page_title: Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner
section_title: Credo
hierarchical_section_title: Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner / Credo
caption_attribution_description: English: The Lord Milner hotel in South Africa. Although Lord Milner never stepped inside, the hotel served as British Army Headquarters for two years (1899 - 1901) during the Boer War.
context_page_description: Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, KG, GCB, GCMG, PC was a British statesman and colonial administrator who played a role in the formulation of foreign and domestic policy between the mid-1890s and early 1920s. From December 1916 to November 1918, he was one of the most important members of David Lloyd George's War Cabinet.
context_section_description: Found among Milner's papers was his Credo, which was published in The Times, republished as a pamphlet, and distributed to schools and other public institutions to great acclaim:
  "I am a Nationalist and not a cosmopolitan .... I am a British (indeed primarily an English) Nationalist.  If I am also an Imperialist, it is because the destiny of the English race, owing to its insular position and long supremacy at sea, has been to strike roots in different parts of the world.  I am an Imperialist and not a Little Englander because I am a British Race Patriot ... The British State must follow the race, must comprehend it, wherever it settles in appreciable numbers as an independent community.  If the swarms constantly being thrown off by the parent hive are lost to the State, the State is irreparably weakened.  We cannot afford to part with so much of our best blood.  We have already parted with much of it, to form the millions of another separate but fortunately friendly State.  We cannot suffer a repetition of the process." Link to the news story.
  On the South African War:
  "The Dutch can never form a perfect allegiance merely to Great Britain.  The British can never, without moral injury, accept allegiance to any body politic which excludes their motherland.  But British and Dutch alike could, without moral injury, without any sacrifice to their several traditions, unite in loyal devotion to an empire-state, in which Great Britain and South Africa would be partners, and could work cordially together for the good of South Africa as a member of that great whole.  And so you see the true Imperialist is also the best South African."   From the Introduction to, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, Vol VI (1909). Link.
caption: The Lord Milner hotel in Matjiesfontein, South Africa
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