Talk:Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner

message: Recently the file :File:Alfred Milner, Viscount Milner by Hugh de Twenebrokes Glazebrook.jpg (right) was uploaded and it appears to be relevant to this article and not currently used by it. If you're interested and think it would be a useful addition, please feel free to include it. Unfortunately it's very dark, but appears to be a good color painting showing him in military regalia - perhaps a brightened version could be uploaded. Dcoetzee 04:02, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  New file [[:File:Alfred Milner, Viscount Milner by Hugh de Twenebrokes Glazebrook.jpg]] 

message: Can an Englishman really be described as an Anglophile? john k (talk) 23:29, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines an "anglophile" as "a person who is not British but who likes Britain or British things very much". The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines it as "a person who is not British but is interested in, likes or supports Britain and its people and customs". So I would say no. Gabbe (talk) 11:13, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anglophilia? 

message: We have an article on Milner's kindergarten but no reference to it in this article. Can anyone with any knowledge of it help? Alansplodge (talk) 22:54, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  No Kindergarten? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: A new section Architect of Apartheid has been added.  I am quite sure Milner was a racist, as were most people of his time and as are most of us today, but to call him the Architect of Apartheid is a misnomer, that notorious title rightfully belongs to Hendrik Verwoerd. The Alberton Record newspaper which is cited as a reference to support the claim of Milner as the Architect of Apartheid is hardly a reliable source, it is a free community newspaper, and they have quoted sahistory.org.za Lord Alfred Milner, British Colonial Secretary, and architect of the Union of South Africa dies and have leaped from "architect of the Union of South Africa" to "Architect of Apartheid" these are not one and the same thing. I believe that this claim of Milner as Architect of Apartheid poor history and should be removed. Though I believe the issue of his refusal of black US troops in WW1 should remain as part of the article. Wayne Jayes (talk) 16:35, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Milner wasn't the architect of apartheid, Verwoerd was. But Milner was a man of quite disagreeable views: idealistic in some ways, frankly nasty in other ways. He wanted to create a British-ruled, white-dominated South Africa, on the model of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, for the greater glory of the Empire, and he thought this could be done by bringing the Afrikaners (Boers) into the imperial fold. And, to do that, you had to let them (and the similarly minded 'Uitlanders', and the Wernher-Beit gold-mining concern) boss the blacks, because they insisted on that. As Milner, the newly installed High Commissioner at Cape Town, wrote to H.H. Asquith on 18 November 1897, 'You have only to sacrifice "the nigger" absolutely and the game is easy.' (Thomas Pakenham, now Earl of Longford, The Boer War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1979, pbk Abacus, London, 1992, ISBN 0-349-10466-2, pp.119-120, 605.) The letter is in the Asquith papers at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Milner remains, and always will remain, notorious for that one sentence, which was cynical and offensive even by the standards of the time. Weirdly, this article does not cite or rely on Pakenham's book at all, even though it is the definitive history of the Boer War, which is the only thing that Milner is really remembered for. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:25, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Architect of Apartheid 

message: This is a great place to settle the Doullens controversy.  What happened?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Music man214 (talk • contribs) 21:35, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody knows for certain, and victory has a thousand fathers, as the saying goes. Everybody wanted to take credit for Foch's appointment when it turned out well. Somebody - I can't for the life of me remember who - wrote that it was a room full of strong-willed men arguing with one another in French (the language of diplomacy at the time - Clemenceau was the only French leader who could speak English) so we shall never know, and the only thing we know for certain is that it didn't happen the way Haig claimed. Haig's diary for this period was almost certainly written up after the event and its accuracy has been called into question.Paulturtle (talk) 04:00, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

text: I suspect that rather exaggerates his role. He certainly wasn't personally responsible for the removal of Robertson, and I'm not aware he had anything much to do with the removal of Jellicoe. My understanding is that his relations with Lloyd George soured a bit from the spring of 1918 onwards.Paulturtle (talk) 08:30, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doullens 

message: I bought an ancestry book about 20 years ago, and found that 200 to 225 Milners live in the United States, all over the place.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Music man214 (talk • contribs) 19:03, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where are the Milners today? 

