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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Cecil Rhodes, by Princess Catherine Radziwill
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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+
+
+
+
+Title: Cecil Rhodes
+       Man and Empire-Maker
+
+
+Author: Princess Catherine Radziwill
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 26, 2005  [eBook #16600]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CECIL RHODES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Dainis Millers, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+      See 16600-h.htm or 16600-h.zip:
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+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/6/0/16600/16600-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+CECIL RHODES
+
+Man and Empire-Maker
+
+by
+
+PRINCESS CATHERINE RADZIWILL
+(CATHERINE KOLB-DANVIN)
+
+With Eight Photogravure Plates
+
+Cassell & Company, Ltd
+London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
+
+1918
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE RT. HON. CECIL RHODES]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ CHAPTER                                    PAGE
+
+    1. CECIL RHODES AND SIR ALFRED MILNER     1
+    2. THE FOUNDATIONS OF FORTUNE            17
+    3. A COMPLEX PERSONALITY                 28
+    4. MRS. VAN KOOPMAN                      40
+    5. RHODES AND THE RAID                   50
+    6. THE AFTERMATH OF THE RAID             69
+    7. RHODES AND THE AFRIKANDER BOND        82
+    8. THE INFLUENCE OF SIR ALFRED MILNER   104
+    9. THE OPENING OF THE NEW CENTURY       120
+   10. AN ESTIMATE OF SIR ALFRED MILNER     130
+   11. CROSS CURRENTS                       144
+   12. THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS              157
+   13. THE PRISONERS' CAMPS                 170
+   14. IN FLIGHT FROM THE RAND              191
+   15. DEALING WITH THE REFUGEES            202
+   16. UNDER MARTIAL LAW                    214
+       CONCLUSION
+       INDEX
+
+
+
+
+       LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+       THE RT. HON. CECIL RHODES           Frontispiece
+
+                                            Facing page
+
+       THE RT. HON. W.P. SCHREINER                  32
+       PRESIDENT KRUGER                             68
+       THE HON. J.H. HOFMEYR                        86
+       THE RT. HON. SIR W.F. HELY-HUTCHINSON        98
+       VISCOUNT MILNER                             132
+       THE RT. HON. SIR LEANDER STARR JAMESON      148
+       THE RT. HON. SIR JOHN GORDON SPRIGG         224
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The recent death of Sir Starr Jameson reminded the public of the South
+African War, which was such an engrossing subject to the British public at
+the close of the 'nineties and the first years of the present century. Yet
+though it may seem quite out of date to reopen the question when so many
+more important matters occupy attention, the relationship between South
+Africa and England is no small matter. It has also had its influence on
+actual events, if only by proving to the world the talent which Great
+Britain has displayed in the administration of her vast Colonies and the
+tact with which British statesmen have contrived to convert their foes of
+the day before into friends, sincere, devoted and true.
+
+No other country in the world could have achieved such a success as did
+England in the complicated and singularly difficult task of making itself
+popular among nations whose independence it had destroyed.
+
+The secret of this wonderful performance lies principally in the care
+which England has exercised to secure the welfare of the annexed
+population, and to do nothing likely to keep them in remembrance of the
+subordinate position into which they had been reduced. England never
+crushes those whom it subdues. Its inbred talent for colonisation has
+invariably led it along the right path in regard to its colonial
+development. Even in cases where Britain made the weight of its rule
+rather heavy for the people whom it had conquered, there still developed
+among them a desire to remain federated to the British Empire, and also a
+conviction that union, though it might be unpleasant to their personal
+feelings and sympathies, was, after all, the best thing which could have
+happened to them in regard to their material interests.
+
+Prosperity has invariably attended British rule wherever it has found
+scope to develop itself, and at the present hour British patriotism is far
+more demonstrative in India, Australia or South Africa than it is in
+England itself. The sentiments thus strongly expressed impart a certain
+zealotism to their feelings, which constitutes a strong link with the
+Mother Country. In any hour of national danger or calamity this trait
+provides her with the enthusiastic help of her children from across the
+seas.
+
+The Englishman, generally quiet at home and even subdued in the presence
+of strangers, is exuberant in the Colonies; he likes to shout his
+patriotism upon every possible occasion, even when it would be better to
+refrain. It is an aggressive patriotism which sometimes is quite uncouth
+in its manifestations, but it is real patriotism, disinterested and devoid
+of any mercenary or personal motives.
+
+It is impossible to know what England is if one has not had the
+opportunity of visiting her Dominions oversea. It is just as impossible to
+judge of Englishmen when one has only seen them at home amid the comforts
+of the easy and pleasant existence which one enjoys in Merrie England, and
+only there. It is not the country Squires, whose homes are such a definite
+feature of English life; nor the aristocratic members of the Peerage, with
+their influence and their wealth; nor even the political men who sit in
+St. Stephen's, who have spread abroad the fame and might and power of
+England. But it is these modest pioneers of "nations yet to be" who, in
+the wilds and deserts of South Africa, Australia and Asia, have
+demonstrated the realities of English civilisation and the English spirit
+of freedom.
+
+In the hour of danger we have seen all these members of the great Mother
+Country rush to its help. The spectacle has been an inspiring one, and in
+the case of South Africa especially it has been unique, inasmuch as it has
+been predicted far and wide that the memory of the Boer War would never
+die out, and that loyalty to Great Britain would never be found in the
+vast African veldt. Facts have belied this rash assertion, and the world
+has seldom witnessed a more impressive vindication of the triumph of true
+Imperialism than that presented by Generals Botha and Smuts. As the leader
+of a whole nation, General Botha defended its independence against
+aggression, yet became the faithful, devoted servant and the true adherent
+of the people whom he had fought a few years before, putting at their
+disposal the weight of his powerful personality and the strength of his
+influence over his partisans and countrymen.
+                                                     CATHERINE RADZIWILL.
+    _December, 1917._
+
+
+
+
+CECIL RHODES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+CECIL RHODES AND SIR ALFRED MILNER
+
+
+The conquest of South Africa is one of the most curious episodes in
+English history. Begun through purely mercenary motives, it yet acquired a
+character of grandeur which, as time went on, divested it of all sordid
+and unworthy suspicions. South Africa has certainly been the land of
+adventurers, and many of them found there either fame or disgrace,
+unheard-of riches or the most abject poverty, power or humiliation. At the
+same time the Colony has had amongst its rulers statesmen of unblemished
+reputation and high honour, administrators of rare integrity, and men who
+saw beyond the fleeting interests of the hour into the far more important
+vista of the future.
+
+When President Kruger was at its head the Transvaal Republic would have
+crumbled under the intrigues of some of its own citizens. The lust for
+riches which followed upon the discovery of the goldfields had, too, a
+drastic effect. The Transvaal was bound to fall into the hands of someone,
+and to be that Someone fell to the lot of England. This was a kindly throw
+of Fate, because England alone could administer all the wealth of the
+region without its becoming a danger, not only to the community at large,
+but also to the Transvaalers.
+
+That this is so can be proved by the eloquence of facts rather than by
+words. It is sufficient to look upon what South Africa was twenty-five
+years ago, and upon what it has become since under the protection of
+British rule, to be convinced of the truth of my assertion. From a land of
+perennial unrest and perpetual strife it has been transformed into a
+prosperous and quiet colony, absorbed only in the thought of its economic
+and commercial progress. Its population, which twenty years ago was
+wasting its time and energy in useless wrangles, stands to-day united to
+the Mother Country and absorbed by the sole thought of how best to prove
+its devotion.
+
+The Boer War has still some curious issues of which no notice has been
+taken by the public at large. One of the principal, perhaps indeed the
+most important of these, is that, though brought about by material
+ambitions of certain people, it ended by being fought against these very
+same people, and that its conclusion eliminated them from public life
+instead of adding to their influence and their power. The result is
+certainly a strange and an interesting one, but it is easily explained if
+one takes into account the fact that once England as a nation--and not as
+_the_ nation to which belonged the handful of adventurers through whose
+intrigues the war was brought about--entered into the possession of the
+Transvaal and organised the long-talked-of Union of South Africa, the
+country started a normal existence free from the unhealthy symptoms which
+had hindered its progress. It became a useful member of the vast British
+Empire, as well as a prosperous country enjoying a good government, and
+launched itself upon a career it could never have entered upon but for the
+war. Destructive as it was, the Boer campaign was not a war of
+annihilation. On the contrary, without it it would have been impossible
+for the vast South African territories to become federated into a Union of
+its own and at the same time to take her place as a member of another
+Empire from which it derived its prosperity and its welfare. The grandeur
+of England and the soundness of its leaders has never come out in a more
+striking manner than in this conquest of South Africa--a blood-stained
+conquest which has become a love match.
+
+During the concluding years of last century the possibility of union was
+seldom taken into consideration; few, indeed, were clever enough and wise
+enough to find out that it was bound to take place as a natural
+consequence of the South African War. The war cleared the air all over
+South Africa. It crushed and destroyed all the suspicious, unhealthy
+elements that had gathered around the gold mines of the Transvaal and the
+diamond fields of Cape Colony. It dispersed the coterie of adventurers who
+had hastened there with the intention of becoming rapidly rich at the
+expense of the inhabitants of the country. A few men had succeeded in
+building for themselves fortunes beyond the dreams of avarice, whilst the
+majority contrived to live more or less well at the expense of those naïve
+enough to trust to them in financial matters until the day when the war
+arrived to put an end to their plunderings.
+
+The struggle into which President Kruger was compelled to rush was
+expected by some of the powerful intriguers in South Africa to result in
+increasing the influence of certain of the millionaires, who up to the
+time when the war broke out had ruled the Transvaal and indirectly the
+Cape Colony by the strength and importance of their riches. Instead, it
+weakened and then destroyed their power. Without the war South Africa
+would have grown more wicked, and matters there were bound soon to come to
+a crisis of some sort. The crux of the situation was whether this crisis
+was going to be brought about by a few unscrupulous people for their own
+benefit, or was to arise in consequence of the clever and far-seeing
+policy of wise politicians.
+
+Happily for England, and I shall even say happily for the world at large,
+such a politician was found in the person of the then Sir Alfred Milner,
+who worked unselfishly toward the grand aim his far-sighted Imperialism
+saw in the distance.
+
+History will give Viscount Milner--as he is to-day--the place which is due
+to him. His is indeed a great figure; he was courageous enough, sincere
+enough, and brave enough to give an account of the difficulties of the
+task he had accepted. His experience of Colonial politics was principally
+founded on what he had seen and studied when in Egypt and in India, which
+was a questionable equipment in the entirely new areas he was called upon
+to administer when he landed in Table Bay. Used to Eastern shrewdness and
+Eastern duplicity, he had not had opportunity to fight against the
+unscrupulousness of men who were neither born nor brought up in the
+country, but who had grown to consider it as their own, and exploited its
+resources not only to the utmost, but also to the detriment of the
+principles of common honesty.
+
+The reader must not take my words as signifying a sweeping condemnation of
+the European population of South Africa. On the contrary, there existed in
+that distant part of the world many men of great integrity, high
+principles and unsullied honour who would never, under any condition
+whatsoever, have lent themselves to mean or dishonest action; men who held
+up high their national flag, and who gave the natives a splendid example
+of all that an Englishman could do or perform when called upon to maintain
+the reputation of his Mother Country abroad.
+
+Some of the early English settlers have left great remembrance of their
+useful activity in the matter of the colonisation of the new continent to
+which they had emigrated, and their descendants, of whom I am happy to say
+there are a great number, have not shown themselves in any way unworthy of
+their forbears. South Africa has its statesmen and politicians who, having
+been born there, understand perfectly well its necessities and its wants.
+Unfortunately, for a time their voices were crushed by the new-comers who
+had invaded the country, and who considered themselves better able than
+anyone else to administer its affairs. They brought along with them fresh,
+strange ambitions, unscrupulousness, determination to obtain power for the
+furtherance of their personal aims, and a greed which the circumstances in
+which they found themselves placed was bound to develop into something
+even worse than a vice, because it made light of human life as well as of
+human property.
+
+In any judgment on South Africa one must never forget that, after all,
+before the war did the work of a scavenger it was nothing else but a vast
+mining camp, with all its terrifying moods, its abject defects, and its
+indifference with regard to morals and to means. The first men who began
+to exploit the riches of that vast territory contrived in a relatively
+easy way to build up their fortunes upon a solid basis, but many of their
+followers, eager to walk in their steps, found difficulties upon which
+they had not reckoned or even thought about. In order to put them aside
+they used whatever means lay in their power, without hesitation as to
+whether these answered to the principles of honesty and
+straightforwardness. Their ruthless conduct was so far advantageous to
+their future schemes that it inspired disgust among those whose ancestors
+had sought a prosperity founded on hard work and conscientious toil. These
+good folk retired from the field, leaving it free to the adventurers who
+were to give such a bad name to England and who boasted loudly that they
+had been given full powers to do what they liked in the way of conquering
+a continent which, but for them, would have been only too glad to place
+itself under English protection and English rule. To these people, and to
+these alone, were due all the antagonisms which at last brought about the
+Boer War.
+
+It was with these people that Sir Alfred Milner found himself out of
+harmony; from the first moment that he had set his foot on African soil
+they tried to put difficulties in his way, after they had convinced
+themselves that he would never consent to lend himself to their schemes.
+
+Lord Milner has never belonged to the class of men who allow themselves to
+be influenced either by wealth or by the social position of anyone. He is
+perhaps one of the best judges of humanity it has been my fortune to meet,
+and though by no means an unkind judge, yet a very fair one. Intrigue is
+repulsive to him, and unless I am very much mistaken I venture to affirm
+that, in the 'nineties, because of the intrigues in which they indulged,
+he grew to loathe some of the men with whom he was thrown into contact.
+Yet he could not help seeing that these reckless speculators controlled
+public opinion in South Africa, and his political instinct compelled him
+to avail himself of their help, as without them he would not have been
+able to arrive at a proper understanding of the entanglements and
+complications of South African politics.
+
+Previous to Sir Alfred's appointment as Governor of the Cape of Good Hope
+the office had been filled by men who, though of undoubted integrity and
+high standing, were yet unable to gauge the volume of intrigue with which
+they had to cope from those who had already established an iron--or,
+rather, golden--rule in South Africa.
+
+Coteries of men whose sole aim was the amassing of quick fortunes were
+virtual rulers of Cape Colony, with more power than the Government to whom
+they simulated submission. All sorts of weird stories were in circulation.
+One popular belief was that the mutiny of the Dutch in Cape Colony just
+before the Boer War was at bottom due to the influence of money. This was
+followed by a feeling that, but for the aggressive operations of the
+outpost agents of certain commercial magnates, it would have been possible
+for England to realise the Union of South Africa by peaceful means instead
+of the bloody arbitrament of war.
+
+In the minds of many Dutchmen--and Dutchmen who were sincerely patriotic
+Transvaalers--the conviction was strong that the natural capabilities of
+Boers did not lie in the direction of developing, as they could be, the
+amazing wealth-producing resources of the Transvaal and of the Orange Free
+State. By British help alone, such men believed, could their country hope
+to thrive as it ought.
+
+Here, then, was the nucleus around which the peaceful union of Boer and
+English peoples in South Africa could be achieved without bloodshed.
+Indeed, had Queen Victoria been represented at the Cape by Sir Alfred
+Milner ten years before he was appointed Governor there, many things which
+had a disastrous influence on the Dutch elements in South Africa would not
+have occurred. The Jameson Raid would certainly not have been planned and
+attempted. To this incident can be ascribed much of the strife and
+unpleasantness which followed, by which was lost to the British Government
+the chance, then fast ripening, of bringing about without difficulty a
+reconciliation of Dutch and English all over South Africa. This
+reconciliation would have been achieved through Cecil Rhodes, and would
+have been a fitting crown to a great career.
+
+At one time the most popular man from the Zambesi to Table Mountain, the
+name of Cecil Rhodes was surrounded by that magic of personal power
+without which it is hardly possible for any conqueror to obtain the
+material or moral successes that give him a place in history; that win for
+him the love, the respect, and sometimes the hatred, of his
+contemporaries. Sir Alfred Milner would have known how to make the work of
+Cecil Rhodes of permanent value to the British Empire. It was a thousand
+pities that when Sir Alfred Milner took office in South Africa the
+influence of Cecil Rhodes, at one time politically dominant, had so
+materially shrunk as a definitive political factor.
+
+Sir Alfred Milner found himself in the presence of a position already
+compromised beyond redemption, and obliged to fight against evils which
+ought never to have been allowed to develop. Even at that time, however,
+it would have been possible for Sir Alfred Milner to find a way of
+disposing of the various difficulties connected with English rule in South
+Africa had he been properly seconded by Mr. Rhodes. Unfortunately for both
+of them, their antagonism to each other, in their conception of what ought
+or ought not to be done in political matters, was further aggravated by
+intrigues which tended to keep Rhodes apart from the Queen's High
+Commissioner in South Africa.
+
+It would not at all have suited certain people had Sir Alfred contrived to
+acquire a definite influence over Mr. Rhodes, and assuredly this would
+have happened had the two men have been allowed unhindered to appreciate
+the mental standard of each other. Mr. Rhodes was at heart a sincere
+patriot, and it was sufficient to make an appeal to his feelings of
+attachment to his Mother Country to cause him to look at things from that
+point of view. Had there existed any real intimacy between Groote Schuur
+and Government House at Cape Town, the whole course of South African
+politics might have been very different.
+
+Sir Alfred Milner arrived in Cape Town with a singularly free and unbiased
+mind, determined not to allow other people's opinions to influence his
+own, and also to use all the means at his disposal to uphold the authority
+of the Queen without entering into conflict with anyone. He had heard a
+deal about the enmity of English and Dutch, but though he perfectly well
+realised its cause he had made up his mind to examine the situation for
+himself. He was not one of those who thought that the raid alone was
+responsible; he knew very well that this lamentable affair had only fanned
+into an open blaze years-long smoulderings of discontent. The Raid had
+been a consequence, not an isolated spontaneous act. Little by little over
+a long span of years the ambitious and sordid overridings of various
+restless, and too often reckless, adventurers had come to be considered as
+representative of English rule, English opinions and, what was still more
+unfortunate, England's personality as an Empire and as a nation.
+
+On the other side of the matter, the Dutch--who were inconceivably
+ignorant--thought their little domain the pivot of the world. Blind to
+realities, they had no idea of the legitimate relative comparison between
+the Transvaal and the British Empire, and so grew arrogantly oppressive in
+their attitude towards British settlers and the powers at Cape Town.
+
+All this naturally tinctured native feeling. Suspicion was fostered among
+the tribes, guns and ammunition percolated through Boer channels, the
+blacks viewed with disdain the friendly advances made by the British, and
+the atmosphere was thick with mutual distrust. The knowledge that this was
+the situation could not but impress painfully a delicate and proud mind,
+and surely Lord Milner can be forgiven for the illusion which he at one
+time undoubtedly cherished that he would be able to dispel this false
+notion about his Mother Country that pervaded South Africa.
+
+The Governor had not the least animosity against the Dutch, and at first
+the Boers had no feeling that Sir Alfred was prejudiced against them. Such
+a thought was drilled into their minds by subtle and cunning people who,
+for their own avaricious ends, desired to estrange the High Commissioner
+from the Afrikanders. Sir Alfred was represented as a tyrannical,
+unscrupulous man, whose one aim in life was the destruction of every
+vestige of Dutch independence, Dutch self-government and Dutch influence
+in Africa. Those who thus maligned him applied themselves to make him
+unpopular and to render his task so very uncongenial and unpleasant for
+him that he would at last give it up of his own accord, or else become the
+object of such violent hatreds that the Home Government would feel
+compelled to recall him. Thus they would be rid of the presence of a
+personage possessed of a sufficient energy to oppose them, and they would
+no longer need to fear his observant eyes. Sir Alfred Milner saw himself
+surrounded by all sorts of difficulties, and every attempt he made to
+bring forward his own plans for the settlement of the South African
+question crumbled to the ground almost before he could begin to work at
+it. Small wonder, therefore, if he felt discouraged and began to form a
+false opinion concerning the persons or the facts with whom he had to
+deal. Those who might have helped him were constrained, without it being
+his fault. Mr. Rhodes became persuaded that the new Governor of Cape
+Colony had arrived there with preconceived notions in regard to himself.
+He was led to believe that Milner's firm determination was to crush him;
+that, moreover, he was jealous of him and of the work he had done in South
+Africa.
+
+Incredible as it appears, Rhodes believed this absurd fiction, and learned
+to look upon Sir Alfred Milner as a natural enemy, desirous of thwarting
+him at every step. The Bloemfontein Conference, at which the brilliant
+qualities and the conciliating spirit of the new Governor of Cape Colony
+were first made clearly manifest, was represented to Rhodes as a desire to
+present him before the eyes of the Dutch as a negligible quantity in South
+Africa. Rhodes was strangely susceptible and far too mindful of the
+opinions of people of absolutely no importance. He fell into the snare,
+and though he was careful to hide from the public his real feelings in
+regard to Sir Alfred Milner, yet it was impossible for anyone who knew him
+well not to perceive at once that he had made up his mind not to help the
+High Commissioner. There is such a thing as damning praise, and Rhodes
+poured a good deal of it on the head of Sir Alfred.
+
+Fortunately, Sir Alfred was sufficiently conscious of the rectitude of his
+intentions and far too superior to feelings of petty spite. He never
+allowed himself to be troubled by these unpleasantnesses, but went on his
+way without giving his enemies the pleasure of noticing the measure of
+success which, unhappily, attended their campaign. He remained inflexible
+in his conduct, and, disdaining any justification, went on doing what he
+thought was right, and which was right, as events proved subsequently.
+Although Milner had at last to give up, yet it is very largely due to him
+that the South African Union was ultimately constituted, and that the
+much-talked-of reconciliation of the Dutch and English in Cape Colony and
+in the Transvaal became an accomplished fact. Had Sir Alfred been listened
+to from the very beginning it might have taken place sooner, and perhaps
+the Boer War altogether avoided.
+
+It is a curious thing that England's colonising powers, which are so
+remarkable, took such a long time to work their way in South Africa. At
+least it would have been a curious thing if one did not remember that
+among the first white men who arrived there Englishmen were much in the
+minority. And of those Englishmen who were attracted by the enormous
+mineral wealth which the country contained, a good proportion were not of
+the best class of English colonists. Many a one who landed in Table Bay
+was an adventurer, drawn thither by the wish to make or retrieve his
+fortune. Few came, as did Rhodes, in search of health, and few, again,
+were drawn thither by the pure love of adventure. In Australia, or in New
+Zealand or other colonies, people arrived with the determination to begin
+a new life and to create for themselves new ties, new occupations, new
+duties, so as to leave to their children after them the result of their
+labours. In South Africa it was seldom that emigrants were animated by the
+desire to make their home in the solitudes of the vast and unexplored
+veldt. Those who got rich there, though they may have built for themselves
+splendid houses while they dwelt in the land, never looked upon South
+Africa as home, but aspired to spend their quickly gained millions in
+London and to forget all about Table Mountain or the shafts and factories
+of Johannesburg and Kimberley.
+
+To such men as these England was a pretext but never a symbol. Their
+strange conception of patriotism jarred the most unpleasantly on the
+straightforward nature of Sir Alfred Milner, who had very quickly
+discerned the egotism that lay concealed beneath its cloak. He understood
+what patriotism meant, what love for one's own country signified. He had
+arrived in South Africa determined to spare neither his person nor his
+strength in her service, and the man who was repeatedly accused both by
+the Dutch and by the English party in the Colony of labouring under a
+misconception of its real political situation was the one who had from the
+very first appreciated it as it deserved, and had recognised its damning
+as well as its redeeming points.
+
+Sir Alfred meant South Africa to become a member of the British Empire, to
+participate in its greatness, and to enjoy the benefits of its protection.
+He had absolutely no idea of exasperating the feelings of the Dutch part
+of its population. He had the best intentions in regard to President
+Kruger himself, and there was one moment, just at the time of the
+Bloemfontein Conference, when a _modus vivendi_ between President Kruger
+and the Court of St. James's might have been established, notwithstanding
+the difficult question of the Uitlanders. It was frustrated by none other
+than these very Uitlanders, who, fondly believing that a war with England
+would establish them as absolute masters in the Gold Fields, brought it
+about, little realising that thereby was to be accomplished the one thing
+which they dreaded--the firm, just and far-seeing rule of England over all
+South Africa.
+
+In a certain sense the Boer War was fought just as much against financiers
+as against President Kruger. It put an end to the arrogance of both.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE FOUNDATIONS OF FORTUNE
+
+
+It is impossible to speak of South Africa without awarding to Cecil Rhodes
+the tribute which unquestionably is due to his strong personality. Without
+him it is possible that the vast territory which became so thoroughly
+associated with his name and with his life would still be without
+political importance. Without him it is probable that both the Diamond
+Fields to which Kimberley owes its prosperity and the Gold Fields which
+have won for the Transvaal its renown would never have risen above the
+importance of those of Brazil or California or Klondyke.
+
+It was Rhodes who first conceived the thought of turning all these riches
+into a political instrument and of using it to the advantage of his
+country--the England to which he remained so profoundly attached amid all
+the vicissitudes of his life, and to whose possessions he was so eager to
+add.
+
+Cecil Rhodes was ambitious in a grand, strange manner which made a
+complete abstraction of his own personality under certain conditions, but
+which in other circumstances made him violent, brutal in manner, thereby
+procuring enemies without number and detractors without end. His nature
+was something akin to that of the Roman Emperors in its insensate desire
+to exercise unchallenged an unlimited power. Impatient of restraint, no
+matter in what shape it presented itself, he brooked no resistance to his
+schemes; his rage against contradiction, and his opposition to any
+independence of thought or action on the part of those who were around
+him, brought about a result of which he would have been the first to
+complain, had he suspected it--that of allowing him to execute all his
+fancies and of giving way to all his resentments. Herein lies the reason
+why so many of his schemes fell through. This unfortunate trait also
+thrust him very often into the hands of those who were clever enough to
+exploit it, and who, more often than proved good to Rhodes' renown,
+suggested to him their own schemes and encouraged him to appropriate them
+as his own. He had a very quick way of catching hold of any suggestions
+that tallied with his sympathies or echoed any of his secret thoughts or
+aspirations.
+
+Yet withal Rhodes was a great soul, and had he only been left to himself,
+or made longer sojourns in England, had he understood English political
+life more clearly, had he had to grapple with the difficulties which
+confront public existence in his Mother Country, he would most certainly
+have done far greater things. He found matters far too easy for him at
+first, and the obstacles which he encountered very often proved either of
+a trivial or else of a removable nature--by fair means or methods less
+commendable. A mining camp is not a school of morality, and just as
+diamonds lose of their value in the estimation of those who continually
+handle them, as is the case in Kimberley, so integrity and honour come to
+be looked upon from a peculiar point of view according to the code of the
+majority.
+
+Then again, it must not be forgotten that the first opponents of Cecil
+Rhodes were black men, of whom the European always has the conception that
+they are not his equals. It is likely that if, instead of Lobengula, he
+had found before him a European chief or monarch, Rhodes would have acted
+differently than history credits him to have done toward the dusky
+sovereign. It is impossible to judge of facts of which one has had no
+occasion to watch the developments, or which have taken place in lands
+where one has never been. Neither Fernando Cortez in Mexico nor Pizzaro
+Gonzalo in Peru proved themselves merciful toward the populations whose
+territory they conquered. The tragedy which sealed the fate of
+Matabeleland was neither a darker nor a more terrible one than those of
+which history speaks when relating to us the circumstances attending the
+discovery of America. Such events must be judged objectively and forgiven
+accordingly. When forming an opinion on the doings and achievements of
+Cecil Rhodes one must make allowance for all the temptations which were
+thrown in his way and remember that he was a man who, if ambitious, was
+not so in a personal sense, but in a large, lofty manner, and who, whilst
+appropriating to himself the good things which he thought he could grasp,
+was also eager to make others share the profit of his success.
+
+Cecil Rhodes, in all save name, was monarch over a continent almost as
+vast as his own fancy and imagination. He was always dreaming, always lost
+in thoughts which were wandering far beyond his actual surroundings,
+carrying him into regions where the common spirit of mankind seldom
+travelled. He was born for far better things than those which he
+ultimately attained, but he did not belong to the century in which he
+lived; his ruthless passions of anger and arrogance were more fitted for
+an earlier and cruder era. Had he possessed any disinterested friends
+capable of rousing the better qualities that slumbered beneath his
+apparent cynicism and unscrupulousness, most undoubtedly he would have
+become the most remarkable individual in his generation. Unfortunately, he
+found himself surrounded by creatures absolutely inferior to himself,
+whose deficiencies he was the first to notice, whom he despised either for
+their insignificance or for their mental and moral failings, but to whose
+influence he nevertheless succumbed.
+
+When Cecil Rhodes arrived at Kimberley he was a mere youth. He had come to
+South Africa in quest of health and because he had a brother already
+settled there, Herbert Rhodes, who was later on to meet with a terrible
+fate. Cecil, if one is to believe what one hears from those who knew him
+at the time, was a shy youth, of a retiring disposition, whom no one could
+ever have suspected would develop into the hardy, strong man he became in
+time. He was constantly sick, and more than once was on the point of
+falling a victim of the dreaded fever which prevails all over South Africa
+and then was far more virulent in its nature than it is to-day. Kimberley
+at that time was still a vast solitude, with here and there a few
+scattered huts of corrugated iron occupied by the handful of colonists.
+Water was rare: it is related, indeed, that the only way to get a wash was
+to use soda water.
+
+The beginning of Rhodes' fortune, if we are to believe what we are told,
+was an ice machine which he started in partnership with another settler.
+The produce they sold to their companions at an exorbitant price, but not
+for long; whereafter the enterprising young man proceeded to buy some
+plots of ground, of whose prolificacy in diamonds he had good reason to be
+aware. It must be here remarked that Rhodes was never a poor man; he could
+indulge in experiments as to his manner of investing his capital. And he
+was not slow to take advantage of this circumstance. Kimberley was a wild
+place at that time, and its distance from the civilised world, as well as
+the fact that nothing was controlled by public opinion, helped some to
+amass vast fortunes and put the weaker into the absolute power of the most
+unscrupulous. It is to the honour of Rhodes that, however he might have
+been tempted, he never listened to the advice which was given to him to do
+what the others did, and to despoil the men whose property he might have
+desired to acquire. He never gave way to the excesses of his daily
+companions, nor accepted their methods of enriching themselves at top
+speed so as soon to be able to return home with their gains.
+
+From the first moment that he set foot on African soil Rhodes succumbed to
+the strange charm the country offers for thinkers and dreamers. His
+naturally languid temperament found a source of untold satisfaction in
+watching the Southern Cross rise over the vast veldt where scarcely man's
+foot had trod, where the immensity of its space was equalled by its
+sublime, quiet grandeur. He liked to spend the night in the open air,
+gazing at the innumerable stars and listening to the voice of the desert,
+so full of attractions for those who have grown to discern somewhat of
+Nature's hidden joys and sorrows. South Africa became for him a second
+Motherland, and one which seemed to him to be more hospitable to his
+temperament than the land of his birth. In South Africa he felt he could
+find more satisfaction and more enjoyment than in England, whose
+conventionalities did not appeal to his rebellious, unsophisticated heart.
+He liked to roam about in an old coat and wideawake hat; to forget that
+civilisation existed; to banish from his mind all memory of cities where
+man must bow down to Mrs. Grundy and may not defy, unscathed, certain
+well-defined prejudices.
+
+Yet Cecil Rhodes neither cared for convention nor custom. His motto was to
+do what he liked and not to trouble about the judgments of the crowd. He
+never, however, lived up to this last part of his profession because, as I
+have shown already, he was keenly sensitive to praise and to blame, and
+hurt to the heart whenever he thought himself misjudged or condemned. Most
+of his mistakes proceeded from this over-sensitiveness which, in a certain
+sense, hardened him, inasmuch as it made him vindictive against those from
+whom he did not get the approval for which he yearned. In common with many
+another, too, Cecil Rhodes had that turn of mind which harbours resentment
+against anyone who has scored a point against its possessor. After the
+Jameson Raid Rhodes never forgave Mr. Schreiner for having found out his
+deceit, and tried to be revenged.
+
+Cecil Rhodes had little sympathy with other people's woes unless these
+found an echo in his own, and the callousness which he so often displayed
+was not entirely the affectation it was thought by his friends or even by
+his enemies. Great in so many things, there were circumstances when he
+could show himself unutterably small, and he seldom practised consistency.
+Frank by nature, he was an adept at dissimulation when he thought that his
+personal interest required it. But he could "face the music," however
+discordant, and, unfortunately for him as well as for his memory, it was
+often so.
+
+The means by which Cecil Rhodes contrived to acquire so unique a position
+in South Africa would require volumes to relate. Wealth alone could not
+have done so, nor could it have assured for him the popularity which he
+gained, not only among the European colonists, but also among the coloured
+people, notwithstanding the ruthlessness which he displayed in regard to
+them. There were millionaires far richer than himself in Kimberley and in
+Johannesburg. Alfred Beit, to mention only one, could dispose of a much
+larger capital than Rhodes ever possessed, but this did not give him an
+influence that could be compared with that of his friend, and not even the
+Life Governorship of De Beers procured for him any other fame than that of
+being a fabulously rich man. Barney Barnato and Joel were also familiar
+figures in the circle of wealthy speculators who lived under the shade of
+Table Mountain; but none among these men, some of whom were also
+remarkable in their way, could effect a tenth or even a millionth part of
+what Rhodes succeeded in performing. His was the moving spirit, without
+whom these men could never have conceived, far less done, all that they
+did. It was the magic of Rhodes' name which created that formidable
+organisation called the De Beers Company; which annexed to the British
+Empire the vast territory known now by the name of Rhodesia; and which
+attracted to the gold fields of Johannesburg all those whom they were to
+enrich or to ruin. Without the association and glamour of Rhodes' name,
+too, this area could never have acquired the political importance it
+possessed in the few years which preceded, and covered, the Boer War.
+Rhodes' was the mind which, after bringing about the famous Amalgamation
+of the diamond mines around Kimberley, then conceived the idea of turning
+a private company into a political instrument of a power which would
+control public opinion and public life all over South Africa more
+effectually even than the Government. This organisation had its own agents
+and spies and kept up a wide system of secret service. Under the pretext
+of looking out for diamond thieves, these emissaries in reality made it
+their duty to report on the private opinions and doings of those whose
+personality inspired distrust or apprehension.
+
+This organisation was more a dictatorship than anything else, and had
+about it something at once genial and Mephistophelian. The conquest of
+Rhodesia was nothing in comparison with the power attained by this
+combine, which arrogated to itself almost unchallenged the right to
+domineer over every white man and to subdue every coloured one in the
+whole of the vast South African Continent. Rhodesia, indeed, was only
+rendered possible through the power wielded in Cape Colony to bring the
+great Northward adventure to a successfully definite issue.
+
+In referring to Rhodesia, I am reminded of a curious fact which, so far as
+I am aware, has never been mentioned in any of the biographies of Mr.
+Rhodes, but which, on the contrary, has been carefully concealed from the
+public knowledge by his admirers and his satellites. The concession
+awarded by King Lobengula to Rhodes and to the few men who together with
+him took it upon themselves to add this piece of territory to the British
+Empire had, in reality, already been given by the dusky monarch--long
+before the ambitions of De Beers had taken that direction--to a Mr.
+Sonnenberg, a German Jew who had very quickly amassed a considerable
+fortune in various speculations. This Mr. Sonnenberg--who was subsequently
+to represent the Dutch party in the Cape Parliament, and who became one of
+the foremost members of the Afrikander Bond--during one of his journeys
+into the interior of the country from Basutoland, where he resided for
+some time, had taken the opportunity of a visit to Matabeleland to obtain
+a concession from the famous Lobengula. This covered the same ground and
+advantages which, later, were granted to Mr. Rhodes and his business
+associates.
