went up to Pretoria to secure
that object. And in that we were successful, and the result of it
has been published very lately."[286]

[Footnote 286: Cd. 903. This was, in its essence, the
proposal for the systematic and effective defence of the
Colony, which Lord Milner had consistently advocated both
before and during the war--with General Butler and the Home
Government, with Lord Roberts at the time of the Forward
Movement (see p. 353), and now at the eleventh hour with Lord
Kitchener in support of the Cape Government.]

[Sidenote: Second visit to England.]

These events, revealing the slow and laborious progress of the
Imperial troops in a South Africa rent by war from end to end, account
sufficiently for the postponement of the work of active administrative
reconstruction in the new colonies, to which Lord Milner owed the
opportunity for his second visit to England. On April 3rd, 1901, he
telegraphed a request that he might be allowed to return home at an
early date, on leave, since he feared that, unless he had a short
rest, he would approach the onerous duty of superintending the work of
reconstruction with lessened efficiency. "I have now been continuously
in harness," he said, "without a day's holiday, for more than two
years ... and it is, undoubtedly, better for the public service, if I
am to get such a rest at all, that I should take leave immediately
while military operations still continue and the work of civil
administration is necessarily curtailed, rather than when it will be
possible to organise civil government in a more complete fashion, and
when many important problems which are for the moment in abeyance will
have to be dealt with." To this request Mr. Chamberlain replied that,
although His Majesty's Government greatly regretted that it was
necessary for Lord Milner to leave South Africa at present, they quite
recognised that it was unavoidable that he should take the rest which
the severe strain of the last two years had made imperative.[287] He
was, therefore, to take leave as soon as he found it possible to do
so.

[Footnote 287: Cd. 547.]

[Sidenote: Civil affairs in new colonies.]

None the less the little that could be done to develop the inchoate
machinery of administration which marked the transition from military
to civil order in the new colonies, was done, and done well, before
Lord Milner left Joha