Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner

""Churchill was 'very keen, able, and broad-minded' and a 'powerful backer', but warned that his weakness was being 'too apt to make up his mind without sufficient knowledge'."

"British influence... is not exercised to impose an uncongenial foreign system upon a reluctant people. It is a force making for the triumph of the simplest ideas of honesty, humanity, and justice, to the value of which Egyptians are just as much alive as anybody else."

"[I]f Egyptian prosperity is a British interest, so is Egyptian independence. We have no desire to possess ourselves of Egypt, but we have every reason to prevent any rival power from so possessing itself. And there is no sure, no creditable manner of providing permanently against such a contingency, except to build up a system of Government so stable as to leave no excuse for future foreign intervention."

"I have a strong hope and conviction that, with moderation and good sense, and a policy of firmness, patience and good temper, these difficulties may yet be satisfactorily, if not immediately settled."

"There is only one possible settlement – war! It has got to come ... The difficulty is in the occasion and not the job itself, that is very easily done and I think nothing of the bogies and difficulties of settling South Africa afterwards. You will find a very different tone and temper when the center of unrest is dealt with."

"If, ten years hence, there are three men of British race to two of Dutch, the country [i.e. South Africa] will be safe and prosperous."

"...the impracticability of governing natives, who, at best, are children, needing and appreciating just paternal government, on the same principles as apply to the government of full-grown men."

"If we believe a thing to be bad, and if we have a right to prevent it, it is our duty to try to prevent it and to damn the consequences."

"I feel more sure that the end is nearing than I do what kind of end it will be."

"My own disposition is against being in the government unless I am part of the Supreme Direction."

"The prospects for peace were, "even blacker than a year ago"."

"Instead of it (World War I) being a war to end wars - it (the Paris Peace Conference) is a Peace to end Peace."

"Only at Government House did I find the Man of No Illusions, the anxious but unwearied Pro-Consul, understanding the faults and virtues of both sides, measuring the balance of rights and wrongs, and determined - more determined than ever, for is it not the only hope for the future of South Africa? - to use his knowledge and power to strengthen the Imperial ties."

"The conditions of the Transvaal ordinance ... cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery; at least, that word in its full sense could not be applied without a risk of terminological inexactitude."

"Lord Milner has gone from South Africa, probably forever. The public service knows him no more. Having exercised great authority he now exercises no authority. Having held high employment he now has no employment. Having disposed of events which have shaped the course of history, he is now unable to deflect in the smallest degree the policy of the day. Having been for many years, or at least for many months, the arbiter of the fortunes of men who are 'rich beyond the dreams of avarice', he is today poor, and honorably poor. After twenty years of exhausting service under the Crown he is today a retired Civil Servant, without pension or gratuity of any kind whatever... Lord Milner has ceased to be a factor in public life."

"He is an old friend of mine. We admired and loved the same woman. That's an indissoluble bond."

"If he does not agree with you, he closes his eyes like a lizard and you can do nothing with him."

"We should have won the war some time ago if there were about half-a-dozen Lord Milners to form a (War) Cabinet."

"How far reaching that service became at the turning point of the war, what a godsend that combination of cool judgement and knowledge with the Premier's flair and courage, how essential to victory the power of decision which at the blackest moment consolidated the direction of the allied armies...but when the story comes to be fully written, it may be found that nothing even in the South African chapter has left a more decisive mark on history than Lord Milner's work at Doullens and in Downing Street..."

"“What would have been the position to-day on South Africa if there had not been a man prepared to take upon himself responsibility; a man whom difficulties could not conquer, whom dissenters could not cow, and whom obloquy could not move?”"

"Milner....is the strongest member of the War Cabinet as well as being the best informed."

"Lloyd George had the firm support of Milner, the strongest man in his War Cabinet."

"The interview adjourned at an appointed hour to the office of the Secretary of War, Lord Milner, whose little book on "The English in Egypt" written twenty-six years ago, was a bible to me in Philippine days. He was an extremely forceful and able man. He was born in Germany of British parents and seems to have acquired a little of the blood and iron. At least he is the most difficult person to bring over that my General (Pershing) and I have attempted. It is all on the question of how many troops shall go with the British and what they shall be. He wants all infantry and machine guns, and while protesting that they all look forward to the day when we shall have our American Army on the line as such, is demanding the things that will make that impossible, at least before 1919."

"In appearance a scholar rather than a man of action, but with an air of grave assurance, which indicated fixity of purpose, a man more apt to give than to take advice."

"I think that Milner and I stand for very much the same things. He is a poor man, and so am I. He does not represent the landed or capitalist classes any more than I do. He is keen on social reform, and so am I."

"Milner was the only person I can turn to for advice. Bonar was a quaking reed. Carson had courage, but not always judgement. Milner alone had both wisdom and intrepidity."

"...trained in the school of newspapers and books rather than that of men. ...poor nervous ignorant fellow, utterly out of sympathy with South Africa."

"Having to deal with the War Cabinet, I know very well there are only two people in it who do anything - the Prime Minister and Lord Milner..."

"l'homme d'action par excellence du cabinet anglais (the outstanding man of drive in the British cabinet)."

"When Lord Milner was given the Order of the Garter... [h]e had to attend a Levee, and when he dressed he was faced by the problem over which shoulder should the riband go. As there was no time to ask anyone's advice he decided to wear it...over the right shoulder; but the Garter...[is] worn over the left shoulder. Quite unconscious that he was wearing his riband over the wrong shoulder he appeared in the antechamber at St. James's Palace, where everyone assembles. There, unfortunately, he met George Curzon, who was scandalised at his ignorance; so strongly, in fact, did Curzon feel that after the Levee he wrote Milner a letter saying that it was almost inconceivable that anyone who had been given this ancient Order, the highest Order in the land, should not even take the trouble to ascertain how it was worn. It happened some months later that one of the Levees at St. James's Palace happened to come on a collar day... Curzon...came rather late to the Levee...and...committ[ed] the most heinous offence of wearing a riband as well as a collar. Of course, the King observed this at once but made little of it, only chaffing Curzon about the mistake; Milner, who was also present, heard these remarks and afterwards wrote to Curzon, repeating nearly word for word that it was almost inconceivable that anyone who had been given this ancient Order, etc. etc."

"Lloyd George is a real bad 'un. The other members of the War Cabinet seem afraid of him. Milner is a tired, dyspeptic old man. Curzon is a gas-bag. Bonar Law equals Bonar Law."

"...Cette decision sauva la France et la liberte du monde. Translated from French to English: ...This decision saved France and the freedom of the world."

"The complete inscription, in english, says, "In this Town Hall, on the 26th of March, 1918, the Allies entrusted General Foch with the Supreme Command on the Western Front. This decision saved France and the liberty of the world.""