The Scheme of Things

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 65, 16 March 1940, Page 19

The Scheme of Things

Bl M.H.a

The power and use of imagination ire. among Jhe things., not generally recognised. Quite a number of unmaginative people are ready to find laxxlt- with imaginative people, and, pe^haps^ .to sheer at those who see into Ihe future and reckon up the possibilities of today by the. use of this luality, which is not given to nearly mough people, or the various misfor;unes which have come upon the peoples of the world would not have Occurred. It needs a great deal of Imagination to foresee a war, for instance, and there were not wanting a great number of people ?who, till war was actually declared, saw that it was^ joining and was inevitable. - It is only necessary to read any of the many enlightening books which .were produced in the year before the present war to see, that something very evil was afoot in all countries, although an immense majority of the people did not want war, indeed loathed the very idea, and son this the "{unimaginative built up the certainty -that war would no| pccur. .....,.__-

One of the people to' really appreciate the Value of imagination was the greiat South' African leader, Cecil Rhodes. In :an address to the de Beers shareholders he said: . "Shareholders may; be divided into two classes, those who: are imaginative, and those who are: hot. ( JTo\th?:latter class the fact of "'our co&nectidn wifii the Chartered

Company has for many years been a great'trial. Human beings are. very interesting. There are those who spend their whole lives in filling money bags, and when they are called upon, perhaps more'hurriedly than they, desire, to retire from this world, -What they leave behind is often dissipated by their offspring on wine, women, and horses. Of these purely unimaginative gentlemen, whose sole concern is the accumulation of wealth, I have a large number as my shareholders, and I now state for £heir consolation that the transactions with the Charters are closed satisfactorily." Cecil Rhodes, no one will deny, was a man of great vision and imagination, or he would never have been able, to cope with the difficulties he met with in the vast country of South Africa, with the unknown quantities of native races and the well-known qualities of the Boers whose enmity to the British was selfevident and most difficult to cope with. However, a vivid imagination of how this or that policy would answer carried .him through .these-troubles, and that they were so real arid'trying may be said to have been shown in his death at a comparatively early age r Imagination -was shown also in his choice before death of his burial place on the top of the magnificent Matoppos where he quite often surveyed a "promised land" which he placed at ttie disposal of a great nujnber of his fellbwrcountrymeh. Supposing, when he arrived in X South Africa, a very delicate lad; who had gone there for the benefit of his health, he had not exercised his wonderful power of imagination,-.but had settled down as an invalid first and then as a business man in a small way—what a loss to the world! ' * .