between them. On the next morning Lord Milner's
saloon car was attached to the Commander-in-Chief's train, and a long
telegram was drafted and despatched to London.[272] The position which
Lord Milner took up on this occasion, and afterwards at the final
negotiations of Vereeniging, was that which he had himself condensed
in the two words "never again." He was anxious for peace; no man more
than he; but a peace upon terms that would leave South Africa with the
remotest prospect of a return to the abnormal political conditions
which had made the war inevitable, he regarded as a disaster to be
avoided at all costs. This telegram despatched, the train left
Bloemfontein, and, in spite of more than one sign of the proximity of
the Boer raiders, it reached Pretoria without delay at 9 a.m. on March
4th. The next ten days Lord Milner remained at the capital of the
Transvaal, in constant communication with the Home Government on the
subject of the peace negotiations[273] with the Boers, which
ultimately proved abortive; but on the 9th he went over to
Johannesburg for the day to see the house which was being prepared for
his occupation. On the 15th he left Pretoria finally for Johannesburg.
He was received at the station by a guard of honour furnished by the
Rand Rifles, and, thus escorted, drove to Sunnyside, a pleasant house
in what is now the suburb of Parktown, commanding an unbroken view
over the veld to the Magaliesberg range beyond Pretoria; and here
he continued to reside until he left South Africa on April 2nd, 1905.

[Footnote 272: This telegram is printed in Cd. 528.]

[Footnote 273: For the nature of these "Middelburg terms,"
see forward in note 2 on p. 568.]

[Illustration: _By permission of the Argus Printing and Publishing
Co., Ltd., Johannesburg._

Lord Milner at Sunnyside.]

[Sidenote: Affairs in the Cape colony.]

From this time forward (March 15th, 1901), Lord Milner's
administrative activity is primarily concerned with the Transvaal and
Orange River Colony. Owing, however, to the continued resistance of
the Boers and the extension of the area of hostilities by the second
invasion of the Cape Colony, the administrative development of the new
colonies was confined within the narrowest limits, until six months of
strenuous military operations had enabled Lord Kitchener to render the
protected areas and the railways virtually secure against the raids of
the Boer commandos. Four ou