AN EMPIRE-BUILDER

Bush Advocate, Volume XIV, Issue 304, 25 March 1903, Page 2

AN EMPIRE-BUILDER

-^ — It was fitting that Mr Chamberlan, while visiting Kimberley during us recent tour of South Africa, shoild render his tribute to the memory of <he Hon. Cecil Rhodes— the great Empiißbuilder who sleeps in the Matopjo Hills. Mr Chamberlain began with a •onfession that will surprise maiy Englishmen. He stated that his peisonal acquaintance with Mr Rhode* was a very slight one, and that he had not had more than half-a-dozed convert sations with him from first to last. Mi Chamberlain, however, in a few briei phrases, summed the dead man up as he appeared to those who were not among his intimate friends. He made mistakes, but he was a great Englishmen, with nothing mean or petty about him— careless of wealth for the things for which wealth is generally desired, but ambitious of power because hi believed that he could use it for th^ benefit of South Africa, for the advanti age of the British. "Mr Rhodes gav«j a new start to the Empire, and he has, imprinted upon South Africa his own! large conception of its future destiny "i —a worthy tribute from the greatest living Imperialist to one of the greatest among those who have already finished their career.