Hrrifu of Kftitirt, iO/i/OS. 



History of the Month. 



339 



standing reproach ot the Empire, Lord Milner 

 would give us two. The art of converting enemies 

 into friends by doing to them as we would that they 

 should do unto us linds no place in Lord Milners 

 system of goverimient. It was the Bismarckian taint 

 in this German-born and German-bnd Pro-consul 

 which has wrecked his career and deluged South 

 Africa in blood. But as before the war he was Bis- 

 marck, who difl not provide him.self with a Moltke, 

 so after the war he is a BisiDank who has not the 

 statesmanship which made his jjrototype build uji 

 the {jerman Knipire on a syst<'m of Home Rule. 



Who is there who is so callous of 



"The heart and dull of feeling as not to 



Pity of It." sympathise with Lord Milner in this 



suprfnie hour of his awakening to 

 liic fact that to the realisation of his scheme the 

 ii'-reditary ingrained political instinct of the British 

 tion offers an insuperable obstacle? He might 

 .i.ive foreseen it if he had not contracted a kind of 

 political ophthalmia in his sojourn in Egypt. Had he 

 done so there would have been no war. For Lord 

 Milner, who is sincerely patriotic in his German- 

 English fashion, would have recoiled in horror from 

 the crime of deluging Africa with blood, knowing 

 that every life sacrificed increased the difficulty in 

 the way of the only possible solution. Nothing can 

 be more frank than his acknowledgment that his 

 war has increased instead of diminishing the diffi 

 culty of governing Africa on the only principle on 

 which the British nation will allow it to be govern- 

 ed — viz., by the free consent of a self-governing 

 people. Until he decided to force war upon the 

 Boers there was not even the shadow of a trouble 

 between us and the Orange Free State. Although 

 we had of our own free will forced the Free States 

 to adopt their flag instead of our own, British set- 

 tlers, British interests, and British sentiments were 

 as fully protected and recognised as if the L'nion 

 Jack had still been flying over Bloemfonlein. There 

 was absolutely no racial antagonism in the Fre<' 

 States. That was before the war. After the war 

 Lord Milner tells us that this bond of affection and 

 of respect no longer exists. Lord Milner ought to 

 know, for his was the hand that destroyed it. As 

 he himself says : '" How can any reasonable man 

 expect the bond of affection to exist ?" Consider- 

 ing that he by his war devastated the whole countr^■ 

 slew hundreds of its citizens, and did to death by 

 his policy of denudation thousands of its women 

 and children, it would be rather difficult for any 

 reasonable man to expect the Free Staters to Love 

 Britain so long as Lord Milner and his policy stood 

 for Britain. But, thank God, the real England is 

 no longer concealed and caricatured and calum- 

 niated by a policv hateful to every true British 

 heart. In a common detestation of Milnerism and 

 all its wavs Boer and Briton have found a new and 



powerful bond of sympaih>, which, il Lord Elgin 

 but perseveres in resolutely effacing as a cursed thing 

 every trace of that racial domination which Lord 

 Milner attempted to establish, will speedily gro^v 

 into a stronger bond of affection than that which 

 binds us to some of our English-speaking colonies 

 at this day. 



Lord Milner signed the Treaty of 



A Vereeniging which was negotiated 



Breach of Faith, by Lord Kitchener, and he still 



professes to believe, and dares to 

 repeat, " the mendacious assertion " that the terms 

 of that Treaty have been loyally carried out by 

 Great Britain. But the whole lenour of his speech 

 shows that he was determined to postpone the 

 execution of the most important clause of that 

 Treaty to the Greek Kalends. The Btjers would 

 not have laid down their arms but for the explicit 

 assurance of Lord Kitchener, who a'.one was au- 

 thorised to speak for the British Government (see 

 Kuyper correspondence), that the Orange Free 

 State was to have responsible government, like what 

 the Cajx- Colony enjoyed, alnmst imnir-diately. Then 

 after a time— owing to the difficulty created by 

 Johannesburg — responsible government was to be 

 extended to the Transvaal. Lord Kitchener's ex- 

 plicit declaration led the Boers to surrender. Lord 

 Mi!ner has treated that explicit assurance as if it 

 had never existed. Even now, when the difficulty 

 of Johannesburg no longer offers an obstacle to 

 responsible government in the Transvaal, he pro- 

 tests, three years after dale, against fulfdling the 

 pledged word of Britain, and does so — Heaven save 

 the mark 1 —because to keep faith with the Boers 

 might be inconvenient to some of the locust horde 

 of Milnerite myrmidons which he inflicted on the 

 country 1 But Lord Milner and all his party appear 

 to have adopted the familiar but fatal doctrine that 

 there is no obligation to keep faith with an Infidel, 

 only thev substitute for the Paynim the South 

 .\frican Dutch. That detestable doctrine, the most 

 pernicious ever forged by the Father of Lies, the 

 British nation repudiated at the General Election. 

 It is now cast out as an accursed thing. Hiin ilia 

 lachryma ! 



No wonder Lord Milner is miser- 

 Failure able. To have been directly 

 Confessed. responsible for the slaughter of 

 25,000 fighting men, and for the 

 doing to death of 5000 women and 20,000 helpless 

 infants, would have been a terrible burden to bear 

 even if the end had justified the means, or. if not 

 justified, at least condoned them. But Lord Milner. 

 in his frankest fashion, admitted his failure: — 



Jnst now the Transvaal— indeed, all South Africa— is under 

 .1 cloud. It has cost us great s.icrifices. The compeneationa 

 which we expected, and reasonably expected, have not 

 come. 