+
+Owing in some measure to negligence and partly through the impossibility
+of raising the enormous capital necessary to make anything profitable out
+of the concession, Mr. Sonnenberg had put the document into his drawer
+without troubling any more about it. Subsequently, when Matabeleland came
+into possession of the Chartered Company, Mr. Sonnenberg ventured to speak
+mildly of his own concession, and the matter was mentioned to Mr. Rhodes.
+The latter's reply was typical: "Tell the ---- fool that if he was fool
+enough to lose this chance of making money he ought to take the
+consequences of it." And Mr. Sonnenberg had to content himself with this
+reply. Being a wise man in his generation he was clever enough to ignore
+the incident, and, realising the principle that might is stronger than
+right, he never again attempted to dispute the title of Cecil John Rhodes
+to the conquest which he had made, and, as I believe, pushed prudence to
+the extent of consigning his own concession to the flames. He knew but too
+well what his future prosperity would have been worth had he remembered
+the document.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A COMPLEX PERSONALITY
+
+
+Rhodesia and its annexation was but the development of a vast scheme of
+conquest that had its start in the wonderful brain of the individual who
+by that time had become to be spoken of as the greatest man South Africa
+had ever known. Long before this Cecil Rhodes had entered political life
+as member of the Cape Parliament. He stood for the province of Barkly
+West, and his election, which was violently contested, made him master of
+this constituency for the whole of his political career. The entry into
+politics gave a decided aim to his ambitions and inspired him to a new
+activity, directing his wonderful organising faculties toward other than
+financial victories and instilling within him the desire to make for
+himself a name not solely associated with speculation, but one which would
+rank with those great Englishmen who had carried far and wide British
+renown and spread the fame of their Mother Country across the seas.
+
+Rhodes' ambitions were not as unselfish as those of Clive, to mention only
+that one name. He thought far more of himself than of his native land in
+the hours when he meditated on all the advantages which he might obtain
+from a political career. He saw the way to become at last absolutely free
+to give shape to his dreams of conquest, and to hold under his sway the
+vast continent which he had insensibly come to consider as his private
+property. And by this I do not mean Rhodesia only--which he always spoke
+of as "My country"--but he also referred to Cape Colony in the same way.
+With one distinction, however, which was remarkable: he called it "My old
+country," thus expressing his conviction that the new one possessed all
+his affections. It is probable that, had time and opportunity been granted
+him to bring into execution his further plans, thereby to establish
+himself at Johannesburg and at Pretoria as firmly as he had done at
+Kimberley and Buluwayo, the latter townships would have come to occupy the
+same secondary importance in his thoughts as that which Cape Colony had
+assumed. Mr. Rhodes may have had a penchant for old clothes, but he
+certainly preferred new countries to ones already explored. To give Rhodes
+his due, he was not the money-grubbing man one would think, judging by his
+companions. He was constantly planning, constantly dreaming of wider areas
+to conquer and to civilise. The possession of gold was for him a means,
+not an aim; he appreciated riches for the power they produced to do
+absolutely all that he wished, but not for the boast of having so many
+millions standing to his account at a bank. He meant to become a king in
+his way, and a king he unquestionably was for a time at least, until his
+own hand shattered his throne.
+
+His first tenure of the Cape Premiership was most successful, and even
+during the second term his popularity went on growing until the fatal
+Jameson Raid--an act of folly which nothing can explain, nothing can
+excuse. Until it broke his political career, transforming him from the
+respected statesman whom every party in South Africa looked up to into a
+kind of broken idol never more to be trusted, Rhodes had enjoyed the
+complete confidence of the Dutch party. They fully believed he was the
+only man capable of effecting the Union which at that time was already
+considered to be indispensable to the prosperity of South Africa. Often he
+had stood up for their rights as the oldest settlers and inhabitants of
+the country. Even in the Transvaal, notwithstanding the authority wielded
+then by President Kruger, the populace would gladly have taken advantage
+of his services and of his experience to help them settle favourably their
+everlasting quarrels with the Uitlanders, as the English colonists were
+called.
+
+Had Cecil Rhodes but had the patience to wait, and had he cared to enter
+into the details of a situation, the intricacies of which none knew better
+than he, it is probable that the annexation of the Transvaal to the
+British Empire would have taken place as a matter of course and the Boer
+War would never have broken out. Rhodes was not only popular among the
+Dutch, but also enjoyed their confidence, and it is no secret that he had
+courted them to the extent of exciting the suspicions of the ultra-English
+party, the Jingo elements of which had openly accused him of plotting with
+the Dutch against the authority of Queen Victoria and of wishing to get
+himself elected Life President of a Republic composed of the various South
+African States, included in which would be Cape Colony, and perhaps even
+Natal, in spite of the preponderance of the English element there.
+
+That Rhodes might have achieved such a success is scarcely to be doubted,
+and personally I feel sure that there had been moments in his life when
+the idea of it had seriously occurred to him. At least I was led to think
+so in the course of a conversation which we had together on this subject a
+few weeks before the Boer War broke out. At that moment Rhodes knew that
+war was imminent, but it would be wrong to interpret that knowledge in the
+sense that he had ever thought of or planned rebellion against the Queen.
+Those who accused him of harbouring the idea either did not know him or
+else wished to harm him. Rhodes was essentially an Englishman, and set his
+own country above everything else in the world. Emphatically this is so;
+but it is equally true that his strange conceptions of morality in matters
+where politics came into question made him totally oblivious of the fact
+that he thought far more of his own self than of his native land in the
+plans which he conceived and formulated for the supremacy of England in
+South Africa. He was absolutely convinced that his election as Life
+President of a South African Republic would not be in any way detrimental
+to the interests of Great Britain; on the contrary, he assured himself it
+would make the latter far more powerful than it had ever been before in
+the land over which he would reign. By nature something of an Italian
+_condottieri_, he considered his native land as a stepping-stone to his
+own grandeur.
+
+For a good many years he had chosen his best friends among Dutchmen of
+influence in the Cape Colony and in the Transvaal. He flattered, courted
+and praised them until he quite persuaded them that nowhere else would
+they find such a staunch supporter of their rights and of their claims.
+Men like Mr. Schreiner,[A] for instance, trusted him absolutely, and
+believed quite sincerely that in time he would be able to establish firm
+and friendly relations between the Cape Government and that of the
+Transvaal. Though the latter country had been, as it were, sequestrated by
+friends of Rhodes--much to their own profit--Mr. Schreiner felt convinced
+that the Colossus had never encouraged any plans which these people might
+have made against the independence of the Transvaal Republic. Rhodes had
+so completely fascinated him that even on the eve of the day when Jameson
+crossed the Border, Mr. Schreiner, when questioned by one of his friends
+about the rumours which had reached Cape Town concerning a projected
+invasion of the Transvaal by people connected with the Chartered Company,
+repudiated them with energy. Mr. Schreiner, indeed, declared that so long
+as Mr. Rhodes was Prime Minister nothing of the kind could or would
+happen, as neither Jameson nor any of his lieutenants would dare to risk
+such an adventure without the sanction of their Chief, and that it was
+more to the latter's interest than to that of anyone else to preserve the
+independence of the Transvaal Republic.
+
+    [A] Now High Commissioner for the Union of South Africa.
+
+[Illustration: THE RT. HON. W.G. SCHREINER.]
+
+Talking of Mr. Schreiner reminds me of his sister, the famous Olive
+Schreiner, the author of so many books which most certainly will long rank
+among the English classics. Olive Schreiner was once upon terms of great
+friendship with Mr. Rhodes, who extremely admired her great talents. She
+was an ardent Afrikander patriot, Dutch by sympathy and origin, gifted
+with singular intelligence and possessed of wide views, which strongly
+appealed to the soul and to the spirit of the man who at that time was
+considered as the greatest figure in South Africa.
+
+It is not remarkable, therefore, that Rhodes should fall into the habit
+of confiding in Miss Schreiner, whom he found was "miles above" the
+people about him. He used to hold long conversations with her and to
+initiate her into many of his plans for the future, plans in which the
+interests and the welfare of the Cape Dutch, as well as the Transvaalers,
+used always to play the principal part. His friendship with her, however,
+was viewed with great displeasure by many who held watch around him.
+Circumstances--intentionally brought about, some maintain--conspired to
+cause a cooling of the friendship between the two most remarkable
+personalities in South Africa. Later on, Miss Schreiner, who was an ardent
+patriot, having discovered what she termed and considered to be the
+duplicity of the man in whom she had so absolutely trusted, refused to
+meet Cecil Rhodes again. Her famous book, "Trooper Peter Halkett of
+Mashonaland," was the culminating point in their quarrel, and the break
+became complete.
+
+This, however, was but an incident in a life in which the feminine element
+never had any great influence, perhaps because it was always kept in check
+by people anxious and eager not to allow it to occupy a place in the
+thoughts or in the existence of a man whom they had confiscated as their
+own property. There are people who, having risen from nothing to the
+heights of a social position, are able to shake off former associations:
+this was not the case with Rhodes, who, on the contrary, as he advanced in
+power and in influence, found himself every day more embarrassed by the
+men who had clung to him when he was a diamond digger, and who, through
+his financial acumen, had built up their fortunes. They surrounded him day
+and night, eliminating every person likely to interfere; slandering,
+ridiculing and calumniating them in turns, they at last left him nothing
+in place of his shattered faiths and lost ideals, until Rhodes became as
+isolated amidst his greatness and his millions as the veriest beggar in
+his hovel.
+
+It was a sad sight to watch the ethical degradation of one of the most
+remarkable intelligences among the men of his generation; it was
+heartrending to see him fall every day more and more into the power of
+unscrupulous people who did nothing else but exploit him for their own
+benefit. South Africa has always been the land of adventurers, and many a
+queer story could be told. That of Cecil John Rhodes was, perhaps, the
+most wonderful and the most tragic.
+
+Whether he realised this retrogression himself it is difficult to say.
+Sometimes one felt that such might be the case, whilst at others it seemed
+as if he viewed his own fate only as something absolutely wonderful and
+bound to develop in the future even more prosperously than it had done in
+the past. There was always about him something of the "tragediante,
+comediante" applied to Napoleon by Pope Pius VII., and it is absolutely
+certain that he often feigned sentiments which he did not feel, anger
+which he did not experience, and pleasure that he did not have. He was a
+being of fits and starts, moods and fancies, who liked to pose in such a
+way as to give others an absolutely false idea of his personality when he
+considered it useful to his interests to do so. At times it was evident he
+experienced regret, but it is doubtful whether he knew the meaning of
+remorse. The natives seldom occupied his thoughts, and if he were reminded
+in later years that, after all, terrible cruelties had been practised in
+Mashonaland or in Matabeleland, he used simply to shrug his shoulders and
+to remark that it was impossible to make an omelette without breaking some
+eggs. It never occurred to him that there might exist people who objected
+to the breaking of a certain kind of eggs, and that humanity had a right
+to be considered even in conquest.
+
+And, after all, was this annexation of the dominions of poor Lobengula a
+conquest? If one takes into account the strength of the people who
+attacked the savage king, and his own weakness, can one do else but regret
+that those who slaughtered Lobengula did not remember the rights of mercy
+in regard to a fallen foe? There are dark deeds connected with the
+attachment of Rhodesia to the British Empire, deeds which would never have
+been performed by a regular English Army, but which seemed quite natural
+to the band of enterprising fellows who had staked their fortunes on an
+expedition which it was their interest to represent as a most dangerous
+and difficult affair. I do not want to disparage them or their courage,
+but I cannot help questioning whether they ever had to withstand any
+serious attack of the enemy. I have been told perfectly sickening details
+concerning this conquest of the territory now known by the name of
+Rhodesia. The cruel manner in which, after having wrung from them a
+concession which virtually despoiled them of every right over their native
+land and after having goaded these people into exasperation, the people
+themselves were exterminated was terrible beyond words. For instance,
+there occurred the incident mentioned by Olive Schreiner in "Trooper Peter
+Halkett of Mashonaland," when over one hundred savages were suffocated
+alive in a cave where they sought a refuge.
+
+Personally, I remain persuaded that these abominable deeds remained
+unknown to Mr. Rhodes and that he would not have tolerated them for one
+single instant. They were performed by people who were in possession of
+Rhodes' confidence, and who abused it by allowing the world to think that
+he encouraged such deeds. Later on it is likely that he became aware of
+the abuse that had been made of his name and of the manner in which it had
+been put forward as an excuse for inexcusable deeds, but he was far too
+indolent and far too indifferent to the blame of the world, at these
+particular moments to disavow those who, after all, had helped him in his
+schemes of expansion, and who had ministered to his longing to have a
+kingdom to himself. Apart from this, he had a curious desire to brave
+public opinion and to do precisely the very things that it would have
+disapproved. He loved to humiliate those whom he had at one moment thought
+he might have occasion to fear. This explains the callousness with which
+he made the son of Lobengula one of his gardeners, and did not hesitate to
+ask him one day before strangers who were visiting Groote Schuur in what
+year he "had killed his father." The incident is absolutely true; it
+occurred in my own presence.
+
+At times, such as that related in the paragraph above, Rhodes appeared a
+perfectly detestable and hateful creature, and yet he was never sincere
+whilst in such moods. A few moments later he would show himself under
+absolutely different colours and give proof of a compassionate heart.
+Generous to a fault, he liked to be able to oblige his friends, or those
+who passed as such, while the charitable acts which he was constantly
+performing are too numerous to be remembered. He had a supreme contempt
+for money, but he spoiled the best sides of his strange, eccentric
+character by enjoying a display of its worst facets with a "cussedness" as
+amusing as it was sometimes unpleasant. Is it remarkable, then, that many
+people who only saw him in the disagreeable moods should judge him from an
+entirely false and misleading point of view?
+
+Rhodes was a man for whom it was impossible to feel indifference; one
+either hated him or became fascinated by his curious and peculiar charm.
+This quality led many admirers to remain faithful to him even after
+disillusion had shattered their former friendship, and who, whilst
+refusing to speak to him any more, yet retained for him a deep affection
+which not even the conviction that it had been misplaced could alter. This
+is a remarkable and indisputable fact. After having rallied around him all
+that was honest in South Africa; after having been the petted child of all
+the old and influential ladies in Cape Town; after having been accepted as
+their leader by men like Mr. Schreiner and Mr. Hofmeyr, who, clever though
+they were, and convinced, as they must have been, of their personal
+influence on the Dutch party and the members of the Afrikander Bond, still
+preferred to subordinate their judgment to Rhodes'; after having enjoyed
+such unparalleled confidence, Rhodes had come to be spurned and rejected
+politically, but had always kept his place in their hearts. Fate and his
+own faults separated him from these people of real weight and influence,
+and left him in the hands of those who pretended that they were attached
+to him, but who, in reality, cared only for the material advantages that
+their constant attendance upon him procured to them. They poisoned his
+mind, they separated him from all those who might have been useful to him,
+and they profited by the circumstance that the Raid had estranged him from
+his former friends to strengthen their own influence upon him, and to
+persuade him that those who had deplored the rash act were personal
+enemies, wishful for his downfall and disgrace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MRS. VAN KOOPMAN
+
+
+Among those with whom Rhodes had been intimate from almost the first days
+of his establishment in Cape Town and his entrance into political life was
+a lady who, for something like half a century, had been enjoying an
+enviable position throughout almost the whole of South Africa. Mrs. van
+Koopman was a Dutchwoman of considerable means and of high character. She
+was clever, well read, and her quick intelligence allowed her to hold her
+own in discussion upon any subject against the most eminent men of her
+generation. She had never made a secret of her Dutch sympathies, nor of
+her desire to see her countrymen given equal rights with the English all
+over South Africa. She was on excellent terms with President Kruger, and
+with President Steyn, whose personality was a far more remarkable one than
+that of his old and crafty colleague.
+
+The leading South African political men used to meet at Mrs. van Koopman's
+to discuss the current events of the day. It is related that she was one
+of the first to bring to the notice of her friends the complications that
+were bound to follow upon the discovery of the gold fields, and to implore
+them to define, without delay, the position of the foreign element which
+was certain to move toward Johannesburg as soon as the news of the riches
+contained in that region became public property.
+
+If the English Government had considered the matter at once the
+complications which arose as soon as companies began to be formed would
+have been less acute. The directors of these concerns imagined themselves
+to be entitled to displace local government, and took all executive power
+into their own hands. This would never have happened if firm governmental
+action had been promptly taken. The example of Kimberley ought to have
+opened the eyes of the Mother Country, and measures should have been taken
+to prevent the purely commercial domain of the gold fields from assuming
+such strident political activities, and little by little dominating not
+only the Transvaal Republic, but also the rest of South Africa.
+
+Mrs. van Koopman had cherished a great affection for Rhodes. Her age--she
+was in the sixties--gave an almost maternal character to the tenderness
+with which she viewed him. He had made her his confidante, telling her all
+that he meant to do for the welfare of the land which she loved so dearly.
+She thought he looked upon South Africa with the same feelings of
+admiration as she did.
+
+The strength of her belief led Mrs. van Koopman to interest all her
+friends in the career of the young Englishman, who appealed to her
+imagination as the embodiment of all that was great and good. Her
+enthusiasm endowed him with many qualities that he did not possess, and
+magnified those which he really had. When he consulted her as to his
+future plans she entered closely into their details, discussed with him
+their chances of success, advised him and used all her influence, which
+was great, in winning him friends and adherents. She trusted him fully,
+and, on his part, whenever he returned to Cape Town after one of his
+yearly visits to Kimberley, or after a few months spent in the solitudes
+of Rhodesia, his first visit was always to the old and gentle lady, who
+welcomed him with open arms, words of affection, and sincere as well as
+devoted sympathy. She had always refused to listen to disparagement of her
+favourite, and would never allow any of the gruesome details connected
+with the annexation of Rhodesia to be recited in her presence.
+
+In Mrs. van Koopman's eyes there was only a glorious side to the Rhodesian
+expedition, and she rejoiced in the renown which it was destined to bring
+to the man who had conceived and planned it. She fully believed that
+Rhodes meant to bring English civilisation, English laws, the English
+sense of independence and respect for individual freedom into that distant
+land. The fact that lucre lay at the bottom of the expedition never
+crossed her mind; even if it had she would have rejected the thought with
+scorn and contempt.
+
+Although the attacks upon Cecil Rhodes increased day by day in intensity
+and in bitterness, Mrs. van Koopman never wavered in her allegiance. She
+attributed them to jealousy and envy, and strenuously defended his name.
+Mrs. van Koopman, too, rejoiced at any new success of Rhodes as if it had
+been her own. She was the first to congratulate him when the dignity of a
+Privy Councillor was awarded to him. After the Matabele Rebellion, during
+which occurred one of the most famous episodes in the life of Rhodes, Mrs.
+van Koopman had been loud in her praises of the man whom she had been the
+first to guess would do great things.
+
+The episode to which I refer, when he alone had had the courage to go
+unattended and unarmed to meet the savage chiefs assembled in the Matoppo
+Hills, had, by the way, done more than anything else to consolidate the
+position of the chairman of De Beers in South Africa.
+
+During the first administration of Cape Colony by Mr. Rhodes, when his
+accession to the premiership had been viewed with a certain suspicion by
+the Dutch party, Mrs. van Koopman made tremendous efforts to induce them
+to have full confidence in her protégé. And the attempt succeeded, because
+even the shrewd Mr. Hofmeyr had at last succumbed to the constant
+entreaties which she had poured upon him. Thenceforward Mr. Hofmeyr became
+one of Mr. Rhodes' firm admirers and strong partisans. Under the able
+guidance of Mrs. van Koopman the relations between the Dutch party and
+their future enemy became so cordial that at last a singular construction
+was put upon both sides of the alliance by the opponents of both. The
+accusation, already referred to, was made against Rhodes that he wished to
+make for himself in South Africa a position of such independence and
+strength that even the authority of the Queen might find itself
+compromised by it. As has been pointed out, the supposition was devoid of
+truth, but it is quite certain that the then Premier of Cape Colony would
+not have objected had the suzerainty been placed in his hands by England
+and British rule in South Africa vested solely in his person.
+
+During a brief interval in his political leadership Rhodes pursued his
+work in Rhodesia. In those days the famous British South Africa Company,
+which was to become known as the Chartered Company, was definitely
+constituted, and began its activity in the new territories which had come
+under its control. Ere long, though, the tide of events brought him again
+to the head of the Government. This time, however, though his appointment
+had been considered as a foregone conclusion, and though very few had
+opposed it, he no longer met the same sympathetic attention and
+co-operation which had characterised his first administration of public
+affairs. The Colony had begun to realise that Mr. Rhodes alone, and left
+free to do what he liked, or what he believed was right, was very
+different from Mr. Rhodes under the influence of the many so-called
+financiers and would-be politicians who surrounded him.
+
+An atmosphere of favouritism and of flattery had changed Rhodes, whom one
+would have thought far above such small things. Vague rumours, too, had
+begun to circulate concerning certain designs of the Chartered Company
+(one did not dare yet mention the name of its chief and chairman) on the
+Transvaal. Rhodes was directly questioned upon the subject by several of
+his friends, amongst others by Mr. Schreiner, to whom he energetically
+denied that such a thing had ever been planned. He added that Doctor
+Jameson, of whom the man in the street was already speaking as the man who
+was planning an aggression against the authority of President Kruger, was
+not even near the frontier of the neighbouring Republic. The mere idea of
+such a thing, Rhodes emphatically declared to Mr. Schreiner, was nothing
+but an ill-natured hallucination to create bad blood between the English
+and the Dutch. His tone seemed so sincere that Mr. Schreiner allowed
+himself to be convinced, and voluntarily assured his colleagues that he
+was convinced of the sincerity of the Prime Minister.
+
+The only person who was really alarmed at the persistent rumours which
+circulated in Cape Town in regard to a possible attack in common accord
+with the leaders of the Reform movement in Johannesburg against the
+independence of the Transvaal Republic was Mrs. van Koopman. She knew
+Rhodes' character too well not to fear that he might have been induced to
+listen to the misguided advice of people trying to persuade him that the
+Rhodesian adventure was susceptible of being repeated on a larger and far
+more important scale, with as much impunity and as little danger as the
+other one had been. Alarmed beyond words by all that she was hearing, she
+determined to find out for herself the true state of things, and, trusting
+to her knowledge of Rhodes' character, she asked him to call upon her.
+
+Rhodes came a few afternoons later, and Mrs. van Koopman closely
+questioned him on the subject, telling him of the tales which were being
+circulated not only in Cape Town, but also at Kimberley and Buluwayo and
+Johannesburg. Rhodes solemnly assured her that they were nothing but
+malicious gossip, and, taking her hands in his own, he repeated that all
+she had heard concerning the sinister designs he was supposed to be
+harbouring against the independence of the Transvaal had absolutely no
+foundation. To add force to his words, he continued that he respected her
+far too much to deceive her willingly, and that he would never have risked
+meeting her and talking with her upon such a subject had there been the
+slightest ground for the rumours which were disturbing the tranquillity of
+the inhabitants of Cape Town. When he left her Mrs. van Koopman felt quite
+reassured.
+
+Next morning Mrs. van Koopman told her anxious friends that she had
+received such assurances from Rhodes that she could not disbelieve him,
+and that the best thing which they could do would be to contradict all
+statements on the subject of a raid on the Transvaal that might come to
+their ears. This occurred on an after-Christmas evening of the year 1895.
+
+When the decisive conversation which I have just related was taking place
+between Mrs. van Koopman and Cecil Rhodes, Doctor Jameson and his handful
+of eager adventurers had already entered Transvaal territory. The Raid had
+become an accomplished fact. It was soon realised that it was the most
+deplorable affair that could have occurred for the reputation of Cecil
+Rhodes and for his political future. The rebound, indeed, was immediate;
+his political career came to an end that day.
+
+The person who was struck most painfully by this disgraceful and cryingly
+stupid adventure was Mrs. van Koopman. All her illusions--and she had
+nursed many concerning Rhodes--were destroyed at one blow. She never
+forgave him. All his attempts to bring about a reconciliation failed, and
+when later on he would fain have obtained her forgiveness, she absolutely
+refused all advances, and declared that she would never consent willingly
+to look upon his face or listen to his voice again. The proud old woman,
+whose ideals had been wrecked so cruelly, could not but feel a profound
+contempt for a man who had thus deliberately lied to her at the very time
+when she was appealing to his confidence. Her aristocratic instincts arose
+in indignation at the falsehoods which had been used to dupe her. She
+would not listen to any excuse, would not admit any extenuating
+circumstances; and perhaps because she knew in the secret of her heart
+that she would never be able to resist the pleadings of the man who had
+thus deceived her, she absolutely refused to see him.
+
+Rhodes never despaired of being restored to her favour, and would have
+given much to anyone able to induce her to relent in her judgment as to
+his conduct. Up to the last he made attempts to persuade her to reconsider
+her decision, but they all proved useless, and he died without having been
+able to win a forgiveness which he craved for many years.
+
+I used to know Mrs. van Koopman well and to see her often. I admired her
+much, not only on account of her great talents and of her powerful
+intellect, but also for the great dignity which she displayed all through
+the Boer War, when, suspected of favouring the Dutch cause to the extent
+of holding communications with the rebels all over the Cape Colony, she
+never committed any indiscretion or gave cause for any direct action
+against her. For some time, by order of the military authorities, she was
+placed under police supervision, and her house was searched for papers and
+documents which, however, were not found--as might have been foreseen.
+
+All through these trying months she never wavered in her attitude nor in
+her usual mode of life, except that she saw fewer people than
+formerly--not, as she used playfully to say, because she feared to be
+compromised, but because she did not wish to compromise others. More than
+once during my visits I spoke to her of Mr. Rhodes and tried to induce her
+to relent in her resolution. I even went so far as to tell her that her
+consent to meet him would, more than anything else, cause him to use all
+his influence, or what remained of it, in favour of a prompt settlement of
+the war in a peace honourable to both sides. Mrs. van Koopman smiled, but
+remained immovable. At last, seeing that I would not abandon the subject,
+she told me in tones which admitted of no discussion that she had far too
+much affection for Rhodes not to have been so entirely cut to the core by
+his duplicity in regard to her and by his whole conduct in that
+unfortunate matter of the Raid. She could trust him no longer, she told
+me, and, consequently, a meeting with him would only give her unutterable
+pain and revive memories that had better remain undisturbed. "Had I cared
+for him less I would not say so to you," she added, "but you must know
+that of all sad things the saddest is the destruction of idols one has
+built for oneself."
+
+This attitude on the part of the one friend he had the greatest affection
+for was one of the many episodes which embittered Rhodes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+RHODES AND THE RAID
+
+
+After the Raid, faithful to his usual tactics of making others responsible
+for his own misdeeds, Cecil Rhodes grew to hate with ferocity all those
+whose silence and quiet disapproval reminded him of the fatal error into
+which he had been led. He was loud in his expressions of resentment
+against Mr. Schreiner and the other members of the Afrikander party who
+had not been able to conceal from him their indignation at his conduct on
+the memorable occasion which ruined his own political life. They had
+compelled him--one judged by his demeanour--to resign his office of Prime
+Minister at the very time when he was about to transform it into something
+far more important--to use it as the stepping-stone to future grandeurs of
+which he already dreamt, although he had so far refrained from speaking
+about them to others. Curious to say, however, he never blamed the authors
+of this political mistake, and never, in public at least, reproached
+Jameson for the disaster he had brought upon him.
+
+What his secret thoughts were on this subject it is easy to guess.
+Circumstances used to occur now and then when a stray word spoken on
+impulse allowed one to discern that he deplored the moment of weakness
+into which he had been inveigled. For instance, during a dinner-party at
+Groote Schuur, when talking about the state of things prevailing in
+Johannesburg just before the war, he mentioned the names of five Reformers
+who, after the Raid, had been condemned to death by President Kruger, and
+added that he had paid their fine of twenty-five thousand pounds each.
+"Yes," he continued, with a certain grim accent of satire in his voice, "I
+paid £25,000 for each of these gentlemen." And when one of his guests
+tactlessly remarked, "But surely you need not have done so, Mr. Rhodes? It
+was tacitly admitting that you had been a party to their enterprise!" he
+retorted immediately, "And if I choose to allow the world to think that
+such was the case, what business is it of yours?" I thought the man was
+going to drop under the table, so utterly flabbergasted did he look.
+
+It is, of course, extremely difficult to know what was the actual part
+played by Rhodes in the Raid. He carried that secret to the grave, and it
+is not likely that his accomplices will ever reveal their own share in the
+responsibility for that wild adventure. My impression is that the idea of
+the Raid was started among the entourage of Rhodes and spoken of before
+him at length. He would listen in silence, as was his wont when he wished
+to establish the fact that he had nothing to do with a thing that had been
+submitted to him. Thus the Raid was tacitly encouraged by him, without his
+ever having pronounced himself either for or against it.
+
+Rhodes was an extremely able politician, and a far-seeing one into the
+bargain. He would never have committed himself into an open approval of an
+attempt which he knew perfectly well involved the rights of nations. On
+the other hand, he would have welcomed any circumstance which would result
+in the overthrow of the Transvaal Republic by friends of his. His former
+successes, and especially the facility with which had been carried out the
+attachment of Rhodesia to the British Empire, had refracted his vision,
+and he refused--or failed--to see the difficulties which he might
+encounter if he wanted to proceed for the second time on an operation of
+the same kind.
+
+On the other hand, he was worried by his friends to allow them to take
+decisive action, and was told that everyone in England would approve of
+his initiative in taking upon himself the responsibility of a step, out of
+which could only accrue solid advantage for the Mother Country.
+
+Rhodes had been too long away from England, and his sojourns there during
+the ten years or so immediately preceding 1895 had been far too short for
+him to have been able to come to a proper appreciation of the importance
+of public opinion in Great Britain, or of those principles in matters of
+Government which no sound English politician will ever dare to put aside
+if he wishes to retain his hold. He failed to understand and to appreciate
+the narrow limit which must not be overstepped; he forgot that when one
+wants to perform an act open to certain well-defined objections there must
+be a great aim in order eventually to explain and excuse the doing of it.
+The Raid had no such aim. No one made a mistake as to that point when
+passing judgment upon the Raid. The motives were too sordid, too mean, for
+anyone to do aught else but pass a sweeping condemnation upon the whole
+business.
+
+If he did not, Rhodes ought to have known that the public would most
+certainly pass this verdict on so dark and shameful an adventure, one that
+harmed England's prestige in South Africa far more than ever did the Boer
+War. But though perhaps he realised beforehand that this would be the
+verdict, he only felt a vague apprehension, more as a fancy than from any
+real sense of impending danger. He had grown so used to see success attend
+his every step that his imagination refused to admit the possibility of
+defeat.
+
+As for the people who engaged in the senseless adventure, their motives
+had none of the lofty ideals which influenced Rhodes himself. They simply
+wanted to obtain possession of the gold fields of the Transvaal and to
+oust the rightful owners. President Kruger represented an obstacle that
+had to be removed, and so they proceeded upon their mad quest without
+regard as to the possible consequences. Still less did they reflect that
+in his case they had not to deal with a native chief whose voice of
+protest had no chance to be heard, but with a very cute and determined man
+who had means at his disposal not only to defend himself, but also to
+appeal to European judgment to adjudge an unjustifiable aggression.
+
+Apart from all these considerations, which ought to have been seriously
+taken into account by Doctor Jameson and his companions, the whole
+expedition was planned in a stupid, careless manner. No wonder that it
+immediately came to grief. It is probable that if Rhodes had entered into
+its details and allowed others to consult him, matters might have taken a
+different turn. But, as I have already shown, he preferred to be able to
+say at a given moment that he had known nothing about it. At least, this
+must have been what he meant to do. But events proved too strong for him.
+The fiasco was too complete for Rhodes to escape from its
+responsibilities, though it must be conceded that he never tried to do so
+once the storm burst. He faced the music bravely enough, perhaps because
+of the knowledge that no denial would be believed, perhaps also because
+all the instincts of his, after all, great nature caused him to come
+forward to take his share in the disgrace of the whole deplorable affair.
+
+Whether he forgave Doctor Jameson for this act of folly remains a mystery.
+Personally I have always held that there must have _un cadavre entre eux_.
+No friendship could account for the strange relations which existed
+between these two men, one of whom had done so much to harm the other. At
+first it would have seemed as if an individual of the character of Cecil
+Rhodes would never have brought himself to forgive his confederate for the
+clumsiness with which he had handled a matter upon which the reputation of
+both of them depended, in the present as well as in the future. But far
+from abandoning the friend who had brought him into such trouble, he
+remained on the same terms of intimacy as before, with the difference,
+perhaps, that he saw even more of him than before the Raid. It seemed as
+if he wanted thus to affirm before the whole world his faith in the man
+through whom his whole political career had been wrecked.
+
+The attitude of Rhodes toward Jameson was commented upon far and wide. The
+Dutch party in Cape Town saw in it a mere act of bravado into which they
+read an acknowledgment that, strong as was the Colossus, he was too weak
+to tell his accomplices to withdraw from public sight until the
+ever-increasing difficulties with the Transvaal--which became more and
+more acute after the Raid--had been settled in some way or other between
+President Kruger and the British Government. Instead of this Rhodes seemed
+to take a particular pleasure in parading the trust he declared he had in
+Doctor Jameson, and to consult him publicly upon almost all the political
+questions which were submitted to him for consideration. This did not mean
+that he followed the advice which he received, because, so far as I was
+able to observe, this was seldom the case.
+
+To add to the contrariness of the situation, Rhodes always seemed more
+glad than anything else if he heard someone make an ill-natured remark
+about the Doctor, or when anything particularly disagreeable occurred to
+the latter. An ironic smile used to light up Rhodes' face and a sarcastic
+chuckle be heard. But still, whenever one attempted to explain to him that
+the Raid had been an unforgivable piece of imprudence, or hazarded that
+Jameson had never been properly punished for it, Rhodes invariably took
+the part of this friend of his younger days, and would never acknowledge
+that Doctor Jim's desire to enter public life as a member of the Cape
+Parliament ought not to be gratified.
+
+On his side, Doctor Jameson was determined that the opportunity to do so
+should be offered to him, and he used Rhodes' influence in order to obtain
+election. He knew very well that without it his candidature would have no
+chance.
+
+Later on, when judging the events which preceded the last two years of
+Rhodes' life, many people expressed the opinion that Jameson, being a
+physician of unusual ability, was perfectly well aware that his friend was
+not destined to live to a very old age, and therefore wished to obtain
+from him while he could all the political support he required to establish
+his career as the statesman he fully believed he was. In fact, Doctor
+Jameson had made up his mind to outlive the odium of the Raid, and to
+become rehabilitated in public opinion to the extent of being allowed to
+take up the leadership of the party which had once owned Rhodes as its
+chief. By a strange freak of Providence, helped no doubt by an iron will
+and opportunities made the most of, Jameson, who had been the great
+culprit in the mad adventure of the Raid, became the foremost man in Cape
+Colony for a brief period after the war, while Rhodes, who had been his
+victim, bore the full consequences of his weakness in having permitted
+himself to be persuaded to look through his fingers on the enterprise.
+
+Rhodes never recovered any real political influence, was distrusted by
+English and Dutch alike, looked upon with caution by the Cape Government,
+and with suspicion even among his followers. The poor man had no friends
+worthy of the name, and those upon whom he relied the most were the first
+to betray his confidence. Unfortunately for himself, he had a profound
+contempt for humanity, and imagined himself capable of controlling all
+those whom he had elected to rule. He imagined he could turn and twist
+anyone according to his own impulses. In support of this assertion let me
+relate an incident in which I played a part.
+
+When the Boer War showed symptoms of dragging on for a longer time than
+expected, some Englishmen proposed that Rhodes should be asked to stand
+again for Prime Minister, to do which he resolutely refused. Opinions,
+however, were very much divided. Some people declared that he was the only
+man capable of conciliating the Dutch and bringing the war to a happy
+issue. Others asserted that his again taking up the reins of Government
+would be considered by the Afrikander Bond--which was very powerful at the
+time--as an unjustifiable provocation which would only further embitter
+those who had never forgiven Rhodes for the Raid.
