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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though it may seem quite out of date to reopen the question when so many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.