Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/94

80 in the Pall Mall Gazette, and cynically treated by the Times. The ideal of associating the Colonies with us in the duty of Imperial Defence was another of the fundamental doctrines of what we called in those days “the Gospel according to the Pall Mall Gazette.” It was in the Pall Mall that we published “The Truth about the Navy,” and the Pall Mall, more than any other paper, was closely associated with the heroic tragedy of General Gordon’s mission to Khartoum.

Cecil Rhodes, brooding in intellectual solitude in the midst of the diamond diggers of Kimberley, welcomed with enthusiasm the Pall Mall Gazette. He found in it the crude ideas which he had embodied in his first will expressed from day to day with as great an enthusiasm as his own, and with a much closer application to the great movements which were moulding the contemporary history of the world. It is probable (although he never mentioned this) that the close personal friendship which existed between General Gordon and himself constituted a still closer tie between him and the editor of the journal whose interview had been instrumental in sending Gordon to Khartoum, and who through all the dark and dreary siege was the exponent of the ideas and the champion of the cause of that last of the Paladins. Whatever contributory causes there may have been, Mr. Rhodes always asserted that his own ideas had been profoundly modified and moulded by the Pall Mall Gazette.

But, as I said, it was not until 1889 that I was first introduced to him. As I had been interested in the expansion of British power in Africa and in the preservation of the trade route which rendered the northern expansion possible, I had constantly exerted myself in support of the ideas of Mr. Mackenzie, who was in more or less personal antagonism to the ideas of Mr. Rhodes. Mr. Mackenzie and Mr. Rhodes both wished to secure the northern territory. Mr. Rhodes believed in thrusting the authority of Cape Colony northward, and Mr. Mackenzie was equally emphatic about placing Bechuanaland under the direct authority of the Crown. This difference of method, although it produced much personal estrangement, in no way affected their devotion to their common ideal. As I was on Mr. Mackenzie’s side, I had nothing to do with Mr, Rhodes; and when Sir Charles Mills (then Cape Agent