+
+A member of the Upper House of Legislature, whom I used to see often, and
+who was a strong partisan of Rhodes, determined to seek advice outside the
+House, and went to see an important political personage in Cape Town, one
+of those who frequented Groote Schuur and who posed as one of the
+strongest advocates of Rhodes again becoming the head of the Government
+presided over by Sir Alfred Milner. What was the surprise of my friend
+when, instead of finding a sympathising auditor, he heard him say that he
+considered that for the moment the return of Rhodes at the head of affairs
+would only complicate matters; that it was still too soon after the Raid;
+that his spirit of animosity in regard to certain people might not help to
+smooth matters at such a critical juncture; and that, moreover, Rhodes had
+grown very morose and tyrannical, and refused to brook any contradiction.
+Coming from a man who had no reason to be friendly with Rhodes, the
+remarks just reported would not have been important, but proceeding from a
+personage who was continually flattering Rhodes, they struck me as showing
+such considerable duplicity that I wrote warning Rhodes not to attach too
+much importance to the protestations of devotion to his person that the
+individual in question was perpetually pouring down upon him. The reply
+which I received was absolutely characteristic: "Thanks for your letter.
+Never mind what X---- says. He is a harmless donkey who can always make
+himself useful when required to do so."
+
+The foregoing incident is enlightening as to the real nature of Cecil
+Rhodes. His great mistake was precisely in this conviction that he could
+order men at will, and that men would never betray him or injure him by
+their false interpretation of the directions which it pleased him to give
+them. He considered himself so entirely superior to the rest of mankind
+that it never struck him that inferior beings could turn upon him and rend
+him, or forget the obedience to his orders which he expected them to
+observe. He did not appreciate people with independence, though he admired
+them in those rare moments when he would condescend to be sincere with
+himself and with others; but he preferred a great deal the miserable
+creatures who always said "yes" to all his vagaries; who never dared to
+criticise any of his instructions or to differ from any opinions which he
+expressed. Sometimes he uttered these opinions with a brutality that did
+him considerable harm, inasmuch as it could not fail to cause repugnance
+among any who listened to him, but were not sufficiently acquainted with
+the peculiarities of his character to discern that he wanted simply to
+scare his audience, and that he did not mean one single word of the
+ferocious things he said in those moments when he happened to be in a
+particularly perverse mood, and when it pleased him to give a totally
+false impression of himself and the nature of his convictions in political
+and public matters.
+
+It must not be lost sight of when judging Mr. Rhodes that he had been
+living for the best part of his life among people with whom he could not
+have anything in common except the desire to make money in the shortest
+time possible. He was by nature a thinker, a philosopher, a reader, a man
+who belonged to the best class of students, those who understand that
+one's mind wants continually improving and that it is apt to rust when not
+kept active. His companions in those first years which followed upon his
+arrival in South Africa would certainly not have appreciated any of the
+books the reading of which constituted the solace of the young man who
+still preserved in his mind the traditions of Oxford. They were his
+inferiors in everything: intelligence, instruction, comprehension of those
+higher problems of the soul and of the mind which always interested him
+even in the most troubled and anxious moments of his life. He understood
+and realised that this was the fact, and this did not tend to inspire him
+with esteem or even with consideration for the people with whom he was
+compelled to live and work.
+
+Men like Barney Barnato, to mention only this one name among the many,
+felt a kind of awe of Cecil Rhodes. This kind of thing, going on as it did
+for years, was bound to give Rhodes a wrong idea as to the faculty he had
+of bringing others to share his points of view, and he became so
+accustomed to be considered always right that he felt surprised and vexed
+whenever blind obedience was not given. Indeed, it so excited his
+displeasure that he would at once plunge into a course of conduct which he
+might never have adopted but for the fact that he had heard it condemned
+or criticised.
+
+It has been said that every rich man is generally surrounded by parasites,
+and Cecil Rhodes was not spared this infliction. Only in his case these
+parasites did not apply their strength to attacks upon his purse; they
+exploited him for his influence, for the importance which it gave them to
+be considered by the world as his friends, or even his dependants. They
+appeared wherever he went, telling the general public that their presence
+had been requested by the "Boss" in such warm terms that they could not
+refuse. It was curious to watch this systematic chase which followed him
+everywhere, even to England. Sometimes this persistency on the part of
+persons whom he did not tolerate more than was absolutely necessary bored
+him and put him out of patience; but most of the time he accepted it as a
+necessary evil, and even felt flattered by it. He also liked to have
+perpetually around him individuals whom he could bully to his heart's
+content, who never resented an insult and never minded an insolence--and
+Rhodes was often insolent.
+
+Another singular feature in a character as complex as it was interesting
+was the contempt in which he held all those who had risen under his very
+eyes, from comparative or absolute poverty, to the status of millionaires
+possessed of houses in Park Lane and shooting boxes in Scotland. He liked
+to relate all that he knew about them, and sometimes even to mention
+certain facts which the individuals themselves would probably have
+preferred to be consigned to oblivion. But--and here comes the singularity
+to which I have referred--Rhodes would not allow anyone else to speak of
+these things, and he always took the part of his so-called friends when
+outsiders hinted at dark episodes which did not admit of investigation. He
+almost gave a certificate of good conduct to people whom he might have
+been heard referring to a few hours before in a far more antagonistic
+spirit than that displayed by those whom he so sharply contradicted.
+
+I remember one amusing instance of the idiosyncrasy referred to. There was
+in Johannesburg a man who, having arrived there with twenty-five pounds in
+his pockets--as he liked to relate with evident pride in the fact--had, in
+the course of two years, amassed together a fortune of two millions
+sterling. One day during dinner at Groote Schuur he enlarged upon the
+subject with such offensiveness that an English lady, newly arrived in
+South Africa and not yet experienced in the things which at the time were
+better left unsaid, was so annoyed at his persistency that she interrupted
+the speaker with the remark:
+
+"Well, if I were you, I would not be so eager to let the world know that I
+had made two millions out of twenty-five pounds. It sounds exactly like
+the story of the man who says that in order to catch a train at six
+o'clock in the morning he gets up at ten minutes to six. You know at once
+that he cannot possibly have washed, whilst your story shows that you
+could not possibly have been honest."
+
+I leave the reader to imagine the consternation produced among those
+present by these words. But what were their feelings when they heard
+Rhodes say in reply:
+
+"Well, one does not always find water to wash in, and at Kimberley this
+happened oftener than one imagines; as for being honest, who cares for
+honesty nowadays?"
+
+"Those who have not lived in South Africa, Mr. Rhodes," was the retort
+which silenced the Colossus.
+
+This man of the get-rich-quick variety was one of those who had mastered
+the difficult operation of passing off to others the mines out of which he
+had already extracted most of the gold, an occupation which, in the early
+Johannesburg days, had been a favourite one with many of the inhabitants
+of this wonderful town. One must not forget that as soon as the fame of
+the gold fields of the Transvaal began to spread adventurers hastened
+there, together with a few honest pioneers, desirous of making a fortune
+out of the riches of a soil which, especially in prospectuses lavishly
+distributed on the London and Paris Stock Exchanges, was described as a
+modern Golconda. Concessions were bought and sold, companies were formed
+with a rapidity which savoured of the fabulous. Men made not only a
+living, but also large profits, by reselling plots of ground which they
+had bought but a few hours before, and one heard nothing but loud praises
+of this or that mine that could be had for a song, "owing to family
+circumstances" or other reasons which obliged their owner to part with it.
+
+The individual who had boasted of the intelligent manner with which he had
+transformed his twenty-five pounds into two solid millions had, early in
+his career, invested some of his capital in one of these mines. Its only
+merit was its high-sounding name. He tried for some time without success
+to dispose of it. At last he happened to meet a Frenchman, newly arrived
+in Johannesburg, who wanted to acquire some mining property there with the
+view of forming a company. Our hero immediately offered his own. The
+Frenchman responded to the appeal, but expressed the desire to go down
+himself into the shaft to examine the property and get some ore in order
+to test it before the purchase was completed. The condition was agreed to
+with eagerness, and a few days later the victim and his executioner
+proceeded together to the mine. The Frenchman went down whilst Mr. X----
+remained above. He walked about with his hands in his pockets, smoking
+cigarettes, the ashes of which he let fall with an apparent negligence
+into the baskets of ore which were being sent up by the Frenchman. When
+the latter came up, rather hot and dusty, the baskets were taken to
+Johannesburg and carefully examined: the ore was found to contain a
+considerable quantity of gold. The mine was bought, and not one scrap of
+gold was ever found in it. Mr. X---- had provided himself with cigarettes
+made for the purpose, which contained gold dust in lieu of tobacco, and
+the ashes which he had dropped were in reality the precious metal, the
+presence of which was to persuade the unfortunate Frenchman that he was
+buying a property of considerable value. He paid for it something like two
+hundred thousand pounds, whilst the fame of the man who had thus cleverly
+tricked him spread far and wide.
+
+The most amusing part of the story consists in its _dénouement_. The duped
+Frenchman, though full of wrath, was, nevertheless, quite up to the game.
+He kept silence, but proceeded to form his company as if nothing had been
+the matter. When it was about to be constituted and registered, he asked
+Mr. X---- to become one of its directors, a demand that the latter could
+not very well refuse with decency. He therefore allowed his name to figure
+among those of the members of the board, and he used his best endeavours
+to push forward the shares of the concern of which he was pompously
+described on the prospectus as having been once the happy owner. As his
+name was one to conjure with the scrip went up to unheard-of prices, when
+both he and his supposed victim, the Frenchman, realised and retired from
+the venture, the richer by several hundreds of thousands of pounds.
+History does not say what became of the shareholders. As for Mr. X----, he
+now lives in Europe, and has still a reputation in South Africa.
+
+This story is but one amongst hundreds, and it is little wonder that,
+surrounded as he was with men who indulged in this charming pastime of
+always trying to dupe their fellow creatures, Rhodes' moral sense relaxed.
+It is only surprising that he kept about him so much that was good and
+great, and that he did not succumb altogether to the contamination which
+affected everything and everybody around him. Happily for him he cherished
+his own ambitions, had his own dreams for companions, his absorption in
+the great work he had undertaken; these things were his salvation.
+Rhodesia became the principal field of Rhodes' activity, and the care with
+which he fostered its prosperity kept him too busy and interested to
+continue the quest for riches which had been his great, if not his
+principal, occupation during the first years of his stay in South Africa.
+
+Although Cecil Rhodes was so happily placed that he had no need to bother
+over wealth, he was not so aloof to the glamour of politics. He had always
+felt the irk of his retirement after the Raid, and the hankering after a
+leading political position became more pronounced as the episode which
+shut the Parliamentary door behind him after he had passed through its
+portals faded in the mind of the people.
+
+It was not surprising, therefore, to observe that politics once more took
+the upper hand amidst his preoccupations. It was, though, politics
+connected with the development of the country that bore his name more than
+with the welfare of the Cape Colony or of the Transvaal. It was only
+during the last two years of Rhodes' existence that his interest revived
+in the places connected with his first successes in life. Rhodes had been
+convinced that a war with the Boers would last only a matter of a few
+weeks--three months, as he prophesied when it broke out--and he was
+equally sure, though for what reason it is difficult to guess, that the
+war would restore him to his former position and power. The illusion
+lingered long enough to keep him in a state of excitement, during which,
+carried along by his natural enthusiasm, he indulged in several
+unconsidered steps, and when at last his hope was dispelled he accused
+everybody of being the cause of his disappointment. Never for a moment
+would he admit that he could have been mistaken, or that the war, which at
+a certain moment his intervention might possibly have avoided, had been
+the consequence of the mischievous act he had not prevented.
+
+When the Bloemfontein Conference failed Rhodes was not altogether
+displeased. He had felt the affront of not being asked to attend; and,
+though his common sense told him that it would have been altogether out of
+the question for him to take part in it, as this would have been
+considered in the light of a personal insult by President Kruger, he would
+have liked to have been consulted by Sir Alfred Milner, as well as by the
+English Government, as to the course to be adopted during its
+deliberations. He was fully persuaded in his own mind that Sir Alfred
+Milner, being still a new arrival in South Africa, had not been able to
+grasp its complicated problems, and so had not adopted the best means to
+baffle the intrigues of President Kruger and the diplomacy of his clever
+colleague, President Steyn. At every tale which reached Cecil Rhodes
+concerning the difficulties encountered by Sir Alfred, he declared that he
+was "glad to be out of this mess." Yet it was not difficult to see that he
+passionately regretted not being allowed to watch from a seat at the
+council table the vicissitudes of this last attempt by conference to
+smooth over difficulties arising from the recklessness displayed by people
+in arrogantly rushing matters that needed careful examination.
+
+[Illustration: PRESIDENT KRUGER]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE AFTERMATH OF THE RAID
+
+
+Toward the close of the last chapter I referred to the Raid passing from
+the forefront of public memory. But though, as a fact, it became blurred
+in the mind of the people, as a factor in South African history its
+influence by no means diminished. Indeed, the aftermath of the Raid
+assumed far greater proportions as time went on. It influenced so entirely
+the further destinies of South Africa, and brought about such enmities and
+such bitterness along with it, that nothing short of a war could have
+washed away its impressions. Up to that fatal adventure the Jingo English
+elements, always viewed with distrust and dislike in the Transvaal as well
+as at the Cape, had been more or less held back in their desire to gain an
+ascendancy over the Dutch population, whilst the latter had accepted the
+Jingo as a necessary evil devoid of real importance, and only annoying
+from time to time.
+
+After the Raid all the Jingoes who had hoped that its results would be to
+give them greater facilities of enrichment considered themselves
+personally aggrieved by its failure. They did just what Rhodes was always
+doing. The Boers and President Kruger had acted correctly in this
+enterprise of Doctor Jameson, but the Jingoes made them responsible for
+the results of its failure. They went about giving expression to feelings
+of the most violent hatred against the Boers, and railed at their
+wickedness in daring to stand up in defence of rights which the British
+Government had solemnly recognised. It became quite useless to tell those
+misguided individuals that the Cabinet at Westminster had from the very
+first blamed Rhodes for his share in what the English Press, with but few
+exceptions, had declared to be an entirely disgraceful episode. They
+pretended that people in London knew nothing about the true state of
+affairs in South Africa or the necessities of the country; that the
+British Government had always shown deplorable weakness in regard to the
+treatment meted out to its subjects in the Colonies, and that both Rhodes
+and Jameson were heroes whose names deserved to be handed down to
+posterity for the services which they had rendered to their country.
+
+It is true that these ardent Jingoes were but a small minority and that
+the right-minded elements among the English Colonials universally blamed
+the unwarranted attack that had been made against the independence of the
+Transvaal. But the truculent minority shouted loud enough to drown the
+censure, and as, with a few notable exceptions, the South African Press
+was under the influence of the magnates, it was not very easy to protest
+against the strange way in which the Raid was being excused. I am
+persuaded that, had the subject been allowed to drop, it would have died a
+natural death, or at worst been considered as an historical blunder. But
+the partisans of Rhodes, the friends of Jameson, and personages connected
+with the leading financial powers did their best to keep the remembrance
+of the expedition which wrecked the political life of Rhodes fresh before
+the public. The mere mention of it was soon sufficient to arouse a tempest
+of passions, especially among the Dutch party, and by and by the history
+of South Africa resolved itself into the Raid and its memories. You never
+heard people say, "This happened at such a time"; they merely declared,
+"This happened before, or after, the Raid." It became a landmark for the
+inhabitants of Cape Town and of the Transvaal, and I could almost believe
+that, in Kimberley at any rate, the very children in the schools were
+taught to date their knowledge of English history from the time of the
+Raid.
+
+The enemies of Cecil Rhodes, and their number was legion, always declared
+that the reason why he had faced the music and braved public opinion in
+England lay in the fact that, for some reason or other, he was afraid of
+Doctor Jameson. I have referred already to this circumstance. Whilst
+refusing to admit such a possibility, yet I must own that the influence,
+and even the authority exercised by the Doctor on his chief, had something
+uncanny about it. My own opinion has always been that Rhodes' attitude
+arose principally from his conviction that Jameson was the only one who
+understood his constitution, the sole being capable of looking after his
+health. Curious as it may seem, I am sure the Colossus had an inordinate
+fear of death and of illness of any kind. He knew that his life was not a
+sound one, but he always rebelled against the idea that, like other
+mortals, he was subject to death. I feel persuaded that one of the reasons
+why he chose to be buried in the Matoppo Hills was that, in selecting this
+lonely spot, he felt that he would not often be called upon to see the
+place where he would rest one day.
+
+This dread of the unknown, so rare in people of his calibre, remained with
+him until the end. It increased in acuteness as his health began to fail.
+Then, more than ever, did he entertain and plan new schemes, as if to
+persuade himself that he had unlimited time before him in which to execute
+them. His flatterers knew how to play upon his weakness, and they never
+failed to do so. Perhaps this foible explains the influence which Doctor
+Jameson undoubtedly exercised upon the mind of Rhodes. He believed himself
+to be in safety whenever Jameson was about him. And so in a certain sense
+he was, because, with all his faults, the Doctor had a real affection for
+the man to whom he had been bound by so many ties ever since the days when
+at Kimberley they had worked side by side, building their fortunes and
+their careers.
+
+By a curious freak of destiny, when the tide of events connected with the
+war had given to the Progressive English party a clear majority in the
+Cape Parliament, Jameson assumed its leadership as a matter of course,
+largely because he was the political next-of-kin to Rhodes. The fact that
+at that time he lived at Groote Schuur added to his popularity, and he
+continued whilst there the traditional hospitality displayed during the
+lifetime of Rhodes. That he ultimately became Prime Minister was not
+surprising; the office fell to his share as so many other good things had
+fallen before; and, having obtained this supreme triumph and enjoyed it
+for a time, he was tactful enough to retire at precisely the right moment.
+
+The Raid indirectly killed Rhodes and directly obliterated his political
+reputation. It lost him, too, the respect of all the men who could have
+helped him to govern South Africa wisely and well. It deprived him of the
+experience and popularity of Mr. Schreiner, Mr. Merriman, Mr. Sauer and
+other members of the Afrikander Bond who had once been upon terms of
+intimacy and affection with him.
+
+It must never be forgotten that at one period of his history Rhodes was
+considered to be the best friend of the Dutch party; and, secondly, that
+he had been the first to criticise the action of the British Government in
+regard to the Transvaal. At the very moment when the Raid was contemplated
+he was making the most solemn assurances to his friends--as they then
+believed themselves to be--that he would never tolerate any attack against
+the independence of the Boers. If his advice had been taken, Rhodes
+considered that the errors which culminated at Majuba with the defeat of
+the British troops would have been avoided. He caused the same assurances
+to be conveyed to President Kruger, and this duplicity, which in anyone
+less compromised than he was in regard to the Dutch party might have been
+blamed, was in his case considered as something akin to high treason, and
+roused against him sentiments not only of hatred, but also of disgust.
+When later on, at the time of the Boer War, Rhodes made attempts to
+ingratiate himself once more into the favour of the Dutch he failed to
+realise that while there are cases when animosity can give way before
+political necessity, it is quite impossible in private to shake hands with
+an individual whom one despises. And that such persons as Mrs. van Koopman
+or Mr. Schreiner, for instance, despised Rhodes there can be no doubt.
+
+They were wrong in doing so. Rhodes was essentially a man of moods, and
+also an opportunist in his strange, blunt way. Had the Dutch rallied round
+him during the last war it is certain that he would have given himself up
+body and soul to the task of trying to smooth over the difficulties which
+gave such an obstinate character to the war. He would have induced the
+English Government to grant to all rebel colonists who returned to their
+allegiance a generous pardon and reinstatement into their former rights.
+
+Even while the war lasted it is a fact that, in a certain sense, Rhodes'
+own party suspected him of betraying its interests. I feel almost sure
+that Sir Alfred Milner did not trust him, but, nevertheless, he would have
+liked Rhodes as a coadjutor. If the two men were never on sincerely
+cordial terms with one another it was not the fault of the High
+Commissioner, who, with that honesty of which he always and upon every
+occasion gave proof, tried to secure the co-operation of the great South
+African statesman in his difficult task. But Rhodes would not help Sir
+Alfred. But neither, too, would he help the Dutch unless they were willing
+to eat humble pie before him. In fact, it was this for which Rhodes had
+been waiting ever since the Raid. He wanted people to ask his forgiveness
+for the faults he himself had committed. He would have liked Sir Alfred
+Milner to beg of him as a favour to take the direction of public affairs,
+and he would have desired the whole of the Dutch party to come down _in
+corpore_ to Groote Schuur, to implore him to become their leader and to
+fight not only for them but also for the rights of President Kruger, whom
+he professed to ridicule and despise, but to whom he had caused assurances
+of sympathy to be conveyed.
+
+During the first period of the war, and especially during the siege, Cecil
+Rhodes was in Kimberley. He had gone with the secret hope that he might be
+able from that centre to retain a stronger hold on South African politics
+than could have been the case at Groote Schuur, in which region the only
+authority recognised by English and Dutch alike was that of Sir Alfred
+Milner. He waited for a sign telling him that his ambition was about to be
+realised in some way or other--and waited in vain. It is indisputable that
+whilst he was shut up in the Diamond City Rhodes entered into secret
+negotiations with some of the Dutch leaders. This, though it might have
+been construed in the sense of treason against his own Motherland had it
+reached the knowledge of the extreme Jingo party, was in reality the
+sincere effort of a true patriot to put an end to a struggle which was
+threatening to destroy the prosperity of a country for which he had
+laboured for so many years.
+
+In judging Rhodes one must not forget that though a leading personality in
+South Africa, and the chairman of a corporation which practically ruled
+the whole of the Cape Colony and, in part, also the Transvaal, he was,
+after all, at that time nothing but a private individual. He had the right
+to put his personal influence at the service of the State and of his
+country if he considered that by so doing he could bring to an end a war
+which threatened to bring destruction on a land that was just beginning to
+progress toward civilisation. It must be remembered that his was the only
+great personality in South Africa capable of opposing President Kruger and
+the other Dutch and Boer leaders. He was still popular among many
+people--feared by some, worshipped by others. He could rally round him
+many elements that would never coalesce with either Dutch or English
+unless he provided the impetus of his authority and approval. If only he
+had spoken frankly to the Boer leaders whom he had caused to be
+approached, called them to his side instead of having messages conveyed to
+them by people whom he could disavow later on and whom, in fact, he did
+disavow; and if, on the other hand, Rhodes had placed himself at the
+disposal of Sir Alfred Milner, and told him openly that he would try to
+see what he could do to help him, the tenseness of the situation would
+almost certainly have been eased.
+
+In a position as intermediary between two adversaries who required his
+advice and influence to smooth the way toward a settlement of the terrible
+South African question Rhodes could have done incalculable service and
+added lustre to his name. But he did not, and it is not without interest
+to seek the reason why the Colossus was not courageous enough to embark
+upon such a course. Whether through fear of his actions being wrongly
+interpreted, or else because he did not feel sure of his ground and was
+apprehensive lest he might be induced to walk into a trap, Cecil Rhodes
+never would pronounce himself upon one side or the other. He left to
+well-wishers the task of reconciliation between himself and his enemies,
+or, if not that, at least the possibility for both once more to take
+common action for the solution of South African difficulties. The
+unfortunate side of the whole affair lay in the fact that the Boer and
+Bond leaders each remained under the impression that in the Raid affair it
+was against their particular body that Rhodes had sinned, that it was
+their cause which he had betrayed. Accordingly they expected him to
+recognise this fact and to tell them of his regret.
+
+But this was not Rhodes' way: on the contrary, he looked to his
+adversaries to consider that they had wronged him. Both parties adhered
+firmly to their point of view; it was not an easy matter to persuade
+either of them to take the initiative. Each very well knew and felt it was
+an indispensable step, but each considered it should be taken by the
+other.
+
+This brings me to make a remark which probably has never yet found its way
+into print, though some have spoken about it in South Africa. It is that
+Cecil Rhodes, whilst being essentially an Empire Maker, was not an Empire
+Ruler. His conceptions were far too vast to allow him to take into
+consideration the smaller details of everyday life which, in the
+management of the affairs of the world, obliges one to consider possible
+ramifications of every great enterprise. Rhodes wanted simply to sweep
+away all obstacles without giving the slightest thought to the
+consequences likely to follow on so offhand a manner of getting rid of
+difficulties.
+
+In addition to this disregard of vital details, there was a tinge of
+selfishness in everything which Rhodes undertook and which gave a personal
+aspect to matters which ought to have been looked upon purely from the
+objective. The acquisition of Rhodesia, for instance, was considered by
+him as having been accomplished for the aggrandisement of the Empire and
+also for his own benefit. He sincerely believed that he had had nothing
+else in his mind when he founded the Chartered Company, than the desire to
+conquer a new country and to give it to England; but he would certainly
+have felt cruelly affronted if the British Government had ever taken its
+administration into its own hands and not allowed Rhodes to do exactly
+what he pleased there. He loved to go to Buluwayo, and would spend weeks
+watching all that was being done in the way of agriculture and mining. In
+particular, he showed considerable interest in the natives.
+
+The Colonial Office in London was treated by Cecil Rhodes with the utmost
+disdain on the rare occasions when it tried to put in a word concerning
+the establishment of British rule in the territories which he gloried in
+having presented to the Queen. It was sufficient to mention in his
+presence the possibility of the Charter being recalled to put Rhodes into
+a passion. No king or tyrant of old, indeed, treated his subjects with the
+severity which Rhodes showed in regard to the different civil officials
+and military defenders of the Rhodesia he loved so much and so unwisely.
+
+It is curious that Rhodes never allowed speculation a free hand in
+Rhodesia as he had done at Kimberley or at Johannesburg. He was most
+careful that outsiders should not hear about what was going on, and took
+endless precautions not to expose the companies that worked the old
+dominions of poor King Lobengula, to the sharp criticism of the European
+Stock Exchanges. Their shares remained in the hands of people on whose
+discretion Rhodes believed that he could rely, and no one ever heard of
+gambling in scrip exciting the minds of the inhabitants of Buluwayo or
+Salisbury to anything like the degree stocks in Transvaal concerns did.
+
+In Rhodesia Rhodes believed himself on his own ground and free from the
+criticisms which he guessed were constantly uttered in regard to him and
+to his conduct. In the new land which bore his name Rhodes was surrounded
+only by dependants, whilst in Cape Colony he now and then came across
+someone who would tell him and, what was worse, who would make him feel
+that, after all, he was not the only man in the world, and that he could
+not always have everything his own way. Moreover, in Cape Town there was
+the Governor, whose personality was more important than his own, and whom,
+whether he liked it or not, he had to take into consideration, and to
+whom, in a certain sense, he had to submit. And in Kimberley there was the
+De Beers Board which, though composed of men who were entirely in
+dependence upon him and whose careers he had made, yet had to be
+consulted. He could not entirely brush them aside, the less so that a
+whole army of shareholders stood behind them who, from time to time, were
+impudent enough to wish to see what was being done with their money.
+
+Nothing in the way of hampering critics or circumscribing authorities
+existed in Rhodesia. The Chartered Company, though administered by a
+Board, was in reality left entirely in the hands and under the control of
+Rhodes. Most of the directors were in England and came before public
+notice only at the annual general meeting, which was always a success,
+inasmuch as no one there had ever ventured to criticise, otherwise than in
+a mild way, the work of the men who were supposed to watch over the
+development of the resources of the country. Rhodes was master, and
+probably his power would have even increased had he lived long enough to
+see the completion of the Cape to Cairo Railway, which was his last hobby
+and the absorbing interest of the closing years of his life.
+
+The Cape to Cairo Railway was one of those vast schemes that can be
+ascribed to the same quality in his character as that which made him so
+essentially an Empire Maker. It was a project of world-wide importance,
+and destined to set the seal to the paramount influence of Great Britain
+over the whole of Africa. It was a work which, without Rhodes, would never
+have been accomplished. He was right to feel proud of having conceived it;
+and England, too, ought to be proud of having counted among her sons a man
+capable of starting such a vast enterprise and of going on with it despite
+the violent opposition and the many misgivings with which it was received
+by the general public.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+RHODES AND THE AFRIKANDER BOND
+
+
+To return to the subject of the negotiations which undoubtedly took place
+between Rhodes and the leaders of the Afrikander Bond during the war, I
+must say that, so far as I know, they can rank among the most
+disinterested actions of his life. For once there was no personal interest
+or possible material gain connected with his desire to bring the Dutch
+elements in South Africa to look upon the situation from the purely
+patriotic point of view, as he did himself.
+
+It would have been most certainly to the advantage of everybody if,
+instead of persisting in a resistance which was bound to collapse, no
+matter how successful it might appear to have been at its start, the
+Boers, together with the Dutch Afrikanders, had sent the olive branch to
+Cape Town. There would then have been some hope of compromise or of coming
+to terms with England before being crushed by her armies. It would have
+been favourable to English interests also had the great bitterness, which
+rendered the war such a long and such a rabid one, not had time to spread
+all over the country. Rhodes' intervention, which Sir Alfred Milner could
+not have refused had he offered it, backed by the Boers on one side and by
+the English Progressive party in the Colony on the other, might have
+brought about great results and saved many lives.
+
+No blame, therefore, ought to attach to Cecil Rhodes for wishing to
+present the Boer side of the case. It would, indeed, have been wiser on
+the part of Mr. Hofmeyr and other Bond leaders to have forgotten the past
+and given a friendly hand to the one man capable of unravelling the
+tangled skein of affairs.
+
+At that period, whilst the siege of Kimberley was in progress, it is
+certain that serious consideration was given to this question of common
+action on the part of Rhodes and of the two men who practically held the
+destinies of the Transvaal in their hands--de Wet and General Botha, with
+Mr. Hofmeyr as representative of the Afrikander Bond at their back. Why it
+failed would for ever remain a mystery if one did not remember that
+everywhere in South Africa lurked hidden motives of self-interest which
+interfered with the best intentions. The fruits of the seed of distrust
+sown by the Raid were not easy to eradicate.
+
+Perhaps if Mr. Rhodes had stood alone the attempt might have met with more
+success than was actually the case. But it was felt by all the leading men
+in the Transvaal that a peace concluded under his auspices would result in
+the subjection of the Boers to the foreign and German-Jew millionaires.
+This was the one thing they feared.
+
+The Boers attributed to the millionaires of the Rand all the misfortunes
+which had fallen upon them, and consequently the magnates were bitterly
+hated by the Boers. And not without reason. No reasonable Boer would have
+seriously objected to a union with England, provided it had been effected
+under conditions assuring them autonomy and a certain independence. But no
+one wanted to have liberty and fortune left at the mercy of adventurers,
+even though some of them had risen to reputation and renown, obtained
+titles, and bought their way into Society.
+
+Unfortunately for him, Rhodes was supposed to represent the class of
+people referred to, or, at any rate, to favour them. One thing is
+certain--the great financial interests which Rhodes possessed in the Gold
+Fields and other concerns of the same kind lent some credence to the idea.
+All these circumstances prevented public opinion from expressing full
+confidence in him, because no one could bring himself to believe what
+nevertheless would have come true.
+
+In the question of restoring peace to South Africa Rhodes most certainly
+would never have taken anyone's advice; he would have acted according to
+his own impulse, and more so because Doctor Jameson was not with him
+during the whole time Kimberley was besieged. Unfortunately for all the
+parties concerned, Rhodes let slip the opportunity to resume his former
+friendship with Mr. Hofmeyr, the only man in South Africa whose
+intelligence could measure itself with his own. And in the absence of this
+first step from Rhodes, a false pride--which was wounded vanity more than
+anything else--prevented the Bond from seeking the help of Rhodes. This
+attitude on the part of each man would simply have been ridiculous under
+ordinary circumstances, but at a time when such grave interests were at
+stake, and when the future of so many people was liable to be compromised,
+it became criminal.
+
+In sharp contrast to it stood the conduct of Sir Alfred Milner, who was
+never influenced by his personal feelings or by his vanity where the
+interests of his country were engaged. During the few months which
+preceded the war he was the object of virulent hatred on the part of most
+of the white population of the Colony. When the first disillusions of the
+war brought along with them their usual harvest of disappointments the
+personality of the High Commissioner appeared at last in its true light,
+and one began to realise that here was a man who possessed a singularly
+clear view on matters of politics, and that all his actions were guided by
+sound principles. His quiet determination not to allow himself to be
+influenced by the gossip of Cape Town was also realised, and amid all the
+spite shown it is to his honour that, instead of throwing up the sponge,
+he persevered, until at last he succeeded in the aim which he had kept
+before him from the day he had landed in Table Bay. He restored peace to
+the dark continent where no one had welcomed him, but where everybody
+mourned his departure when he bade it good-bye after the most anxious
+years he had ever known.
+
+When Sir Alfred accepted the post of Governor of the Cape Colony and
+English High Commissioner in South Africa, he had intended to study most
+carefully the local conditions of the new country whither fate and his
+duty were sending him, and then, after having gained the necessary
+experience capable of guiding him in the different steps he aspired to
+take, to proceed to the formidable task he had set for himself. His great
+object was to bring about a reconciliation between the two great political
+parties in the Colony--the South African League, with Rhodes as President,
+and the Afrikander Bond, headed by Messrs. Hofmeyr (the one most in
+popular favour with the Boer farmers), Sauer and Schreiner.
+
+In the gigantic task of welding together two materials which possessed
+little affinity and no love for each other, Sir Alfred was unable to be
+guided by his experience in the Motherland. In England a certain
+constitutional policy was the basis of every party. At the Cape the
+dominating factors were personal feelings, personal hatreds and
+affections, while in the case of the League it was money and money alone.
+I do not mean that every member of the League had been bought by De Beers
+or the Chartered Company; but what I do maintain is that the majority of
+its members had some financial or material reason to enrol themselves.
+
+In judging the politics of South Africa at the period of which I am
+writing, one must not forget that the greater number of those who then
+constituted the so-called Progressive party were men who had travelled to
+the Cape through love of adventure and the desire to enrich themselves
+quickly. It was only the first comers who had seen their hopes realised.
+Those who came after them found things far more difficult, and had
+perforce to make the best of what their predecessors left. On the other
+hand, it was relatively easy for them to find employment in the service of
+one or the other of the big companies that sprang up, and by whom most of
+the mining and industrial concerns were owned.
+
+[Illustration: THE HON. J.H. HOFMEYR]
+
+When the influence of the De Beers increased after its amalgamation with
+the other diamond companies around Kimberley, and when Rhodes made up his
+mind that only a political career could help him to achieve his vast
+plans, he struck upon the thought of using the money and the influence
+which were at his disposal to transform De Beers into one of the most
+formidable political instruments the world had ever seen. He succeeded in
+doing so in what would have been a wonderful manner if one did not
+remember the crowd of fortune-seeking men who were continually landing in
+South Africa. These soon found that it would advantage them to enrol under
+Rhodes' banner, for he was no ordinary millionaire. Here stood a man who
+was perpetually discovering new treasures, annexing new continents, and
+who had always at his disposal profitable posts to scatter among his
+followers.
+
+The reflex action upon Rhodes was that unconsciously he drifted into the
+conviction that every man could be bought, provided one knew what it was
+he wanted. He understood perfectly well the art of speculating in his
+neighbours' weaknesses, and thus liked to invite certain people to make
+long stays at his house, not because he liked them, but because he knew,
+if they did not, that they would soon discover that the mere fact of being
+the guest of Mr. Rhodes procured for them the reputation of being in his
+confidence. Being a guest at Groote Schuur endowed a man with a prestige
+such as no one who has not lived in South Africa can realise, and,
+furthermore, enabled him to catch here and there scraps of news respecting
+the money markets of the world, a proper understanding and use of which
+could be of considerable financial value. A cup of tea at Groote Schuur
+was sufficient to bring about more than one political conversion.
