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 which are the despair of theorists and dangerous sport of local factions, English, African, Australian, and Indian, each too narrow to consider the others or the Empire; in customs union, a federal step; in the approach to railway union, another federal step; in the Intercolonial Council which he unflinchingly maintained as being, despite its unpopularity with the impatient, the one step possible at this stage towards making federation organic; last, not least, in the settlement of the bases of representation for the new interim constitution upon lines which do not compromise the future—a service second only to that rendered at Vereeniging over the terms of peace—in all this, I believe, Milner's lines have been well and truly laid, and, as in Rhodes's apologue of the avenue of osk saplings, those who come after will not greatly alter those lines. At least, if Milner has had to share Pitt's disappointment, he must be allowed to share Pitt's title of the 'pilot who weathered the storm.' Nor will men who know hesitate to apply to him also certain words that were used of William Pitt the elder, that warrior invalid. The eight years of Milner's South African service were hard years for those who bore responsibility, even if of iron frame. They pulled down Rhodes and the veteran Kruger. They made wrecks of Mr. Steyn and Mr. Reitz. They left the Unionist war Ministry a prey to the flaccid exhaustion which ever since has benumbed British politics. In Milner they strained well-nigh to breaking-point a physical constitution notoriously unequal to the will that drove it. The ageing tale of them is scored very legibly on the long, lean face, with its look of watchfulness. But all who during those hard years had to do with him, be they soldiers or civilians, will echo of Milner what was said of Chatham: that 'no one ever left his cabinet without feeling himself a braver man.'