More than thirty years before the outbreak of the Second Boer War a Dutch
child in the Hopetown District of Cape Colony found, while playing
carelessly near the left bank of the Orange, a pretty pebble that was
destined to mould the History of South Africa.
He
took the bagatelle home to his father's farm, where a neighbour, one Van
Niekirk, saw it and was struck by its brilliancy. It chanced that the
Irishman O'Reilly was passing that way and to him it was entrusted to take
to Colesberg for expert opinion upon its value. Here certain Jews declared
that it was but a white topaz not worth one shilling and it was disdainfully
cast out into the road, from which it was with difficulty recovered by
O'Reilly, whose belief in it though shaken was not wholly abandoned. Through
a mutual friend, Lorenzo Boyes, Acting Civil Commissioner of the District,
the pebble came to the notice of an expert mineralogist named Atherstone at
Grahamstown, but it was held so lightly in esteem by the sender that it
reached Atherstone as an enclosure in an ordinary unregistered letter.
Atherstone examined it, and when it had not only spoilt all the jeweller's
files in the town but had also passed an examination by polarized light,
pronounced that it was a diamond worth £500. His certificate to its
character, which had been so ignorantly disparaged, was the origin of the
Diamond industry of South Africa. Another diamond was soon picked up near
Hopetown which without difficulty or misadventure rose to its own plane in
mineralogy. Its career was short and its destiny happy. It was purchased by
the first Earl of Dudley for the adornment of his second wife.
When it was noised abroad with the customary exaggeration that the monopoly
of Golconda and the Brazils was at an end and that diamonds grew wild on the
South African veld, a wide extent of country was explored and the precious
crystallized carbon was found in districts separated by many hundreds of
miles. In certain places, one of which became known as the town of
Kimberley, it was ascertained to recur in a constant proportion of the
contents of the "pipes" or volcanic tubes which rose through the surface
strata.
The pioneers of Kimberley took possession of the diamondiferous grounds
without ascertaining to whom they belonged, and when their value became
positive the question of ownership arose. The boundaries of the districts
administered by the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal
respectively were, as regards territory, supposed to be of little account,
vague, ill-defined, and unsurveyed; and the districts themselves were
occupied by native tribes of nomad habits. About the middle of the XIXth
century a Hottentot chief named Waterboer came up out of the West and
squatted in the districts lying between the Orange and the Vaal. His rights,
such as they were, were assumed or acquired by the Cape Government, which
soon became involved in controversy with the Orange Free State as to their
extent and nature. Finally the British Empire secured a good title to the
estate by the payment of £90,000. But the Orange Free State not unnaturally,
when the value of the Diamond Fields increased day by day, soon began to
think that it had parted with a profitable possession for an inadequate
return. The feeling rankled; and the confident expectation of recovering
Kimberley sold for a song tempted Bloemfontein into the fatal alliance with
Pretoria.
In
1871 a sickly youth named Cecil Rhodes came from England to South Africa in
search of health, which after a short sojourn in Natal he found at
Kimberley. The prospects of the place favourably impressed him, and he soon
laid in it the foundations of his fortune; but six years later the future of
Kimberley was still precarious and the discovery of gold in a remote
district of the Transvaal sucked thither the greater proportion of the
citizens, who, however, found that they had not bettered themselves by the
change and returned to the pipes: and soon nearly a hundred companies,
syndicates, and private adventurers were groping for diamonds over an area
of less than two hundred acres. The waste of energy was manifest to Rhodes,
who in 1888 completed, with the help of the Rothschilds, the task upon which
he had been engaged for some years, the amalgamation of the conflicting and
overlapping diamond interests under the name of the De Beers Consolidated
Mines. It was soon found that the new industry was insufficiently protected
by the existing criminal law and a new felony was created by the Illicit
Diamond Buying Act.
