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,1 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.
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.