+
+Once started the South African League soon became a power in the land, not
+so strong by any means as the Afrikander Bond, but far more influential in
+official, and especially in financial, circles. Created for the apparent
+aim of supporting British government in Cape Colony, it found itself
+almost from the very first in conflict with it, if not outwardly, at least
+tacitly. After his rupture with the Bond consequent upon the Raid, Rhodes
+brought considerable energy to bear upon the development of the League. He
+caused it to exercise all over the Colony an occult power which more than
+once defied constituted authority, and proved a source of embarrassment to
+British representatives with greater frequency than they would have cared
+to own. Sir Alfred Milner, so far as I have been able to see, when taking
+the reins, had not reckoned upon meeting with this kind of government
+within a government, and in doing so perhaps did not appreciate its
+extent. But from the earliest days of his administration it confronted
+him, at first timidly, afterwards with persistence, and at last with such
+insolence that he found himself compelled to see what he could do to
+reduce to impotence this organisation which sought to devour him.
+
+The problem which a situation of the character described thrust upon Sir
+Alfred was easier to discuss than to solve. The League was a power so wide
+that it was almost impossible to get rid of its influence in the country.
+It was controlled by Rhodes, by De Beers, by the Chartered Company, by the
+members in both Houses who were affiliated to it, by all the great
+financial establishments throughout South Africa--with but a solitary
+exception--by the principal industrial and agricultural enterprises in the
+country. It comprised political men, landowners, doctors, merchants,
+ship-owners, practically all the colonists in Rhodesia, and most of the
+English residents of the Transvaal. It controlled elections, secured
+votes, disposed of important posts, and when it advised the Governor the
+Legislature had to take its remarks into consideration whether or not it
+approved of them. Under the regime of the days when the League was formed
+it had been able to develop itself with great facility, the dangers which
+lurked behind its encroachment on the privileges of the Crown not being
+suspected. But Sir Alfred Milner discovered the menace at once, and with
+the quiet firmness and the tact which he always displayed in everything
+that he undertook proceeded to cope with the organisation.
+
+Sir Alfred soon found himself confronted by the irritation of Rhodes, who
+had relied on his support for the schemes which he had nursed in regard to
+the Transvaal. I must here explain the reason why Rhodes had thrown his
+glances toward the Rand. One must remember the peculiar conditions in
+which he was placed in being always surrounded by creatures whom he could
+only keep attached to his person and to his ambition by satisfying their
+greed for gold. When he had annexed Matabeleland it had been principally
+in the expectation that one would find there the rich gold-bearing strata
+said to exist in that region. Unfortunately, this hope proved a fallacious
+one. Although thousands of pounds were spent in sinking and research, the
+results obtained were of so insignificant a nature, and the quantity of
+ore extracted so entirely insufficient to justify systematic exploitation,
+that the adventurers had perforce to turn their attention toward other
+fields.
+
+It was after this disillusion that the idea took hold of Rhodes, which he
+communicated to his friends, to acquire the gold fields of the Rand, and
+to transform the rich Transvaal into a region where the Chartered Company
+and the South African League would rule. Previous to this, if we are to
+believe President Kruger, Rhodes had tried to conclude an alliance with
+him, and once, upon his return from Beira to Cape Town, had stopped at
+Pretoria, where he paid a visit to the old Boer statesman.
+
+It is quite likely that on this occasion Rhodes put in a word suggesting
+that it would be an advantage to the Transvaal to become possessed of an
+outlet on the sea-board, but I hardly think that Kruger wrote the truth in
+his memoirs in stating that when mentioning Delagoa Bay Rhodes used the
+words, "We must simply take it," thus associating himself with Kruger.
+Cecil Rhodes was far too cute to do any such tiling, knowing that it would
+be interpreted in a sense inimical to his plans. But I should not be
+surprised if, when the President remarked that Delagoa was Portuguese, he
+had replied, "It does not matter, and you must simply take it." This would
+have been far more to the point, as it would have hinted to those who knew
+how to read between the lines that England, which Rhodes was persuaded was
+incarnated in himself, would not mind if the Transvaal did lay hands on
+Delagoa Bay. Such an act would furnish the British Government with a
+pretext for dabbling to some effect in the affairs of the Transvaal
+Republic.
+
+Such a move as this would have been just one of these things which Rhodes
+was fond of doing. He felt sometimes a kind of malicious pleasure in
+whispering to others the very things likely to get them into trouble
+should they be so foolish as to do them. In the case of President Kruger,
+however, he had to deal with a mind which, though uncouth, yet possessed
+all the "slimness" of which so many examples are to be found in South
+Africa.
+
+Kruger wrote, "Rhodes represented capital, no matter how base and
+contemptible, and whether by lying, bribery or treachery, all and every
+means were welcome to him if they led to the attainment of his ambitious
+desires." But Oom Paul was absolutely wrong in thinking that it was the
+personage he was thus describing who practised all these abominations. He
+ought to have remembered that it was his name only which was associated
+with all these basenesses, and the man himself, if left to his better
+self, would never have condescended to the many acts of doubtful morality
+with which his memory will remain associated in history.
+
+I am firmly convinced that on his own impulse he would never, for
+instance, have ventured on the Raid. But, unhappily, his habit, when
+something "not quite" was mentioned to him, was to say nothing and to
+trust to his good luck to avoid unpleasant consequences arising out of his
+silence. Had he ventured to oppose the plans of his confederates they
+would have immediately turned upon him, and ... There were, perhaps, past
+facts which he did not wish the world to remember. His frequent fits of
+raging temper arose from this irksome feeling, and was his way--a futile
+way--of revenging himself on his jailors for the durance in which they
+kept him. The man who believed himself to be omnipotent in South Africa,
+and who was considered so powerful by the world at large, was in reality
+in the hands of the very organisations he had helped to build.
+
+It was not Cecil John Rhodes' will which was paramount in the South
+African League. Kruger spoke absolutely the truth when he asserted that it
+was essential "to know something about the Chartered Company before it was
+possible to realise the true perspective of the history of South Africa
+during the closing years of the last century." Another of Kruger's
+sweeping assertions--and one which he never backed by anything
+tangible--was when he further wrote that Rhodes was "one of the most
+unscrupulous characters that ever existed, whose motto was 'the end
+justifies the means,' a motto that contains a creed which represents the
+whole man." Rhodes by nature was not half so unscrupulous as Kruger
+himself, but he was surrounded by unscrupulous people, whom he was too
+indolent to repulse. He was constantly paying the price of his former
+faults and errors in allowing his name to serve as a shield for the
+ambitions of those who were in no way worthy of him and who constantly
+abused his confidence.
+
+The habit became ingrained in the nature of Cecil Rhodes of always doing
+what he chose without regard to the feelings and sentiments of others. It
+persisted during the whole of the war, and would probably have proved a
+serious impediment to the conclusion of peace had he lived until it became
+accomplished. This characteristic led him, after all his intrigues with
+the Dutch party and the Bond, to throw himself once more into the arms of
+the English Progressive party and to start a campaign of his own against
+the rebel Colonials and the Dutch inhabitants of the Transvaal.
+
+While the siege of Kimberley lasted, even while he was seeking to become
+reconciled to the British element, Rhodes asserted himself in a strongly
+offensive manner. He sent to Sir Alfred Milner in Cape Town reports of his
+own as to the military authorities and dispositions, couched in such
+alarming tones that the High Commissioner became most uneasy concerning
+the possible fate of the Diamond City. These reports accused the officers
+in charge of the town of failing in the performance of their duties, and
+showing symptoms of abject fear in regard to the besieging Boer army. It
+was only after an explanation from Sir Redvers Buller, and after the
+latter had communicated to him the letters which he himself had received
+from Colonel Kekewich, the commander of the troops to whom had been
+entrusted the defence of Kimberley, that Sir Alfred was reassured.
+
+The fact was that Rhodes became very impatient to find that his movements
+were watched by the military authorities, and that sometimes even the
+orders which he gave for what he considered the greater security of the
+town, and gave with the superb assurance which distinguished him, were
+cancelled by the responsible officials. Disgraceful scenes followed.
+Rhodes was accused of wishing to come to an arrangement with Cronje, who
+was in charge of the besieging troops, in order to bring the war to an end
+by his own efforts.
+
+I never have been able to ascertain how much of real truth, if any, was in
+the various accusations made against Cecil Rhodes by the English General
+Officers, but they were embodied in the message which was alleged to have
+been flashed across to Kimberley after the battle of Modder River by Lord
+Methuen, but which was supposed by those whom it concerned to have been
+inspired by the Commander-in-Chief:
+
+"Tell Mr. Rhodes," the heliograph ran, "that on my entry into Kimberley he
+and his friends must take their immediate departure."
+
+Two years later, in November, 1902, Sir Redvers Buller, when speaking at
+the annual dinner of the Devonians in London, remarked that he must
+protest against the rumours which, during the siege of Kimberley, had been
+spread by some of its residents that the Imperial authorities had been in
+a perpetual state of "funk." The allusion was understood to refer to Mr.
+Rhodes by his partisans, who protested against the speech. Rhodes, indeed,
+during his whole life was never in greater disfavour with the English
+Government than after the siege of Kimberley; perhaps because he had
+always accused Whitehall of not understanding the real state of things in
+South Africa. The result of that imperative telegram, and Rhodes' belief
+as to its source, was bitter hatred against Sir Redvers Buller. It soon
+found expression in vindictive attacks by the whole Rhodesian Press
+against the strategy, the abilities, and even the personal honesty of Sir
+Redvers Buller.
+
+Whether Rhodes, upon his arrival in London, attempted to hurt the General
+I do not know, but it could be always taken for granted that Rhodes could
+be a very bad enemy when he chose.
+
+Upon his return to Groote Schuur he seemed more dissatisfied than ever
+with the Home Government. He was loud in his denunciations and unceasing
+in his criticisms. Sir Alfred, however, like the wise man he was,
+preferred to ignore these pinpricks, and invariably treated Rhodes with
+the utmost courtesy and attention. He always showed himself glad to listen
+to Rhodes and to discuss with him points which the Colossus thought it
+worth while to talk over. At that time Rhodes was in the most equivocal
+position he had ever been in his life. He could not return to Kimberley;
+he did not care to go to Rhodesia; and in Cape Colony he was always
+restive.
+
+At this period all kinds of discussions used to take place concerning the
+ultimate results of the war and the influence which it would have on the
+future development of affairs in the Transvaal. The financiers began to
+realise that after the British flag had once been raised at Pretoria they
+would not have such a good time of it as they had hoped at first, and now,
+having done their best to hurry on the war, regretted it more than anybody
+else. The fact was that everybody in South Africa, with the exception of
+the Boers themselves, who knew very well their own resources, had believed
+that the war would be over in three months, and that the Transvaal would
+be transferred into a Crown Colony where adventurers and gold-seekers
+would have a fine time.
+
+Rhodes himself had more than once expressed his conviction that the
+destruction of the Boers would not take more than three months at the
+most, and this assurance was accepted as gospel by most of the financiers
+of Johannesburg. An exception was Mr. F. Eckstein, the general manager and
+partner in the concern of Wernher, Beit & Co., and one of the ablest
+financiers in that city. From the first he was quite pessimistic in regard
+to the length of time the war would take.
+
+As the war dragged on without there seeming any chance of its being
+brought to a rapid conclusion, it became evident that England, after all
+the sacrifices which she was making, would never consent to leave the
+leaders of the movement--the ostensible object of which had been to grant
+to the Uitlanders certain privileges to which they had no right--as sole
+and absolute masters of the situation. In fact, the difficulties of the
+war made it evident that, once peace was proclaimed, public opinion at
+home would demand that the Transvaal, together with the Orange Free State,
+should be annexed to the British Empire in view of a future federation of
+the whole of South Africa, about which the English Press was already
+beginning to speak.
+
+That South Africa should not remain a sphere of exploitation sent shivers
+down the spines of the financiers. The South African League was observed
+to become quite active in discovering rebels. Their zeal in this direction
+was felt all over Cape Colony. Their aim was to reduce the register in
+order to bring about a considerable falling off of voters for the
+Afrikander Bond, and thereby substantially influence the results of the
+next election to the Cape Parliament.
+
+At this period certain overtures were made once again to the Bond party.
+They proceeded apparently from men supposed to act on their own
+initiative, but who were known to be in favour at Groote Schuur. These
+advances met with no response, but when the rumour that they had been made
+spread among the public owing to an indiscretion, Rhodes hastened to deny
+that he had been a party to the plan--as was his wont when he failed to
+achieve. All the same, it is a fact that members of the House of Assembly
+belonging to the Afrikander party visited Groote Schuur in the course of
+that last winter which Rhodes spent there, and were warmly welcomed.
+Rhodes showed himself unusually gracious. He hoped these forerunners would
+rally his former friends to his side once more. But Rhodes was expecting
+too much, considering ail the circumstances. Faithful to his usual
+tactics, even whilst his Afrikander guests were being persuaded to lend
+themselves to an intrigue from which they had hoped to win something,
+Rhodes was making himself responsible for another step likely to render
+the always strong hatred even more acute than ever. More than that, he was
+advocating, through certain underground channels, the suspension of the
+Constitution in Cape Colony.
+
+[Illustration: THE RT. HON. SIR W.F. HELY-HUTCHINSON]
+
+The particulars of this incident were only disclosed after the war was
+over. The whole thing was thrashed out in Parliament and its details
+communicated to the public by Mr. David de Waal, one of the truest friends
+Mr. Rhodes ever had. The discussion took place after Sir Alfred Milner had
+been transferred to Johannesburg and Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson had taken
+his place in Cape Town. The South African League had become more active
+than ever, and was using all its influence to secure a majority for its
+members at the next general election. The Bond, on its side, had numerous
+adherents up country, and the stout Dutch farmers had remained faithful to
+their old allegiance, so there was no hope that they would be induced,
+even through the influence of money, to give their votes to the
+Progressives. The only things which remained were: a redistribution of
+seats, then a clearing out of the register, and, lastly, a suspension of
+the Constitution, which would have allowed the Governor a "free" hand in
+placing certain measures on the statute book. The most influential members
+among the executive of the South African League met at Cotswold Chambers,
+and Rhodes, who was present, drew up a petition which was to be presented
+to the Prime Minister. Sir Gordon Sprigg, who filled that office, was a
+man who, with all his defects, was absolutely incapable of lending himself
+to any mean trick in order to remain in power. When Sir Gordon became
+acquainted with the demands of the League he refused absolutely to take a
+part in what he maintained would have been an everlasting blot on the
+reputation of the Government.
+
+After Rhodes' death, when the question of the suspension of the
+Constitution was raised by the Progressives in the House of Assembly, it
+was discussed in all its details, and it was proved that the South African
+League, in trying throughout the country to obtain signatures to a monster
+petition on the matter, had resorted to some more than singular means to
+obtain these signatures. Mr. Sauer, who was the leader of the Bond party
+in the Chamber, revealed how the League had employed agents to induce
+women and sometimes young children to sign the petition, and that at the
+camp near Sea Point, a suburb of Cape Town, where soldiers were stationed
+previous to their departure for England, these same agents were engaged in
+getting them to sign it before they left under the inducement of a fixed
+salary up to a certain amount and a large percentage after it had been
+exceeded, according to the number of the names obtained in this way. When
+trustworthy people of unimpeachable character wrote to the papers
+denouncing this manoeuvre the subsidised papers in Cape Town, and the
+Rhodesian Press, refused to publish the affidavits sworn on the subject,
+but wrote columns of calumnies about the Dutch Colonials, and, as a
+finishing stroke, clamoured for the suspension of the Constitution.
+
+The speech of Mr. Sauer gave rise to a heated debate, during which the
+Progressive members indignantly denied his assertions. Then stepped in Mr.
+David de Waal, that friend of Rhodes to whom I have already referred. He
+rose to bring his testimony to the facts revealed by Mr. Sauer, who was
+undoubtedly the most able leader which the Afrikander party possessed,
+with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Merriman.
+
+"In February, 1902," he said, "there was a meeting in Cotswold Chambers
+consisting of the twenty-two members of the House of Assembly who went by
+the name of 'Rhodes' group.' It was at first discussed and ultimately
+decided to wait on the Prime Minister and to interview him concerning the
+expenditure of the war, which had reached the sum of £200,000 monthly.
+Then, after some further discussion, we came to the conclusion to meet
+once more. This was done on February 17th. You must remember that war was
+still raging at the time. At this second meeting it was agreed to
+formulate a scheme to be submitted to the Government which proposed the
+suspension of the Constitution in regard to five clauses. The first was to
+be this very suspension, then a new registration of voters, a
+redistribution of seats, the indemnity to be awarded to the faithful
+English Colonials, and, finally, the reestablishment of the Constitution.
+As to this last I must make a statement, and that is, that if I had known
+that it was meant to withdraw the Constitution for more than one month I
+would have objected to it, but I was told that it would be only a matter
+of a few days."
+
+At this point Mr. de Waal was interrupted by a Progressive member, who
+exclaimed that Dr. Jameson had denied that such a thing had ever been said
+or mentioned.
+
+"I know he has done so," replied Mr. de Waal, "but I will make a
+declaration on my oath. A committee was then appointed," he went on,
+"which waited on the Prime Minister and presented to him this very same
+petition. Sir Gordon Sprigg, however, said that he would not be ruled by
+anyone, because they had a responsible Government. The Committee reported,
+when it returned, that the Prime Minister was opposed to any movement
+started on the basis of the petition which they had presented to him, and
+that he would not move an inch from his declaration, saying energetically,
+'Never! I shall never do it!' Sir Gordon Sprigg had further pointed out
+that the result of such a step would be that the Cape would become a Crown
+Colony and would find itself in the same position as Rhodesia."
+
+Perhaps this was what Rhodes and the South African League had wished, but
+the publication of the details connected with this incident, especially
+proceeding from a man who had never made a secret of the ties which had
+bound him to Rhodes, and who, among the latter's Dutch friends, had been
+the only one who had never failed him, drove the first nail into the
+coffin of Rhodesian politics.
+
+It was common knowledge that de Waal had steadfastly stood by Rhodes even
+during the terrible time of the Raid. Moreover, he was a man of high
+integrity, who alone among those who had attached themselves to the
+destinies of the Empire Maker had never taken part in the financial
+schemes of a doubtful nature which marked the wonderful career of Rhodes.
+This declaration opened the eyes of many persons who, to that day, had
+denied the political intrigues which had been going on at Cotswold
+Chambers. Afterwards it became relatively easy for Sir Alfred Milner to
+clear the atmosphere in South Africa and to establish public life on
+sounder principles than the pure love of gain. It cannot be sufficiently
+regretted that he should not have done so before Rhodes' death and thus
+have given Rhodes--and, incidentally, the country for which Rhodes had
+done so much in the way of material development--the opportunity to shake
+off his parasites and become a real factor in solidifying the great area
+in which he was such an outstanding personality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE INFLUENCE OF SIR ALFRED MILNER
+
+
+The occult power exercised by the League on the inner politics of South
+Africa could not fail to impress Sir Alfred Milner most unpleasantly.
+Frank himself, it must have often been absolutely repulsive to him to have
+to do with people whom he feared to trust and who believed that they could
+bring into political life the laxities of the mining camp. Though not
+aware of it, even before he landed in Cape Town the Progressives had made
+up their minds to represent him as determined to sweep the Dutch off the
+face of the earth.
+
+Believing Sir Alfred to be the confederate of Rhodes, the Boers, too,
+would have nothing to do with him. Whilst the Bloemfontein Conference was
+going on President Kruger, as well as the leaders of the Afrikander Bond,
+were overwhelmed with covert warnings to distrust the High Commissioner.
+Whence they emanated is not a matter of much doubt. Sir Alfred was accused
+of wanting to lay a trap for the Boer plenipotentiaries, who were told to
+beware of him as an accomplice of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, whose very name
+produced at Pretoria the same effect as a red rag upon a bull. Under these
+circumstances the Conference was bound to fail, and the High Commissioner
+returned to Cape Town, very decidedly a sadder and most certainly a wiser
+man.
+
+Now that years have passed since the Boer War it is possible to secure a
+better perspective, in the light of which one can question whether it
+would have been possible to avoid the conflict by an arrangement of some
+kind with the Boer Republics, Personally, I believe that an understanding
+was not out of the question if the strong financial interests had not
+opposed its accomplishment; but at the same time a patched up affair would
+not have been a happy event for either South Africa or for England. It
+would have left matters in almost the same condition as they had been
+before, and the millionaires, who were the real masters on the Rand, would
+have found a dozen pretexts to provoke a new quarrel with the Transvaal
+Government. Had the Boer Executive attempted to do away with the power of
+the concerns which ruled the gold mines and diamond fields, it would have
+courted a resistance with which it would have been next to impossible to
+deal. The war would still have taken place, but it might have occurred at
+a far less favourable moment. No arrangement with President Kruger, even
+one most propitious to British interests, could have done away with the
+corruption and the bribery which, from the first moment of the discovery
+of the gold fields, invaded that portion of South Africa, and this
+corruption would always have stood in the way of the establishment of the
+South African Union.
+
+Sir Alfred Milner knew all this very well, and probably had an inward
+conviction, notwithstanding his efforts to prevent the war, that a
+conflict was the only means of breaking these chains of gold which
+shackled the wheels of progress. At so critical a time the support of
+Rhodes and his party would have been invaluable. And Sir Alfred would have
+welcomed it. Cecil Rhodes, of course, had declared himself officially in
+accord with the High Commissioner, and even praised him to a degree of
+fulsomeness. But the ulterior motive was simply to excite the Dutch party
+against him. The reputation of Sir Alfred Milner as a statesman and as a
+politician was constantly challenged by the very people who ought to have
+defended it. Rhodes himself had been persuaded that the Governor harboured
+the most sinister designs against his person. The innuendo was one of the
+most heinous untruths ever invented by his crowd of sycophants.
+
+An opportunity came my way, by which I was able to convince myself how
+false was the belief nourished by Rhodes against Milner. During the course
+of a conversation with Sir Alfred, I boldly asked him whether he was
+really such an enemy of Rhodes as represented. I was surprised by the
+moderate tone in which he replied to my, after all, impertinent question.
+The remarks which we then exchanged filled me with the greatest admiration
+for the man who so nobly, and so worthily, upheld British prestige in
+South Africa under the most trying circumstances. Milner was an entirely
+honest man--the rarest thing in the whole of Cape Town at that anxious
+period--and after one had had the advantage of discussing with him the
+political situation, one could only be filled with profound respect for
+him and for his opinions, actions and conduct. Far from working against
+Rhodes, as Sir Alfred had been represented to me as doing, I convinced
+myself that he was keenly anxious to be on good and, what is more
+important, on sincere terms with him. Sir Alfred had not the slightest
+feeling of animosity against the Dutch. On the contrary, he would have
+liked them to become persuaded of his desire to protect them against
+possible aggression by the Jingoes, whose offensive conduct none more than
+himself assessed at its true value.
+
+But what was the real situation? He found his every action misconstrued;
+whatever he did was interpreted in a wrong sense, and those who should
+have shared his aims were plotting against him. The position was truly
+tragic from whatever side it was viewed, and a weaker or less honest man
+would assuredly have given up the struggle.
+
+A few days after my conversation with Sir Alfred Milner, which took place
+during the course of a dinner at Government House, I took opportunity to
+mention it to Rhodes. I tried to clear his mind of the suspicions that I
+knew he entertained in regard to the High Commissioner. Cecil Rhodes
+listened to me with attention, then asked me in that sarcastic tone of
+his, which was so intensely disagreeable and offensive, whether I was in
+love with Sir Alfred, as I had so suddenly become his champion. Then he
+ended, "You are trying to make me believe the impossible." I did not allow
+him, however, to ruffle me, as evidently was his desire, but replied that
+when one came to know better those whom one had only met occasionally,
+without ever having talked with them seriously, it was natural to amend
+one's opinion accordingly. I told him, too, that my earlier
+misapprehension had been intensified by a certain lady who posed as
+Rhodes' greatest friend, and who had been loud in her denunciations of the
+High Commissioner, long before I had ever met him. But now, I added, I had
+come to the conclusion that Sir Alfred had been terribly maligned.
+
+At this point Rhodes interrupted me with the remark: "So you think that he
+is a paragon. Well, I won't contradict you, and, besides, you know that I
+have always defended him; but still, with all his virtues, he has not yet
+found out what he ought to do with me."
+
+"What can one do with you, Mr. Rhodes?" I asked with a smile.
+
+"Leave me alone," was the characteristic reply, in a tone which was
+sufficient for me to follow the advice, as it meant that the man was
+getting restive and might at any moment break out into one of those fits
+of rage which he so often used as a means to bring to an end a
+conversation in which he felt that he might not come out as victor.
+
+A few days later a rabid Rhodesian who happened to be staying at Groote
+Schuur approached me. "You have been trying to convert Mr. Rhodes to Sir
+Alfred," he remarked.
+
+"I have done nothing of the kind," I said. "I am not a preacher, but I
+have been telling Mr. Rhodes that he was mistaken if he thought that he
+had an enemy in the High Commissioner."
+
+"Had you any reason to suppose that he considered him one?" was the
+unexpected question.
+
+"Well, from what I have seen it seemed to me that you have all been doing
+your best to persuade him that such was the case," I retorted, "and why
+you should have done so passes my comprehension."
+
+The conversation dropped, but the incident confirmed me in my opinion that
+strong forces were at work to sow enmity between Rhodes and Sir Alfred
+Milner for fear the influence of the High Commissioner might bring Rhodes
+to look at things differently. As things stood at the moment, Rhodes was
+persuaded that the High Commissioner hated him, was jealous of him, wanted
+him out of his path, and never meant to allow him under any circumstances
+whatever to have any say in the settlement of South African affairs. This
+conviction, which was carefully nourished from the outside, evoked in his
+mind an absurd and silly rage to which no man of common sense, unblinded
+by vanity, could have fallen victim. I would not be so foolish as to deny
+to the famous Life Governor of De Beers either abundant common sense or
+outstanding intelligence, but here was a man gifted with genius who, under
+the impulse of passion, could act and speak like a child.
+
+Rhodes looked upon the High Commissioner as a nuisance unfortunately not
+to be set aside. What exasperated him, especially in regard to the High
+Commissioner, was the fact that he knew quite well that Sir Alfred Milner
+could assume the responsibility for concluding peace when that time
+arrived. Rhodes always hoped that his personal influence on the English,
+as well as among the Bond party, would enable him to persuade the leaders
+of the rebel movement in Cape Colony to lay down their arms and to leave
+their interests in his hands. Should such a thing have happened, Rhodes
+thought that such a success as this would efface the bad impression left
+by the Raid. He grudgingly admitted that that wild adventure had not
+pleased people, but he always refused to acknowledge that it was the one
+great and unredeemable mistake of his life. I remember once having quoted
+to him the old French motto which in the Middle Ages was the creed of
+every true knight:
+
+                   "Mon âme à Dieu,
+                    Mon bras au roi,
+                    Mon coeur aux dames,
+                    L'honneur à moi!"
+
+"Ah, yes! In those times one could still think about such things," he
+simply remarked, which proved to me that he had no comprehension of the
+real sense of the beautiful words. The higher attributes of mind did not
+trouble him either in the hours of his greatest triumphs or in the moments
+when Fortune ceased to smile upon him. He thought he had something far
+better: ambition, love of domination, the desire to eclipse everybody and
+everything around him. I do not mention money, because Rhodes did not care
+for money intrinsically.
+
+Yet the man was great in spite of all his defects. Particularly in the
+rein he gave to his thoughts during nights spent in the solitude of the
+karroo, when the stars were almost the only things which he could look
+upon, their immensity the only companion worthy of himself. One could
+almost believe Cecil Rhodes was possessed of a dual personality. At one
+moment he lived in the skies in regard to his own future prospects and the
+great deeds he wished to perform, about which he never ceased to think.
+The next he was on this earth, dabbling in the meannesses of humanity,
+taking a vicious pleasure in noticing the evil about him and too
+frequently succeeding, somehow, in wounding the feelings of those who
+liked him best, and then wondering how it happened that he had so few
+friends.
+
+On account of these characteristics, notwithstanding all his wonderful
+faculties, Cecil Rhodes will never remain an historical figure like the
+Count of Egmont during the Revolt of the Netherlands, or Mirabeau at the
+time of the French Revolution. Undoubtedly he achieved great things, but
+nothing truly beautiful. I do not think that even the warmest of his
+admirers can ever say that the organising and amalgamation of De Beers or
+the conquest of Matabeleland had anything beautiful about them. Still,
+they were triumphs which no one except himself could have achieved. He
+undoubtedly erected an edifice the like of which had never been seen in
+modern times, and he opened to the ambitions and to the greed of the world
+new prospects, new sources of riches, which caused very many to look upon
+him as truly the god of material success.
+
+Rhodes can be said to have revolutionised Society by bringing to the
+social horizon people who, but for the riches he placed within reach of
+their grasping fingers, would never have been able to emerge from their
+uncultured obscurity.
+
+People have said to me, "How generous was Rhodes!" Yes, but always with a
+shade of disdain in the giving which hurt the recipients of his charity.
+One of the legends in the Cape is that half those whom Rhodes helped had
+been his victims at one time or the other.
+
+It was no wonder that Cecil Rhodes was an embittered man when one reflects
+how many curses must have been showered upon his head. The conquest of
+Matabeleland had not gone by without evoking terrible enmities; and the
+amalgamation of De Beers, in consequence of which so many people who had
+spent thousands of pounds in acquiring plots of ground where they had
+hoped to find diamonds, and who had later to part from them for a mere
+song, were among the things never forgiven him by those whom the
+speculations had ruined. Later on came the famous Bill which he caused to
+be adopted in both Houses of Legislature concerning the illicit buying of
+diamonds, the I.D.B. Act.
+
+The I.D.B. enactment destroyed one of the fundamental principles in
+British legislature which always supposes a man to be innocent until he
+has been proved guilty. It practically put the whole of Cape Colony under
+the thumb of De Beers. The statute was not wisely framed. It could be
+invoked to remove persons whose presence in Kimberley was inconvenient.
+Therefore the I.D.B. Act drew on the head of Rhodes and of his colleagues
+torrents of abuse. It is, unfortunately, certain that cases happened where
+diamonds were hidden surreptitiously among the effects of certain persons
+who had had the imprudence to say too loudly that they meant to expose the
+state of things existing in Kimberley; and in consequence innocent men
+were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
+
+I heard one story in particular which, if true, throws a terrible light on
+the state of affairs in the Diamond City. A young man of good connections,
+who had arrived from England to seek his fortune in South Africa, was
+engaged in Kimberley at a small salary by one of the big diamond mining
+concerns. After about three or four months' sojourn he felt so disgusted
+that he declared quite loudly that as soon as he could put by sufficient
+money to pay his passage back to Europe he would do so, there to make it
+the business of his life to enlighten his compatriots as to what was going
+on in South Africa. He threatened, too, to warn his countrymen against
+those who used to deluge England with prospectuses praising, in exalted
+terms, the wonderful state of things existing in South Africa and dilating
+upon the future prospects of Cape Colony. Old residents warned him he
+would do better to restrain his wrath until he was out of reach of
+interested parties; he did not listen to them, with the result that one
+morning detectives appeared in the house where he lodged, searched his
+room, and--found some diamonds hidden in a flower pot of geraniums which
+was standing in his window and which the daughter of his landlady had
+given him that very morning. No protestations of the unhappy young fellow
+availed him. He was taken to Cape Town and condemned to seven years'
+imprisonment, the end of which he did not live to see, as he died a few
+months after he had been sentenced.
+
+The story was freely current in South Africa; and, true or not, it is
+unquestionable that a large number of persons suffered in consequence of
+the I.D.B. Act, no more serious proofs being offered that they had taken
+or concealed diamonds than the fact that the stones had been found in
+unlikely places in their rooms. Books without number have been written
+about the I.D.B. Act, a great number evidently evincing hatred or revenge
+against Mr. Rhodes and his lieutenants.
+
+The famous De Beers Company acquired a position of overwhelming strength
+in the social, economical and political life of South Africa, where
+practically it secured control of everything connected with finance and
+industry. De Beers built cold storage rooms, a dynamite factory, ice
+houses, interested itself in agriculture, fruit-growing, farming and
+cattle-breeding all over the Colony. It managed to acquire shares in all
+the new mining enterprises whether in the Transvaal or in Rhodesia.
+Politically it controlled the elections, and there were certain districts
+in the Cape Colony where no candidate unsupported by De Beers could hope
+to be elected to a seat in Parliament. The company had its own police,
+while its secret service was one of the most remarkable in the world,
+having among its archives a record of the private opinions of all the
+people enjoying any kind of eminence in the country. In presence of De
+Beers the Governor himself was overshadowed; indeed, I do not think that
+if the Home Government had tried to oppose the organisation it would have
+had much chance of coming out on top.
+
+Sir Alfred Milner was the first man who saw that it would be impossible
+for England to have the last word in South Africa unless those who, both
+in Cape Colony and in the Transvaal, were the real masters of the
+situation were broken, and financial concerns persuaded to occupy
+themselves solely with financial matters. Though Sir Alfred was wise
+enough, and prudent enough, not to allow his feelings on the subject to
+become public property, Rhodes was shrewd enough to guess that he would
+encounter a resolute adversary in the person of the High Commissioner.
+Perhaps had he kept his suspicions to himself instead of communicating
+them to others he might have been persuaded in time to recognise that
+there was a great deal in the opinions which Sir Alfred held as to the
+participation of financial organisations in political matters. If only
+each could have had a chance for a frank understanding, probably Milner
+would not have objected to Rhodes continuing to control the vast machine
+into which the diamond mines amalgamation had grown, so long as it
+confined its operations to commerce.
+
+If Government is exercised by a single person it is possible for it to
+possess the elements of justice and equity, and to be carried out with few
+mistakes of such gravity as would compromise the whole system. But,
+unfortunately, the South African autocracy meant an army of small
+autocrats, and it was they who compromised Rhodes and then sheltered
+themselves behind his gigantic personality from the unpopularity and
+detestation which their actions aroused in the whole of South Africa.
+
+I feel personally convinced that if, during the period which immediately
+followed upon the relief of Kimberley and of Lady smith, Rhodes had
+approached Sir Alfred and frankly told him that he wanted to try his luck
+with the Dutch party, and to see whether his former friends and colleagues
+of the Afrikander Bond could not be induced to listen to reason, the High
+Commissioner would have been only too glad to meet him and to explain his
+views on the whole question. Instead of doing so, Rhodes, carried away as
+he always was by this everlasting desire to be the first everywhere, did
+not even give a thought to the wisdom of confiding to anyone the efforts
+which he undoubtedly made to induce the Bond leaders to trust him again.
+
+There was a moment when things got very near to an understanding between
+Rhodes and Sir Alfred. This was when Mr. Sauer himself entertained the
+thought of letting Rhodes sway the future by making with the English
+Government conditions of a peace which would not wound to the quick the
+feelings of the Dutch part of the population of the Colony.
+
+A circumstance, apparently insignificant, destroyed all the hopes that had
+been entertained by several who wished the Colossus well. Certain papers
+were brought to Rhodes; these contained information likely to prove of use
+to him as well as to the English Government. After he had read them he
+asked that they should be left with him until the following day. The
+person in charge of the documents had been asked not to part with them
+even for a single hour, as it was important that no one should be able to
+copy documents which might seriously compromise certain people. Therefore,
+she refused. Rhodes thereupon flew into a terrible passion and demanded to
+know the reason for the apparent distrust. When told that it was not so
+much a question of distrust as the impossibility of breaking a promise
+once given, he exclaimed that he would have nothing more to do with the
+whole business, and started almost immediately afterwards his agitation
+for the suspension of the Constitution in Cape Colony. But--and this is an
+amusing detail to note--Rhodes used every possible effort to obtain
+possession of the papers he had been allowed to see, going so far as to
+have the house searched of the person who had refused to allow him to keep
+the documents--a revenge which was as mean as it was useless, because the
+papers in question had been at once returned to their rightful owners.
+
+The request made by Rhodes to keep these documents produced a very bad
+impression on those who had begun to entertain hopes that he might be
+induced to throw the weight of his personality into the scale of a
+settlement. It confirmed the suspicions held by the Afrikander party ever
+since the Raid.
