desire, a member of the great community of free nations gathered together under the
British flag. That has been the object of all my efforts. It is my object still." (8) In his
great farewell speech of March 1905, Milner called upon his hearers, and especially the
Kindergarten, to remain loyal to this ultimate goal. He said:
“What I pray for hardest is, that those with whom I have worked in a great struggle
and who may attach some weight to my words should remain faithful, faithful above all
in the period of reaction, to the great idea of Imperial Unity. Shall we ever live to see its
fulfillment? Whether we do or not, whether we succeed or fail, l shall always be steadfast
in that faith, though I should prefer to work quietly and in the background, in the
formation of opinion rather than in the exercise of power.... When we who call ourselves
Imperialists talk of the British Empire, we think of a group of states, all independent in
their local concerns, but all united for the defense of their own common interests and the
development of a common civilization; united, not in an alliance—for alliances can be
made and unmade, and are never more than nominally lasting—but in a permanent
organic union. Of such a union the dominions as they exist today, are, we fully admit,
only the raw material. Our ideal is still distant but we deny that it is either visionary or
unattainable.... The road is long, the obstacles are many, the goal may not be reached in
my lifetime—perhaps not in that of any man in this room. You cannot hasten the slow
growth of a great idea like that by any forcing process. But what you can do is to keep it
steadily in view, to lose no opportunity to work for it, to resist like grim death any policy
which leads away from it. I know that the service of that idea requires the rarest
combination of qualities, a combination of ceaseless effort with infinite patience. But
then think on the other hand of the greatness of the reward; the immense privilege of
being allowed to contribute in any way to the fulfillment of one of the noblest
conceptions which has ever dawned on the political imagination of mankind.”
For the first couple of years in South Africa the Kindergarten worked to build up the
administrative, judicial, educational, and economic systems of South Africa. By 1905
they were already working for the Union. The first steps were the Inter-colonial Council,
which linked the Transvaal and Orange River Colony; the Central South African Railway
amalgamation; and the customs union. As we have seen, the Kindergarten controlled the
first two of these completely; in addition, they controlled the administration of Transvaal
completely. This was important, because the gold and diamond mines made this colony
the decisive economic power in South Africa, and control of this power gave the
Kindergarten the leverage with which to compel the other states to join a union.
In 1906, Curtis, Dawson, Hichens, Brand, and Kerr, with the support of Feetham and
Malcolm, went to Lord Selborne and asked his permission to work for the Union. They
prevailed upon Dr. Starr Jameson, at that time Premier of Cape Colony, to write to
Selborne in support of the project. When permission was obtained, Curtis resigned from
his post in Johannesburg and, with Kerr's assistance, formed "Closer Union Societies" as
propaganda bodies throughout South Africa. Dawson, as editor, controlled the
South Africa was concerned, with Monypenny, Amery, Basil Williams, and Grigg in
strategic spots—the last as head of the imperial department of the paper. Fabian Ware
published articles by various members of the Milner Group in his
Africa, £5000 was obtained from Abe Bailey to found a monthly paper to further the
cause of union. This paper, The State, was edited by Philip Kerr and B. K. Long and
became the predecessor of
Bailey was not only the chief financial support of the Kindergarten's activities for closer
union in South Africa, but also the first financial contributor to The Round Table in 1910,
and to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919. He contributed to both during
his life, and at his death in 1940 gave
period. He had given the Royal Institute £5000 a year in perpetuity in 1928. Like his
close associates Rhodes and Beit, he left part of his immense fortune in the form of a trust
fund to further imperial interests. In Bailey's case, the fund amounted to £250,000.
As part pf the project toward a Union of South Africa, Curtis in 1906 drew up a
memorandum on the need for closer union of the South African territories, basing his
arguments chiefly on the need for greater railway and customs unity. This, with the
addition of a section written by Kerr on railway rates, and a few paragraphs by Selborne,