It seems, perhaps, a good deal to say of Cecil Rhodes that, not only has he enormously increased our area of empire in South Africa, but that he is the only man who can efficiently protect that empire from the two greatest dangers which threaten it.
These are, first, a war of Dutch against British, such as the Pretorian Government and its German allies have been trying so hard to bring about, and for the purposes of which they have been arming themselves to the teeth; and, second, a general native uprising, which would very probably follow hard on the heels of the racial war.
Now the only English statesman who is thoroughly believed in by the Dutch majority at the Cape is Cecil Rhodes, and the only white man who is thoroughly trusted and respected by the natives of all tribes is also Cecil Rhodes, and this is a fact which goes very far to account for the desperate anxiety of the Hollander-German-Boer party in South Africa and Europe to get him thoroughly disgraced and discredited over the Jameson fiasco.
The measure of their failure is not only the measure of his triumph. It is also the measure of the future peace and prosperity of British South Africa. We live too near the man to see him in his just proportions, but, unless Downing Street excels, if that be possible, its own blunders in the past, and unless this royal race of ours suddenly belies all its best traditions, a day must come when the British flag will fly over a federated and united South Africa, when the rule of the Boer will have gone the way of all anachronisms—and in that day men will look back and see, in juster perspective than we can do, the great qualities of the man who has made it all possible.
It is probable that in that day the very names of his enemies and detractors will be forgotten, or remembered only as we remember the name of Cataline in connection with that of Cicero. Then Cecil Rhodes will take his place beside Robert Clive and Warren Hastings, and in some great square of the future Metropolis of the British African Empire, there will stand a statue of him, and on its base will probably be inscribed those memorable words of his:—
“All English: That’s my dream!”
And with such words I, too, may fittingly bring to a close this all too imperfect series of word-portraits of some, at least, of the Men Who Have Made the Empire.
UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.
Transcriber’s Note
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.