Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/72

58 But it was in that sphere that he really lived, breathing that mystic and exalted atmosphere which alone sustained his spiritual life.

When Mr. Rhodes had not yet completed his course at Oxford he drew up what he called “a draft of some of my ideas.” It was when he was in Kimberley. He wrote it, he said, in his letter to me of August, 1891, when he was about twenty-two years of age. When he promised to send this to me to read, he said, “You will see that I have not altered much as to my feelings.” In reality he must have written it at the beginning of 1877, otherwise he could not have referred to the Russo-Turkish War, which began in that year. On inquiry among those who were associated with him in his college days, I find that, although he talked much about almost every subject under heaven, he was very reticent as to the political ideas which were fermenting in his brain in the long days and nights that he spent on the veldt, away from intellectual society, communing with his own soul, and meditating upon the world-movements which were taking place around him. This document may be regarded as the first draft of the Rhodesian idea. It begins in characteristic fashion thus, with the exception of some passages omitted or summarised:—

“It often strikes a man to inquire what is the chief good in life; to one the thought comes that it is a happy marriage, to another great wealth, and as each seizes on the idea, for that he more or less works for the rest of his existence. To myself, thinking over the same question, the wish came to me to render myself useful to my country. I then asked the question, How could I?” He then discusses the question, and lays down the following dicta. “I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. I contend that every acre added to our territory means the birth of more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence.