Cecil Rhodes Part 6

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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sume the Premiers.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 n.o.bler 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 a.s.sociations; 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sions have no entrance. It is the adoration of the Greatness Who created the beauty which no touch can defile, no tongue slander, and n.o.body 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.similated he never forgot. Years after he would remember a pa.s.sage 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" (Ca.s.sell).

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 embarra.s.sing, 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 a.s.sailed 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 ign.o.ble 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 inst.i.tuted 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 a.s.sumed.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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 att.i.tude 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 a.s.sisting 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VISCOUNT MILNER]

All these circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed upon Viscount Milner.

The welfare of South Africa and the reputation of Sir Alfred would have been substantially enhanced had he been able to a.s.sert 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 grat.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sions 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, a.s.sociated with the Jameson Raid, was an American engineer, John Hays Hammond.