ish public life.
"He has the union of intellect with fascination that makes men mount
high," wrote Lord Rosebery. And Sir William Harcourt, "the most
grateful and obliged" of Milner's "many friends and admirers,"
pronounced him to be "a man deserving of all praise and all
affection." Mr. Asquith, who presided, stated in a speech marked
throughout by a note of intimate friendliness that "no appointment of
our time has been received with a larger measure both of the
approbation of experienced men and of the applause of the public." The
office itself was "at the present moment the most arduous and
responsible in the administrative service of the country." Not only
"embarrassing problems," but "formidable personalities" would confront
the new High Commissioner for South Africa:

"But," he added, "we know that he takes with him as clear an
intellect and as sympathetic an imagination, and, if need should
arise, a power of resolution as tenacious and as inflexible as
belongs to any man of our acquaintance."

Milner's reply is significant of the spirit in which he had undertaken
his task. Like Rhodes, he had found in his Oxford studies the reasoned
basis for an enlightened Imperialism. Chief among his earliest
political convictions was the belief that--

"there was no political object comparable in importance with that
of preventing a repetition of such a disaster [as the loss of the
United States]: the severance of another link in the great
Imperial chain.... It is a great privilege to be allowed to fill
any position in the character of what I may be, perhaps, allowed
to call a 'civilian soldier of the Empire.' To succeed in it, to
render any substantial service to any part of our world-wide
State, would be all that in any of my most audacious dreams I had
ever ventured to aspire to. But in a cause in which one
absolutely believes, even failure--personal failure, I mean, for
the cause itself is not going to fail--would be preferable to an
easy life of comfortable prosperity in another sphere."

[Sidenote: Personal traits.]

This was the man who was sent to maintain the interests of the
paramount Power in a South Africa shaken by racial antagonism, and
already feverish with political intrigue and commercial rivalry. Of
all the tributes of the farewell banquet, Sir William Harcourt's was
closest to the life--"worthy of all praise and all affect