message: The Good Lord seems to have run afoul with certain people nearly a century after his death.  There is a cruel myth about Alfred among certain English that has endured to this day, it paints him as evil, greedy, power hungry, beholden to the wealthy English, and all this is proved by his closeness with the randlords, and his trusteeship over Cecil Rhodes' will.  Moreover, he is seen as the head of a secret society that runs everything in England, including foreign policy, which, of course, means orchestrating (self serving) wars for greed.  There is a book recently published called, "Lord Milner's Second War" , which people should find and perhaps even buy.  I'm sure it's a real gem.  There is at least one other book, and perhaps other material on the internet about this.  However, I am here to say that none of that is possible.  People are not so easily screwed, and Alfred's only reason to orchestrate the, "Round Table movement" was to enhance the power of the Empire, not to enlarge his bank account.  Even the Lord Milner Hotel in South Africa is a misnomer.  Alfred never lived there.  It was built in 1899, and it was home to British Army Headquarters.
Rather than starting wars, Lord Milner was about ending them. People should read the words of American Peace Conference Delegate James Shotwell, found here:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/Lord-Alfred-Milner-109792770489900/photos/?tab=album&album_id=111199363682574  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.156.160.60 (talk) 01:50, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cruelty Dispelled 

message: Apropos the suggestion that the US 92nd Division might have served alongside the British, Duncan Hill commented (in an edit summary) that Pershing wasn't too keen on US troops serving with British and French. Well, he was fiercely opposed to US troops being integrated into the Allied armies at regiment and battalion level, as Haig and others had suggested.
I haven't found anything very specific, although I haven't looked very hard. I don't know for certain but I suspect this may refer to the US II Corps, which fought alongside the British. It initially consisted of the US 27th, 30th, 33rd, 78th and 80th divisions. The latter three were transferred out when the Allies went back onto the offensive but the 27th and 30th remained under British command until the end of the war.Paulturtle (talk) 00:57, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I was rather dubious about the assertion, as I knew Pershing had gone out of his way to prevent his troops being trained or brigaded with Allied forces. The statement in the article is referenced to . Now I do not have the book, and only snippets are available on Google Books and search only on Hathi trust, and I can't find it on Archive.org or on a couple of well-known sites that we aren't meant to use. The Google snippet view only shews the name Milner as being on pages 54, 308, and 363. The Hathi Trust says he's mentioned on pages 54, 264, 308, 363, and 397. So - neither gives a result for the claimed page 46. Neither Google Books nor Hathi Trust give a result for 92nd Division, they both give a result for 92+division on page 132, but from the Google snippet this is about the number of machine guns allocated to each division at the beginning of the War. I am therefore going to remove the assertion as being apparently unsupported by the source. I shall ask on WP:RX if anyone can supply the page, or even chapter referred to. DuncanHill (talk) 14:34, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

text: So, yes the British did, according to Pershing, object to the 92nd and that was on colour grounds (Milner actually says "administrative trouble"), how much of this was down to Milner himself and how much to the Army we can't say on the evidence in Pershing, and indeed how much account the Americans took of British objections . It would be very interesting to find out more about the episode. DuncanHill (talk) 15:25, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  US 92nd Division 

message: How do I load a picture?  I have many pictures I would like to load, but I don't know how to load a picture. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lord Milner (talk • contribs) 07:45, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Load a Picture

message: There is an editor using the name Lord Milner who has been very active on this page recently. He doesnt have his own user page.  I am sure he means well and some of the edits are very useful. Some I don't understand -mostly to do with refs. Some however seem to be done for the sake of it. The ones that annoy me are those where he insists on using US spelling. I have corrected him on a number of occasions on spelling and other things and have always given my reasons. He rarely summarises his edits or gives reasons. Please Lord Milner could you respond? I am sure you act in good faith. So do I and I always try to improve articles. Even if we disagree on things we should have constructive disagreement and act collaboratively with a view to making a better encyclopedia.Does anybody else have any comments? Spinney Hill (talk) 19:50, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Lord Milner" 

message: thumb|left|Lord Milner's Second War
thumb|Lord Milner's Second War book summary
What is this?  I'm not from England, but perhaps someone can explain to us how this cult like, conspiracy thinking started.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lord Milner (talk • contribs) 23:08, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Bad Rap

