IN THE Exhibition of Mr. Max Beerbohm’s caricatures at the Leicester Gallery there is a series of finely executed drawings of the late Lord Milner, which suggest the failure of his career. He was a man of high character and great parts, a man, too, on whom from the beginning fortune smiled. He was only thirty-five when he was sent to Egypt to reorganize her finances. He was only forty-three when he was appointed High Commissioner in South Africa. His administration in South Africa was a tragic failure. He was a conscientious and efficient official without imagination. He misunderstood the Boers, antagonized them, and underestimated their obstinacy and their military power. He was, at least, partially responsible for the Boer war, and had it not been for Lord Kitchener his want of sympathy would have assuredly postponed the making of peace. From his return to England in 1905 until he entered the second Coalition war ministry he was an inconspicuous politician, generally miscalculating the changing circumstances of the times, and devoted to a narrow self-contained Imperialism. It fell to him in March, 1918, finally to decide on the single command that gave the Allied armies victory, and he decided right. Since the war his principal public service was his visit to Egypt, with the subsequent suggestion for self-Government, in odd contrast with his policy in South Africa. Lord Milner was one of the most gifted of the sons of Balliol, of the unbelieving Balliol of Jowett. That may, perhaps, account for his pathetic failure to reach achievement worthy of his devotion to duty and outstanding talents. He knew Oxford, but he never knew England.
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