It
has been for several centuries the practice of Great Britain to entrust to
private companies the imperial responsibilities which she is reluctant to
assume and to let out to contractors, who can be repudiated if they fail and
expropriated if they succeed, the job of expanding an Empire. Of this policy
the most prominent instance is the East India Company, a commercial venture
which obtained from Queen Elizabeth a charter empowering it to trade with
the East and which, though connected with Great Britain only by the slender
thread of an ocean track of 12,000 miles, maintained itself for two
centuries and a half with ever increasing territory and authority until it
became a great military Empire. Other examples of lower degree are the
Hudson's Bay Company and the Borneo Company. The De Beers Company provided
out of its abundance large sums for exploration and settlement in South
Africa and for the furtherance of the Imperial idea, and it is said that
Rhodes spent the whole of one night in arguing with some of the
materialistic magnates of Kimberley, before he could induce them to consent
to the employment of the resources of the Company in the advancement of his
schemes of Empire. He found, however, that these could not be satisfactorily
promoted by a Company whose primary interests were commercial rather than
imperial; and in 1888 he obtained a charter for the British South Africa
Company, an offshoot of the De Beers Company, formed for the purpose of
extending the British Empire towards the Equator.
The question of the defences of Kimberley engaged the attention of the De
Beers Company some years before the outbreak of the war. Its vulnerability
to attack from the Orange Free State, the border of which ran close to the
town, was obvious; and in 1896 a depot of arms and ammunition was formed. A
military plan of the place was sent to the Imperial authorities and a
defence force was also organized. This, however, had in 1899 ceased to exist
owing chiefly to the action of Mr. Schreiner, at that time the Premier of
the Cape Colony, who in June refused, with complacent optimism, to furnish
it with arms, saying that, "there is no reason for apprehending that
Kimberley is in danger of attack," and that "the fears of the citizens are
groundless and their anticipations without foundation." A battery of
artillery was, however, surreptitiously brought up from King Williamstown.
The policy of Schreiner during the months preceding the war is obscure.
While refusing help to Kimberley he was allowing munitions of war, which
were way billed as pianos and hardware, to pass through the Cape Colony to
the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. He does not appear to have been
actively disloyal to the Imperial Government and in his own way he probably
did his best to keep the peace. His mind was cast in a mould which is not
uncommon in the British Empire but which is rarely found outside it. He was
more anxious to stand well with its enemies, and like the Unjust Steward to
have a claim to a place in their houses, if they were successful, than to
work for its security. It was with great difficulty that Sir A. Milner as
late as September 18 obtained his consent to the dispatch of a few regulars
to Kimberley to form the backbone of a defensive force. He seems to have
retained almost to the end, in spite of all indications to the contrary, the
belief that the war would be averted or at least that the Orange Free State
would not join in it. Yet in this he erred in good company. Mr. Balfour said
that if on September 28 he had been asked whether war with the Orange Free
State was a probable contingency he would have replied that war with
Switzerland was one equally probable; and Lord Lansdowne declined before
September 23 to discuss with Lord Roberts the question of operations in the
Free State. Buller, with surer insight, had foreseen the alliance as far
back as 1881.
The War Office, however, as to a certain extent on the alert and distrusted
the optimism of Schreiner and of a high military official who had been for
some years in South Africa. Officers were sent to Kimberley to organize a
scheme of defence, but having regard to the susceptibility of the Capetown
Government it was done secretly and confidentially and Schreiner was
outwitted. By October 7 the town, which was under the command of Colonel
Kekewich, was secure against a coup de main though not against a vigorous
and sustained siege. Little more than an eighth of the garrison was composed
of regular troops; the artillery was out of date; rifles and ammunition were
deficient. On October 13 Rhodes threw himself into Kimberley and became for
better or worse a power in the town. As soon as the siege began the relative
value of the chief products of the mines was inverted: water, the most
generous gift of nature and hitherto an embarrassment in the workings,
became for the time being more valuable than the diamonds.
On
October 12 the curtain of the great drama was raised and the first scene
presented. It showed the capture of an armoured train on the railway between
Kimberley and Mafeking. Kimberley under any circumstances was a prize worth
winning. But Kimberley taken with Rhodes as a prisoner of war, the man who
had curbed and checked on every side the expansion of the Republics, who had
taken Matabeleland on the north and Bechuanaland on the west into the fold
of the British Empire, would be more than a prize, would be a triumph.
Rhodes metaphorically in chains, and actually paraded as a captive in the
streets of Bloemfontein and Pretoria was an alluring prospect.
Great, however, as were the advantages to be gained by the early capture of
Kimberley, the object was not pursued with energy and determination. When
the siege began on November 6 the situation was in favour of the attack. The
Boers were in possession of the railway from Orange River Station to
Mafeking: Kimberley was ill-supplied with the munitions and weapons of war
and was defended by a force mainly composed of irregulars; it was encumbered
with a large native population; and the civil and military authorities were
not working in harmony.
