Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/125

Rh their politics from you. We are on the spot, and we are unanimous in declaring this war to be necessary. You have never been in South Africa, and yet instead of deferring to the judgment of your own boys, you fling yourself into a violent opposition to the war. I should not have acted in that way about an English question or an American question. No matter how much I might have disliked the course which you advised, I would have said, ‘No, I know Stead; I trust his judgment, and he is on the spot. I support whatever policy he recommends.’”

“It’s all very well,” I replied, “but you see, although I have never been in South Africa, I learned my South African policy at the feet of a man who was to me the greatest authority on the subject. He always impressed upon me one thing so strongly that it became a fixed idea in my mind, from which I could never depart. That principle was that you could not rule South Africa without the Dutch, and that if you quarrelled with the Dutch South Africa was lost to the Empire. My teacher,” I said, “whose authority I reverence—perhaps you know him? His name was Cecil John Rhodes. Now I am true to the real, aboriginal Cecil John Rhodes, and I cannot desert the principles which he taught me merely because another who calls himself by the same name advises me to follow an exactly opposite policy.”

Mr. Rhodes laughed and said: ‘‘Oh, well, circumstances have changed. But after all that does not matter now. The war is ending, and that is a past issue.”

Mr. Rhodes went back to Africa and I did not see him again till his return last year. In January, 1901, he had added a codicil to his will, removing my name from the list of executors, fearing that the others might find it difficult to work with me. He wrote me at the same time saying I was “too masterful” to work with the other executors.