LORD MILNER ON SOUTH AFRICA.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 115, 18 May 1906, Page 1

LORD MILNER ON SOUTH AFRICA.

The April number of the "National Review;"' publishes an exceptionally interesting article upon the South African situation by Lord Milneiv Lord Milner deals mainly with, the general underlying moral situation, as the' following extracts indicate:—We are, I take it, all agreed that in the long run South Africa can only remain within the British family of States if the majority of her white inhabitants desire, or at least acquiesce in, that position. It is not necessary that they should all be fervently attached to Great Britain, or even to the British connection. But it is necessary that there should be a nucleus in whom that attachment is really strong, and that this nucleus should be powerful enough to counterbalance any actively hostile elements, and to leaven the more or less . indifferent mass. My plea is for a policy on the part of this country which will steadily tend to strengthen that nucleus.' A great deal will depend upon the action of the British Government during the ] next two or three critical years. But even more, far more, depends, not only during these years, but in the future, upon the attitude of the British people, upon the amount of sympathy which they extend to those of their follow countrymVm in.. South Africa who have in the past clung, through infinite discouragement and under manifold temptations to let go, to the great ideal of a united Empire, and who will, I believe, continue to cling to it unless the thing becomes utterly hopeless. Can we expect them to continue to feel attached to us if we seem to set no store by that attachment? It has often cost them dear. What sacrifices have been entailed in hundreds of cases by nothing more than open sympathy with the Old Country and the Union Jack? The boycott, which has ruined many a man, aye, and driven out many a man, in the up-country districts of Cape Colony, is only a case in point. And again, have we forgotten all that was entailed upon the British of the Iransvaai by their participation in the political struggle which preceded the war, and in the war itself ? Many of them faced death, all of them faced exile, the certainty of immediate impoverishment and the prospect of total rum—for what? For the maintenance' or their self-respect as Britons, and for the honor of the British name. .... The attachment of these people is a precious national possession, and they at least deserve the sympathy and respect of all their fellow countrymen, even of those who think that our South African policy has been mismanaged, and that British statesmen were to blame for the Avar.