The defence throughout was more active than the attack. Reconnaissances and
raids against the enemy's positions were made with effect; and the
bombardment which followed a rejected summons to surrender did little harm.
Communication with the outer world was not seriously impeded. Cattle grazed
almost with impunity inside the line of investment and several thousands of
the natives escaped.
But the difficulties of Kekewich, who had been in command since September
20, were not confined to those created by the military situation. He was
thrown into close association with the man who was one of the indirect
causes of the war, and who had little confidence in military men, or
sympathy with their ideas and methods. Rhodes had come into his own
Kimberley and for the first time he was not master in it. He found himself a
sterilized dictator acting in an atmosphere too tenuous to support his
vitality but sufficient to preserve it from extinction. He was subject to
the authority of the military commandant, a galling position for a
distinguished statesman who had not a high opinion of the professional
capacity of the British officer. From the age of eighteen he had been his
own master except during the intervals which he had spared from South Africa
and spent at Oxford, when he was temporarily subject to the lax discipline
of a University. While his contemporaries were amusing themselves at
college, or performing routine duties in the Army or the Civil Service, or
preparing to enter a profession, Rhodes was spending the critical years of
his life in outlining the future and scheming for a South African Empire to
be erected on the foundation of the Kimberley Mines.
It
was inevitable from the nature of the case and from his intimate concern in
the fortunes of Kimberley that he could not see South African affairs at
large in their true perspective. The sparkle of his diamonds made him
curiously colour-blind and out of this defect in his mental vision sprang
the mischief. Kimberley, for the time being at least, stood so closely in
the foreground that other objects were thrown out of focus. Nor did the
disturbing influence of the glare and halation of Kimberley only affect the
vision of the diamond men within the town. It closed the eyes of the
besiegers without it to a great strategical opportunity which soon passed
away.
The figure of Rhodes in Kimberley was the magnet which attracted and
detained commandos which could have been more usefully employed elsewhere,
and his presence, so far as it had this effect, was of great service to the
perilously weak British force during the first few weeks of the war. If the
commandos squatting before Kimberley had instead been sent to raid
southwards towards the Karroo, and to inflame the Dutch districts in the
Cape Colony, they would have met with little resistance, and advancing with
daily increasing numbers would have had little difficulty in planting
themselves firmly in the heart of the enemy's country. For the moment the
war in the west was waged not against Great Britain but against the Man of
Kimberley.
The diamond men, with Rhodes at their head, forgetting that the object of
the war was the redress of the Outlanders' wrongs in the Transvaal, began to
bellow for relief even before the Boers had completed the investment of the
town. Telegrams couched in extravagant and almost hysterical language and
betraying the egotism and the want of self-control of the senders were
repeatedly despatched. One of these, in which on October 19 the De Beers
directors asked for information as to the plans of the military authorities
at Capetown, "so as to enable us to take our own steps in case relief is
refused," was thought not unnaturally by Buller to hint at surrender; and
although this was not the intention of the senders it is probable that they
did not regret the interpretation that was put upon it.
Fortunately, however, Kekewich was a cool-headed man who did not suffer
himself to be hustled. While preserving amicable personal relations with
Rhodes, he was careful to let Capetown know that the situation in Kimberley
was by no means desperate and that it would be able to hold out for several
weeks.
The impetuous and childish letters and telegrams sent out by the diamond men
induced Buller, who said afterwards that "although I had every confidence in
Colonel Kekewich's military capacity I did not trust the other powers within
the city," to send Lord Methuen northwards on November 10 with instructions
to help Kimberley by removing unnecessary non-combatants and natives, and
"to let the people understand that you have not come to undertake its
defence, but to afford it better means of maintaining its defence."
The news of Methuen's approach did not allay the excitement of the townsmen.
His movement was not an essential part of the general plan of campaign but
only a raid in force with the object of putting men and supplies into
Kimberley and enable it to hold on until pressure elsewhere upon the Boers
should raise the siege automatically.
The dignity and the self-respect of the diamond men was affronted. Like the
Syrian captain Naaman, when offered relief of his leprosy by the prophet
Elisha, they resented the simple process by which their own relief was to be
effected. They had looked to an Army Corps at least marching on Kimberley
with all the pomp of war and speedily enabling it to resume its normal
occupation of diamond grubbing; and now they found that the town was not
considered of much account in the scheme of the military, who regarded it as
a mere besieged place of little strategical importance; which, after some
assistance, was to be left dependent for its safety upon its own exertions
while the main army advanced through the Free State.
