16 MAY 1925, Page 3

Death has taken a heavy toll lately of some of

our greatest public servants, but no loss causes more general sorrow than that of Lord Milner who died on Wednesday. He will have an important place in history as one of the " Pro-Consuls " whose labour gave a peculiar dis- tinction to British administrative work at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. When Alfred Milner was an undergraduate at Balliol, Jowett picked him out as destined for the greatest success among his contemporaries. In a sense Jowett was wrong, for Milner had not the intuitions and the personality that constitute supreme leadership, but he was a man of amazing administrative capacity. His real work began when he gave up journalism and was sent by Goschen to Egypt. His book on Egypt is a wonderful exhibition of grasp and reach.