of the negotiations before the
war, the loyalists found in Lord Milner their "representative man."

[Footnote 288: See p. 459.]

[Footnote 289: The Letters Patent were not issued until
August.]

[Sidenote: 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.