficial — for we must 

 no forget his success in drawing on the best men of all 

 classes for his representative advisers — took over the coun- 

 try " a t«tal wreck, with half its population in exile." They 

 found its railways and telegraphs a battlefield, and left 

 them better than they had ever been in peace. They ex- 

 tended them by hundreds of miles, and repaired roads by 

 hundreds of leagues. They laid out two or three millions in 

 building town schools and farm schools, hospitals and or- 

 phanages and prisons, dwellings for teachers and magis- 

 trates and police. They brought the Statute book from 

 a jumble to a model. They foujid free municipalities 

 nowhere, and created them for every town. They started 

 expert departments, studied irrigation, founded experi- 

 mental-farms, brought in breed-stock, planted forests, 

 They actually doubled the country's record in the number 

 of children being taught in the free schools. In a word, 

 found a colony without the running plant of civilisation, 

 and in three years' work created it. 



This may be all very true. But we cannot forget 

 that it was the man who made the countr}- a 

 total wreck, and who destroyed the running plant 

 of civilisation, who is now held up to our admiration 

 for what he did to undo his own devastating work 

 of destruction. Even the mining industry, which 

 Mr. Garrett regards as the first of British interests, 

 has only now, after the Chinese importation, reach- 

 ed the annual output of gold it was producing in 

 the last days of Kruger's regime. 



I heartily sympathise with Mr. Garrett's threnody 

 over the breakdown of Milner's health. It would 

 have been well if he could have been spared to 

 undo more of the mischief he had done in South 

 Africa. Mr. Garrett says: — 



The tide is turning at last, but too late for many smaller 

 men, and too late for Milner. The undertow has tired 

 him out. In irrigation, in forestry, in communications, 

 above all, in laud colonisation, his full plans would have 

 changed the face of the country. Some of them, perhaps, 

 may never be realised now; the day of opulence will come, 

 but not the day of opulent dictatorship, they will remain 

 like those massive stone zimbabwes out in the African veld, 

 which time ;ind nature cannot obliterate, but on which pos- 

 terity will never build. But much is well begun, and 

 abides the coming of the better years for triumphant com- 

 pletion. 



For us who succeed to his evil heritage, we can 

 amend his botched patchwork by kex;ping our word, 

 paying our debts, and re-establishing freedom and 

 self-government to the Colonies which he left under 

 despotic rule. 



" PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY." 



The philosopher let loose on play, offers almost 

 as edifying a spectacle to the Philistine as does a 

 criminological disquisition on kissing. In Mind, Mr. 

 W. H. Winch gives the first instalment of his study 

 in the psychology and philosophy of play. He 

 takes it as commonly agreed — 



1. That those activities are playful which are performed 

 for the sake of the game; we play for the "game" not the 

 ■' cup." 



2. TTiat in so far as the conscious acquisition of skill, 

 either in the game or in anything else, is present, the 

 mental attitude to that extent ceases to be a purely play- 

 ful one. We talk, for example, of practising and playing 

 the piano, and we mean two distinct things; we practise 

 to play rather than play for practice. 



3. That the "plays" of life are more or less dissociated 

 from the great body of belief and action which make up 

 the conception of our real world; one is belief which is 

 made, the other is make-believe. 



He holds that adult play rather than youthful play 

 possesses more clearly the distinctive characteris- 

 tics of play : — 



The struggles of very young children are apt to be very 

 fully charged with the emotional accompaniments of strife; 

 much later does fighting become football, and a high stage 

 of development is attained before a "scrimmage" engen- 

 ders no ill-feeling. 



He very much questions the statement that the 

 " feeling of pleasure that results from the satisfac- 

 tion of instinct is the primary psychic accompani- 

 ment of play." He asks: — 



Are we always happy when we are playing? Dr. Lewis 

 Paton tells a story of a boy whom he found crying on 

 Primrose Hill because he had been a Boer three nights 

 running. The game is undertaken for its own sake, not 

 for the sake of the resultant or accompanying pleasure; 

 and impeded progress in the game will indubitably bring 

 pain. The criterion of pleasure is insufficient to mark of! 

 play from work. Successful activity, even in what we 

 do not like doing, brings a pleasure of its own. Much of 

 this world's work is pleasurable throughout; and pleasure 

 is not an invariable accompaniment of playful activities. 



These are samples of the light that is sown for 

 the serious person who would understand the what 

 and wherefore of play. 



