Cecil Rhodes
BY J. L. HAMMOND.
?r it is a mark of greatness to interest your fellow-men Rhodes was a• great man, for few men of his tune have had such attractions for biographers. One distinguished writer, Pro- fessor Basil Williams, published an admirable book on him ten years ago ; another, Mr. Clifford Sharp, is at this moment com- posing a full biography. And now almost simultaneously there have appeared two books about him, both of them of striking quality. Mr. Plomer's* book is worthy of the excellent series to which it belongs ; it is terse, well-proportioned, and spirited. Mrs: style of narrative will not suit every- body's taste, and it is sometimes a little confusing. But her bookt as a whole is vivid, imaginative, witty and penetrating, and she has what is an important gift for a biographer—the gift of entering into a man's mind and mood without losing the power of looking at him from outside.
It may seem odd to say of a man who was the centre of such violent controversies that there is little disagreement about him. Yet in a -sense it is true ; for the impression that is produced by all the studies that have been made of his- character is singularly consistent. Some like this about him, or dislike that ; some condone where others cannot ; Mr. Plomer is more severe than Mrs. Millin ; but there is nothing mysterious or puzzling to anybody who follows the story closely. And the story is one of the most interesting in history.
• When Rhodes' will was published, with its ideas of world- wide policy, there was a general exclamation of surprise. " Here was a man," said his contemporaries, " who had a wide, sweeping outlook ; large and generous ideas." When his life was written it became apparent that he had those ideas as a boy.• Now there was nothing strange in itself in finding a man. at that time with those ideas. As an undergraduate Rhodes- lived in the new atmosphere created by Seeley; in his middle- years those ideas had been vulgarized into the crude Impe- rialism of Stead and Kipling. What was surprising to his contemporaries was that a man who could make money as fast and as unSeampulously as Rhodes should care about any- thing but money. In the ancient world and in the Middle Ages men often valued money for the public uses they could make of it ; but in the Industrial Revolution this tradition- almost disappeared. Rhodes wanted money, and he got it by the most ruthless methods, ruthless to white and still more ruthless to black, but he wanted it not for his personal enjoy- ment, still less for the prestige of wealth, but for the dis- interested ideas that inspired his imagination.
It happened that he was fitted by nature and circumstances to win a great triumph for one of his projects. He wanted to unite South Africa. The difficulty about this project was that the British as a rule could not get on with the Dutch. This was true of the ordinary colonist, his mind full of memories of racial quarrel, of Majuba and other rankling incidents. It was true also of Milner and his type of high-minded bureaucrats who found it difficult to be patient and work with slow minds. The Dutch have_slow minds by nature, and Kruger, the man with whom Milner had to reckon, had a mind slow by art. Rhodes was quite free from this embarrassment. He had not been born in the atmosphere of angry history ; he was an Oxford man who had chosen South Africa for his home. Neither had he the racial arrogance of the educated English, man ; he had tumbled about too much to dislike working with foreigners, and he happened to like the Dutch farmer type better than any other : he used to tell the Dutch that he was a countryman descended from cowkeepers. He used these gifts and advantages to create for himself a remarkable post- tion. He was a Prime Minister working with the Dutch, * Cecil Rhodes: By William Plomer. (Peter Davies-. 5s.) t Rhodes. By Sarah Gertrude Minim-. .(Ghatto and Windua. 9a) enjoying their confidence, carrying them with-him. Mrs. Millie quotes the declaration of the 'leader of the Bond about the Charter " If-Mr. Rhodes and his" people' are ideharge, it is all right." He had against-him a• declining power ; Kruger Was seventy and_the younger Boers disliked his obsoleteddeaa ; the Orange Free State had come into a Customs Union." In11395 Rhodes was on the road- to a success that would:have- given him the great place in history that he sought and•-•naiSsed. For nothing but racial feud could defeat this slow movement toward union, and Rhodes had shown how to take the- sting out of the memories on which that feud lived. If Rhodes, who had the Dutch - with him, had waited,- he would have- gone down to history as the man who made South Africa one.
Up to this point Rhodes' career might suggeSt..thatthe old sophist's advice, " First acquire a competence and then practise virtue," is a possible rule for life.- The diffietilty about this maxim is that when practising virtue a MD is always in danger of reverting to the methods by which he acquired a competence. Louis Napoleon is a good example. Nobody who has studied Mr; Simpson's books can clauhtthat he was a man in some moods with lofty and generous ideas, larger minded than his critics in, French politics. But you never knew when the old intriguing and shifty adventurer would come back: One day You are dealing with a statesman, the next with a sharper. This is precisely what happened with. Rhodes. • He had-anade a fortune and was busy prac- tising virtue. When making 'a fortune he had use- the methods of a pushing man of finance, freezing out, squeez- ing out, bluffing, dodging and manoeuvring. • Mrs. Milian gives • a brilliant account of this passage-in his life-and a dramatic picture of Loberigula, the savage who -kept his worth-while white men' broke it. Suddenly this old Rhodes burst out in his politics. He flung on one side his scheme of patientpoticy for a coup—a coup that involved treachery to almost- every- body who trusted him: • He . deceived the High Commis- sioner; the Chartered Company, and, most unfortunate of all for the purposes of his ambition, he deceived his Dutch Colleagues and supporters: This act of treachery ruined -hini, but he nearly escaped at the last moment, for Johannesburg wanted to put off the Raid, and it was Jameson's infatuation that brought Rhodes to grief.' It is an interesting Commentary on human nature'that RhodeS forgave the Man who destroyed him, but could not -forgive-the men whom he had betrayed. As for the nature -of the coup for' which Rhodes sacrificed everything, nobody who las read Mr. Colvin's excellent 'life of Jameson can help wondering what had become of the Mind of a man who, after obtaining all that Rhodes had Obtained by tolerance and wisdom, could risk' all his drearris on such a crazy "escapade. "
In Mrs. Millin's brilliant story there are two statements that need • modification.• - It is not true that Chamberlain restrained the Gladstone Government from giving back the
Transvaal in _1880. Mr. Garvin shows, Chamberlain alone pressed for immediate restitution. Also Mrs. Millin, referring to the- statement that Rhodes gave a • subscriptionc to- the Liberal Party, remarks that some thought this- wax--tie reason why 'Harcourt and-Campbell-Bannerman did-not-press Rhodes at the inquiry. The Report which these leaders signed condemned Rhodes' in, the strongest language : the points on which the Committee did not continue to -press Rhodes were the accusations made against•Chamberlain; - In defending this unfortunate conduct in' the House of Commons Harcourt took the -line that he had no reason to -think that Chamberlain was a liar and every reason to think-that. the Rhodesians never spoke the truth. The conduct-of the Select Committee opens a large field for discussion '-and :speculation,. but the explana- tion here referred to- fits the- faets-ivorse than-any _other,
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