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Show ; ,'; CECIL RHODES. IP With peace restored to South Af- IM rica, in the cleared atmosphere we can ob- ft' tan a more correect view of the real Hip character of the late Ceci) Rhodes. He llW was caed cruel selfish and indifferent to B'Cf any suffering produced in carrying out !H . his gigantic schemes. He was cruel as in' the surgeon is who cuts away malignant IB tumors from the human body, he was sel-H sel-H M fish no doubt, that he had an over-master K m ambition is sure, but when we come fill sudy ne rea purposes of the myster-jEi1 myster-jEi1 ious man as revealed by his will, his char-H char-H acter takes on new light. First of all his HHi ruling trait was intense patriotism. He B thought of his countrymen as the race HHJ that had the strength to beat down what HBI $ was crude and fierce and unfair in their own natures, and despite their Kings and thoir own stubborn ways to cause all men, high and low, to stand upon an exact eqality before the law; he bought of the years when England, almost alone among the natons of the earth, kept a light at her window Avhich was a notice to the world outside, that within her boundaries, bound-aries, the personal liberty of men was secure. No doubt he often repeated the apostrophe of Curran: "I speak in the spirit of the British law which makes liberty lib-erty commensurate with and inseperable from British soil." "No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced, no matter what complexion incompatable to freedom free-dom and Indian or African sun may have burned upon him; no matlr in what dis-asterous dis-asterous battle his liberties may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted on the altar of slavery, the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britian, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in it3 own majesty, his body swells beyond the limit of the chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled." Cecil Rhodes found South Africa almost al-most absolutely lost in savagery. He knew how immense would be the undertaking under-taking to begin its redemption, that there would be sufferng, danger and infinite in-finite toil. He knew that however it might be carried on there would be fierce criticism of the work and inisjudgment of motives, but he did not hesitate. He shirked neither toil nor danger; he asked no man to do what he did not do himself. His life was spared only long enough to outline and begin the work, but he started progress in a way that it cannot now be stopped. He wanted the financial backing necessary for the work and he obtained it from the mines. In working them he discovered how England had fallen behind, done up as she has been in strange obliviousness of how the world is sweeping past her, and employed chiefly American and German engineers and managers. AH the time he was working for Anglo Saxon and German dominence; working to fix in a practical way something which would insure the peace which the Czar called the conference to establish on paper. Then in his will he provided a way to inject fresh blood into England's great university to break the inertia and ex-clusiveness ex-clusiveness which have long dominated that institution, and which, spreading has extended to even the industries of Great Britain and to the army of Great Britain until when that army in that same South Africa was confronted by a vigilant, tireless, tire-less, brave and alert enemy, nothing but disaster Avas experienced for months. Cecil Rhodes was an extreme imperialist, imper-ialist, not that kind which bows in obedience obed-ience to hereditary royalty, but to the royalty of intellect to that he was ever ready to do reverence. So he lived. Like Moses he was given to see the fruition of his dreams from afar, but not to join in the festivities of the day of final victory. vic-tory. He wanted South Africr redeemed, he wanted to see his native land exalted and he set in motion the work which will secure both results. He was forced to think, while dying, that he was going to the grave misjudged and misunderstood but he was no doubt comforted by the thought that his vindication would come later. And it will. In the estimation of the world fifty years hence Cecil Rhodes will be held as in the front rank of the great men who in the last years of the nineteenth century, made for themselves immortality. |