Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/120

106 with his money. The scholarships were to be tenable at Oxford.

When Mr. Rhodes left England in February, 1895, he was at the zenith of his power. Alike in London and in South Africa, every obstacle seemed to bend before his determined will. It was difficult to say upon which political party he could count with greater confidence for support. He was independent of both parties, and on terms of more or less cordial friendship with one or two leaders in both of the alternative Governments. In Rhodesia the impis of Lobengula had been shattered, and a territory as large as the German Empire had been won for civilisation at a cost both in blood and treasure which is in signal contrast to the expenditure incurred for such expeditions when directed from Downing Street. When he left England everything seemed to point to his being able to carry out his greater scheme, when we should be able to have undertaken the propagation of “our ideas” on a wider scale throughout the world.

And then, upon this fair and smiling prospect, the abortive conspiracy in Johannesburg of the Raid cast its dark and menacing shadow over the scene. No one in all England had more reason than I to regret the diversion of Mr. Rhodes’s energies from the path which he had traced for himself. Who can imagine to what pinnacle of greatness Mr. Rhodes might not have risen if the natural and normal pacific development of South Africa, which was progressing so steadily under his enlightened guidance, had not been rudely interrupted by the fiasco for which Mr. Rhodes was not primarily responsible.

It was what seemed to me the inexplicable desire of Mr. Rhodes to obtain Bechuanaland as a jumping-off place which led to the first divergence of view between him and myself on the subject of South African policy. The impetuosity with which his emissaries pressed for the immediate transfer of Bechuanaland to the Chartered Company made me very uneasy, and I resolutely opposed the cession of the jumping-off place subsequently used by Dr. Jameson as a base for his Raid. Mr. Rhodes was very wroth, and growled like an angry bear at what he regarded as my perversity in objecting to a cession of territory for which I could see no reason, but which he thought