He briefly chaired the Board of Inland Revenue until April 1897, when he was appointed Governor of the Cape Colony and High Commissioner for Southern Africa by Joseph Chamberlain following the disastrous Jameson Raid.

[2] Although authorised to practise law after being called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1881, he joined the staff of the Pall Mall Gazette under John Morley, becoming assistant editor to William Thomas Stead.

Milner remained in Egypt from 1889 to 1892, his period of office coinciding with the first great reforms under Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, after the danger of bankruptcy which precipitated British control had been avoided.

[2] Milner remained at the Board of Inland Revenue until 1897, having established a reputation as one of the clearest-headed and most judicious British civil servants, a position as a man of moderate Liberal Unionist views, and strong political allies in Goschen, Cromer, St Aldwyn and Harcourt.

In 1896, British colonial administrator Leander Starr Jameson, under the employment of Cecil Rhodes, attempted and failed to trigger an uprising against President Kruger by the Uitlanders.

Reaching the Cape Colony in May, Milner resolved difficulties with President Kruger over the treatment of the Uitlanders under the Transvaal Aliens' Law, then set out on a tour of British South Africa.

[5] At the March 1898 elections, opponents of the Progressives won a majority in the House of Assembly and William Schreiner formed a government opposed to British intervention in the Transvaal.

In the ten weeks Milner spent away from the Colony, relations with the Boers had deteriorated after acting High Commissioner William Francis Butler had allowed the inference that he did not support Uitlander grievances.

[7] Milner's efforts to reconstruct the civil administration were limited while operations continued in the field, and he therefore returned to England to spend a "hard-begged holiday," mainly occupied in work at the Colonial Office.

[11] Speaking the next day at a luncheon in his honour, he asserted that the war had been unavoidable, as the British were asked to "conciliate" was "panoplied hatred, insensate ambition, invincible ignorance".

[15] He established a 10% tax on the annual net produce of the gold mines and devoted his attention to the repatriation of the Boers, land resettlement by British colonists, education, justice, the constabulary, and the development of railways.

[5] After Joseph Chamberlain's surprise resignation on 18 September 1903 due to ill health, Milner declined the vacant post of Secretary of State for the Colonies, considering it more important to complete his work in South Africa, where economic depression was becoming pronounced.

[21] Among his proteges were Peter Perry, Lionel Curtis, Patrick Duncan, Geoffrey Dawson and Hugh Wyndham, many of whom continued in South Africa under Lord Selborne after Milner's retirement and return to England.

[20] On 20 March 1906, a motion was moved by William Byles, a radical Liberal member of the House of Commons, censuring Milner for his infraction of the Chinese labour ordinance by not forbidding light corporal punishment.

[22] On behalf of the Liberal government, an amendment was moved by Winston Churchill, stating, "This House, while recording its condemnation of the flogging of Chinese coolies in breach of the law, desires, in the interests of peace and conciliation in South Africa, to refrain from passing censure upon individuals".

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.

A counter-demonstration was organised by Sir Bartle Frere, and a public address, signed by over 370,000 persons, was presented to Lord Milner expressing high appreciation of the services rendered by him in Africa to the Crown and empire.

[20] In the period 1909–11, Milner was a strong opponent of the People's Budget of David Lloyd George and the subsequent attempt of the Liberal government to curb the powers of the House of Lords.

People feel that they belong to an organism which is greater than the particular portion of the King's dominion where they happen to reside, but which has no government, no Parliament, no press even, to explain to them where its interests lie, or what its policy should be.

[28] Following the death of Lord Kitchener aboard the HMS Hampshire on 5 June 1916, Milner was mentioned as a possible Secretary of State for War, though the role went to Lloyd George.

"[35] Milner remained one of Lloyd George's closest advisors throughout the war, second only to Bonar Law, and was responsible for negotiating contracts with miners, agricultural production, and food rationing.

For instance, in response to the U-boat campaign and blockade of British ports in early 1917, Milner assisted the Royal Agricultural Society in procuring 5,000 Fordson tractors and communicated directly with Henry Ford by telegraph.

[39] Junior ministerial positions established to assist the war cabinet (known as the Garden Suburb) were filled with young Milner allies, including Leo Amery, Waldorf Astor, Lionel Curtis and Philip Kerr.

The object of the mission, stressed at the second Chantilly Conference in December 1916, was to maintain the Russian position in the war and synchronize its movements with the Western allies of Britain, France and Italy.

The official report published in March 1917 was optimistic that even if the Tsar were to be toppled—which in fact happened just 13 days after Milner's return—Russia would remain in the war and would solve their "administrative chaos".

"[56] Foch's stand was taken at Amiens, a town with a critical railway station, which, if taken, could have divided the Allies in half, driving the British into the sea, and leaving Paris and the rest of France open for defeat.

[58]Historian Edward Crankshaw adds, Perhaps the most striking of all his exercises ... and certainly one of the most fruitful of good, was when as a member of the War Cabinet in 1918 he signed Foch into the supreme command, as it were between lunch and tea.

[59]The appointment of Foch is memorialized by an inscription at the front of the Hôtel de Ville (town hall) in Doullens, which reads, "This decision saved France and the freedom of the world."

Around the end of the Second Boer War, Milner became a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers established by the Fabian Society campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

[72] According to the Biographical Dictionary of World War I: "Milner, on March 24, 1918 crossed the Channel and two days later at Doullens convinced Premier Georges Clemenceau, an old friend, that Marshal Ferdinand Foch be appointed commander in chief of the Allied armies in France.