+
+They say that everyone is afforded once the chance of one's lifetime. In
+the case of Rhodes, he certainly missed by that action the one opportunity
+of reinstating himself once again upon the pinnacle whence the adventure
+of Doctor Jameson had caused him to fall.
+
+I remember that whilst these events were going on a political man, well
+acquainted with all details of the endeavour to secure a reconciliation
+between the Afrikander Bond and Rhodes, came to see me one evening. We
+talked over the whole situation. He told me that there were people who
+thought it would be a good thing to inform Sir Alfred Milner of what was
+going on, in the hope that he might give Rhodes an inkling that he knew
+that intrigue was rife at Groote Schuur, and at the same time express to
+Rhodes with what satisfaction he personally would view the good offices of
+the Colossus to influence both the South African League and the Afrikander
+Bond. But we agreed that it was quite impossible. Such a course would not
+inspire the High Commissioner with an exalted idea as to our morality in
+matters of trust, and, besides, it would not be playing the game in regard
+to Rhodes and his group. So the matter dropped; but Rhodes suspected, and
+never forgave us or any of those whose thoughts ran on the same lines.
+
+Whether Sir Alfred Milner ever learned who had been trying to persuade the
+master of Groote Schuur to seek his co-operation in what would have been
+the noblest deed of Rhodes' life, I have not been able to ascertain to the
+present day. To tell the truth, I never tried to do so, the matter having
+lost all interest except as a matter of history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE OPENING OF THE NEW CENTURY
+
+
+Such were the preoccupations, the intrigues and the emotions which, all
+through that monotonous winter of 1900-1901, agitated the inhabitants of
+and the visitors to Groote Schuur. Rhodes himself seemed to be the one man
+who thought the least about them. It is certain that he felt hurt in his
+pride and in his consciousness that the good which he had wanted to do
+failed to be appreciated by those whom he had intended to benefit. But
+outwardly he made no sign that the matter interested him otherwise than
+from a purely objective point of view, that of the statesman who thinks
+that it is part of his duty to put his services at the disposal of his
+country whenever required to do so. He felt also slightly surprised to
+find, once he had expressed his willingness to use the experience of South
+African affairs which he had acquired and which no one in the Cape
+possessed with such thoroughness, that the people who had appealed to him,
+and whom he had consented to meet half-way, would not give him the whole
+of their confidence; indeed, they showed some apprehension that he would
+use his knowledge to their detriment.
+
+When one reviews all the circumstances that cast such a tragic shade over
+the history of these eventful months, one cannot help coming to the
+conclusion that there was a good deal of misunderstanding on both sides
+and a deplorable lack of confidence everywhere. Rhodes had entirely lost
+ground among his former friends, and would not understand that it was more
+difficult, even on the part of those who believed in his good intentions,
+to efface the impression that he had been playing a double game ever since
+the Raid had deprived him of the confidence and support which previously
+were his all over Cape Colony.
+
+The whole situation, as the new century opened, was a game of cross
+purposes. Sir Alfred Milner might have unravelled the skein, but he was
+the one man whom no one interested in the business wished to ask for help.
+And what added to the tragedy was the curious but undisputable fact that
+even those who reviled Rhodes hoped he would return to power and assume
+the Premiership in place of Sir Gordon Sprigg.
+
+In spite of the respect which Sir Gordon Sprigg inspired, and of the
+esteem in which he was held by all parties, it was generally felt that if
+Rhodes were once more at the helm he might return to a more reasonable
+view of the whole situation. In such an office, too, it was believed that
+Rhodes would give the Colony the benefit of his remarkable gifts of
+statecraft, as well as wield the authority which he liked so much to
+exercise, for the greater good of the country in general and of the
+British Government in particular. I believe that if at that moment Cecil
+Rhodes had become the head of the Cabinet not one voice, even among the
+most fanatic of the Afrikander Bond, would have objected. Those most
+averse to such a possibility were Rhodes' own supporters, a small group of
+men whose names I shall refrain from mentioning.
+
+All true friends of Rhodes, however, must surely have felt a keen regret
+that he wasted his talents and his energy on those entangled and, after
+all, despicable Cape politics. The man was created for something better
+and healthier than that. He was an Empire Maker by nature, one who might
+have won for himself everlasting renown had he remained "King of
+Rhodesia," as he liked to call himself. There, in the vast solitudes which
+by his enterprise and foresight had become a part of the British Empire,
+he ought to have gone on uninterruptedly in the glorious task of bringing
+civilisation to that hitherto unknown land. For such work his big nature
+and strange character were well fitted, and his wide-ranging mind
+appreciated the extent of the task. As he used to say himself sometimes,
+he was never so happy and never felt so free and so much at peace with the
+world and with mankind as among the Matoppo Hills.
+
+The statesmanlike qualities which Cecil Rhodes undoubtedly possessed were
+weakened by contact with inferior people. It is impossible to create real
+politicians and sound ones at the same rapid pace as financial magnates
+sprang up at the Cape as well as in the Transvaal. The class who entered
+politics had as little real solidity about them as the houses and
+dwellings which were built at a moment's notice from corrugated iron and a
+few logs. They thought that they understood how to govern a nation because
+they had thoroughly mastered the mysteries of bookkeeping in problematical
+financial undertakings.
+
+I remember one afternoon when, talking with Rhodes in the grounds of
+Groote Schuur, he took me to the summer-house which he had built for
+himself, whence one had a beautiful view over the country toward Table
+Mountain. He leaned on the parapet of the little observatory which
+surmounted the summer-house and lost himself in a day dream which, though
+long, I felt I had better not interrupt. I can see his face and expression
+still as, with his arms crossed over his chest, he gazed into space,
+thinking, thinking, and forgetting all else but the vision which he was
+creating in that extraordinary brain of his. I am sure that he remained so
+for over twenty minutes. Then he slowly turned round to me and said, with
+an accent indescribable in its intensity and poignancy:
+
+"I have been looking at the North, at my own country--"
+
+"Why do you not always remain there?" I exclaimed almost involuntarily, so
+painfully did the words strike me.
+
+"Because they will not let me," he replied.
+
+"They? Who?" I asked again. "Surely you can do what you like?"
+
+"You think so," he said, "but you do not know; there are so many things;
+so many things. And they want me here too, and there is this place ..."
+
+He stopped, then relapsed once more into his deep meditation, leaving me
+wondering what was holding back this man who was reputed to do only what
+he chose. Surely there would have been a far better, far nobler work for
+him to do there in that distant North which, after all, in spite of the
+beauties of Groote Schuur, was the only place for which he really cared.
+There he could lead that absolutely free and untrammelled life which he
+loved; there his marvellous gifts could expand with the freedom necessary
+for them to shine in their best light for the good of others as well as
+for his own advantage. In Rhodesia he was at least free, to a certain
+extent, from the parasites.
+
+How could one help pitying him and regretting that his indomitable will
+did not extend to the courage of breaking from his past associations; that
+he did not carry his determination far enough to make up his mind to
+consecrate what was left of his life to the one task for which he was best
+fitted, that of making Rhodesia one of the most glorious possessions of
+the British crown. Rhodes had done so much, achieved so much, had
+conceived such great things--as, for instance, the daring inception of the
+Cape to Cairo Railway--that it surely could have been possible for him to
+rise above the shackling weaknesses of his environment.
+
+So many years have passed since the death of Rhodes that, now, one can
+judge him objectively. To me, knowing him so well as I did, it seem that
+as his figure recedes into the background of history, it acquires more
+greatness. He was a mystery to so many because few had been able to guess
+what it was that he really meant, or believed in, or hoped for. Not a
+religious man by any means, he yet possessed that religion of nature which
+pervades the soul of anyone who has ever lived for long face to face with
+grandeurs and solitudes where human passions have no entrance. It is the
+adoration of the Greatness Who created the beauty which no touch can
+defile, no tongue slander, and nobody destroy. Under the stars, to which
+he confided so much of the thoughts which he had kept for himself in his
+youth and early manhood, Rhodes became a different man. There in the
+silence of the night or the dawn of early morning, when he started for
+those long rides of which he was so fond, he became affectionate, kind,
+thoughtful and tender. There he thought, he dreamt, he planned, and the
+result of these wanderings of his mind into regions far beyond those where
+the people around him could stray was that he revealed himself as God had
+made him and such as man hardly ever saw him.
+
+Rhodes had always been a great reader; books, indeed, had a great
+influence over his mind, his actions and opinions. He used to read slowly,
+and what he had once assimilated he never forgot. Years after he would
+remember a passage treating of some historical fact, or of some social
+interest, and apply it to his own work. For instance, the idea of the Glen
+Grey Act was suggested to him by the famous book of Mackenzie Wallace
+dealing with Russia,[B] in which he described the conditions under which
+Russian peasants then held their land. When Rhodes met the author of the
+aforementioned volume at Sandringham, where both were staying with the
+then Prince and Princess of Wales, he told him at once, with evident
+pleasure at being able to do so, that it was his book which had suggested
+that particular bit of legislation.
+
+    [B] "Russia" (Cassell).
+
+Another occasion I remember when Rhodes spoke of the great impression
+produced upon his opinions by a book called "The Martyrdom of Man,"[C] the
+work of Winwood Reade, an author not very well known to the general
+public. The essay was an unusually powerful negation of the Divinity.
+Rhodes had, unfortunately for him, chanced across it just after he had
+left the University, and during the first months following upon his
+arrival in South Africa he read it in his moments of leisure between
+looking for diamonds in the sandy plains of Kimberley. It completely upset
+all the traditions in which he had been nurtured--it must be remembered
+that he was the son of a clergyman--and caused a revolt against the
+teachings of his former masters.
+
+    [C] Published in the U.S.A., 1875.
+
+The adventurous young man who had left his native country well stocked
+with principles which he was already beginning to find embarrassing, found
+in this volume an excuse for becoming the personage with whom the world
+was to become familiar later on, when he appeared on the horizon as an
+Empire Maker. He always kept this momentous book beside him, and used to
+read it when he wanted to strengthen himself in some hard resolution or
+when he was expected to steel his mind to the performance of some task
+against which his finest instincts revolted even whilst his sense of
+necessity urged him onward.
+
+Talking with me on the occasion I have referred to above, in respect to
+this volume which had left such weeds in his mind, he expressed to me his
+great enthusiasm about the ideas it contained, and spoke with unmeasured
+approval of its strong and powerful arguments against the existence of a
+Deity, and then exclaimed, "You can imagine the impression which it
+produced on me when I read it amid all the excitement of life at Kimberley
+not long after leaving Oxford University." And he added in a solemn tone,
+"That book has made me what I am."
+
+I think, however, that Rhodes exaggerated in attaching such influence to
+Reade's essay. He was very interested in the supernatural, a feature which
+more than once I have had occasion to observe in people who pretend that
+they believe in nothing. I suspect that, had he been able to air the
+doubts which must have assailed him sometimes when alone in the solitudes
+of Rhodesia, one would have discovered that a great deal of carelessness,
+of which he used to boast in regard to morality and to religion, was
+nothing but affectation. He treated God in the same offhand way he handled
+men, when, in order to terrify them, he exposed before their horrified
+eyes abominable theories, to which his whole life gave the lie. But in his
+inmost heart he knew very well that God existed. He would have felt quite
+content to render homage to the Almighty if only this could have been done
+incognito. In fact, he was quite ready to believe in God, but would have
+felt extremely sorry had anyone suspected that such could be the case. The
+ethical side of Cecil Rhodes' character remained all through his life in
+an unfinished state. It might perhaps have been the most beautiful side of
+his many-sided life had he not allowed too much of what was material, base
+and common to rule him. Unwillingly, perhaps, but nevertheless certainly,
+he gave the impression that his life was entirely dedicated to ignoble
+purposes. Perhaps the punishment of his existence lay precisely in the
+rapidity with which the words "Rhodesian finance" and "Rhodesian politics"
+came to signify corruption and bribery. Even though he may not have been
+actually guilty of either, he most certainly profited by both. He
+instituted in South Africa an utter want of respect for one's neighbour's
+property, which in time was a prime cause of the Transvaal War. Hated as
+he was by some, distrusted as he remained by almost everybody, yet there
+was nothing mean about Cecil Rhodes. Though one felt inclined to detest
+him at times, yet one could not help liking and even loving him when he
+allowed one to see the real man behind the veil of cynicism and irony
+which he constantly assumed.
+
+With Rhodes' death the whole system of Rhodesian politics perished. It
+then became relatively easy for Sir Alfred Milner to introduce the
+necessary reforms into the government of South Africa. The financial
+magnates who had ruled at Johannesburg and Kimberley ceased to interest
+themselves politically in the management of the affairs of the Government.
+They disappeared one after the other, bidding good-bye to a country which
+they had always hated, most of them sinking into an obscurity where they
+enjoy good dinners and forget the nightmare of the past.
+
+The Dutch and the English elements have become reconciled, and loyalty to
+England, which seemed at the time of the Boer War, and during the years
+that had preceded it, to have been confined to a small number of the
+English, has become the rule. British Imperialism is no mere phantom: the
+Union of South Africa has proved it to have a very virile body, and, what
+is more important, a lofty and clear-visioned soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+AN ESTIMATE OF SIR ALFRED MILNER
+
+
+The conditions under which Sir Alfred Milner found himself compelled to
+shape his policy of conciliation were beset with obstacles and
+difficulties. An understanding of these is indispensable to the one who
+would read aright the history of that period of Imperial evolution.
+
+The question of the refugees who overwhelmed Cape Colony with their
+lamentations, after they had been obliged to leave the Transvaal at
+the beginning of the hostilities--the claims of the Rand
+multi-millionaires--the indignation of the Dutch Colonists confined in
+concentration camps by order of the military authorities--the Jingoes
+who thought it would be only right to shoot down every Dutch
+sympathiser in the country: these were among the things agitating the
+South African public mind, and setting up conflicting claims
+impossible of adjustment without bitter censure on one hand or the
+other. The wonder is that, amid all these antagonistic elements, Sir
+Alfred Milner contrived to fulfil the larger part of the tasks which
+he had sketched out for himself before he left England.
+
+The programme which Sir Alfred planned to carry out proved, in the long
+run, to have been thoroughly sound in conception and practice, because it
+contained in embryo all the conditions under which South Africa became
+united. It is remarkable, indeed, that such a very short time after a war
+which seemed altogether to have compromised any hope of coalescing, the
+Union of South Africa should have become an accomplished fact.
+
+Yet, strange as it may appear, it is certain that up to his retirement
+from office Sir Alfred Milner was very little known in South Africa. He
+had been so well compelled by force of circumstances to lead an isolated
+life that very few had opportunity to study his character or gain insight
+into his personality. In Cape Town he was judged by his policy. People
+forgot that all the time he was at Government House, Cape Town, he was a
+man as well as a politician: a man whose efforts and work in behalf of his
+country deserved some kind of consideration even from his enemies. It is
+useless to discuss whether Sir Alfred did or did not make mistakes before
+the beginning of the war. Why waste words over events which cannot be
+helped, and about which there will always be two opinions? Personally, I
+think that his errors were essentially of the kind which could not have
+been avoided, and that none of them ever compromised ultimately the great
+work which he was to bring to a triumphant close.
+
+What I do think it is of value to point out is the calmness which he
+contrived always to preserve under circumstances which must have been
+particularly trying for him. Another outstanding characteristic was the
+quiet dignity with which he withstood unjustifiable attacks when dealing
+with not-to-be-foreseen difficulties which arose while carrying on his
+gigantic task. Very few would have had the courage to remain silent and
+undaunted whilst condemned or judged for things he had been unable to
+alter or to banish. And yet this was precisely the attitude to which Sir
+Alfred Milner faithfully adhered. It stands out among the many proofs
+which the present Viscount Milner has given of his strong character as one
+of its most characteristic features, for it affords a brilliant
+illustration of what will, mastered by reason, can do.
+
+Since those perilous days I have heard many differing criticisms of Lord
+Milner's administration as High Commissioner in South Africa. What those
+who express opinions without understanding that which lies under the
+surface of history fail to take into account is the peculiar, almost
+invidious position and the loneliness in which Sir Alfred had to stand
+from the very first day that he landed in Table Bay. He could not make
+friends, dared not ask anyone's advice, was forced always to rely entirely
+upon his own judgment. He would not have been human had he not sometimes
+felt misgivings as to the wisdom of what he was doing. He never had the
+help of a Ministry upon whom he could rely or with whom he could
+sympathise. The Cabinet presided over by Sir Gordon Sprigg was composed of
+very well-intentioned men. But, with perhaps one single exception, it did
+not possess any strongly individualistic personage capable of assisting
+Sir Alfred in framing a policy acceptable to all shades of public opinion
+in the Colony, or even to discuss with him whether such a policy could
+have been invented. As for the administration of which Mr. Schreiner was
+the head, it was distinctly hostile to the policy inaugurated by Mr.
+Joseph Chamberlain, which Sir Alfred represented. Its members, indeed, put
+every obstacle in the Governor's way, and this fact becoming known
+encouraged a certain spirit of rebellion among the Dutch section of the
+population. Neither one Ministry nor the other was able to be of any
+serious use to Milner, who, thus hampered, could neither frame a programme
+which accorded with his own judgment nor show himself in his true light.
+
+[Illustration: VISCOUNT MILNER]
+
+All these circumstances were never taken into consideration by friends or
+foes, and, in consequence, he was made responsible for blunders which he
+could not help and for mistakes which he was probably the first to
+deplore. The world forgot that Sir Alfred never really had a free hand,
+was always thwarted, either openly or in secret, by some kind of
+authority, be it civil or military, which was in conflict with his own.
+
+It was next to an impossibility to judge a man fairly under such
+conditions. All that one could say was that he deserved a good deal of
+praise for having, so successfully as he did, steered through the manifold
+difficulties and delicate susceptibilities with which he had to contend in
+unravelling a great tangle in the history of the British Empire.
+
+The Afrikander Bond hated him, that was a recognised fact, but this hatred
+did Sir Alfred more good than anything else. The attacks directed against
+him were so mean that they only won him friends among the very people to
+whom his policy had not been acceptable. The abuse showered by certain
+newspapers upon the High Commissioner not only strengthened his hands and
+his authority, but transformed what ought to have remained a personal
+question into one in which the dignity as well as the prestige of the
+Empire was involved. To have recalled him after he had been subjected to
+such treatment would have been equivalent to a confession that the State
+was in the wrong. I have never been able to understand how men of such
+undoubted perception as Mr. Sauer or Mr. Merriman, or other leaders of the
+Bond, did not grasp this fact. Sir Alfred himself put the aspect very
+cleverly before the public in an able and dignified speech which he made
+at the lunch offered to Lord Roberts by the Mayor and Corporation of Cape
+Town when he said, "To vilify her representative is a strange way to show
+one's loyalty to the Queen."
+
+A feature in Sir Alfred Milner's character, which was little known outside
+the extremely small circle of his personal friends, was that when he was
+in the wrong he never hesitated to acknowledge the fact with
+straightforward frankness. His judgments were sometimes hasty, but he was
+always willing to amend an opinion on just grounds. There was a good deal
+of dogged firmness in his character, but not a shred of stubbornness or
+obstinacy. He never yielded one inch of his ground when he believed
+himself to be in the right, but he was always amenable to reason, and he
+never refused to allow himself to be convinced, even though it may be that
+his natural sympathies were not on the side of those with whom he had got
+to deal. Very few statesmen could boast of such qualities, and they surely
+ought to weigh considerably in the balance of any judgment passed upon
+Viscount Milner.
+
+The welfare of South Africa and the reputation of Sir Alfred would have
+been substantially enhanced had he been able to assert his own authority
+according to his own judgment, without overrulings from Whitehall, and
+with absolute freedom as to choice of colleagues. His position was most
+difficult, and though he showed no outward sign of this fact, it is
+impossible to believe that he did not feel its crushing weight. Between
+the Bond, Mr. Hofmeyr, the race hatred which the Dutch accused him of
+fomenting, the question of the refugees, the clamours of the Jingo
+Colonials, and the extreme seriousness of the military situation at one
+time, it was perfectly marvellous that he did not break down. Instead, as
+very few men could have done, he kept a clear-headed shrewdness, owing to
+which the Empire most certainly contracted an immense debt of gratitude
+toward him for not having allowed himself to yield to the temptation of
+retaliating upon those who had made his task such a particularly hard one.
+His forbearance ought never to be lost sight of in judging the
+circumstances which brought about and attended the South African War.
+Whilst the war was going on it was not realised that Sir Alfred Milner was
+the only man who--when the time arrived--could allay the passions arising
+from the conflict. But, without vanity, he knew, and could well afford to
+wait for his reward until history rather than men had judged him.
+
+In the meanwhile Sir Alfred had to struggle against a sea of obstacles in
+which he was probably the only man clever enough not to drown himself--a
+danger which overtook others who had tried to plunge into the complicated
+politics of South Africa. A succession of administrators at Government
+House in Cape Town ended their political career there, and left, broken in
+spirit, damaged in reputation.
+
+As for the local politicians, they were mostly honest mediocrities or
+adventurous spirits, who used their influence for their personal
+advantage. An exception was Mr. Hofmeyr. But he was far too absorbed in
+securing the recognition of Dutch supremacy at the Cape to be able to work
+on the milder plane necessary to bring about the one great result. The
+popularity of Mr. Hofmeyr was immense and his influence indisputable; but
+it was not a broad influence. He shuddered at the mere possibility of the
+Transvaal falling into the hands of the British.
+
+Whilst touching upon the subject of the Transvaal, I may say a word
+concerning the strangely mixed population, for the sake of whom,
+officially, Britain went to war. The war was entirely the work of the
+Uitlanders, as they called themselves with a certain pride, but very few
+of whom possessed a drop of English blood. The British public at home was
+told that it was necessary to fight President Kruger because Englishmen in
+the Transvaal were being ill-treated and denied their legitimate rights.
+In reality, this was one of those conventional reasons, lacking common
+sense and veracity, upon which nations are so often fed. If we enter
+closely into the details of existence in the Transvaal, and examine who
+were those who shouted so loudly for the franchise, we find that the
+majority were either foreigners or Jews hailing from Frankfurt or Hamburg.
+Many of them had, to be sure, become naturalised British subjects, but I
+doubt very much whether, among all the magnates of Johannesburg or of
+Kimberley, more than one or two pure-blooded Englishmen could be found.
+Rhodes, of course, was an exception, but one which confirmed the rule.
+Those others whose names can still be conjured with in South Africa were
+Jews, mostly of Teutonic descent, who pretended that they were Englishmen
+or Colonials; nothing certain was known about their origin beyond the fact
+that such or such small shops in Grahamstown, Durban or Cape Town had
+witnessed their childish romps. The Beits, the Neumanns and the Wernhers
+were German Jews; Barney Barnato was supposed to have been born under the
+shade of a Portuguese synagogue, and considered the fact as being just as
+glorious a one as would have been that of having in his veins "all the
+blood of all the Howards." The Joels were Hebrews; the Rudds supposed to
+belong to the same race through some remote ancestor; the Mosenthals,
+Abrahams, Phillipps, and other notabilities of the Rand and Kimberley,
+were Jews, and one among the so-called Reformers, associated with the
+Jameson Raid, was an American engineer, John Hays Hammond.
+
+The war, which was supposed to win the franchise for Englishmen in the
+Transvaal, was in reality fought for the advantage of foreigners. Most
+people honestly believed that President Kruger was aiming at destroying
+English prestige throughout the vast dark continent, and would have been
+horrified had they known what was going on in that distant land. Fortunes
+were made on the Rand in a few days, but very few Englishmen were among
+the number of those who contrived to acquire millions. Englishmen, indeed,
+were not congenial to the Transvaal, whilst foreigners, claiming to be
+Englishmen because they murdered the English language, abounded and
+prospered, and in time came sincerely to believe that they were British
+subjects, owing to the fact that they continually kept repeating that
+Britain ought to possess the Rand.
+
+When Britain came really to rule the Rand the adventurers found it did not
+in the least secure the advantages which they had imagined would derive
+from a war they fostered. This question of the Uitlanders was as
+embarrassing for the English Government as it had been for that of the
+Transvaal. These adventurers, who composed the mass of the motley
+population which flourished on the Rand, would prove a source of annoyance
+to any State in the world. On the other hand, the importance acquired by
+the so-called financial magnates was daily becoming a public danger,
+inasmuch as it tended to substitute the reign of a particular class of
+individuals for the ruling of those responsible for the welfare of the
+country. These persons individually believed that they each understood
+better than the Government the conditions prevailing in South Africa, and
+perpetually accused Downing Street of not realising and never protecting
+British interests there.
+
+Amidst their recriminations and the publicity they could command from the
+Press, it is no wonder that Sir Alfred Milner felt bewildered. It is to
+his everlasting honour that he did not allow himself to be overpowered. He
+was polite to everybody; listened carefully to all the many wonderful
+tales that were being related to him, and, without compromising himself,
+proceeded to a work of quiet mental elimination that very soon made him
+thoroughly grasp the intricacies of any situation. He quickly came to the
+conclusion that President Kruger was not the principal obstacle to a
+peaceful development of British Imperialism in South Africa. If ever a
+conflict was foisted on two countries for mercenary motives it was the
+Transvaal War, and a shrewd and impartial mind like Milner's did not take
+long to discover that such was the case.
+
+He was not, however, a man capable of lending himself meekly to schemes of
+greed, however wilily they were cloaked. His was not the kind of nature
+that for the sake of peace submits to things of which it does not approve.
+This man, who was represented as an oppressor of the Dutch, was in reality
+their best friend, and perhaps the one who believed the most in their
+eventual loyalty to the English Crown. It is a thousand pities that when
+the famous Bloemfontein Conference took place Sir Alfred Milner, as he
+still was at that time, had not yet acquired the experience which later
+became his concerning the true state of things in the Transvaal. Had he at
+that time possessed the knowledge which he was later to gain, when the
+beginning of hostilities obliged so many of the ruling spirits of
+Johannesburg to migrate to the Cape, it is likely that he would have acted
+differently. It was not easy for the High Commissioner to shake off the
+influence of all that he heard, whether told with a good or bad intention,
+and it was still harder for him in those first days of his office to
+discern who was right or who was wrong among those who crowded their
+advice upon him--and never forgave him when he did not follow their
+ill-balanced counsels.
+
+Concerning the outstanding personality of Cecil Rhodes, the position of
+Sir Alfred Milner was even more difficult and entangled than in regard to
+anyone else. It is useless to deny that he had arrived at Cape Town with
+considerable prejudice against Rhodes. He could not but look
+interrogatively upon the political career of a man who at the very time he
+occupied the position of Prime Minister had lent himself to a conspiracy
+against the independence of another land. Moreover, Rhodes was supposed,
+perhaps not without reason, to be continually intriguing to return to
+power, and to be chafing in secret at the political inaction which had
+been imposed upon him, and for which he was himself responsible more than
+anyone else. The fact that after the Raid Rhodes had been abandoned by his
+former friends harmed him considerably as a political man by destroying
+his renown as a statesman to whom the destinies of an Empire might be
+entrusted with safety. One can truly say, when writing the story of those
+years, that it resolved _itself_, into the vain struggle of Rhodes to
+recover his lost prestige. Sir Alfred was continually being made
+responsible for things of which he had not only been innocent, but of
+which, also, he had disapproved most emphatically. To mention only
+one--the famous concentration camps. A great deal of fuss was made about
+them at the time, and it was generally believed that they had been
+instituted at the instigation of the High Commissioner. When consulted on
+the subject Sir Alfred Milner had, on the contrary, not at all shared the
+opinion of those who had believed that they were a necessity, although
+ultimately, for lack of earlier steps, they became so.
+
+The Colony at that time found its effective government vested in the hands
+of the military authorities, who not infrequently acted upon opinions
+which were not based upon experience or upon any local conditions. They
+believed, too, implicitly what they were told, and when they heard people
+protest, with tears in their eyes, their devotion to the British Crown,
+and lament over the leniency with which the Governor of Cape Colony looked
+upon rebellion, they could not possibly think that they were listening to
+a tissue of lies, told for a purpose, nor guess that they were being made
+use of. Under such conditions the only wonder is the few mistakes which
+were made. To come back to the Boers' concentration camps, Sir Alfred
+Milner was not a sanguinary man by any means, and his character was far
+too firm to use violence as a means of government. It is probable that,
+left alone, he would have found some other means to secure strict
+obedience from the refugees to orders which most never thought of
+resisting. Unfortunately for everybody concerned, he could do nothing
+beyond expressing his opinion, and the circumstance that, out of a feeling
+of duty, he made no protestations against things of which he could not
+approve was exploited against him, both by the Jingo English party and by
+the Dutch, all over South Africa. At Groote Schuur especially, no secret
+was made by the friends of Rhodes of their disgust at the state of things
+prevailing in concentration camps, and it was adroitly brought to the
+knowledge of all the partisans of the Boers that, had Rhodes been master
+of the situation, such an outrage on individual liberty would never have
+taken place. Sir Alfred Milner was subjected to unfair, ill-natured
+criticisms which were as cunning as they were bitter. The concentration
+camps afford only one instance of the secret antagonisms and injustices
+which Sir Alfred Milner had to bear and combat. No wonder thoughts of his
+days in South Africa are still, to him, a bitter memory!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CROSS CURRENTS
+
+
+The intrigues which made Groote Schuur such a disagreeable place were
+always a source of intense wonder to me. I could never understand their
+necessity. Neither could I appreciate the kind of hypocrisy which induced
+Rhodes continually to affirm that he did not care to return to power,
+whilst in reality he longed to hold the reins again. It would have been
+fatally easy for Rhodes, even after the hideous mistake of the Raid, to
+regain his political popularity; a little sincerity and a little truth
+were all that was needed. Unfortunately, both these qualities were wanting
+in what was otherwise a really gifted nature. Rhodes, it seemed by his
+ways, could not be sincere, and though he seldom lied in the material
+sense of the word, yet he allowed others to think and act for him, even
+when he knew them to be doing so in absolute contradiction to what he
+ought to have done himself. He appeared to have insufficient energy to
+enforce his will on those whom he despised, yet allowed to dictate to him
+even in matters which he ought to have kept absolutely under his own
+control.
+
+I shall always maintain that Rhodes, without his so-called friends, would
+most certainly have been one of the greatest figures of his time and
+generation. He had a big soul, vast conceptions, and when he was not
+influenced by outward material details--upon which, unfortunately for
+himself as well as for his reputation in history, he allowed his mind to
+dwell too often--his thoughts were always directed toward some higher
+subject which absorbed his attention, inspired him, and moved him
+sometimes to actions that drew very near to the heroic. He might have gone
+to his grave not only with an unsullied, but also with a great reputation
+based on grounds that were noble and splendid had he shaken off the
+companions of former times. Unhappily, an atmosphere of flattery and
+adulation had become absolutely necessary to him, and he became so used to
+it that he did not perceive that his sycophants never left him alone for a
+moment. They watched over him like a policeman who took good care no
+foreign influence should venture to approach.
+
+The end of all this was that Rhodes resented the truth when it was told
+him, and detested any who showed independence of judgment or appreciation
+in matters concerning his affairs and projects. A man supposed to have an
+iron will, yet he was weak almost to childishness in regard to these
+flattering satellites. It amused him to have always at his beck and call
+people willing and ready to submit to his insults, to bear with his fits
+of bad temper, and to accept every humiliation which he chose to offer.
+
+Cecil Rhodes never saw, or affected never to see, the disastrous influence
+all this had on his life.
+
+I remember asking him how it came that he seldom showed the desire to go
+away somewhere quite alone, if even for a day or two, so as to remain
+really tête-à-tête with his own reflections. His reply was most
+characteristic: "What should I do with myself? One must have people about
+to play cards in the evening." I might have added "and to flatter one,"
+but refrained. This craving continually to have someone at hand to bully,
+scold, or to make use of, was certainly one of the failings of Rhodes'
+powerful mind. It also indicated in a way that thirst for power which
+never left him until the last moment of his life. He had within him the
+weakness of those dethroned kings who, in exile, still like to have a
+Court about them and to travel in state. Rhodes had a court, and also
+travelled with a suite who, under the pretence of being useful to him,
+effectually barred access to any stranger. But for his entourage it is
+likely that Rhodes might have outlived the odium of the Raid. But, as Mrs.
+van Koopman said to me, "What is the use of trying to help Rhodes when one
+is sure that he will never be allowed to perform all that he might
+promise?"
+
+The winter which followed upon the relief of Kimberley Rhodes spent almost
+entirely at Groote Schuur, going to Rhodesia only in spring. During these
+months negotiations between him and certain leaders of the Bond party went
+on almost uninterruptedly. These were either conducted openly by people
+like Mr. David de Waal, or else through other channels when not entrusted
+to persons whom it would be relatively easy later on to disavow. Once or
+twice these negotiations seemed to take a favourable turn at several
+points, but always at the last minute Rhodes withdrew under some pretext
+or other. What he would have liked would have been to have, as it were,
+the Dutch party, the Bond, the English Colonists, the South African
+League, President Kruger, and the High Commissioner, all rolled into one,
+fall at his feet and implore him to save South Africa. When he perceived
+that all these believed that there existed a possibility for matters to be
+settled without his intervention, he hated every man of them with a hatred
+such as only very absolute natures can feel. To hear him express his
+disgust with the military authorities, abuse in turns Lord Roberts, whom
+he used to call an old man in his dotage, Lord Kitchener, who was a
+particular antipathy, the High Commissioner, the Government at home, and
+the Bond, was an education in itself. He never hesitated before making use
+of an expression of a coarseness such as does not bear repeating, and in
+his private conversations he hurled insults at the heads of all. It is
+therefore no wonder that the freedom of speech which Rhodes exercised at
+Groote Schuur added to the difficulties of a situation the brunt of which
+not he, but Sir Alfred Milner, had to bear.
+
+More than once the High Commissioner caused a hint to be conveyed to Cecil
+Rhodes that he had better betake himself to Rhodesia, and remain there
+until there was a clearer sky in Cape Colony. These hints were always
+given in the most delicate manner, but Rhodes chose to consider them in
+the light of a personal affront, and poured down torrents of invective
+upon the British Government for what he termed their ingratitude. The
+truth of the matter was that he could not bring himself to understand that
+he was not the person alone capable of bringing about a permanent
+settlement of South Africa. The energy of his young days had left him, and
+perhaps the chronic disease from which he was suffering added to his
+constant state of irritation and obscured the clearness of his judgment in
+these post-raid days.
+
+I hope that my readers will not imagine from my reference that I have a
+grudge of any kind against Doctor Jameson.[D] On the contrary, truth
+compels me to say that I have seldom met a more delightful creature than
+this old friend and companion of Cecil Rhodes, and I do believe he held a
+sincere affection for his chief. But Jameson, as well as Rhodes, was under
+the influence of certain facts and of certain circumstances, and I do not
+think that he was, at that particular moment about which I am writing, the
+best adviser that Rhodes might have had. In one thing Doctor Jim was above
+suspicion: he had never dirtied his hands with any of the financial
+speculations which those about Rhodes indulged in, to the latter's
+detriment much more than his own, considering the fact that it was he who
+was considered as the father of their various "smart" schemes. Jameson
+always kept aloof from every kind of shady transaction in so far as money
+matters were concerned, and perhaps this was the reason why so many people
+detested him and kept advising Rhodes to brush him aside, or, at all
+events, not to keep him near him whilst the war was going on. His name was
+to the Dutch as a red rag to a very fierce and more than furious bull,
+while the Bond, as well as the burghers of the Transvaal, would rather
+have had dealings with the Evil One himself than with Doctor Jim. Their
+prejudices against him were not to be shaken. In reality others about
+Rhodes were far more dangerous than Jameson could ever have proved on the
+question of a South African settlement in which the rights of the Dutch
+elements in the Cape and Orange Free State would be respected and
+considered.
+
+    [D] Dr. Jameson died November 26th, 1917.
