Alfred Milner, early 1900's

Alfred Milner KG GCB GCMG PC (23 March 1854 – 13 May 1925) was a British statesman and colonial administrator.

Quotes

• There is only one possible settlement – war! It has got to come ... The difficulty is in the occasion and not the job itself, that is very easily done and I think nothing of the bogies and difficulties of settling South Africa afterwards. You will find a very different tone and temper when the center of unrest is dealt with.

— Milner as recorded by Percy FitzPatrick, cited in Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa, 2008, Martin Meredith, p. 374.

• If, ten years hence, there are three men of British race to two of Dutch, the country [i.e. South Africa] will be safe and prosperous.

— Milner on 27 December 1900, in private correspondence with Major Hanbury-Williams, as quoted by C. Headlam in The Milner Papers: South Africa, 1933, Cassell, p. 242

• ...the impracticability of governing natives, who, at best, are children, needing and appreciating just paternal government, on the same principles as apply to the government of full-grown men.

— Milner on 6 December 1901, on post-war government in South Africa, in correspondence with Joseph Chamberlain, as quoted by C. Headlam in The Milner Papers: South Africa, 1933, Cassell, p. 312

Quotes about Milner

• ...trained in the school of newspapers and books rather than that of men. ...poor nervous ignorant fellow, utterly out of sympathy with South Africa.

— John Merriman cited in Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa, 2008, Martin Meredith, p. 368.

• In appearance a scholar rather than a man of action, but with an air of grave assurance, which indicated fixity of purpose, a man more apt to give than to take advice.

— James Rose Innes cited in Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa, 2008, Martin Meredith, p. 368, his first impression of Milner at Government House, Cape Town

• I think that Milner and I stand for very much the same things. He is a poor man, and so am I. He does not represent the landed or capitalist classes any more than I do. He is keen on social reform, and so am I.

— David Lloyd George, quoted in Lord Riddell's diary entry (18 February 1917), J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), p. 186.

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