Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner quotes

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. - Milner as recorded by Percy FitzPatrick, cited in Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa, 2008, Martin Meredith, p. 374. (Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner)
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. View quote
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner
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 damn the consequences. View quote
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner
I feel more sure that the end is nearing than I do what kind of end it will be. View quote
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner
Instead of it (World War I) having been a war to end wars - it (the Paris Peace Conference) is a Peace to end Peace. View quote
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner
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. View quote
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner
...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. View quote
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner
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. View quote
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner