labours which proved not less anxious and critical than those which preceded the war and dogged it to its close, Milner girded up his loins for a work as great and more congenial. With relentless industry, that labor improbus which stamps all he undertakes, he plunged into the heart of the chaos left by war and began to build the new order. The task was a heroic one. Everything cried out to be done at once, and there was no civil service and no tradition. Milner's plans, long pondered, were projected on large and noble lines. All the world counted on a flowing tide as the natural sequel to peace and to the British flag—that great commercial asset, as Rhodes, in an absurdly misrepresented phrase, with just pride described it. The main concern was how to make the sluices of the State big enough for the tide to flow in. Then came the check. All the world proved wrong. Instead of tide, it was ebb, ebb, till it touched the lowest low water-mark of local experience.
At first, speed had to be everything, economy nothing—now it was all the other way. Everything had to be improvised all over again on a humbler scale, and to a chorus of grumbles about extravagance, parsimony, disproportion, round pegs in square holes, and all the voces populi of a time of retrenchment. The solution of the labour trouble was only reached after a long and wearing controversy, and, meanwhile, finance became a formidable problem. Milner had not served for nothing in Egypt and at Somerset House; he made ends meet and carried on. But the opportunity of hard times was golden for all natural foes of the new Administration. It was not lost on the Boer Generals, nor on the Boer pastors, ever the chief cherishers of the sacred embers of race-feeling. Some promising cries were started. Milner was abundantly justified of his foresight in insisting that there should be nothing implied, but everything in black and white, in the terms of peace. Happily, the Boers were busy, like thrifty men, in getting the most they could out of repatriation funds, loans, and advances. They echoed