+
+[Illustration: THE RT. HON. SIR LEANDER STARR JAMESON]
+
+Whatever might have been his faults, Doctor Jameson was neither a rogue
+nor a fool. For Rhodes he had a sincere affection that made him keenly
+alive to the dangers that might threaten the latter, and anxious to avert
+them. But during those eventful months of the war the influence of the
+Doctor also had been weakened by the peculiar circumstances which had
+arisen in consequence of the length of the Boer resistance. Before the war
+broke out it had been generally supposed that three months would see the
+end of the Transvaal Republic, and Rhodes himself, more often than I care
+to remember, had prophesied that a few weeks would be the utmost that the
+struggle could last. That this did not turn out to be the case had been a
+surprise to the world at large and an intense disappointment to Cecil
+Rhodes. He had all along nourished a bitter animosity against Kruger, and
+in regard to him, as well as Messrs. Schreiner, Merriman, Hofmeyr, Sauer
+and other one-time colleagues, he carried his vindictiveness to an extent
+so terrible that more than once it led him into some of the most
+regrettable actions in his life.
+
+Cecil Rhodes possessed a curious shyness which gave to his character an
+appearance the more misleading in that it hid in reality a will of iron
+and a ruthlessness comparable to a _Condottiere_ of the Middle Ages. The
+fact was that his soul was thirsting for power, and he was inordinately
+jealous of successes which anyone but himself had or could achieve in
+South Africa. I am persuaded that one of the reasons why he always tried
+by inference to disparage Sir Alfred Milner was his annoyance at the
+latter's calm way of going on with the task which he had mapped out for
+himself without allowing his mind to be troubled by the outcries of a mob
+whom he despised from the height of his great integrity, unsullied honour,
+and consciousness of having his duty to perform. Neither could Rhodes ever
+see in political matters the necessities of the moment often made it the
+duty of a statesman to hurl certain facts into oblivion and to reconcile
+himself to new circumstances.
+
+That he did disparage Sir Alfred Milner is unfortunately certain. I
+sincerely believe that the war would never have dragged on so long had not
+Rhodes contrived to convey to the principal Boer leaders the impression
+that while Sir Alfred Milner remained in South Africa no settlement would
+be arrived at with the British Government, because the High Commissioner
+would always oppose any concessions that might bring it to a successful
+and prompt issue. Of course Cecil Rhodes never said this in so many words,
+but he allowed people to guess that such was his conviction, and it was
+only after Sir Alfred had I left the Cape for Pretoria that, by a closer
+contact with the Boers themselves, some of the latter's prejudices against
+him vanished.
+
+At last did the sturdy Dutch farmers realise that if there was one man
+devoid of animosity against them, and desirous of seeing the end of a
+struggle which was ruining a continent, it was Sir Alfred Milner. They
+also discovered another thing concerning his political views and
+opinions--that he desired just as much as they did to destroy the power
+and influence of those multi-millionaires who had so foolishly believed
+that after the war's end they would have at their disposal the riches
+which the Transvaal contained, so that, rather than becoming a part of the
+British Empire, it would in reality be an annexe of the London and Paris
+Stock Exchanges.
+
+As events turned out, by a just retribution of Providence, the magnates
+who had let greedy ambition master them lost most of the advantages which
+they had been able to snatch from President Kruger. Whether this would
+have happened had Rhodes not died before the conclusion of peace remains
+an open question. It is certain he would have objected to a limitation of
+the political power of the concerns in which he had got such tremendous
+interests; it is equally sure that it would have been for him a cruel
+disappointment had his name not figured as the outstanding signature on
+the treaty of peace. There were in this strange man moments when his
+patriotism assumed an entirely personal shape, but, improbable as it may
+appear to the reader, there was sincerity in the conviction which he had
+that the only man who understood what South Africa required was himself,
+and that in all that he had done he had been working for the benefit of
+the Empire. There was in him something akin to the feeling which had
+inspired the old Roman saying, "_Civis Romanum sum._" He understood far
+better than any of the individuals by whom he was surrounded the true
+meaning of the word Imperialism. Unfortunately, he was apt to apply it in
+the personal sense, until, indeed, it got quite confused in his mind with
+a selfish feeling which prompted him to put his huge personality before
+everything else. If one may do so, a reading of his mind would show that
+in his secret heart he felt he had not annexed Rhodesia to the Empire nor
+amalgamated the Kimberley mines and organised De Beers for the benefit of
+his native Britain, but in order to make himself the most powerful man in
+South Africa, and yet at the same time shrewdly realised that he could not
+be the king he wished to become unless England stood behind him to cover
+with her flag his heroic actions as well as his misdeeds.
+
+That Rhodes' death occurred at an opportune moment cannot be denied. It is
+a sad thing to say, but for South Africa true enough. It removed from the
+path of Sir Alfred Milner the principal obstacle that had stood in his way
+ever since his arrival at Cape Town. The Rhodesian party, deprived of its
+chief, was entirely harmless. Rhodesian politics, too, lost their strength
+when he was no longer there to impose them upon South Africa.
+
+One of the great secrets of the enormous influence which the Colossus had
+acquired lay in the fact that he had never spared his money when it was a
+question of thrusting his will in directions favourable to his interest.
+None of those who aspired to take his place could follow him on that road,
+because none were so superbly indifferent to wealth. Cecil Rhodes did not
+care for riches for the personal enjoyments they can purchase. He was
+frugal in his tastes, simple in his manners and belongings, and absolutely
+careless as to the comforts of life. The waste in his household was
+something fabulous, but it is a question whether he ever participated in
+luxuries showered upon others. His one hobby had been the embellishment of
+Groote Schuur, which he had really transformed into something absolutely
+fairylike as regards its exterior beauties and the loveliness of its
+grounds and gardens. Inside, too, the house, furnished after the old Dutch
+style, struck one by its handsomeness, though it was neither homelike nor
+comfortable. In its decoration he had followed the plans of a clever
+architect, to whose artistic education he had generously contributed by
+giving to him facilities to travel in Europe, but he had not lent anything
+of his own personality to the interior arrangements of his home, which had
+always kept the look of a show place, neither cared for nor properly
+looked after.
+
+Rhodes himself felt happier and more at his ease when rambling in his
+splendid park and gazing on Table Mountain from his stoep than amidst the
+luxury of his richly furnished rooms. Sometimes he would sit for hours
+looking at the landscape before him, lost in a meditation which but few
+cared to disturb, and after which he invariably showed himself at his best
+and in a softer mood than he had been before. Unfortunately, these moments
+never lasted long, and he used to revenge himself on those who had
+surprised him in such reveries by indulging in the most caustic and cruel
+remarks which he could devise in order to goad them out of all patience. A
+strange man with strange instincts; and it is no wonder that, once, a
+person who knew him well, and who had known him in the days of his youth
+when he had not yet developed his strength of character, had said of him
+that "One could not help liking him and one could not avoid hating him;
+and sometimes one hated him when one liked him most."
+
+Sir Alfred Milner had neither liked nor hated him, perhaps because his
+mind was too well balanced to allow him to view him otherwise than with
+impartiality and with a keen appreciation of his great qualities. He would
+have liked to work with Rhodes, and would gladly have availed himself of
+his experience of South Africa and of South African politicians. But Sir
+Alfred refused to be drawn into any compromises with his own conscience or
+to offend his own sense of right and wrong. He was always sincere, though
+he was never given credit for being so in South Africa. Sir Alfred Milner
+could not understand why Rhodes, instead of resolutely asserting that he
+wanted to enter into negotiations with the Bond in order to win its
+co-operation in the great work of organising the new existence of South
+Africa on a sound and solid basis, preferred to cause promises to be made
+to the Bond which he would never consent to acknowledge.
+
+These tortuous roads, which were so beloved by Rhodes, were absolutely
+abhorrent to the High Commissioner. When Rhodes started the agitation for
+the suspension of the Constitution, which occupied his thoughts during the
+last months of his life--an agitation which he had inaugurated out of
+spite against Mr. Sauer and Mr. Hofmeyr, who had refused to dance to
+Rhodes' tune--Sir Alfred Milner had at once seen through the underlying
+motives of the moment, and what he discerned had not increased his
+admiration for Rhodes. Sir Alfred had not opposed the plans, but he had
+never been sanguine as to their chance of success, and they were not in
+accordance with his own convictions. Had he thought they had the least
+chance of being adopted, most certainly he would have opposed them with
+just as much energy as Sir Gordon Sprigg had done. He saw quite well that
+it would not have been opportune or politic to put himself into open
+opposition to Rhodes. Sir Alfred therefore did not contradict the rumours
+which attributed to him the desire to reduce the Cape to the condition of
+a Crown Colony, but bent his energy to the far more serious task of
+negotiating a permanent peace with the leading men in the Transvaal, a
+peace for which he did not want the protection of Rhodes, and to which an
+association with Rhodes might have proved inimical to the end in view--the
+ideal of a South African Federation which Rhodes had been the first to
+visualise, but which Providence did not permit him to see accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
+
+
+It is impossible to speak or write about the South African War without
+mentioning the Concentration Camps. A great deal of fuss was made about
+them, not only abroad, where all the enemies of England took a particular
+and most vicious pleasure in magnifying the so-called cruelties which were
+supposed to take place, but also in the English Press, where long and
+heartrending accounts appeared concerning the iniquities and injustices
+practised by the military authorities on the unfortunate Boer families
+assembled in the Camps.
+
+In recurring to this long-forgotten theme, I must first of all say that I
+do not hold a brief for the English Government or for the administration
+which had charge of British interests in South Africa. But pure and simple
+justice compels me to protest, first against the use which was made for
+party purposes of certain regrettable incidents, and, more strongly still,
+against the totally malicious and ruthless way in which the incidents were
+interpreted.
+
+It is necessary before passing a judgment on the Concentration Camps to
+explain how it came about that these were organised. At the time of which
+I am writing people imagined that by Lord Kitchener's orders Boer women,
+children and old people were forcibly taken away from their homes and
+confined, without any reason for such an arbitrary proceeding, in
+unhealthy places where they were subjected to an existence of privation as
+well as of humiliation and suffering. Nothing of the kind had taken place.
+
+The idea of the Camps originated at first from the Boers themselves in an
+indirect way. When the English troops marched into the Orange Free State
+and the Transvaal, most of the farmers who composed the bulk of the
+population of the two Republics having taken to arms, there was no one
+left in the homes they had abandoned save women, children and old men no
+longer able to fight. These fled hurriedly as soon as English detachments
+and patrols were in sight, but most of the time they did not know where
+they could fly to, and generally assembled in camps somewhere on the
+veldt, where they hoped that the British troops would not discover them.
+There, however, they soon found their position intolerable owing to the
+want of food and to the lack of hygienic precautions.
+
+The British authorities became aware of this state of things and could not
+but try to remedy it. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done. To
+come to the help of several thousands of people in a country where
+absolutely no resources were to be found was a quite stupendous task, of a
+nature which might well have caused the gravest anxieties to the men
+responsible for the solution. It was then that the decision was reached to
+organise upon a reasonable scale camps after the style of those which
+already had been inaugurated by the Boers themselves.
+
+The idea, which was not a bad one, was carried out in an unfortunate
+manner, which gave to the world at large the idea that the burgher
+families who were confined in these camps were simply put into a prison
+which they had done nothing to deserve. The Bond Press, always on the
+alert to reproach England, seized hold of the establishment of the Camps
+to transform into martyrs the persons who had been transferred to them,
+and soon a wave of indignation swept over not only South Africa, but also
+over Britain. This necessary act of human civilisation was twisted to
+appear as an abuse of power on the part of Lord Roberts and especially of
+Lord Kitchener, who, in this affair, became the scapegoat for many sins he
+had never committed. The question of the Concentration Camps was made the
+subject of interpellations in the House of Commons, and indignation
+meetings were held in many parts of England. The Nonconformist Conscience
+was deeply stirred at what was thought to be conduct which not even the
+necessities of war could excuse. Torrents of ink were spilt to prove that
+at the end of the nineteenth century measures and methods worthy of the
+Inquisition were resorted to by British Government officials, who--so the
+ready writers and ready-tongued averred--with a barbarity such as the
+Middle Ages had not witnessed, wanted to be revenged on innocent women and
+children for the resistance their husbands and fathers were making against
+an aggression which in itself nothing could justify.
+
+So far as the Boers themselves were concerned, I think that a good many
+among them viewed the subject with far more equanimity than the English
+public. For one thing, the fact of their women and children being put in
+places where at least they would not die of hunger must have come to them
+rather in the light of a relief than anything else. Then, too, one must
+not lose sight of the conditions under which the Boer burghers and farmers
+used to exist in normal times. Cleanliness did not rank among their
+virtues; and, as a rule, hygiene was an unknown science. They were mostly
+dirty and neglected in their personal appearance, and their houses were
+certainly neither built nor kept in accordance with those laws of
+sanitation which in the civilised world have become a matter of course.
+Water was scarce, and the long and torrid summers, during which every bit
+of vegetation was dried up on the veldt, had inured the population to
+certain privations which would have been intolerable to Europeans. These
+things, and the unfortunate habits of the Boers, made it extremely
+difficult, if not impossible, to realise in the Camps any approach to the
+degree of cleanliness which was desirable.
+
+To say that the people in the Concentration Camps were happy would be a
+gross exaggeration, but to say that they were martyrs would convey an
+equally false idea. When judging of facts one ought always to remember the
+local conditions under which these facts have developed. A Russian moujik
+sent to Siberia does not find that his life there is very much different
+from what it was at home, but a highly civilised, well-educated man,
+condemned to banishment in those frozen solitudes, suffers acutely, being
+deprived of all that had made existence sweet and tolerable to him. I feel
+certain that an Englishman, confined in one of the Concentration Camps of
+South Africa, would have wished himself dead ten times a day, whilst the
+wife of a Boer farmer would not have suffered because of missing soap and
+water and clean towels and nicely served food, though she might have felt
+the place hot and unpleasant, and might have lamented over the loss of the
+home in which she had lived for years.
+
+The Concentration Camps were a necessity, because without them thousands
+of people, the whole white population of a country indeed, amounting to
+something over sixty thousand people, would have died of hunger and cold.
+
+The only means of existence the country Boers had was the produce of their
+farms. This taken away from them, they were left in the presence of
+starvation, and starvation only. This population, deprived of every means
+of subsistence, would have invaded Cape Colony, which already was overrun
+with white refugees from Johannesburg and the Rand, who had proved a
+prolific source of the greatest annoyance to the British Government. To
+allow this mass of miserable humanity to wander all over the Colony would
+have been inhuman, and I would like to know what those who, in England and
+upon the Continent, were so indignant over the Concentration Camps would
+have said had it turned out that some sixty thousand human creatures had
+been allowed to starve.
+
+The British Government, owing to the local conditions under which the
+South African War came to be fought, found itself in a dilemma, out of
+which the only escape was to try to relieve wholesale misery in the most
+practical manner possible. There was no time to plan out with deliberation
+what ought to be done; some means had to be devised to keep a whole
+population alive whom an administration would have been accused of
+murdering had there been delay in feeding it.
+
+There was also another danger to be faced had the veldt been allowed to
+become the scene of a long-continued migration of nations--that of
+allowing the movements of the British troops to become known, thereby
+lengthening a war of already intolerable length, to say nothing of
+exposing uselessly the lives of English detachments, which, in this
+guerrilla kind of warfare, would inevitably have occurred had the Boer
+leaders remained in constant communication with their wandering
+compatriots.
+
+Altogether the institution of the Concentration Camps was not such a bad
+one originally. Unfortunately, they were not organised with the
+seriousness which ought to have been brought to bear on such a delicate
+matter, and their care was entrusted to people who succeeded, unwittingly
+perhaps, in making life there less tolerable than it need have been.
+
+I visited some of the Concentration Camps, and looked into their interior
+arrangements with great attention. The result of my personal observations
+was invariably the same--that where English officials were in charge of
+these Camps everything possible was done to lighten the lot of their
+inmates. But where others were entrusted with surveillance, every kind of
+annoyance, indignity and insult was offered to poor people obliged to
+submit to their authority.
+
+In this question, as in many others connected with the Boer War, it was
+the local Jingoes who harmed the British Government more than anything
+else, and the Johannesburg Uitlanders, together with the various Volunteer
+Corps and Scouts, brought into the conduct of the enterprises with which
+they were entrusted an intolerance and a smallness of spirit which
+destroyed British prestige far more than would have done a dozen
+unfortunate wars. The very fact that one heard these unwise people openly
+say that every Boer ought to be killed, and that even women and children
+ought to be suppressed if one wanted to win the war, gave abroad the idea
+that England was a nation thirsting for the blood of the unfortunate
+Afrikanders. This mistaken licence furnished the Bond with the pretext to
+persuade the Dutch Colonists to rebel, and the Boer leaders with that of
+going on with their resistance until their last penny had been exhausted
+and their last gun had been captured.
+
+Without these detestable Jingoes, who would have done so much harm not
+only to South Africa, but also to their Mother Country, England, it is
+certain that an arrangement, which would have brought about an honourable
+peace for everybody, could have come much sooner than it did. A
+significant fact worth remembering--that the Boers did not attempt to
+destroy the mines on the Rand--goes far to prove that they were not at all
+so determined to hurt British property, or to ruin British residents, or
+to destroy the large shareholder concerns to which the Transvaal owed its
+celebrity, as was credited to them.
+
+When the first rumours that terrible things were going on in the
+Concentration Camps reached England there were found at once amateurs
+willing to start for South Africa to investigate the truth of the
+accusations. A great fuss was made over an appeal by Lady Maxwell, the
+wife of the Military Governor of Pretoria, in which she entreated America
+to assist her in raising a fund to provide warm clothing for the Boer
+women and children. Conclusions were immediately drawn, saddling the
+military authorities with responsibility for the destitution in which
+these women and children found themselves. But in the name of common
+sense, how could one expect that people who had run away before what they
+believed to be an invasion of barbarians determined to burn down and
+destroy all their belongings--how could one expect that these people in
+their flight would have thought about taking with them their winter
+clothes, which, in the hurry of a departure in a torrid summer, would only
+have proved a source of embarrassment to them? More recently we have seen
+in Belgium, France, Poland and the Balkans what occurred to the refugees
+who fled before foreign invasion. The very fact of Lady Maxwell's appeal
+proved the solicitude of the official English classes for the unfortunate
+Boers and their desire to do something to provide them with the
+necessaries of life.
+
+Everybody knows the amount of money which is required in cases of this
+kind, and--in addition to America's unstinting response--public and
+private charity in Britain flowed as generously as it always does upon
+every occasion when an appeal is made to it in cases of real misfortune.
+But when it comes to relieve the wants of about sixty-three thousand
+people, of all ages and conditions, this is not so easy to do as persons
+fond of criticising things which they do not understand are apt sweepingly
+to declare. Very soon the question of the Concentration Camps became a
+Party matter, and was made capital of for Party purposes without
+discrimination or restraint. Sham philanthropists filled the newspapers
+with their indignation, and a report was published in the form of a
+pamphlet by Miss Hobhouse, which, it is to be feared, contained some
+percentage of tales poured into her ears by people who were nurtured in
+the general contempt for truth which at that time existed in South Africa.
+
+If the question of Concentration Camps had been examined seriously, it
+would have been at once perceived what a tremendous burden the
+responsibility of having to find food and shelter for thousands of enemy
+people imposed on English officials. No one in Government circles
+attempted or wished to deny, sorrowful as it was to have to recognise it,
+that the condition of the Camps was not, and indeed could not be, nearly
+what one would have wished or desired. On the other hand, the British
+authorities were unremitting in their efforts to do everything which was
+compatible with prudence to improve the condition of these Camps.
+Notwithstanding, people were so excited in regard to the question, and it
+was so entirely a case of "Give a dog a bad name," that even the
+appointment of an Imperial Commission to report on the matter failed to
+bring them to anything approaching an impartial survey. Miss Hobhouse's
+report had excited an emotion only comparable to the publication of Mrs.
+Beecher Stowe's famous novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
+
+Miss Hobhouse came to South Africa inspired by the most generous motives,
+but her lack of knowledge of the conditions of existence common to
+everyone in that country prevented her from forming a true opinion as to
+the real hardship of what she was called upon to witness. Her own
+interpretations of the difficulties and discomforts which she found
+herself obliged to face proved that she had not realised what South Africa
+really was. Her horror at the sight of a snake in one of the tents she
+visited could only evoke a smile from those who had lived for some time in
+that country, as a visitor of that particular kind was possible even in
+the suburbs of Cape Town, and certainly offered nothing wonderful in a
+tent on the high veldt. The same remark can be applied to the hotels,
+which Miss Hobhouse described as something quite ghastly. Everyone who
+knew what South Africa really was could only agree with her that the
+miserable places there were anything but pleasant residences, but the fuss
+which she made as to these trivial details could only make one sceptical
+as to the genuineness of the other scenes which she described at such
+length. No one who had had occasion to watch the development of the war or
+the circumstances which had preceded it could bring himself to believe
+with her that the British Government was guilty of premeditated cruelty.
+
+Of course, it was quite dreadful for those who had been taken to the
+Concentration Camps to find themselves detained there against their will,
+but at the same time, as I have already remarked, the question remains as
+to what these people would have done had they been left absolutely
+unprotected and unprovided for among the remnants of what had once been
+their homes. It was certain that Miss Hobhouse's pamphlet revealed a
+parlous state of things, but did she realise that wood, blankets, linen
+and food were not things which could be transported with the quickness
+that those responsible heartily desired? Did she remember that the British
+troops also had to do without the most elementary comforts, in spite of
+all the things which were constantly being sent from home for the benefit
+of the field forces? Both had in South Africa two enemies in common that
+could not be subdued--distance and difficulty of communication. With but a
+single line of railway, which half the time was cut in one place or
+another, it was but natural that the Concentration Camps were deprived of
+a good many things which those who were compelled to live within their
+limits would, under different circumstances or conditions, have had as a
+matter of course.
+
+Miss Hobhouse had to own that she met with the utmost courtesy from the
+authorities with whom she had to deal, a fact alone which proved that the
+Government was only too glad to allow people to see what was being done
+for the Boer women and children, and gratefully appreciated every useful
+suggestion likely to lighten the sad lot of those in the Camps.
+
+It is no use denying, and indeed no one, Sir Alfred Milner least of all,
+would have denied that some of the scenes witnessed by Miss Hobhouse,
+which were afterwards described with such tremulous indignation, were of a
+nature to shock public opinion both at home and abroad. But, at the same
+time, it was not fair to circumstances or to people to have a false
+sentimentality woven into what was written. Things ought to have been
+looked upon through the eyes of common sense and not through the
+refracting glasses of the indignation of the moment. It was a libel to
+suggest that the British authorities rendered themselves guilty of
+deliberate cruelty, because, on the contrary, they always and upon every
+occasion did everything they could to lighten the lot of the enemy peoples
+who had fallen into their hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE PRISONERS' CAMPS
+
+
+I went myself very carefully into the details of whatever information I
+was able to gather in regard to the treatment of Boer prisoners in the
+various Camps, notably at Green Point near Cape Town, and I always had to
+come to the conclusion that nothing could have been better. Is it likely
+that, when such an amount of care was bestowed upon the men, the women and
+children should have been made the objects of special persecution? No
+impartial person could believe such a thing to have been possible, and I
+feel persuaded that if the people who in England contributed to make the
+position of the British Government more difficult than already it was,
+could have glanced at some Prisoners' Camps, for instance, they would very
+quickly have recognised that an unbalanced sentimentality had exaggerated
+facts, and even in some cases distorted them.
+
+In Green Point the prisoners were housed in double-storied buildings which
+had balconies running round them. Here they used to spend many hours of
+the day, for not only could they see what was going on around the Camps
+but also have a good view of the sea and passing ships. Each room held six
+men, and there was besides a large mess-room downstairs in each building
+which held about ninety people. Each Boer officer had a room for himself.
+When, later on, the number of prisoners of war was increased, tents had to
+be erected to accommodate them; but this could hardly be considered
+hardship in the climate which prevails at the Cape, and cannot be compared
+to what at the present moment the soldiers of the Allies are enduring in
+the trenches. The tents were put in a line of twenty each, and each score
+had a building attached for the men in that line to use as a dormitory if
+they chose. Excellent bathrooms and shower-baths were provided, together
+with a plentiful supply of water. The feeding of the prisoners of war was
+on a substantial scale, the daily rations per man including:
+
+     Bread          1¼ lb.
+     Meat (fresh)    1 lb.
+     Sugar           3 oz.
+     Coal (or)       1 lb.
+     Wood (or)       2 lb.
+     Coal and wood  1½ lb.
+     Vegetables      ½ lb.
+     Jam             ¼ lb., or 6 oz. of
+                      vegetables in lieu.
+
+Coffee, milk and other items were also in like generous apportionments.
+
+The clothing issued to the prisoners, as asked for by them, to give the
+month of June, 1901, as an instance, was:
+
+     Boots         143 pairs
+     Braces         59 pairs
+     Hats          164
+     Jackets       133
+     Shirts        251
+     Socks         222 pairs
+     Trousers      166
+     Waistcoats     87
+
+and other small sundries.
+
+At Green Point Camp ample hospital accommodation was provided for the
+sick, and there was a medical staff thoroughly acquainted with the Dutch
+language and Boer habits. There was electric light in every ward, as well
+as all other comforts compatible with discipline.
+
+In the first six months of 1901 only five men died in the Camps, the
+average daily strength of which was over 5,000 men. As for the sick, the
+average rarely surpassed 1 per cent., amongst which were included wounded
+men, the cripples, and the invalids left behind from the parties of war
+prisoners sent oversea to St. Helena or other places.
+
+The hospital diet included, as a matter of course, many things not forming
+part of the ordinary rations, such as extra milk, meat extracts, and
+brandy. A suggestive fact in that respect was that though the medical
+officers in charge of the Camps often appealed to Boer sympathisers to
+send them eggs, milk and other comforts for the sick prisoners, they
+hardly ever met with response; and in the rare cases when it happened, it
+was mostly British officials or officers' wives who provided these
+luxuries.
+
+The spiritual needs of the prisoners of war were looked after with
+consideration; there was a recreation room, and, during the time that a
+large number of very young Boers were in Camps, an excellent school, in
+which the headmaster and assistant teachers held teachers' certificates.
+Under the Orange River Colony this school was later transferred to the
+Prisoners of War Camp at Simonstown, and in both places it did a
+considerable amount of good. The younger Boers took very kindly and almost
+immediately to English games such as football, cricket, tennis and quoits,
+for which there was plenty of room, and the British authorities provided
+recreation huts, and goal posts and other implements. The Boers also
+amused themselves with amateur theatricals, club-swinging, and even formed
+a minstrel troup called the "Green Point Spreemos."
+
+In the Camps there was a shop where the Boers could buy anything that they
+required in reason at prices regulated by the Military Commandant. Beyond
+this, relatives and friends were allowed to send them fruit or anything
+else, with the exception of firearms. In the Boer laagers were coffee
+shops run by speculative young Boers. The prisoners used to meet there in
+order to drink coffee, eat pancakes and talk to heart's content. This
+particular spot was generally called Pan Koek Straat, and the wildest
+rumours concerning the war seemed to originate in it.
+
+Now as to the inner organisation of the Camps. The prisoners were allowed
+to choose a corporal from their midst and also to select a captain for
+each house. Over the whole Camp there reigned a Boer Commandant, assisted
+by a Court of "Heemraden" consisting of exlandrosts and lawyers appointed
+by the prisoners of war themselves. Any act of insubordination or
+inattention to the regulations, sanitary or otherwise, was brought before
+this court and the guilty party tried and sentenced. When the latter
+refused to abide by the judgment of the Boer court he was brought before
+the Military Commandant, but for this there was very seldom need.
+
+The prisoners of war had permission to correspond with their friends and
+relatives, and were allowed newspapers and books. The former, however,
+were rather too much censored, which fact constituted an annoyance which,
+with the exertion of a little tact, might easily have been avoided.
+
+As will be seen from the details, the fate of the Boer prisoners of war
+was not such a bad one after all. Nor, either, was life in the
+Concentration Camps, and I have endeavoured to throw some new light on the
+subject to rebut the old false rumours which, lately, the German
+Government revived when taxed with harsh treatment of their own prisoners
+of war, so as to draw comparisons advantageously to themselves.
+
+While adhering to my point, I quite realise that it would be foolish to
+assert that all the Concentration Camps were organised and administered on
+the model of the Green Point Camp, where its vicinity to Cape Town allowed
+the English authorities to control everything that was going on. In the
+interior of the country things could not be arranged upon such an
+excellent scale, but had there not existed such a state of irritation all
+over the whole of South Africa--an irritation for which the so-called
+English loyalists must also share the blame--matters would not have grown
+so sadly out of proportion to the truth, painful though the facts were in
+some cases.
+
+This question of the Camps was admittedly a most difficult one. It was the
+result of a method of warfare which was imposed upon England by
+circumstances, but for which no individual Minister or General was solely
+responsible. The matter was brought about by successive steps that turned
+out to be necessary, though they were deplorable in every respect. Failing
+the capture of the Boer commandoes, which was well-nigh impossible, the
+British troops were driven to strip the country, and stripping the country
+meant depriving not only the fighting men but also the women and children
+of the means of subsistence. Concentration, therefore, followed
+inevitably, and England found itself burdened with the immense
+responsibility of feeding, housing and clothing some sixty thousand women
+and children.
+
+In spite of the British officers in charge of the Concentration Camps
+struggling manfully with this crushing burden of anxiety, and doing all
+that lay within their power to alleviate the sufferings of this multitude,
+cruel and painful things happened. The food, which was sufficient and
+wholesome for soldiers, could not do for young people, and yet it was
+impossible to procure any other for them. If the opinion of the military
+had been allowed to be expressed openly, one would have found probably
+that they thought England ought never to have assumed this responsibility,
+but rather have chosen the lesser evil and left these people on their
+farms, running the risk of the Boers provisioning themselves therefrom.
+The risk would not, perhaps, have been so great as could have been
+supposed at first sight, but then this ought to have been done from the
+very beginning of the war, and the order to burn the Boer farms ought
+never to have been given. But once the Boer farms had been deprived of
+their military use to the enemy, these people could not be turned back to
+starve on the veldt; the British had to feed them or earn the reproach of
+having destroyed a nation by hunger. As things had developed it was
+impossible for Great Britain to have followed any other policy--adopted,
+perhaps, in a moment of rashness, but the consequences had to be accepted.
+It only remained to do the best toward mitigating as far as possible the
+sufferings of the mass of humanity gathered into the Camps, and this I
+must maintain that the English Government did better than could have been
+expected by any who knew South Africa and the immense difficulties which
+beset the British authorities.
+
+It must not be forgotten that when the war began it was looked upon in the
+light of a simple military promenade; and, who knows, it might have been
+that had not the Boers been just as mistaken concerning the intentions of
+England in respect of them as England was in regard to the Boer military
+strength and power of resistance. One must take into account that for the
+few years preceding the war, and especially since the fatal Jameson Raid,
+the whole of the Dutch population of the Transvaal and of the Orange Free
+State, as well as that of Cape Colony, was persuaded that England had made
+up its mind to destroy it and to give up their country, as well as their
+persons, into the absolute power of the millionaires who ruled the Rand.
+On their side the millionaires openly declared that the mines were their
+personal property, and that England was going to war to give the Rand to
+them, and thereafter they were to rule this new possession without any
+interference from anyone in the world, not even that of England. Such a
+state of things was absolutely abnormal, and one can but wonder how ideas
+of the kind could have obtained credence. But, strange as it may seem, it
+is an indisputable fact that the opinion was prevalent all over South
+Africa that the Rand was to be annexed to the British Empire just in the
+same way as Rhodesia had been and under the same conditions. Everyone in
+South Africa knew that the so-called conquest of the domain of King
+Lobengula had been effected only because it had been supposed that it was
+as rich in gold and diamonds as the Transvaal.
+
+When Rhodes had taken possession of the vast expanse of territory which
+was to receive his name, the fortune-seekers who had followed in his
+footsteps had high anticipations of speedy riches, and came in time to
+consider that they had a right to obtain that which they had come to look
+for. These victims of money-hunger made Rhodes personally responsible for
+the disappointments which their greed and unhealthy appetites encountered
+when at last they were forced to the conclusion that Rhodesia was a land
+barren of gold. In time, perhaps, and at enormous expense, it might be
+developed for the purpose of cattle breeding, but gold and diamonds either
+did not exist or could only be found in such small quantities that it was
+not worth while looking for them.
+
+As a result of this realisation, Rhodes found himself confronted by all
+these followers, who loudly clamoured around him their indignation at
+having believed in his assertions. What wonder, therefore, that the
+thoughts of these people turned toward the possibility of diverting the
+treasures of the Transvaal into their own direction. Rhodes was brought
+into contact with the idea that it was necessary to subdue President
+Kruger. With a man of Rhodes' impulsive character to begin wishing for a
+thing was sufficient to make him resort to every means at his disposal to
+obtain it. The Boer War was the work of the Rhodesian party, and long
+before it broke out it was expected, spoken of, and considered not only by
+the Transvaal Government, but also by the Burghers, who, having many
+opportunities of visiting the Cape as well as Rhodesia, had there heard
+expression of the determination of the South African League, and of those
+who called themselves followers and partisans of Rhodes, to get hold of
+the Rand, at the head of which, as an inevitable necessity, should be the
+Colossus himself. No denial of these plans ever came from Rhodes. By his
+attitude, even when relations between London and Pretoria were excellent,
+he gave encouragement to the people who were making all kinds of
+speculations as to what should happen when the Transvaal became a Crown
+Colony.
+
+The idea of a South African Federation had not at that time taken hold of
+public opinion, and, if Rhodes became its partisan later on, it was only
+after he had realised that the British Cabinet would never consent to put
+Johannesburg on the same footing as Bulawayo and Bechuanaland. Too large
+and important interests were at stake for Downing Street to look with
+favourable eyes on the Rand becoming only one vast commercial concern. A
+line had to be drawn, but, unfortunately, the precise demarcation was not
+conveyed energetically enough from London. On the other hand, Cecil
+Rhodes, as well as his friends and advisers, did not foresee that a war
+would not put them in power at the Transvaal, but would give that country
+to the Empire to rule, to use its riches and resources for the good of the
+community at large.
+
+The saddest feature of the South African episode was its sordidness. This
+robbed it of every dignity and destroyed every sympathy of those who
+looked at it impartially or from another point of view than that of
+pounds, shillings and pence. England has been cruelly abused for its
+conduct in South Africa, and abused most unjustly. Had that feeling of
+trust in the justice and in the straightforwardness of Great Britain only
+existed in the Dark Continent, as it did in the other Colonies and
+elsewhere, it would have proved the best solution to all the entangled
+questions which divided the Transvaal Republic from the Mother Country by
+reason of its manner of looking at the exploitation of the gold mines. On
+its side too, perhaps, England might have been brought to consider the
+Boers in a different light had she disbelieved a handful of people who had
+every interest in the world to mislead her and to keep her badly informed
+as to the truth of the situation.
+
+When war broke out it was not easy for the Command to come at once to a
+sane appreciation of the situation, and, unfortunately for all the parties
+concerned, the unjust prejudices which existed in South Africa against Sir
+Alfred Milner had to a certain extent tinctured the minds of people at
+home, exercising no small influence on the men who ought to have helped
+the High Commissioner to carry through his plans for the settlement of the
+situation subsequently to the war. The old saying, "Calumniate,
+calumniate, something will always remain after it," was never truer than
+in the case of this eminent statesman.
+
+It took some time for matters to be put on a sound footing, and before
+this actually occurred many mistakes had been made, neither easy to
+rectify nor possible to explain. Foremost among them was this question of
+the Concentration Camps. Not even the protestations of the women who
+subsequently went to the Cape and to the Transvaal to report officially on
+the question were considered sufficient to dissipate the prejudices which
+had arisen on this unfortunate question. The best reply that was made to
+Miss Hobhouse, and to the lack of prudence which spoiled her good
+intentions, was a letter which Mrs. Henry Fawcett addressed to the
+_Westminster Gazette_. In clear, lucid diction this letter re-established
+facts on their basis of reality, and explained with self-respect and
+self-control the inner details of a situation which the malcontents had
+not given themselves the trouble to examine.