On
December 4 Kekewich was instructed to make arrangements for the deportation
of a large proportion of the white and coloured population, Methuen hinting
that Rhodes himself might be included. Although Rhodes had a few weeks
before complained of the difficulties caused by the presence of
non-combatants and had even endeavoured to send them away, he now vehemently
opposed their removal. His reasons for so doing are not very clear, but they
appear to be part of the systematic obstruction which he offered to every
proposition of the military authorities which tended to restrict the output
of diamonds. His objections were transmitted to Buller, who speedily put the
question in its proper light by telegraphing to Kekewich that "what we have
to do is to keep the Union Jack flying over South Africa without favour to
any particular set of capitalists," and Methuen met his protest with the
answer that "Rhodes has no voice in the matter." After the defeat at
Magersfontein the plan of deportation had necessarily to be given up.
In
his own proper sphere of a civilian working with civilians Rhodes was
usefully active and his services were great. He employed the persons thrown
out of work by the closing of the mines in labour for the general benefit of
the town, and did much to relieve the distress among the poorer inhabitants.
The manufacture of a heavy gun, to which the name of Long Cecil was given,
in the De Beers engineering establishment, was soon countered by the Boers,
who brought into action a gun throwing a much heavier shell which had been
disabled by the Naval Battery at Ladysmith, repaired at Pretoria, and was
now mounted before Kimberley. The appearance of Long Tom, supervening on a
reduction on the daily rations, caused a panic among the civilians. On
February 9 Rhodes threatened to call a public meeting to consider the
situation unless he was informed of the plans for the relief of the town:
but Kekewich was authorized by Lord Roberts not only to forbid the holding
of the meeting, but even if necessary to arrest Rhodes. A private meeting
was then held at which a remonstrance was drawn up for transmission to Lord
Roberts through Kekewich; and for the second time a communication from the
Kimberley men was interpreted as a threat to surrender. It was probably sent
with that intent in order to elicit information as to Lord Roberts' plans.
Kekewich meanwhile was finding his position almost intolerable, and his
representations convinced Lord Roberts of the necessity of raising the siege
of Rhodes without delay and at any cost. It was effected on February 15 by
French's brilliant cavalry movement; but at the cost of the convoy of 170
wagons which were snapped up by De Wet at Waterval Drift, and of an Army
compelled to march and to fight for nearly four weeks on reduced rations.
But the harvesting of the crop of diamonds was resumed, and as far as
Kimberley was concerned the war was at an end.
Although the siege lasted for more than three months the casualties were
few, only 40 persons being killed and 123 wounded by acts of war. The
privations suffered by the inhabitants, especially during the last few
weeks, were no doubt great, but certainly not greater than the privations
which unhappily are endured by the unemployed in Great Britain during a hard
winter. The siege was conducted without much vigour and determination, and
the most important operation on the side of the defence was a sortie on
November 29 after the news had come in of Methuen's approach.
The relief of Kimberley closed the public career of the most conspicuous
figure in the British Empire; and with great dignity and self-restraint,
which might well have been imitated by other persons whose conduct during
the war was impugned, Rhodes refrained from publishing a Kimberley book.
If
the Siege of Kimberley brought out the weak side of his character, his
egotism and impatience, his lack of power to adapt himself even temporarily
to unaccustomed conditions, it will be remembered that these defects were
inherent and that his marvellous success in life had accentuated them. The
acts of a public man are so variously regarded by his opponents and his
admirers, are seen by them in such different lights, that there can rarely
be any general agreement on the question of the ratio between his merits and
his failings; but the chief phases of his life afford the raw material out
of which each man for himself can form an estimate of his character.
