To meet and baffle these outward thrusts one by one was the first necessity; and that, from the early eighties down to the stoppage of the last earth (the seaward opening) in 1895, he did. Those who know the inside history of those events know best his part in them, which, to be sure, was sometimes not very pellucid to outside gaze. In the west, for instance, direct Imperialists like Warren and Mackenzie, blunt, honest fellows, were quite at cross-purposes with him; but Paul Kruger read his Rhodes aright, if they could not,[1] and in his 'Memoirs' that good hater has put it on record who it was that really shut the Boer kraal, and kept open the British road to the north.
I have seen it suggested that what really kept foreign Powers out of Rhodesia was not Rhodes, but the Moffat Treaty of 1888 and the proclamation of that blessed phrase 'Sphere of Influence.' The criticism could not have been made had the critics known—what does not appear in Blue-Books, but what Lord Rosmead could have told them—who it was that prompted both treaty and proclamation. Rhodes had disclosed his plans, and Sir Hercules Robinson had exacted guarantees that where he planted the flag Rhodes would follow. Something more was wanted than negatives to Kruger and proclamations of spheres. The north must be not only talked about, but taken—occupied, opened up, freed from the yoke of black militarism, settled, developed. Only so could a new world to redress the balance of the old, a counterpoise to the lost Eldorado of the Transvaal, be got ready to fling into the British scale on the day when South Africa should be ready to tremble into union one way or the other. For that millions were needed, and since it was idle in those days—how idle was proved by that old crusader, John Mackenzie—to ask the British Government or taxpayer to find the
- ↑ If Sir Charles Warren desires (as he clearly needs) more light on Rhodes's part in the obscure Cape politics of that period, he might seek it from an unimpeachable witness like Sir James Rose-Innes.