+
+"First," says this forceful document, "I would note Miss Hobhouse's
+frequent acknowledgments that the various authorities were doing their
+best to make the conditions of Camp life as little intolerable as
+possible. The opening sentence of her report is, 'January 22.--I had a
+splendid truck given me at Cape Town through the kind co-operation of Sir
+Alfred Milner--a large double-covered one, capable of holding twelve
+tons.' In other places she refers to the help given to her by various
+officials. The commandant at Aliwal North had ordered £150 worth of
+clothing, and had distributed it; she undertook to forward some of it. At
+Springfontein 'the commandant was a kind man, and willing to help both the
+people and me as far as possible.' Other similar quotations might be made.
+Miss Hobhouse acknowledges that the Government recognise that they are
+responsible for providing clothes, and she appears rather to deprecate the
+making and sending of further supplies from England. I will quote her
+exact words on this point. The italics are mine. 'The demand for clothing
+is so huge that it is hopeless to think that the private charity of
+England and Colonial working parties combined can effectually cope with
+it. _The Government recognise that they must provide necessary clothes,_
+and I think we all agree that, having brought these people into this
+position, it is their duty to do so. _It is, of course, a question for
+English folk to decide how long they like to go on making and sending
+clothes._ There is no doubt they are immensely appreciated; besides, they
+are mostly made up, which the Government clothing won't be.' Miss Hobhouse
+says that many of the women in the Camp at Aliwal North had brought their
+sewing machines. If they were set to work to make clothes it might serve a
+double purpose of giving them occupation and the power of earning a little
+money, and it would also ensure the clothes being made sufficiently large.
+Miss Hobhouse says people in England have very incorrect notions of the
+magnificent proportions of the Boer women. Blouses which were sent from
+England intended for women could only be worn by girls of twelve and
+fourteen; they were much too small for the well-developed Boer maiden, who
+is really a fine creature. Could a woman's out-out size be procured? It
+must be remembered that when Miss Hobhouse saw the Camps for the first
+time it was in January, the hottest month in the South African year; the
+difficulty of getting supplies along a single line of rail, often broken
+by the enemy, was very great. The worst of the Camps she saw was at
+Bloemfontein, and the worst features of this worst Camp were:
+
+"1. Water supply was bad.
+
+"2. Fuel was very scarce.
+
+"3. Milk was very scarce.
+
+"4. Soap was not to be had.
+
+"5. Insufficient supply of trained nurses.
+
+"6. Insufficient supply of civilian doctors.
+
+"7. No ministers of religion.
+
+"8. No schools for children.
+
+"9. Exorbitant prices were demanded in the shops.
+
+"10. Parents had been separated from their children.
+
+"Within the Report itself, either in footnotes or in the main body of the
+Report, Miss Hobhouse mentions that active steps had already been taken to
+remedy these evils. Tanks had been ordered to boil all the water. She left
+money to buy another, and supplied every family with a pan to hold boiled
+water. Soap was given out with the rations. 'Moreover, the Dutch are so
+very full of resources and so clever they can make their own soap with fat
+and soda.' The milk supply was augmented; during the drought fifty cows
+only yielded four buckets of milk daily. 'After the rains the milk supply
+was better.' An additional supply of nurses were on their way. 'The Sister
+had done splendid work in her domain battling against incessant
+difficulties ... and to crown the work she has had the task of training
+Boer girls to nurse under her guidance.'
+
+"Ministers of religion are in residence, and schools under Mr. E.B.
+Sargant, the Educational Commissioner, are open for boys and girls.
+Children have been reunited to parents, except that some girls, through
+Miss Hobhouse's kind efforts, have been moved away from the Camps
+altogether into boarding schools. Even in this Bloemfontein Camp,
+notwithstanding all that Miss Hobhouse says of the absence of soap and the
+scarcity of water, she is able to write: 'All the tents I have been in are
+exquisitely neat and clean, except two, and they are ordinary.' Another
+important admission about this Camp is to be found in the last sentence of
+the account of Miss Hobhouse's second visit to Bloemfontein. She describes
+the iron huts which have been erected there at a cost of £2,500, and says:
+'It is so strange to think that every tent contains a family, and every
+family is in trouble--loss behind, poverty in front, privation and death
+in the present--but they have agreed to be cheerful and make the best of
+it all.'
+
+"There can be no doubt that the sweeping together of about 68,000 men,
+women and children into these Camps must have been attended by great
+suffering and misery, and if they are courageously borne it is greatly to
+the credit of the sufferers. The questions the public will ask, and will
+be justified in asking, are:
+
+"1. Was the creation of these Camps necessary from the military point of
+view?
+
+"2. Are our officials exerting themselves to make the conditions of the
+Camps as little oppressive as possible?
+
+"3. Ought the public at home to supplement the efforts of the officials,
+and supply additional comforts and luxuries?
+
+"The reply to the first question can only be given by the military
+authorities, and they have answered it in the affirmative. Put briefly,
+their statement is that the farms on the veldt were being used by small
+commandoes of the enemy as storehouses for food, arms and ammunition; and,
+above all, they have been centres for supplying false information to our
+men about the movements of the enemy, and correct information to the enemy
+about the movements of the British. No one blames the Boer women on the
+farms for this; they have taken an active part on behalf of their own
+people in the war, and they glory in the fact. But no one can take part in
+war without sharing in its risks, and the formation of the Concentration
+Camps is part of the fortune of war. In this spirit 'they have agreed,' as
+Miss Hobhouse says, 'to be cheerful and make the best of it.'
+
+"The second question--'Are our officials exerting themselves to make the
+Camps as little oppressive as possible?'--can also be answered in the
+affirmative, judging from the evidence supplied by Miss Hobhouse herself.
+This does not imply that at the date of Miss Hobhouse's visit, or at any
+time, there were not matters capable of improvement. But it is confessed
+even by hostile witnesses that the Government had a very difficult task,
+and that its officials were applying themselves to grapple with it with
+energy, kindness and goodwill. Miss Hobhouse complains again and again of
+the difficulty of procuring soap. May I quote, as throwing light upon the
+fact that the Boer women were no worse off than the English themselves,
+that Miss Brooke-Hunt, who was in Pretoria to organise soldiers'
+institutes a few months earlier than Miss Hobhouse was at Bloemfontein,
+says in her interesting book, 'A Woman's Memories of the War': 'Captain
+---- presented me with a piece of Sunlight soap, an act of generosity I
+did not fully appreciate till I found that soap could not be bought for
+love or money in the town.' A Boer woman of the working-class said to Miss
+Brooke-Hunt: 'You English are different from what I thought. They told us
+that if your soldiers got inside Pretoria they would rob us of everything,
+burn our houses, and treat us cruelly; but they have all been kind and
+respectable. It seems a pity we did not know this before.' Miss Hobhouse
+supplies some rather similar testimony. In her Report she says: 'The
+Mafeking Camp folk were very surprised to hear that English women cared a
+rap about them or their suffering. It has done them a lot of good to hear
+that real sympathy is felt for them at home, and I am so glad I fought my
+way here, if only for that reason.'
+
+"In what particular way Miss Hobhouse had to fight her way to the Camps
+does not appear, for she acknowledges the kindness of Lord Kitchener and
+Lord Milner in enabling her to visit them; we must therefore suppose that
+they provided her with a pass. But the sentence just quoted is enough in
+itself to furnish the answer to the third question--'Is it right for the
+public at home to supplement by gifts of additional comforts and luxuries
+the efforts of our officials to make Camp life as little intolerable as
+possible?' All kinds of fables have been told to the Boer men and women of
+the brutality and ferocity of the British. Let them learn by practical
+experience, as many of them have learnt already, that the British soldier
+is gentle and generous, and that his women-folk at home are ready to do
+all in their power to alleviate the sufferings of the innocent victims of
+the war. I know it will be said, 'Let us attend to the suffering loyalists
+first.' It is a very proper sentiment, and if British generosity were
+limited to the gift of a certain definite amount in money or in kind, I
+would be the first to say, 'Charity begins at home, and our people must
+come first.' But British generosity is not of this strictly measured kind.
+By all means let us help the loyal sufferers by the war; but let us also
+help the women and children of those who have fought against us, not with
+any ulterior political motive, but simply because they have suffered and
+are bound to suffer much, and wounded hearts are soothed and healed by
+kindness.
+
+"Mr. Rowntree has spoken quite publicly of the deep impression made on the
+Boer women by the kindness shown them by our men. One said she would be
+always glad to shake hands with a British soldier; it was because of the
+kindly devices they had invented to make over their own rations to the
+women and children during the long journey when all were suffering from
+severe privations. Another Boer girl, referring to an act of kindness
+shown her by a British officer, remarked quietly: 'When there is so much
+to make the heart ache it is well to remember deeds of kindness.' The more
+we multiply deeds of kindness between Boer and Briton in South Africa, the
+better for the future of the two races, who, we hope, will one day fuse
+into a united nation under the British flag."
+
+I hope the reader will forgive me for having quoted in such abundance from
+Mrs. Fawcett's letter, but it has seemed to me that this plain,
+unprejudiced and unsophisticated report, on a subject which could not but
+have been viewed with deep sorrow by every enlightened person in England,
+goes far to remove the doubts that might still linger in the minds of
+certain people ignorant of the real conditions of existence in South
+Africa.
+
+A point insufficiently realised in regard to South African affairs is the
+manner in which individuals comparatively devoid of education, and with
+only a hazy notion of politics, contrived to be taken into serious
+consideration not only by those who visited South Africa, but by a certain
+section of English society at home, and also in a more restricted measure
+by people at the Cape and in the Transvaal who had risen. These people
+professed to understand local politics better than the British
+authorities, and expected the officials, as well as public opinion in
+Great Britain, to adopt their advice, and to recognise their right to
+bring forward claims which they were always eager to prosecute.
+Unfortunately they had friends everywhere, to whom they confided their
+regrets that the British Government understood so very little the
+necessities of the moment. As these malcontents were just back from the
+Rand, there were plenty of people in Cape Town, and especially in Port
+Elizabeth, Grahamstown, and other English cities in Cape Colony, ready to
+listen to them, and to be influenced by the energetic tone in which they
+declared that the Boers were being helped all along by Dutch Colonials who
+were doing their best to betray the British.
+
+In reality, matters were absolutely different, and those who harmed
+England the most at that time were precisely the people who proclaimed
+that they, and they alone, were loyal to her, and knew what was necessary
+and essential to her interests and to her future at the Cape of Good Hope
+and the Rand. Foremost amongst them were the adherents of Rhodes, and this
+fact will always cling to his memory--most unfortunately and most
+unjustly, I hasten to say, because had he been left absolutely free to do
+what he liked, it is probable he would have been the first to get rid of
+these encumbrances, whose interferences could only sow animosity where
+kindness and good will ought to have been put forward. Cecil Rhodes wanted
+to have the last and definite word to say in the matter of a settlement of
+the South African difficulties, and as no one seemed willing to allow him
+to utter it, he thought that he would contrive to attain his wishes on the
+subject by seeming to support the exaggerations of his followers. Yet, at
+the same time, he had the leaders of the Dutch party approached with a
+view of inducing them to appeal to him to put himself at their head.
+
+This double game, which while it lasted constituted one of the most
+curious episodes in a series of events of which every detail was
+interesting, I shall refer to later in more detail, but before doing so
+must touch upon another, and perhaps just as instructive, question--the
+so-called refugees, whose misfortunes and subsequent arrogance caused so
+many anxious hours to Sir Alfred Milner during his tenure of office at the
+Cape and later on in Pretoria.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+IN FLIGHT FROM THE RAND
+
+
+One of the greatest difficulties with which the Imperial Government found
+themselves confronted when relations between Great Britain and the
+Transvaal became strained was the influx of refugees who at the first hint
+of impending trouble left Johannesburg and the Rand, and flocked to Cape
+Town.
+
+The greater number were aliens. From Russia in particular they had flocked
+to the Transvaal when they heard of its treasures. Adventurers from other
+parts of Europe, with a sprinkling of remittance men, also deserted
+Johannesburg. Only the few were real English residents who, from the time
+the Rand had begun to develop, had been living and toiling there in order
+to win sufficient for the maintenance of their families. All this mass of
+humanity, which passed unnoticed when scattered over wide areas in the
+vicinity of Pretoria or Johannesburg, had lived for many years in the
+expectation of the day when the power of the Transvaal Republic would be
+broken. They had discounted it perhaps more than they should have done had
+the dictates of prudence been allowed to take the lead against the wishes
+of their hearts.
+
+When war became imminent the big mining houses considered it wiser to
+close their offices and mines, and for these unfortunate beings, deprived
+of their means of existence, the position became truly a lamentable one.
+They could not very well remain where they were, because the Burghers, who
+had never taken kindly to them, made no secret of their hostility, and
+gave them to understand very clearly that as soon as war had been declared
+they would simply turn them out without warning and confiscate their
+property. Prudence advised no delay, and the consequence was that,
+beginning with the month of August, and, indeed, the very first days which
+followed upon the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference, a stream of
+people from the Transvaal began migrating toward Cape Colony, which was
+supposed to be the place where their sufferings would find a measure of
+relief that they vainly imagined would prove adequate to their needs. At
+the Cape, strangely enough, no one had ever given a thought to the
+possibility of such a thing happening. In consequence, the public were
+surprised by this persisting stream of humanity which was being poured
+into the Colony; the authorities, too, began to feel a despair as to what
+could be done. It is no exaggeration to say that for months many hundreds
+of people arrived daily from the north, and that so long as communications
+were kept open they continued to do so.
+
+At first the refugees inundated the lodging-houses in Cape Town, but these
+soon being full to overflowing, some other means had to be devised to
+house and feed them. Committees were formed, with whom the Government
+officials in the Colony worked with great zeal and considerable success
+toward alleviating the misery with which they found themselves confronted
+in such an unexpected manner. The Municipal Council, the various religious
+communities, the Medical men--one and all applied themselves to relief
+measures, even though they could not comprehend the reason of the blind
+rush to the Cape. Nor, in the main, could the refugees explain more
+lucidly than the one phrase which could, be heard on all sides, no matter
+what might have been the social position: "We had to go away because we
+did not feel safe on the Rand." In many cases it would have been far
+nearer to the truth to say that they had to go because they could no
+longer lead the happy-go-lucky existence they had been used to.
+
+The most to be pitied among these people were most certainly the Polish
+Jews, who originally had been expelled from Russia, and had come to seek
+their fortunes at Johannesburg. They had absolutely no one to whom they
+could apply, and, what was sadder still, no claim on anyone; on the
+English Government least of all. One could see them huddling together on
+the platform of Cape Town railway station, surrounded by bundles of rags
+which constituted the whole of their earthly belongings, not knowing at
+all what to do, or where to go to. Of course they were looked after,
+because English charity has never stopped before differences of race and
+creed, but still it was impossible to deny that their constantly
+increasing number added considerably to the difficulties of the situation.
+
+A Jewish Committee headed by the Chief Rabbi of Cape Town, the Rev. Dr.
+Bender, worked indefatigably toward the relief of these unfortunate
+creatures, and did wonders. A considerable number were sent to Europe, but
+a good many elected to remain where they were, and had to be provided for
+in some way till work could be found for them, which would at least allow
+them to exist without being entirely dependent on public charity. Among
+the aliens who showed a desire to remain in South Africa were many in
+possession of resources of their own; but they carefully concealed the
+fact, as, upon whatever it amounted to, they counted to rebuild their
+fortunes when Britain became sole and absolute mistress on the Rand.
+
+The most dangerous element in the situation was that group of easygoing
+loafers who lived on the fringe of finance and picked up a living by doing
+the odd things needed by the bigger speculators. When things began to be
+critical, these idlers were unable to make money without working, and
+while prating of their patriotism, made the British Government responsible
+for their present state of penury. These men had some kind of instruction,
+if not education, and pretended they understood all about politics, the
+government of nations, and last, but not least, the conduct of the war.
+Their free talk, inflamed with an enthusiasm got up for the occasion, gave
+to the stranger an entirely incorrect idea of the position, and was
+calculated to give rise to sharp and absolutely undeserved criticisms
+concerning the conduct of the administration at home, and of the
+authorities in the Colony. They also fomented hatred and spite between the
+English and the Dutch.
+
+The harm done by these people, at a moment when the efforts of the whole
+community ought to have been directed toward allaying race hatred, and
+smoothing down the differences which had arisen between the two white
+sections of the population, is almost impossible of realisation for one
+who was not in South Africa at the time, and who could not watch the slow
+and gradual growth of the atmosphere of lies and calumny which gradually
+divided like a crevasse the very people who, in unison, might have
+contributed more than anything else to bring the war to a close. One must
+not forget that among these refugees who poisoned the minds of their
+neighbours with foundationless tales of horror, there were people who one
+might have expected to display sound judgment in their appreciation of the
+situation, and whose relatively long sojourn in South Africa entitled them
+to be heard by those who found themselves for the first time in that
+country. They were mostly men who could talk well, even eloquently; and
+they discussed with such apparent knowledge all the circumstances which,
+according to them, had brought about the war, that it was next to
+impossible for the new-comers not to be impressed by their language--it
+seemed bubbling over with the most intense patriotism.
+
+The observer must take into account that among these people there happened
+to be a good many who, as the war went on, enrolled themselves in the
+various Volunteer Corps which were formed. These gave the benefit of their
+experience to the British officers, who relied on the knowledge and
+perception of their informants because of themselves, especially during
+the first months which followed upon their landing, they could not come to
+a clearly focused, impartial judgment of the difficulties with which they
+found their efforts confronted. One must also remember that these officers
+were mostly quite young men, full of enthusiasm, who flamed up whenever
+the word rebellion was mentioned in their presence, and who, having
+arrived in South Africa with the firm determination to win the war at all
+costs, must not be blamed if in some cases they allowed their minds to be
+poisoned by those who painted the plight of the country in such a
+lugubrious tint. If, therefore, acts of what appeared to be cruelty were
+committed by these officers, it would be very wrong to make them alone
+responsible, because they were mostly done out of a spirit of self-defence
+against an enemy whom they believed to be totally different from what he
+was in reality, and who if only he had not been exasperated, would have
+proved of better and healthier stuff than, superficially, his acts seemed
+to indicate.
+
+There was still another class of refugee, composed of what I would call
+the rich elements of the Rand: the financiers, directors of companies;
+managers and engineers of the different concerns to which Kimberley and
+Johannesburg owed their celebrity. From the very first these rightly
+weighed up the situation, and had been determined to secure all the
+advantages which it held for anyone who gave himself the trouble to
+examine it rationally. They came to Cape Town under the pretence of
+putting their families out of harm's way, but in reality because they
+wanted to be able to watch the development of the situation at its centre.
+They hired houses at exorbitant prices in Cape Town itself, or the
+suburbs, and lived the same kind of hospitable existence which had been
+theirs in Johannesburg. Their intention was to be at hand at the
+settlement, to put in their word when the question of the different
+financial interests with which they were connected would crop up--as it
+was bound to do.
+
+The well-to-do executive class forming the last group had the greatest
+cause to feel alarmed at the consequences which might follow upon the war.
+Although they hoped that they would be able to maintain themselves on the
+Rand in the same important positions which they had occupied previous to
+the war, yet they had enough common sense to understand that they would
+not be allowed under a British administration the same free hand that
+President Kruger had given, or which they had been able to obtain from him
+by means of "refreshers" administered in some shape or other. It is true
+that they had always the alternative of retiring from South Africa to Park
+Lane, whence they would be able to astonish Society, but they preferred to
+wait, in case the crash were still delayed for some little time.
+
+The big houses, such as Wernher, Beit and Co.--the head of which, at
+Johannesburg, was Mr. Fred Eckstein, a man of decided ability, who perhaps
+was one of those in South Africa who had judged the situation with
+accuracy--would have preferred to see the crisis delayed. Mr. Eckstein and
+other leading people knew very well that sooner or later the Transvaal was
+bound to fall to England, and they would have felt quite content to wait
+quietly until this event had been accomplished as a matter of course, by
+the force of circumstances, without violence. President Kruger was such an
+old man that one could, in a certain sense, discuss the consequences which
+his demise was bound to bring to South Africa. There was no real necessity
+to hurry on events, nor would they have been hurried had it not been for
+the efforts of the Rhodesians, whose complaints had had more than anything
+else to do with the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference, and all that
+followed upon that regrettable incident. It was the Rhodesians, and not
+the big houses of the Rand, who were most eager for the war.
+
+The exploitation of Rhodesia, the principal aim of which was the
+foundation of another Kimberley, had turned out to be a disappointment in
+that respect, and there remained nothing but making the best of it,
+particularly as countless companies had been formed all with a distinctly
+mineral character to their prospectuses. Now, if the Rand, with all its
+wealth and its still unexplored treasures, became an appanage of
+Kimberley, it would be relatively easy to effect an amalgamation between
+gold and diamond mines, which existed there, and the Rhodesian companies.
+Under these conditions it was but natural that despite an intelligent
+comprehension of the situation, Sir Alfred Milner was nevertheless unable
+to push forward his own plans in regard to the Transvaal and its aged
+President, Mr. Kruger.
+
+The misfortune of the whole situation, as I have already pointed out, was
+that the men who had attempted to play a high game of politics, in reality
+understood very little about them, and that instead of thinking of the
+interests of the Empire to which they professed themselves to be so deeply
+attached, they thought in terms of their personal outlook. Rhodes alone of
+those not in official position saw the ultimate aim of all these entangled
+politics. But unfortunately, though he had the capacities and experience
+of a statesman, he was not a patient man; indeed, throughout his life he
+had acted like a big spoiled child, to whom must be given at once whatever
+he desires. Too often he acted in the present, marring the future by
+thinking only of the immediate success of his plans, and brutally starting
+to work, regardless of consequences and of his personal reputation. Though
+his soul was essentially that of a financier and he would ride rough-shod
+over those who conducted their business affairs by gentler methods, yet at
+the same time, by a kind of curious contrast, he was always ready, nay,
+eager, to come to the material help of his neighbour--maybe out of
+affection for him; maybe out of that special sort of contempt which makes
+one sometimes throw a bone to a starving dog one has never seen before.
+The greatest misfortune in Rhodes' life was his faculty, too often applied
+upon occasions when it were best suppressed, of seeing the mean and sordid
+aspects of an action, and of imagining that every man could be bought,
+provided one knew the price. He was so entirely convinced of this latter
+fact that it always caused him a kind of impatience he did not even give
+himself the trouble to dissimulate, to find that he had been mistaken.
+This happened to him once or twice in the course of his career.
+
+The English party in the Colony regretted until the end of Rhodes' life
+the strange aberration that allowed the Raid, and made him sacrifice his
+reputation for the sake of hastening an event which, without his
+interference, would almost surely soon have come to pass. The salient
+feature of the Raid was its terrible stupidity; in that respect it was
+worse than a crime, for crime is forgotten, but nothing can efface from
+the memory of the world or the condemnation of history a colossally stupid
+political blunder.
+
+After the foolish attempt to seize hold of their country, the Boers
+distrusted British honour and British integrity; and doubting the word or
+promises of England, they made her responsible for this mistake of Cecil
+Rhodes. Rhodes, however, refused to recognise the sad fact. The big
+magnates of Johannesburg said that the wisest thing Rhodes could have done
+at this critical juncture would have been to go to Europe, there to remain
+until after the war, thus dissociating himself from the whole question of
+the settlement, instead of intriguing to be entrusted with it.
+
+The fact of Cecil Rhodes' absence would have cleared the whole situation,
+relieved Sir Alfred Milner, and given to the Boers a kind of political and
+financial security that peace would not be subject to the ambitions and
+prejudices of their enemies, but concluded with a view to the general
+interests of the country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+DEALING WITH THE REFUGEES
+
+
+The refugees were a continual worry and annoyance to the English community
+at the Cape. As time went on it became extremely difficult to conciliate
+the differing interests which divided them, and to prevent them from
+committing foolish or rash acts likely to compromise British prestige in
+Africa. The refugees were for the most boisterous people. They insisted
+upon being heard, and expected the whole world to agree with their
+conclusions, however unstable these might be. It was absolutely useless to
+talk reason to a refugee; he refused to listen to you, but considered
+that, as he had been--as he would put it--compelled to leave that modern
+paradise, the Rand, and to settle at Cape Town, it became the
+responsibility of the inhabitants of Cape Town to maintain him. Table
+Mountain echoed with the sounds of their vain talk. They considered that
+they were the only people who knew anything about what the English
+Government ought to do, and who criticised it the most, threatening at
+every moment that they would write to their influential friends--even the
+poorest and most obscure had "influential friends"--revealing the
+abominable way in which English interests were neglected in Cape Colony,
+where the Government, according to them, only helped the rebels, and
+considered their wants and requirements in preference to those of their
+own people.
+
+At first, when they were not known as they deserved to be, some persons
+fresh from the Mother Country, to whom South African morals and intrigues
+were unknown, took to heart the position as well as the complaints of
+those refugees. Hearing them continually mention cases in which rebel
+Dutch had, in this way or that, shown their want of allegiance to the
+British Government, conclusions were jumped at that there must exist a
+reason for these recriminations and allegations, and that British
+officials were in reality too anxious to conciliate the anti-English
+elements in the Colony, to the detriment of the loyalists, whose feelings
+of patriotism they considered, as a matter of course, required no reward
+and scarcely any encouragement. These people, unequipped with the truth,
+took up with a warmth which it certainly did not deserve the cause of
+these loyalists, sought their advice, and formed a totally wrong and even
+absurd opinion both as to South African politics and the conduct of the
+representatives of the Queen in Cape Town.
+
+All the misrepresentation and misunderstanding which took place
+increasingly, led to animosity on the part of the Dutch. Rightly or
+wrongly, it was taken as a matter of course that Rhodes favoured the idea
+of a total annihilation of the Cape Dutch. And as he was considered a kind
+of demigod by so many the idea was widely circulated, and became at last
+deeply rooted in the minds of most of the white population of South
+Africa, who, without being able to say why, considered it in consequence a
+part of its duty to exaggerate in the direction of advocating severity
+toward the Dutch. This did not contribute to smoothen matters, and it grew
+into a very real danger, inimical to the conclusion of an honourable and
+permanent peace. Federation, which at one time had been ardently wished
+for almost everywhere, became a new cause for anxiety as soon as it was
+known that Rhodes was in favour of it. People fancied that his ambitions
+lay in the direction of a kind of dictatorship exercised by himself over
+the whole of South Africa, a dictatorship which would make him in effect
+master of the country.
+
+This, however, was the last thing which the financiers on the Rand wished.
+Indeed, they became quite alarmed at the thought that it might become
+possible, and hastened to explain to Sir Alfred Milner the peril which
+such a thing, if it ever happened, would constitute for the community at
+large. Their constant attendance upon Sir Alfred, however, gave rise to
+the idea that these financiers wanted to have it all their own way with
+him and with the Cabinet at home, and that they meant to confiscate the
+Transvaal to their own profit.
+
+The presence of the moneyed class at the Cape had also another drawback:
+it exasperated the poorer refugees, who could not forgive those who, too,
+had fled the Rand, for having so successfully saved their own belongings
+from the general ruin and remained rich, when so many of those who had
+directly or indirectly helped them to acquire their wealth were starving
+at their door. In reality the magnates of the Rand spent huge sums in the
+relief of their poorer brethren in misfortune. I know from personal
+experience, having often solicited them in favour of, say, some
+unfortunate Russian Jew or a destitute Englishman who had lost all his
+earthly belongings through the war. These millionaires, popularly accused
+of being so hardhearted, were always ready with their purses to help those
+who appealed to their charity. But the fact that they were able to live in
+large and luxurious houses whilst so many others were starving in hovels,
+that their wives wore diamonds and pearls, and that they seemed still to
+be able to gratify their every desire, exasperated the multitude of
+envious souls congregated at the Cape.
+
+A general feeling of uneasiness and of unpleasantness began to weigh on
+the whole atmosphere, and as it was hardly possible for anyone to attack
+openly those who had inexhaustible purses, it became the fashion to say
+that the Dutch were responsible for the general misfortune, and to
+discover means of causing them unpleasantness.
+
+On the other hand, as the war went on and showed no signs of subsiding,
+the resources of those who, with perfect confidence in its short duration,
+had left the Rand at a moment's notice, began to dwindle the more quickly
+insomuch as they had not properly economised in the beginning, when the
+general idea was prevalent that the English army would enter Pretoria for
+the Christmas following upon the beginning of the war, and that an era of
+unlimited prosperity was about to dawn in the Transvaal. I do believe that
+among certain circles the idea was rooted that once President Kruger had
+been expelled from the Rand its mines would become a sort of public
+property accessible to the whole community at large, and controlled by all
+those who showed any inclination for doing so.
+
+The mine owners themselves looked upon the situation from a totally
+different point of view. They had gathered far too much experience
+concerning the state of things in South Africa to nurse illusions as to
+the results of a war which was bound to put an end to the corruption of
+the Transvaal Republic. They would have preferred infinitely to let things
+remain in the condition into which they had drifted since the Raid,
+because they understood that a strong British Government would be
+interested in putting an end to the abuses which had transformed the Rand
+into an annexe of the Stock Exchange of almost every European capital.
+But, as the war had broken out, they preferred that it should end, in the
+establishment of a regular administration which could neither be bought
+nor persuaded to serve interests in preference to the public. They did not
+relish the possible triumph of a single man, backed by a powerful
+financial company, with whom they had never lived upon particularly
+affectionate terms.
+
+Rather than see South Africa continue under the influence which had
+hitherto held it in grip, the magnates preferred to associate themselves
+with Sir Alfred Milner to bring about as soon as possible a Federation of
+the different South African States, where there would be no place for the
+ambition of a single individual, and where the domination of one financial
+company would become an impossibility. These magnates were reasonable
+people after all, quite content, after they had taken the cream, to allow
+others to drink. The fever for gold had left them. The fact was that these
+people were not at all anxious to remain at Johannesburg; they preferred
+to gather dividends in London rather than to toil in South Africa; the
+merry, merry days of the Rand had come to an end.
+
+Altogether, indeed, things were beginning to slow down at Johannesburg, in
+spite of the fictitious agitation by the Rhodesian party. The war had come
+as a relief to everybody, and afforded the magnates the opportunity which
+they had been longing for, to enforce order and economy upon a stringent
+scale in their mines and to begin modelling their concerns after a
+European fashion, closing the door upon adventurers and cutting off the
+"financial fringe." The times when new fields of exploitation were
+discovered every day were at an end; the treasures which the Transvaal
+contained in the way of precious metals and stones had all been located;
+and very few surprises could be expected in that direction. It was time
+for the pioneers to retire upon their laurels and to give to themselves,
+as well as to their fortunes, the sedate appearance which they required in
+order to be able to take a place amid the most elegant and exclusive
+society of Europe. Had Rhodes remained alive he would have proved the one
+great obstacle which the magnates of the Rand would have to take into
+consideration, the disturbing element in a situation that required calm
+and quiet.
+
+If Cecil Rhodes had been allowed to decide alone as to the best course of
+action to pursue he also might have come to the same conclusion as these
+magnates. During those moments when he was alone with his own thoughts and
+impulses he would have realised his duty toward his country. He was
+conscious, if others were not, of how utterly he had lost ground in South
+Africa, and he understood that any settlement of the South African
+difficulties could only become permanent if his name were not associated
+with it. This, though undeniable, was a great misfortune, because Rhodes
+understood so perfectly the art of making the best of every situation, and
+using the resources to hand, that there is no doubt he would have brought
+forward a practical solution of the problems which had cropped up on every
+side. He might have proved of infinite use to Sir Alfred Milner by his
+thorough knowledge of the Dutch character and of the leaders of the Dutch
+party with whom he had worked. But Rhodes was not permitted to decide
+alone his line of conduct: there were his supporters to be consulted, his
+so-called friends to pacify, the English Jingoes to satisfy, and, most
+difficult of all, the Bond and Dutch party to please. Moreover, he had
+been indulging in various intrigues of his own, half of which had been
+conducted through others and half carried out alone, with what he believed
+was success. In reality they proved to be more of these disappointments he
+had courted with a carelessness which would have appeared almost
+incredible if one did not know Cecil Rhodes. The Rhodesians, who with
+intention had contrived to compromise him, never left him a moment to his
+own thoughts. Without the flatterers who surrounded him Rhodes would
+undoubtedly have risen to the height of the situation and frankly and
+disinterestedly put himself at the disposal of the High Commissioner. But
+they managed so to irritate him against the representative of the Queen,
+so to anger him against the Dutch party to which he had belonged formerly,
+and so to persuade him that everybody was jealous of his successes, his
+genius and his position in South Africa, that it became relatively easy
+with a man of Rhodes' character to make him smart under the sense of
+non-appreciation. Thus goaded, Rhodes acted often without premeditation.
+
+In contrast to this impatience and the sense of unsatisfied vanity, the
+coolness and greatness of character of Sir Alfred Milner appeared in
+strong contrast, even though many friends of earlier days, such as W.T.
+Stead, had turned their backs upon Sir Alfred, accusing him of being the
+cause of all the misfortunes which fell upon South Africa. But those who
+thus condemned Sir Alfred did not understand the peculiar features of the
+situation. He was credited with inspiring all the harsh measures which
+were employed on occasion by others, measures which he had stridently
+disapproved. Rhodes, in his place, would have killed somebody or destroyed
+something; Sir Alfred went slowly on with his work, disdained praise as
+well as blame, and looked toward the future. I leave it to the reader to
+decide which of the two showed himself the better patriot.
+
+The refugees did not take kindly to the High Commissioner. They had been
+full of illusions concerning the help they fondly imagined he would be
+glad to offer them, and when they discovered that, far from taking them to
+his bosom, he discouraged their intention of remaining in Cape Town until
+the end of the war, they grumbled and lied with freedom. Sir Alfred gave
+them very distinctly to understand that they had better not rely on the
+British Government to feed and clothe them. He said that they would be
+well advised to try to find some work which would allow them to keep
+themselves and their families. But especially he recommended them to go
+back to Europe, which, he gravely assured the refugees, was the best place
+for them and their talents. This did not please those refugees who posed
+as martyrs of their English patriotism and as victims of the hatred of
+Kruger and of the Dutch. They expected to be petted and flattered as those
+looked up to as the saviours of the Empire.
+
+All the foregoing applies to the middle-class section of the refugees. The
+poorer ones grumbled also, but in a different manner, and their irritation
+was rather directed towards the military authorities. As for the
+millionaires, with a few exceptions they also did not care for the High
+Commissioner for reasons elaborated in earlier pages of this volume. They
+even considered that it would be prejudicial to their interests to allow
+Rhodes to be upon too intimate terms with Sir Alfred Milner, so they kept
+a faithful watch at Government House as well as at Groote Schuur, and in
+doing so added to the tension which, up to the last moment of Sir Alfred's
+tenure of office at Cape Town, existed between him and Cecil Rhodes. Too
+courteous to tell his redoubtable adversary that he had better mind his
+own business, convinced, on the other hand, of the latter's great
+capacities and great patriotism, Sir Alfred was constantly doing all that
+he could do in reason to pacify him. Cecil Rhodes used to make most bitter
+and untrue remarks as to the stupidity of the Imperial Government at home
+and the incapacity of the men in charge of its armies in South Africa. All
+this was repeated right and left with the usual exaggeration, and reached,
+as perhaps was intended, those whom it concerned. The result was that
+Rhodes found himself tabooed at Pretoria. This he said was due to the
+great fear which his influence over public opinion in South Africa
+inspired among those in command there.
+
+The big trouble with Rhodes was that he would never own himself in the
+wrong. He quibbled, he hesitated, he postponed replies to questions
+submitted for his consideration. He wearied everybody around him with his
+constant prevarications in regard to facts he ought to have accepted
+without flinching if he wanted to regain some of his lost prestige.