Like many men who have afterwards become famous in the secular world, Cecil
Rhodes was intended for the Church. His health suffered from the rigours of
the East Anglian climate and he was sent out to South Africa. His brother's
farm in Natal, to which he was consigned, he found derelict on his arrival,
but he was soon growing cotton on it, against the advice of the local
experts, but with eventual success. At the age of 18 he was prospecting for
diamonds at Kimberley, and forming the opinion during a visit to the
Transvaal that an insufficient proportion of the South African Continent
belonged to the British Empire. In 1872, being then 19 years of age, he went
to Oxford, but in a few months his health broke down and another voyage to
the Cape became necessary. In 1876 he returned to the University and
remained there for two years when South Africa recalled him. As soon as he
could be spared he went back to his college and, eight years after
matriculation, completed his undergraduate course. It was a high compliment
to the value of a Pass Degree at Oxford, where, however, he formed the
opinion, which was not publicly divulged until his will was opened
twenty-one years later, that Oxford Dons were "children in finance."
His election to the Cape Parliament in 1881 as Member for Kimberley placed
him in a favourable position to advance his schemes for the northward
extension of the British Empire. When the trespasses and encroachments of
the Transvaal Boers beyond the limits assigned to them under the Convention
of 1884 made it advisable to incorporate Bechuanaland he was unable to
persuade the Cape Government to undertake that responsibility, but with the
assistance of Sir Hercules Robinson and the support of Mr. Chamberlain he
induced the Imperial Government to take action. President Kruger had
connived at the establishment on native territory under British protection
of two little republics of raiders, to which the names of Goshen and
Stellaland were assigned; and a costly expedition under Sir C. Warren was
needed to bring him to his senses. In 1885 Bechuanaland became an integral
part of the British Empire.
In
1888 he again opened the flood gates of Imperialism, and secured by means of
a treaty with Lobengula the reversion of the native territory north of the
Transvaal, at which two European nations were nibbling, and which in his
honour received the name of Rhodesia.
He
became Premier of the Cape Colony in 1890 by the help of the Dutch vote and
from that time gradually sank from the zenith of his success. His good
fortune left him when he attained his ambition. The Jameson Raid, for which
he was not personally, though he confessed himself morally, responsible,
ended his political career. His last good service to the Empire was given
during the Matabele rising. He accompanied the troops sent to suppress the
rebellion; and when the operations seemed likely to be indefinitely
prolonged, he brought it to an end by going fearlessly and almost unattended
among the natives, whose confidence he won by meeting them trustfully in
council and listening to their grievances.
His physical vitality, always inadequate, was seriously impaired by the
strain of the siege. He never fully recovered his strength and he died on
March 26, 1902, two months before the Second Boer war was brought to a close
by the Vereeniging Treaty.
He
was a rich but honest man, and the great wealth which he amassed never led
him to attach undue importance to the possession of it. He valued it not for
his own advantage, but for its help in advancing his political and imperial
schemes. He employed it creditably and without ostentation, and spent none
of it in social display in London. By his will he left the greater portion
of it to the University of Oxford for the establishment of an amiable if
somewhat quixotic system of bringing the various branches of the Anglo-Saxon
race into association at a centre of learning and athletics, where they were
to be leavened by a Teutonic admixture.
The vision of posthumous reputation allured him, and he delighted in the
hope that the name of his own Rhodesia, like the cities which still bear the
name of Alexander, would be on the lips of men of generations as far distant
from his own as his own was from the days of the Great Macedonian.
He
presented a pair of sculptured lions to President Kruger. Almost on the eve
of the war he asserted confidently that Kruger would not fight. It is
probable that this was not his belief, but that it was said in order to
provoke the President into rejecting the overtures of the British
Government, and to make inevitable the war which he foresaw was the only way
of settling the South African question.
Not a few incidents in his life are difficult to explain. The donation of
£10,000 to the funds of the Parnellite Party by an ardent English
Imperialist who had never expressed any particular enthusiasm for Home Rule
may have been a douceur to prevent the Irish members from attacking him in
the British Parliament. He had not forgotten that Parnell inaugurated the
policy of obstruction carried to the length of all-night sittings upon the
occasion of the discussion of a Cape Colonial question in the House of
Commons. Possibly Rhodes was a Home Ruler not in spite of his Imperialism
but because of it. Home rule was necessary to it. The function of the
Imperial Parliament was the general control of the affairs of the Empire,
leaving local politics to be dealt with by local legislatures.
The strong and dominant personality of Cecil Rhodes came to the front at a
time when the British Empire was beginning to show signs of lassitude and
appeared to be growing tired of itself. Patriotism was being slowly
transmuted into a limp and sickly cosmopolitan altruism. He checked this
decadence, at least for the time being, but passed away before he was able
to subdue it.
