with a woman. Public life Kerr served in the South African government from 1905 to 1910 and was a member of what became called "Milner's Kindergarten", a group of colonial officers who deemed themselves reformist rather than an actual political faction. They believed the colonies should have more say in the Commonwealth of Nations. By the standards of the era, they were liberal: most of them had an interest in elevating the status of white colonials, rejected independence, and had a paternalistic view of nonwhites. Kerr became more liberal on these issues than his counterparts by admiring Gandhi and trying, if not entirely succeeding, to be more progressive than they were on racial issues. Kerr was based in Johannesburg, where he served on the Inter-Colonial Council where he specialised in the running of the railroads. Kerr helped write the Selborne Memorandum of 1907 calling for the four colonies of the Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, Natal and the Cape Colony to be united into one and granted Dominion status as the new country of South Africa. In common with the other members of the Milner's Kindergarten, Kerr rejected the original British plan for the cultural genocide of the Afrikaners by forcing them to speak English regardless if they wanted to or not. Instead, he advocated reconciliation with the moderate Afrikaner nationalists led by Jan Smuts and Louis Botha. Kerr envisioned the new nation of South Africa as a federation where the Anglos (South African whites of British descent) would share power with the Afrikaners. The black and Asian populations of South Africa were completely excluded from the political progress-the moderate Afrikaner nationalists were prepared to allow "coloreds" (the South African term for mixed race people) the right to vote, a concession opposed by the more extreme Afrikaner nationalists. Inspired by The Federalist Papers that led to the modern American constitution, Kerr founded in December 1908 a journal called The States that was published in both English and Afrikaans that urged for the federation of the four colonies and Dominion status. Kerr defined the purpose of The States as allowing "...for the South Africans to join in a state and became a nation". However, the Afrikaners would not accept a federation and instead preferred an unitary state as the greater number of Afrikaners vs. the Anglos would ensure the former would dominate South Africa rather than the latter. On 31 May