The Evening Star MONDAY, MARCH 28, 1927. CECIL RHODES.

Evening Star, Issue 19518, 28 March 1927, Page 6

The Evening Star MONDAY, MARCH 28, 1927. CECIL RHODES.

On Saturday, the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, wreaths from various parts of the world were placed on the grave of Cecil Rhodes on the Matoppo Hills. It was a fitting tribute, but the memory of Rhodes will be yet bettor served if the promise that was contained in another item of Saturday’s nows should be fulfilled, and the now flag for South Africa made a truly national one, instead of an affront to British sentiment. Rhodes was a great Empire-builder. He was not less an enthusiast for the union of two races in South Africa, which he did more than any other man in his own day to promote; which, by the one mad error of his career, ho did most also to retard; and which has happily been consummated, although not without the survival of some differences .and dangers, since his death. There are few more remarkable stories than that of the delicate boy who, emerging from an English parsonage, with only his natural abilities to help him, started life at the age of seventeen as a cotton planter in Natal, and then amassed a fortune as one of the pioneers of tho great diamond and gold industries of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Ho was still directing his diamond enterprises when he returned to Oxford to take his degree there at tho ago of twenty-eight. Ho did not regard money more than the things of tho mind. The fortune which he amassed was never more than a moans with him for promoting those Imperial aims which were a religion to him from his youth. At the ago of nineteen he had persuaded himself that God was obviously trying to produce a typo of humanity most fitted to bring peace, liberty, and justice to the world and to make that typo predominant. Only one race, so it scorned to him, approached that ideal type, his own Anglo-Saxon race. The work for him to do, then, was to promote the expansion of that race. It was a simple faith, hut he held to if with undeviating devotion throughout his life, and with tho power of a practical visionary. It was through his influence that Basutoland, BcchuanaJaud, and Rhodesia wore in turn added to the Empire when they might have become German or Dutch. lh<S extensions, comprising an area larger than Spain, France, and the former German Empire put together, were more than nominal. Development and settlement were following them. The great railway from Cape to Cairo was well begun. The fame of Rhodes was supreme. His name was in all men’s mouths. Ho was approved by tho Dutch, who did not want German neighbors, almost as much as by the English. He had always admired the Dutch. When he stood for Parliament it was for a constituency that included a largo Boer element, and it returned him again and again. His ideas for the union of South Africa were commending themselves, slowly but surely, to both sections in Cape Colony, Some Dutchmen would have preferred, however, that this union should he independent of tho British Empire. Tho flag question, even then, mado a division. Rhodes described his object as “the government of South Africa by the people of South Africa with tho Imperial flag for defence,” and that formula was accepted by Jan Hofmeyer, the chief advocate of union from the Boers’ side.

Things were going well lor his dream throughout the greater portion of South Africa. Unfortunately they ware not going well for it in the Transvaal. Rhodes lost his head. In 1895 he was Prime Minister of Capo Colony, and had been so for five years. He had been accused, in those later years, of becoming overbearing and arrogant, of losing some of his old powers of patience and restraint.. He felt, perhaps, that ho could do anything, like 'the old Roman Emperors, whom ho thought he resembled, who wore depraved by excess of power. Perhaps the sense that his health was failing and that his life must bo a short one made him impatient. There was no excuse for what Rhodes did. His conduct in secretly plotting and preparing the way for the Jameson raid, to upset the Government of the Transvaal, which was a friendly country, was made worse by the fact that he was head of the Government of Cape Colony and head also of the Chartered Company of Rhodesia. His agents were ill-chosen. One of them, who was sent to England, easily persuaded himself that his obscure hints had revealed the plan to Mr Chamberlain. and that the Secretary for the Colonies approved the scheme. The raid was a fiasco, as more knowledge, at the moment it began,-must have shown that it would be. Rhodes did his best to stop it—when it was too late. Before it failed, Dutch friends who taxed him with the conspiracy, having heard rumors of it, found him to all appearance a broken man. Ho would say nothing, except that he would resign the Prime Ministership in the morning. He would not give Jameson away. When London heard of the raid, and before it failed, Mr Chamberlain cabled that any such violation of a friendly territory must be at once repudiated. Rhodes was completely disgraced. Ho gave up his offices. But the worst effect, even for Rhodes, of his unscrupulous folly was its effect on the cause of union. How could tho Dutch henceforth trust any British leader or regard any British advocacy of that cause except ns a cloak for aggression and dominance ? It, might have appeared that there was no further future for Rhodes. “When faith, is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.” When he returned to an active part in South African politics, though the Dutch voters of his old constituency still supported him, it was as tho leader of a section instead of as the leader of a combined party. - But almost on the morrow of his humiliation he was performing new services for the Empire by the suppression of a revolt in Matabeleland, which nothing but Jus unique personal influence could have achieved "without protracted bloodshed. And after his death the great scheme of scholarships for which his will provided, and which also had been a purpose with him all his life, showed how broad his Imperialism could he. £he chief par* of his dream for South

Africa has been fulfilled. “Living ho was the land, and dead his soul shall ho her soul.” Tho final decision on tho Flag Bill will show to what degree that is yet true.