Part 17

I have myself seen “these poor children” happy, healthy, and sober, in the compounds of Kimberley. In the Transvaal and the Portuguese territory I have seen them drunken, degraded, and diseased, and I am in a position to say that every word of the above quotation is solid fact. I wonder how many of our professional temperance agitators could point to such a splendid achievement as that.

It seems, perhaps, a good deal to say of Cecil Rhodes that, not only has he enormously increased our area of empire in South Africa, but that he is the only man who can efficiently protect that empire from the two greatest dangers which threaten it.

These are, first, a war of Dutch against British, such as the Pretorian Government and its German allies have been trying so hard to bring about, and for the purposes of which they have been arming themselves to the teeth; and, second, a general native uprising, which would very probably follow hard on the heels of the racial war.

Now the only English statesman who is thoroughly believed in by the Dutch majority at the Cape is Cecil Rhodes, and the only white man who is thoroughly trusted and respected by the natives of all tribes is also Cecil Rhodes, and this is a fact which goes very far to account for the desperate anxiety of the Hollander-German-Boer party in South Africa and Europe to get him thoroughly disgraced and discredited over the Jameson fiasco.

The measure of their failure is not only the measure of his triumph. It is also the measure of the future peace and prosperity of British South Africa. We live too near the man to see him in his just proportions, but, unless Downing Street excels, if that be possible, its own blunders in the past, and unless this royal race of ours suddenly belies all its best traditions, a day must come when the British flag will fly over a federated and united South Africa, when the rule of the Boer will have gone the way of all anachronisms--and in that day men will look back and see, in juster perspective than we can do, the great qualities of the man who has made it all possible.

It is probable that in that day the very names of his enemies and detractors will be forgotten, or remembered only as we remember the name of Cataline in connection with that of Cicero. Then Cecil Rhodes will take his place beside Robert Clive and Warren Hastings, and in some great square of the future Metropolis of the British African Empire, there will stand a statue of him, and on its base will probably be inscribed those memorable words of his:--

“All English: That’s my dream!”

And with such words I, too, may fittingly bring to a close this all too imperfect series of word-portraits of some, at least, of the Men Who Have Made the Empire.

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.

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Transcriber’s note:

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors, including occasional missing letters and punctuation at the ends of some lines, were corrected; unpaired quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unpaired.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations.

Page 8: “Oune” probably is a misprint for “Orne”.

Page 204: “Sir Thomas Wren” should be “Sir Christopher Wren”.

Page 261: “countymen” may be a misprint for “countrymen”.

Page 268: “Dafour” was printed that way.