Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/113

Rh “If we made a success of this, it would be doubly easy to carry out the programme which I sketched out to you, a part of which would be the paper.”

So he wrote from Lisbon on his way out. A year later (November 25th, 1890) he wrote:—

“My dear Stead,—I am getting on all right, and you must remember that I am going on with the same ideas as we discussed after lunch at Sir Charles Mills’. I am sorry I never met Booth. I understand what he is exactly. When I come home again I must meet Cardinal Manning, but I am waiting until I make my Charter a success before we attempt our Society—you can understand.”

By the time this letter reached me I was leaving the Pall Mall Gazette and preparing for the publication of the first number of the. It was an enterprise in which Mr. Rhodes took the keenest interest. The first number was issued on January 15th, 1891. He regarded it as a practical step towards the realisation of his great idea, the reunion of the English-speaking world through the agency of a central organ served in every part of the world by affiliated Helpers.

This interest he preserved to the last. He told me with great glee when last in England how he had his copy smuggled into Kimberley during the siege at a time when martial law forbade its circulation, and although he made wry faces over some of my articles, he was to the end keenly interested in its success.

After this explanation I venture to inflict upon my readers some extracts from the opening address “To all English-speaking Folk,” which appeared in the first number of the. Possibly they may read it to-day with more understanding of its significance, and of what lay behind in the thought of the writer. Mr. Rhodes regarded it, he used to say, as “an attempt to realise our ideas,” for after the first talk with him when he touched upon these “deep things,” it was never “my ideas” or “your ideas,” but always “our ideas.” Bearing that in mind, glance over a few brief extracts from the manifesto with which this periodical was launched into the world:—

There exists at this moment no institution which even aspires to be to the English-speaking world what the Catholic Church in its prime was to