Page:The empire and the century.djvu/559

 comparison with the popular machine. If the latter is apt to turn too quickly upon an impugned and struggling servant, the former, unless Russian or Oriental, is apt to be over-loyal to fidelity. The new Administration's critics complained that Milner was so. He expected much of his men, and got much; but he gave as loyally. Grounds for grumbling no doubt there were. 'I myself,' says Milner, 'could point out more mistakes than any of the cavillers.' But when all is said, the practical test remains. 'By their fruits ye shall know them.' Milner and his men, official and unofficial—for we must not forget his success in drawing on the best men of all classes for his representative advisers—took over the country 'a total wreck, with half its population in exile.' They found its railways and telegraphs a battlefield, and left them better than they had ever been in peace. They extended them by hundreds of miles and repaired roads by hundreds of leagues. They laid out two to three millions in building town schools and farm schools, hospitals and orphanages and prisons, dwellings for teachers and magistrates and police. They brought the Statute-book from a jumble to a model. They found free municipalities nowhere, and created them for every town. They started expert departments, studied irrigation, founded experimental farms, brought in breed-stock, planted forests. They actually doubled the country's record in the number of children being taught in the free schools. In a word, they found a Colony without the running plant of civilization, and in three years' work created it. 'Rough, but not scamped,' is Milner's summary of the work's quality; its amount speaks for itself. Milner left it to speak when hard times blew a gust of unpopularity. He is one of those

To the clamour of short-sighted impatience—and Johannesburg, though to him personally loyal, is not