DEAL WITH CECIL RHODES
When Cecil Rhodes came to me, in order to bring about the construction of the Cape-to-Cairo Railway and Telegraph line through the interior regions of German East Africa, his wishes were approved by me, in agreement with the Foreign Office and the Imperial Chancellor; with the proviso that a branch railway should be built via Tabora, and that German material should be used in the construction work on German territory. Both conditions were acquiesced in by Rhodes most willingly. He was grateful at the fulfillment of his pet ambition by Germany, only a short time after King Leopold of Belgium had refused his request.
Rhodes was full of admiration for Berlin and the tremendous German industrial plants, which he visited daily. He said that he regretted not having been in Berlin before, in order to have learned about the power and efficiency of Germany, and to have got into touch with the German Government and prominent Germans in commercial circles. He said he had wished, even before the Jameson raid, to visit Berlin, but had been prevented in London at that time from so doing; that, had he been able to inform us before of his plan to get permission to build the Cape-to-Cairo line through the Boer countries, as well as through our colonies, the German Government would probably have been able to help him by bringing persuasion to bear upon Kruger, who was unwilling to grant this permission; that "the stupid Jameson Raid" would never have been made, in that case, and the Kruger dispatch never written—as to that dispatch, he had never borne me a grudge on account of it.
He added that as we, in Germany, could not be correctly informed as to aim and actual purposes, the said raid must have looked to us like "an act of piracy," which naturally and quite rightly had excited the Germans; that all he had wanted was to have such stretches of land as were needed for his rail lines—such, in fact, as Germany had just granted to him in the interior of her colonies—a demand which was not unjust and would certainly have met with German support. I was not to worry, he added, about the dispatch and not bother myself any more about the uproar in the English press. Rhodes did not know about the origin of the Kruger dispatch and wanted to console me, imagining that I was its originator.
Rhodes went on to advise me to build the Bagdad Railway and open up Mesopotamia, after having had irrigation simultaneously introduced there. He said that this was Germany's task, just as his was the Cape-to-Cairo line. In view of the fact that the building of this line through our territory was also made dependent upon the cession to us of the Samoan Islands, Rhodes worked actively in London toward having them turned over to us.
In home politics, Prince Hohenlohe, as Chancellor, showed a mildness which was not generally favorable. Owing to his long acquaintanceship with Herr von Hertling, he was able to establish friendly relations with the Vatican. His mildness and indulgence were also exercised toward Alsace-Lorraine, in which, as an expert of long standing, he showed particular interest. But he got little thanks for this, since the French element, indirectly benefited thereby, behaved with ever-increasing arrogance.