message: In para 6 of this section there is a long list of people, beginning with Lord Derby and ending with Admiral Jellicoe who were removed from office. The article then refers to "the former " and the "latter." I think this is inappropriate with a list of more than two. If "the former" relates to Lord Derby the "former " should be replaced by "the first." The "latter" is clearly Jellicoe and I will alter this but the account does not square with the article on Jellicoe. Jellicoe was resistant to convoys but the were apparently in common use by August 1917. "his orders" is a bit vague. What orders ? Or does it mean dismissal. Can the account of his removal be squared with that in the Jellicoe article?Spinney Hill (talk) 08:02, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorted. Jellicoe was a respected figure and is praised by modern historians (for having comprehensively outmanoeuvred the High Seas Fleet at Jutland and being very unlucky not to win a second Trafalgar) but at the time, he was under a cloud because of disappointment at Jutland and I get the impression he was a bit worn out - and I suspect that Lloyd George was looking for somebody to kick in his frustration at Haig and Robertson (but that's just my opinion). The "First Sea Lord" section of Jellicoe's biog was written by me back in about 2013. For what it's worth, they actually toyed with appointing General Robertson as First Lord of the Admiralty before giving it to Geddes.Paulturtle (talk) 06:05, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

text: Milner was certainly involved in the replacement of Carson by Geddes as First Lord of the Admiralty in July 1917, but I don't think he was actively involved in the sacking of Jellicoe at the end of 1917. He was involved in the removal of Robertson early in 1918, having lost confidence in the generals in 1917 over Third Ypres.Paulturtle (talk) 19:03, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wartime Minister 

message: While the Peace Treaty Section on this article relating to Milner is very specific and focused, the ending of this section beginning with the quote from Marshal Foch seems largely to be unnecessary commentary on the part of the editor. The section goes into quoting many people of tangential (some, even no) relation to Milner himself. The insertion of quotes from those long after Milner's lifetime that discuss the Treaty of Versailles generally and not Milner specifically also seem largely out of place in this Wikipedia article dedicated to him. Perhaps this discussion is much better suited to Treaty of Versailles page itself, where debate and editing for accuracy can be consolidated rather than fought over on a more peripheral article.
Additionally, when my title mentions historical speculation it refers most particularly to this line:
This line is clear cut speculation and frankly an expression merely of the editor's opinion, not a statement grounded in fact. We all are entitled to our own opinions but Wikipedia articles, which are meant to approach being unbiased, are not the place to express them. Such a passage is of dubious nature in any Wiki article. Alfred Milner, particularly, is only tangentially related to such speculation. The passage simply should be removed.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:240:e300:1800:8c6:870f:9a33:d73b (talk) 04:50, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical Speculation/"What If's?" Under "The Peace Treaty" Section Unwarranted. 

message: The paragraph from Newbury says Alfred was aloof from politics.  This is so not true: he was one of the stars in Salisbury's Unionist government, with others being Arthur Balfour and Joseph Chamberlain.  Unionists were to the right of Conservatives.  The best way to look at it is here: Unionists were gung-ho for the Empire, Conservatives were anti-Empire, and Liberals were about Home Rule (Irish Independence).  The idea of the modern welfare state first appeared in the early years of the twentieth century, influenced by Germany, in the minds of Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George, but this clouds the issue.  Milner formed his own political party, the British Workers National League, to swing 'patriotic labour' to the side of the Empire, and he was the founder of The Round Table journal, which gave quarterly updates to the common man on developments in each colony.
The paragraph from from Elkins says Alfred was a racist.  However, he was only biased towards what he called, "the British race".  A typical example of his writing says, "It is the British Race which built the Empire, and it is the undivided British race which can alone uphold it.... Deeper, stronger, more primordial than material ties is the bond of common blood."Hochschild, Adam, "To End All Wars pg. 20 Furthermore, if race is a social construct, then there is none better than countries as a race.  Advocating one's nation as a race was common with Unionists, and besides, what would be the state of the world today without British intervention?
For these reasons, I think both paragraphs in the articles section should be modified or deleted. Lord Milner (talk) 03:10, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: A Bad Evaluation