+Unfortunately for himself and for the cause of peace in South Africa,
+Rhodes fancied himself immensely clever at "biding his time," as he used
+to say. He had ever lurking somewhere in his brain the conviction that one
+day the whole situation at Cape Town and Pretoria would become so
+entangled that they would have to send for him to beg him as a favour to
+step round and by his magic touch unravel all difficulties. His curious
+shyness, his ambition and his vanity battled with each other so long that
+those in authority at last came to the sad conclusion that it was far
+better to look elsewhere for support in their honest efforts at this
+important moment in the existence of the African Continent.
+
+One last attempt was made. It was backed up by people in London, among
+others by Stead. Stead liked the Great Imperialist as well as one man can
+like another, and had a great and justified confidence in Rhodes' good
+heart as well as in that indefinable nobility which manifested itself at
+times in his strange, wayward nature. Moreover, being gifted with a keen
+sense of intuition, the famous journalist realised quite well the immense
+work that might have been done by England through Rhodes had the latter
+consented to sweep away those men around him who were self-interested.
+
+But Rhodes preferred to maintain his waiting attitude, whilst trying at
+the same time to accumulate as many proofs as possible that people wanted
+him to assert himself at last. It was the fact that these proofs were
+denied to him at the very minute when he imagined he held them already in
+his hands which led to his suddenly turning once more against the persons
+he had been almost on the point of propitiating. It led him to begin the
+movement for the suspension of the Constitution in Cape Colony, out of
+which he expected so much and which he intended to use as his principal
+weapon against the enemies whom he suspected. That was the last great
+political venture in his life; it failed, but merciful Providence allowed
+him not to see the utter collapse of his latest house of cards.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+UNDER MARTIAL LAW
+
+
+It may be useful, or at any rate of interest, before I lay my pen aside,
+to refer to several things which, at the time they occurred, caused
+torrents of ink to flow both in England and in South Africa.
+
+The most important, perhaps, was the application of martial law in Cape
+Colony. I must repeat that I hold no brief for England. My affection and
+admiration for her does not go to the extent of remaining absolutely blind
+to faults she has made in the past, and perhaps is making in the present.
+I will not deny that martial law, which, unfortunately, is a necessity in
+wartime, was sometimes applied with severity in South Africa. But the
+odium rests principally on the loyalists; their spiteful information in
+many cases induced British officers to treat as rebels people who had
+never even dreamt of rebellion.
+
+It must not be forgotten that those to whom was entrusted the application
+of martial law had perforce to rely on local residents, whom they could
+not possibly suspect of using these officers to satisfy private
+animosities of further private interests. These British officers had never
+been used to see suspicion reign as master, or to watch a perfectly
+conscious twisting of the truth in order to condemn, or even destroy,
+innocent people. A young and probably inexperienced officer sent into a
+small place like Aliwal North or Uitenhage, for instance, found himself
+obliged to rely for information as to the loyalty of the inhabitants on
+some adventurer who, through capitalist influence, had obtained an
+executive post of some kind. How can one wonder, therefore, that many
+regrettable incidents occurred and were immediately made capital of by the
+Bond party further to embitter the feelings of the Dutch Colonists?
+
+Many illegal acts were performed under martial law; of some a mention was
+made in the Cape Town Parliament; these, therefore, do not admit of doubt.
+For instance, as Mr. Neethling said in the Legislative Council, a man of
+seventy was sent down from Paarl to Beaufort West without being allowed to
+say good-bye to his wife, who was left behind without means of support.
+Their house was searched for papers, but without result, and the man--a
+member of the Afrikander Bond--was sent back, after eighteen months'
+deportation, without any charge having been made against him. He was an
+auctioneer and shipping agent, and during his absence his business was
+annexed by a rival. One British Colonial, who held office at Stellenbosch,
+said to one family, without even making an inquiry as to their conduct,
+"You are rebels and I will take your mules"--which was done. The mules
+were afterwards sold to the Commissariat Department by the man who had
+commandeered them. Is it a matter of astonishment, therefore, that many
+people felt sore and bitter at all that they had undergone and were going
+through?
+
+The administration of martial law in the country districts was absolutely
+deplorable; but when one examines minutely the circumstances of the cases
+of injustice about which one could have no doubt, it always emerged that
+these never proceeded from British officers, who, on the contrary,
+wherever they found themselves in command, invariably acted with humanity.
+The great mistake of the military authorities was that they had far too
+much confidence in the Volunteer Corps and those members of it who were
+only anxious to make money out of existing circumstances. Unfortunately,
+certain officers in command of the different corps were extreme Jingoes,
+and this distorted their whole outlook. People said at the time of the war
+that some districts of Cape Colony had been turned into hells; some
+things, in truth, called for strong comment. No words could be energetic
+enough to describe the manner in which martial law had been
+administered--in the district of Graaf Reinet, for instance. The
+commandants--this justice must be rendered to them--generally meant well,
+but, unfortunately, they were assisted by men of less stable character as
+intelligence officers. These, in their turn, unwisely without due inquiry,
+engaged subordinates, upon whom they relied for their information. Graaf
+Reinet people had had to put up with something akin to the Spanish
+Inquisition. Men there were afraid to speak for fear of espionage, the
+most innocent remarks were distorted by spies recruited from an uncertain
+section of the community. A cattle inspector was deported without trial;
+in consequence, the Secretary for Agriculture decided not to employ him
+again; at Graaf Reinet a Colonial intelligence officer constantly declared
+in public that it was his intention to drive the people into rebellion;
+and so instances could be multiplied.
+
+The rebellion was not due to martial law. In Graaf Reinet the prison was
+frequently so crowded, often by men who did not in the least know why,
+that no more sleeping accommodation could be found in it. People were in
+durance vile because they would not join the town guard or defence force.
+So overcrowded the prison became that many persons contracted disease
+during their incarceration.
+
+For these sad occurrences the Cape Government was not initially to blame;
+more than once they had remonstrated with the local military authorities,
+but reports concerning their conduct were not allowed to reach the ears of
+Lord Roberts or of Lord Kitchener. Very often a Hottentot informed against
+respectable citizens to the intelligence officer, and by virtue of that
+they were imprisoned as long as the military authorities deemed fit. When
+released, a man would sometimes find that his house had been sacked and
+his most valuable property carried away. Persons were deported at an
+hour's notice without reasons being given, and thereafter scouts took
+possession of their farms and plundered and destroyed everything. Four
+wagon-loads of men, women and children were deported from their homes at
+Beaufort West. In vain did they ask what they had done. Everybody of the
+name of Van Zyl in the district of Graaf Reinet was deported! not a single
+person was left on their farms except those who had driven them out of
+them. And after these had done their work the victims were told, "Now you
+can return home." Some had to walk back many miles to their farms, to find
+only ruin left. Many white people were imprisoned on the mere evidence of
+coloured persons, the reputation for veracity of whom was well known all
+over South Africa, and whose evidence against a white man would never have
+been admitted in any court of law previous to the war.
+
+In Uitenhage the same kind of thing occurred. It was sufficient for a Boer
+column to pass near the farm of an Afrikander for the latter to be taken
+to prison without the slightest investigation. No one knew where the fines
+paid went, and certainly a good many of those which were imposed by the
+commanders of the scouts and volunteer corps never reached the coffers of
+the Government.
+
+At Cradock, Somerset East, Graaf Reinet and Middelburg people were
+compelled to eradicate prickly pears and do other hard labour simply
+because they had remained quietly at home, according to the proclamation
+issued by Sir Alfred Milner, and refused to join a volunteer corps of some
+sort or other. Many magistrates, acting on instructions, forced guiltless
+people to walk a four to six hours' drive under the pretence of subduing
+their spirits.
+
+One case especially was of such a flagrant nature that it illustrates how
+far the malice of these so-called loyalists went and the harm which their
+conduct did to the British Government. The act which I am going to relate
+would never have been committed by any genuine English officer, no matter
+under what provocation. There is also a detail which must be noticed: by a
+strange coincidence all the victims of oppression were, with but few
+exceptions, men of means, whom, therefore, it was worth while to plunder.
+The story is that a certain Mr. Schoeman, a man of wealth and position
+residing on Vlakteplaats, a farm in the division of Oudtshoorn, received,
+on August 28th, 1901, a message through his son from the military scouts
+who were stationed at De Jaeger's farm in the neighbourhood, instructing
+him to hand over his horses to their care. No written order from the
+Commandant was exhibited to Mr. Schoeman, either at that time or on his
+request, nor was any evidence adduced at his trial later on to prove that
+such an order had really been given by an officer administering martial
+law in the district. Nevertheless, Mr. Schoeman obeyed the order, and on
+the same afternoon sent his horses, three in number, to De Jaeger. The
+scouts refused to take his horses, and told them to bring them on the
+following morning, Thursday, August 29th. This Schoeman did; on coming to
+the place with them he found that the scouts had left, and was obliged to
+take the animals again back to his farm. On the afternoon of that same day
+he received a message from the scouts, and in reply told them to come and
+see him. He had meanwhile, for safety's sake, sent two horses to be
+concealed away from his stable, and kept one, a stallion, at the
+homestead.
+
+The next day, Friday, Boers appeared early in the afternoon. They took the
+stallion, and the following day they returned and asked where the other
+horses were. Mr. Schoeman declined to give any information, but they
+discovered and seized them. Immediately after the Boers had left, Mr.
+Schoeman dispatched one of his farm boys named Barry to De Jaeger, the
+nearest military post, to report the occurrence. The scouts had, however,
+disappeared, and he learned from De Jaeger that before leaving they had
+received a report of the presence of the Boers. On the return of Barry,
+Mr. Schoeman endeavoured to obtain another messenger. Owing to the state
+of the country, which was infested with the enemy, his efforts proved
+unavailing.
+
+During the next week Mr. Schoeman, with a considerable number of his
+neighbours, was ordered to Oudtshoorn. On his arrival he was arrested,
+without any charge or warrant, and confined for some three months, bail
+being refused. No preliminary examination was held as provided in the
+instructions on martial law issued May 1st, 1901. On Sunday, December 1st,
+it was notified to Mr. Schoeman that he would be tried on the following
+day, and the charges were for the first time communicated to him. On
+December 2nd the court assembled and Mr. Schoeman was charged with three
+offences:
+
+1. For not having handed his horses over to the proper military
+authorities, whereby they fell into the hands of the enemy.
+
+2. For having been on friendly terms with the enemy.
+
+3. For having failed to report the presence of the enemy.
+
+He was found guilty on the first and last charges and not guilty on the
+second count, being sentenced to six months' hard labour and to pay a fine
+of £500, or to suffer a further term of twelve months' hard labour in lieu
+of the fine. The sentence was confirmed, the fine was paid by Mr.
+Schoeman, and he underwent the imprisonment for one month with hard labour
+and for five months without hard labour, which was remitted upon order
+from Lord Kitchener, who, without even being fully instructed as to the
+circumstances of the case, of his own accord lightened the terrible
+sentence passed upon Mr. Schoeman.
+
+Later on Mr. Schoeman was cleared of the calumnies that had been the cause
+of his suffering. In this case, as in many others, the victim was the
+object of the private vengeance of a man who had had a grudge against him,
+and repaid it in that abominable manner.
+
+One of the worst mistakes among the many committed during the South
+African War was to allow residents to be invested with what was nothing
+less than unlimited authority over their fellow-citizens. The British
+Government, which was made responsible for these acts, would never have
+given its sanction to any one of them; mostly, it was unaware of the
+original facts. The English military authorities dealt in absolute good
+faith, which makes the more shameful the conduct of those who wilfully led
+them into error. Their one fault was not to realise that certain
+individuals were not fit to administer martial law. In one particular
+district the man in authority seemed to have as the single aim of his life
+the punishment of anyone with Dutch sympathies or of Dutch blood. It was
+useless to appeal to him, because whenever a complaint was brought by an
+inhabitant of the district he simply refused to listen to it, and poured a
+torrent of abuse at the head of the bringer. One of his most notorious
+actions was the treatment which, by his orders, was inflicted on an old
+man who enjoyed the general esteem of both the English and the Dutch
+community, a former member of the House of Assembly. His house was
+searched, the floors were taken up, and the whole garden was dug out of
+recognition in a search for documents that might have proved that his son,
+or himself, or any other member of his family had been in correspondence
+with the two Republics. All this kind of thing was done on hearsay
+evidence, behind which lay personal motives. Had the settlement of the
+country been left entirely in the hands of Lord Kitchener, nothing
+approaching what I have related could have occurred. Unfortunately for all
+concerned, this was precisely the thing which the Rhodesian and other
+interests opposed. Much of the loyalty, about which such a fuss was made
+at the Cape, was loyalty to the sovereign in the pocket, and not loyalty
+to the Sovereign on the throne. This concern for wealth was seen in many
+aspects of life in South Africa, and occasionally invaded drastically the
+realm of social well-being. A case in point was the opposition by the
+financial interests to a tax on brandy. In South Africa drunkenness was
+one of the worst evils, especially among the coloured race, yet the
+restrictive influence of a tax was withheld. The underlying motive was
+nothing but the desire to avoid the tax on diamonds, which every
+reasonable person claimed and considered to be a source of revenue of
+which the Government had no right to deprive itself. While Rhodes lived
+the legislation introduced and maintained by his powerful personality
+revealed the policy of compromise which he always pursued. He was
+eminently practical and businesslike. He said to the members of the Bond,
+"Don't you tax diamonds and I won't tax dop," as the Cape brandy is
+called. The compact was made and kept in his lifetime.
+
+When Rhodes was dead and a big democratic British element had come into
+the country after the war, those in power began wondering how it was that
+diamonds, which kept in luxury people who did not live in the country and
+consequently had no interest whatever in its prosperity, were not taxed.
+The Ministry presided over by Sir Gordon Sprigg shared this feeling, and
+in consequence found itself suddenly forsaken by its adherents of the day
+before, and the Rhodesian Press in full cry against the Government. Sir
+Gordon Sprigg was stigmatised as a tool of the Bond and as disloyal to the
+Empire after the fifty years he had worked for it, with rare
+disinterestedness and great integrity. Nevertheless, the Ministry declared
+that, as there existed an absolute necessity for finding new resources to
+liquidate the expenses contingent on the war, it would propose a tax on
+diamonds and another one on dop.
+
+The exasperation of the Rhodesian party, which was thus roused, was the
+principal reason why the agitation for the suspension of the Constitution
+in Cape Colony was started and pursued so vigorously in spite of the small
+chance it had to succeed. His support of this agitation may be called the
+death-bed effort of Rhodes. When he was no longer alive to lend them his
+strong hand, the Rhodesian party was bound to disperse. They tried in vain
+to continue his policy, but all their efforts to do so failed, because
+there was nothing really tangible for them to work upon.
+
+With Cecil Rhodes came to an end also what can be called the romantic
+period of the history of South Africa, that period during which fortunes
+were made and lost in a few days; when new lands were discovered and
+conquered with a facility and a recklessness that reminded one of the
+Middle Ages. The war established an equilibrium which but for it would
+have taken years to be reached. It sealed the past and heralded the dawn
+of a new day when civilisation was to assert itself, to brush away many
+abuses, much cruelty and more injustice. The race hatred which the
+personality of Rhodes had done so much to keep alive, collapsed very
+quickly after his death, and as time went on the work done with such
+unselfishness and such quiet resolution by Sir Alfred Milner began to bear
+fruit. It came gradually to be understood that the future would justify
+his aims.
+
+[Illustration: THE RT. HON. SIR JOHN GORDON SPRIGG]
+
+The war was one of those colossal crises which shake the foundations of a
+country and change the feelings of a whole generation of men and women in
+regard to each other. Whilst it lasted it roused the worst passions and
+showed up the worst aspects of the character of the people who played a
+part in it; but once it was over the false fabric upon which the
+animosities of the day before had been built fell. A serious and more
+enlightened appreciation of the events that had brought about the
+cataclysm which had cleared the air took the place of the furious outburst
+of hatred that had preceded it. People began to realise that it was not
+possible, on a continent where Europeans constituted but a small minority,
+that they could give the coloured races a terrible example of disunion and
+strife and still maintain dominance. Both the English and Dutch had at
+last recognised the necessity for working together at the great task of a
+Federation of the South African States, which would allow the whole of the
+vast Southern Continent to develop itself on a plane of higher progress
+under the protection of the British flag. This Union was conceived many,
+many years earlier by Cecil Rhodes. It was his great spirit that thought
+of making into one great nation the agglomeration of small nationalities,
+white and black, that lay over the veldt and impenetrable forests of South
+and Central Africa. For a long space of years Cecil Rhodes was South
+Africa.
+
+So long as Rhodes lived it would have been impossible for South Africa
+to escape the influence of his brain, which was always plotting and
+planning for the future whilst forgetting more often than was healthy or
+wise the preoccupations of the present. After the Queen's flag had been
+hoisted at Pretoria, Cecil Rhodes alive would have proved an anomaly in
+South Africa. Cecil Rhodes dead would still retain his position as a
+dreamer and a thinker, a man who always pushed forward without heeding the
+obstacles, forgetful of aught else but the end he was pursuing, the
+country which he loved so well, and, what he cared for even more, his own
+ambition. Men like Rhodes--with all their mistakes to mar their dazzling
+successes--cannot be replaced; it is just as difficult to take up their
+work as it is to fill the gap caused by their disappearance.
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+I have come to the end of what I intended at first to be a book of
+recollections but which has resolved itself into one of impressions. A
+more competent pen than mine will one day write the inner history of this
+South African War, which by an anomaly of destiny had quite different
+results from those expected. So many things have occurred since it
+happened that the whole sequence of events, including the war, is now
+looked upon by many people as a simple incident in a long story.
+
+In reality the episode was something more than that. It was a
+manifestation of the great strength of the British Empire and of the
+wonderful spirit of vitality which has carried England triumphantly
+through crises that would have wrecked any other nation. The incidents
+which followed the war proved the generosity that lies at the bottom of
+the English character and the grandeur that comes out of it in those grave
+moments when the welfare of a nation appears to be at stake and its rulers
+are unable to apply to a succession of evils and dangers the right remedy
+to bring about peace and contentment. No other nations possess this
+remarkable and distinctive feature. England very wisely refused to notice
+the bitterness which still persisted in the early days after the
+conclusion of peace, and devoted her energies to the one immense and
+immediate work of Federation.
+
+The colossal work of Union had been conceived in the shape which it was
+eventually to assume by Sir Alfred Milner, who, after having laid the
+foundations, was patriot enough to allow others to achieve its
+consummation, because he feared the unjust estimate of his character,
+disseminated by interested persons, might compromise the desired object
+and far-reaching possibilities of an enterprise which the most sanguine
+had never imagined could be accomplished within so short a space of time.
+He had toiled courageously toward the founding of a new State where the
+rights of every white as well as of every coloured man should be respected
+and taken into account, and where it would be impossible for a handful of
+rich men by the mere power of riches to control the lives and consciences
+of others.
+
+The time of Sir Alfred Milner's administration was the transitory period
+between the primitive and the civilised that no nation escapes, and this
+period Sir Alfred used in working toward the establishment of a strong and
+wise government. Whether the one which started its course of existence on
+the day when the Federation of South Africa became an accomplished fact
+was strong and wise it is not for me to say. At least it was a patriotic
+government, one which worked sincerely at the abolition of the race hatred
+which the war had not entirely killed, and also one which recognised that
+after all it was the principle of Imperial government that alone could
+bring back prosperity and security to unfortunate and bleeding South
+Africa.
+
+The war gave to the Empire the loyal support and co-operation of the Dutch
+population at the Cape and also in the Transvaal, and the fidelity with
+which General Botha fulfilled his duty toward the Mother Country in the
+difficult moments of 1914 proved the strong link forged in 1902 between
+the British Empire and South Africa. Now that years have passed it is
+possible to look with a less passionate eye upon the past and upon the men
+who took a leading part in the events which gave to the British Empire
+another fair dominion. They appear to us as they really were, and we can
+more justly accord them their proper valuation. The personality of Cecil
+Rhodes will always remain a great one; his merits and his defects will be
+reduced to their proper relative proportions, and the atmosphere of
+adulation or antagonism which, as the occasion suited, was poured upon
+him, be dissipated by time's clarifying influences. His real work
+consisted in the opening of new sources of wealth and new spheres of
+activity to a whole multitude of his fellow-countrymen, and of giving his
+native land an extension of its dominions in regions it had never
+penetrated before Cecil Rhodes' enterprising spirit of adventure and of
+conquest sent him into the wilderness of Africa to open a new and
+radiating centre of activity and development for his country. The
+conception of the Cape to Cairo Railway was one of those projects for
+which his country will ever remain grateful.
+
+Yes! Rhodes was a great Englishman in spite of his faults, and perhaps on
+account of his faults. Beside the genius of a Darwin or of a Pasteur, the
+talent of a Shakespeare or of a Milton, the science of a Newton or of a
+Lister, his figure seems a small one indeed, and it is absurd to raise him
+to the same level as these truly wonderful men. The fact that the activity
+of Cecil Rhodes lay in quite a different direction does not, however,
+diminish the real importance of the work which he did, nor of the services
+which he rendered to his country. The mistake is to judge him as a
+universal genius. His genius had a particular bent; it was always directed
+toward one point and one only, that of material advantages to be acquired
+for the nation to which he belonged and of which he was so proud to be the
+son. Without him South Africa would possibly have been lost for the
+British Empire, which owes him most certainly a great debt in that
+respect.
+
+The years which have gone by since his death have proved that in many
+things Rhodes had been absolutely mistaken. Always he was an attractive,
+and at times even a lovable, personality; a noble character marred by
+small acts, a generous man and an unscrupulous foe; violent in temper,
+unjust in his view of facts that displeased him, understanding chiefly his
+personal interests, true to those whom he considered his friends, but
+implacable toward the people whom he himself had wronged. He was a living
+enigma to which no one had ever found a solution; because he presented
+constantly new and unexpected sides that appeared suddenly and shattered
+the conclusion to which one had previously arrived.
+
+In Europe Rhodes would not only have been impossible, but he would never
+have found the opportunity to give full rein to his faculties of
+organisation and of conquest. He knew no obstacles and would admit none in
+his way; he was of the type of Pizarro and of Fernando Cortez, with fewer
+prejudices, far more knowledge, and that clear sense of civilisation which
+only an Englishman born and bred amid the traditions of liberty can
+possess. But he was lacking in the fine political conception of government
+which Sir Alfred Milner possessed, and whilst refusing to admit the
+thought of compromise in matters where a little yielding to the wishes and
+desires of others might have secured him considerable advantage, he yet
+allowed himself to become entangled in intrigues which he denied as soon
+as he perceived that they could not be successful, but for which the world
+always condemned and never forgave, and even in some cases despised him.
+
+Notwithstanding the great brilliance of his intelligence and the strength
+of his mind, Cecil Rhodes will always be found inferior to the present
+Viscount Milner as a statesman. Rhodes could not and would not wait.
+Milner spent his whole existence in waiting, and waited so successfully
+that he lived to see the realisation of the plans which he had made and
+which so many, even among his friends, had declared to be quite impossible
+for him to realise. Milner, about whose tact and mental greatness so many
+false notions existed in South Africa as well as elsewhere, had been the
+one man who had seen clearly the consequences of the war. As he told me
+one day when we were talking about the regrettable race-hatred which lent
+such animosity to the struggle: "It will cease sooner than one thinks."
+
+The wise administrator, who had studied human nature so closely as he had
+done politics, had based his judgments on the knowledge which he had
+acquired of the spirit of colonisation which makes Great Britain so
+superior to any other nation in the world, and his belief that her
+marvellous spirit of adaptation was bound to make itself felt in South
+Africa as it had elsewhere. Sir Alfred Milner knew that as time went on
+the Afrikanders would realise that their erstwhile enemies had given them
+the position to which they had always aspired, a position which entitled
+them to take a place among the other great nations of the world. He knew,
+too, that their natural spirit of pride and of vanity would make them
+cherish the Empire that had allowed them to realise their ambitions of the
+past. Until the war they had been proud of their gold and of their
+diamonds; after the war they would be proud of their country. And by the
+consciousness which would gradually come to them of the advantages which
+their Federation under the British flag had brought to them they would
+become also ardent British patriots--blessing the day when, in a passing
+fit of insanity, goaded into it by people who had never seen clearly the
+situation, President Kruger had declared war on England.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Africa, South, charm of, 22
+      conquest of, 1
+      drunkenness in, 223
+      English colonists, 14
+      prior to Boer War, 6
+      Union of (_see_ Union)
+
+Afrikander Bond, 86, 99
+      and Rhodes, 73, 82, 84
+      and Sir A. Milner, 134
+
+Afrikander party compel Rhodes' resignation, 50
+Aliwal North concentration camp, 182
+America's response to concentration camp appeal, 165
+
+
+         B
+
+Barkly West, Rhodes elected for, 28
+Barnato, Barney, 24, 137
+      his awe of Rhodes, 60
+Beit, Alfred, 24
+Bender, Rev. Dr., Chief Rabbi of Cape Town, 194
+Bloemfontein, concentration camp at, 182, 184
+Bloemfontein Conference, the, 13, 16, 140
+      failure of, 67, 104
+Boer War, concentration camps, 157 _et seq._
+      not a war of annihilation, 3
+      prime cause of, 128, 137, 139, 178
+      Rhodes' prophecy, 67
+Boers, the, mistrust of England after the Raid, 200
+      pre-war hygienic conditions of, 160 (_Cf. also_ Dutch)
+Botha, General, 83
+      imperialism of, xii, 229
+British Empire, South Africa added to, 3
+British Government, the, a missed opportunity, 41
+      and Boer concentration camps, 162
+British South Africa Company, constitution of, 44
+          (_See also_ Chartered Company)
+Brooke-Hunt, Miss, in Pretoria, 186
+Buller, Sir Redvers, and siege of Kimberley, 94, 95
+
+
+         C
+
+Cape Colony, diamond fields, 3
+      loyalty to England, 129
+      martial law in, 214 _et seq._
+      mutiny of Dutch in, 8
+      overcrowded prisons, 217
+      Rhodes as Premier, 30, 43, 44
+      Sir Gordon Sprigg as Premier, 99, 121
+Cape to Cairo Railway, 81, 124, 229
+Cape Town, influx of refugees, 191 _et seq._
+Chamberlain, Joseph, 104
+      policy of, 133
+Chartered Company of South Africa, 25, 26, 78, 80
+      sinister rumours, 45
+Concentration camps, 141, 142, 157
+      hygienic conditions of, 160
+      inner organisation, 173
+      Miss Hobhouse's charges, and Mrs. Henry Fawcett's reply to, 165, 181
+      necessity for, 161
+      rations, 171
+Cronje, General, 94
+
+
+         D
+
+De Beers Consolidated Mines, 24, 80, 112
+      power of Company, 114
+Delagoa Bay, 91
+Dop tax, the, 223
+Dutch, the, and Dr. Jameson, 149
+      and Sir A. Milner, 151
+      enmity with English, 11
+      mutiny in Cape Colony, 8
+      popularity of Rhodes with, 30, 43, 73
+      reconciliation with English, 129 (_Cf. also_ Boers)
+
+
+         E
+
+Eckstein, F., 97, 197
+England acquires the Transvaal, 1
+      the question of concentration camps, 159
+English, the
+      as colonists, 14, 15
+      enmity with the Dutch, 11
+      reconciliation with the Dutch, 129
+
+
+         F
+
+Fawcett, Mrs. Henry, reply to Miss Hobhouse, 181
+Frenchman, a, and a Johannesburg mining property, 64
+
+
+         G
+
+Glen Grey Act, the, 126
+Graaf Reinet, martial law in, 216
+Green Point (Cape Town) concentration camp, 170
+Groote Schuur, the house and gardens, 153
+
+
+         H
+
+Hammond, John Hays, 138
+Hely-Hutchinson, Sir W.F., 99
+Hobhouse, Miss, pamphlet on concentration camps, 165 _et seq._
+Hofmeyr, Mr., 38, 43, 83, 84, 86, 135, 150, 155
+      popularity of, 136
+
+
+         I
+
+I.D.B. Act, the, unwisdom of, 113
+Imperial Commission report on concentration camps, 166
+
+
+         J
+
+Jameson, Dr., affection for Rhodes, 72, 148
+      becomes Prime Minister, 73
+      death of, 148 (note)
+      enters Transvaal territory, 47 (_see_ Jameson Raid)
+      political aspirations of, 56
+      Progressive leader, 72
+      relations   with   Rhodes   after   the raid, 54
+      rumours of his forthcoming raid, 45
+      the Dutch and, 149
+Jameson Raid, the, 9, 30
+      a colossal blunder, 200
+      aftermath of, 69
+      its aim, 53
+      tacitly encouraged by Rhodes, 51, 67
+Jews, Polish, plight of, 193
+Jingoes, the, 69, 107, 130, 135, 142, 163, 216
+Joel, S., 24
+Johannesburg, a shady operation in, 63
+      flight from, 191
+      goldfields of, 24
+
+
+         K
+
+Kekewich, Colonel, entrusted with defence of Kimberley, 94
+Kimberley, diamond mines in, 17, 24, 87
+      relief of, 116
+      Rhodes' purchase of plots in, 21
+      Rhodes' secret negotiations, 76
+      siege of, 75, 83, 94
+      the I.D.B. Act in operation, 113
+Kitchener, Lord, and Boer concentration camps, 159
+      intervenes in the Schoeman case, 221
+      Rhodes and, 147
+Koopman, Mrs. van, author's admiration for, 48
+      disillusionment of, 47, 74, 146
+      her alarm at raid rumours, 45
+      intimacy with Rhodes, 40
+      Rhodes denies raid projected, 46
+      under police supervision, 48
+Kruger, President, 30, 53, 198
+      and Mrs. van Koopman, 40
+      candid criticisms of Rhodes, 92, 93
+      death sentence for Reformers, 51
+      "refreshers" for, 197
+      Rhodes attempts alliance with, 90
+      Rhodes' _bête-noire_, 150
+      Rhodes' duplicity, 74
+      warned against Sir A. Milner, 104
+
+
+         L
+
+Ladysmith, relief of, 116
+Lobengula, King, 36
+      and Rhodesia, 25
+      Cecil Rhodes and, 19
+      his son becomes one of Rhodes' gardeners, 37
+Loyalists and concentration camps, 174
+
+
+         M
+
+Mafeking concentration camp, 186
+Majuba, defeat of British at, 73
+Martial law in Cape Colony, 214 _et seq._
+"Martyrdom of Man" (Reade's), its influence on Rhodes, 126
+Matabele Rebellion, the, Rhodes' courage in, 43
+Matabeleland, 19
+      acquired by the Chartered Company, 26, 90, 112
+Matoppo Hills, an historic meeting, 43
+    Rhodes' burial-place, 72
+Maxwell, Lady, an appeal by, 164
+Merriman, Mr., 134, 150
+    severs relations with Rhodes, 73
+Methuen, Lord, mandate to Rhodes, 95
+Milner, Sir (Viscount) Alfred, 4, 58
+      a hint to Rhodes, 147
+      and the Boers, 12, 85, 132
+      and Rhodes, 74, 140, 148
+      and the De Beers Company, 115
+      appointed Governor of Cape Colony, 8, 85
+      dignified speech, 134
+      efforts for peace, 156
+      his great object, 86
+      influence of, 104
+      misunderstood and misjudged 7, 12, 85, 104, 107, 108, 180, 228
+      overruled from Whitehall, 135
+      policy of conciliation, 130
+      reports from Rhodes on defence of Kimberley, 94
+      Rhodes' distrust of, 13, 75
+      the refugees and, 210
+      the South African League, 90
+      transferred to Johannesburg, 99
+
+
+         N
+
+Napoleon, Pius VII. on, 35
+Neethling, Mr., and martial law in Cape Colony, 215
+
+
+         O
+
+Orange Free State, flight of the populace, 158
+      illusions of the Dutch in, 176
+      resources of, 8
+
+
+         P
+
+Pius VII., Pope, on Napoleon, 35
+Polish Jews, plight of, 193
+Pretoria, British flag hoisted at, 226
+      Rhodes tabooed at, 211
+      Rhodes visits Kruger at, 91
+      soldiers' institutes at, 186
+
+
+         R
+
+Radziwill, Princess Catherine, and Rhodes, 110, 146
+      and Rhodes' suspicions of Sir A. Milner, 107
+      conversations with Sir A. Milner, 106, 232
+      Rhodes' characteristic note to, 59
+      talks with Rhodes on Reade's "Martyrdom of Man," 127
+      visits concentration camps, 163
+Rand, the, Downing Street and, 179
+      Dutch illusions as to Britain's intentions, 177
+      flight from, 191 _et seq._
+      gold fields of, 90
+      magnates of, 137 _el seq._, 197
+Reade, Winwood, influence of his
+      "Martyrdom of Man" on Rhodes, 126
+Rhodes, Cecil, agitates for suspension of constitution, 118, 155, 213, 224
+      beginning of his fortune, 21
+      created a Privy Councillor, 43
+      death, 129, 153, 224
+      end of his political career, 47, 50, 57, 73
+      enters political life, 28
+      patriotism of, 10,17, 31, 76, 82, 152, 230
+Rhodes, Herbert (brother of Cecil Rhodes), 20
+Rhodesia, annexation of, 24, 25, 28, 35, 36, 78
+      exploitation of, 198
+      question of its mineral wealth, 177
+      Rhodes as "King" of, 122
+Roberts, Lord, complimentary lunch to, 134
+      Rhodes' abuse of, 147
+Rowntree, Mr., and the concentration camps, 187
+Russia, Wallace's work on, 126
+
+
+         S
+
+Sandringham, Rhodes at, 126
+Sargent, E.B., 183
+Sauer, Mr., 86, 117, 134, 150, 155,
+      and Rhodes, 73
+      leader of Bond party, 100
+Schoeman, Mr., illegal arrest of, and Lord Kitchener's
+          intervention, 200, 201
+Schoeman, Mr., and Loyalists, 219
+Schreiner, Mr., 38, 86, 133, 150
+      confidence in Rhodes, 32
+      indignation with Rhodes, 50, 73
+      questions Rhodes, 45
+      Rhodes and, 23, 74
+Schreiner, Olive, on annexation of Rhodesia, 36
+      Rhodes and, 33
+Simonstown, camp for prisoners of war at, 172
+Smuts, General, Imperialism of, xii
+Sonnenberg, Mr., and Rhodes, 26
+South Africa (_see_ Africa, South)
+South African League, 86, 88, 97, 99
+      a petition to Sir Gordon Sprigg, 99, 102
+      and Sir A. Milner, 90
+Southern Cross, the, 22
+Sprigg, Sir Gordon, and the South African League, 99
+      diamond and dop taxes, 224
+      Premier of Cape Colony, 99, 121, 132
+Stead, W.T., admiration of Rhodes, 212
+      and Sir A. Milner, 209
+Steyn, President, and Mrs. van Koopman, 40
+
+
+         T
+
+Transvaal, the, flight of Boer inhabitants, 158
+      gold mines, 1, 3, 17
+      loyalty to England, 129
+      object of Jameson Raid, 53
+      racial qualifications, 137
+Transvaal Republic, intrigues in, 1
+
+
+         U
+
+Uitenhage, martial law in, 218
+Uitlanders, the, and concentration camps, 163
+      quarrel with, 30
+      their part in the Boer War, 16, 97, 137, 139
+Union of South Africa, 228
+      an accomplished fact, 131, 228
+      magnates' views, 207
+      organisation of, 2
+      Sir A. Milner's part in constitution, 14
+      united effort for, 225
+
+
+         W
+
+Wall, David de, 99, 101, 146
+Wales, Prince of (Edward VII.), 126
+Wallace, Mackenzie, meets Rhodes, 126
+Wernher, Beit and Company, 97, 197
+Wet, De, 83
+_Westminster Gazette,_ Mrs. Fawcett's reply to Miss Hobhouse in, 181
+
+
+
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