Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/869

 8o8

77/6' Green Bag.

devoted the greater part of his fortune. But to see the vision as he saw it, we must at the outset clearly understand that he had no wish to build an empire that should be subject to the British Crown, whose centre would be the Buildings of Parliament in London. The Monarchy, Parliament, even the Constitution, were to him but present social adjustments, which might or might not serve in the future. These were details. His conception was far greater. He con ceived the whole English-speaking race as one family. Once gain the family con sciousness throughout the race, and it mi^ht be trusted adequately to express itself in governmental institutions. The location and form of government were incidental. "His fatherland," says Mr. Stead (p. 52) "is coterminous with the use of the tongue of his native land. He was devoted to the old flag, but in his ideas he was American, and in his later years he expressed to me his unhesitating readiness to accept the re union of the race under the stars and stripes, if it could not be obtained in any other way. Although he had no objection to the Monarchy, he unhesitatingly preferred the American to the British Constitution, and the text-book which he laid down for the guidance of his novitiates was a copy of the American Constitution." This feeling of Mr. Rhodes is more clearly set forth in his own words. "If even now we could arrange," he says, "with the present Members of the United States Assembly and our House of Commons, the peace of the world is secured for all eter nity! We could hold our Federal Parlia ment five years at Washington and five years at London. The only thing feasible to carry this idea out is a secret society gradually absorbing the wealth of the world to be devoted to such an object. . . . Fancy the charm to young America, just coming on and dissatisfied. For the Ameri

can has been taught the lesson of home rule and the success of leaving the management of the local pump to the parish beadle. . . . Wrhat a scope and what a horizon for work, at any rate, for the next two centuries, the best energies of the best people of the world; perfectly feasible, but needing an organization, for it is impossible for one human atom to complete anything, much less such an idea as this requiring the de votion of the best souls of the next 200 years. There are three essentials: (i) The plan duly weighed and agreed to. (2) The first organization. (3) The seizure of the wealth necessary." (pp. 73-76.1 The due weighing of the plan, his first essential, shows with what earnestness Mr. Rhodes gave himself to the undertaking. "The first thing that impressed him," says Mr. Stead (p. 94), "as a result of a survey, of the ways of God to man. is that Diety. must look on things on a comprehensive scale. If Mr. Rhodes thinks in continents, his Maker must at least think in planets. The Divine plan must be at least co-exten sive with the human race. . . . Holeand-corner plans of salvation, theological or political, are out of court. . . . The Divine plan must be universal. "The planet being postulated as the area of the Divine activity, perfecting the race by natural selection and the struggle for existence being recognized as favorite in struments of the Divine Ruler, the question immediately arose as to which race seems most likely to be the Divine instrument in carrying out the Divine idea over the whole planet. . . . There are various races— the Yellow, the Black, the Brown, the White. Numerically, the Yellow race comes first. But if the test be the area of the world and the power to control its destinies, the primacy of the White race is indisput able. The Yellow race is massed on half a single continent; the White exclusively