An African Adventure
by Isaac Frederick Marcosson · English · Gutenberg #25569 · 466,206 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of An African Adventure
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: An African Adventure
Author: Isaac Frederick Marcosson
Release date: May 23, 2008 [eBook #25569]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25569
Credits: Produced by Mark C. Orton, Júlio Reis, Linda McKeown and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE ***
Produced by Mark C. Orton, Júlio Reis, Linda McKeown and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ADVENTURES IN INTERVIEWING
PEACE AND BUSINESS
S. O. S: AMERICAS'S MIRACLE IN FRANCE
THE BUSINESS OF WAR
THE REBIRTH OF RUSSIA
THE WAR AFTER THE WAR
LEONARD WOOD: PROPHET OF PREPAREDNESS
[Illustration: KING ALBERT]
AN AFRICAN
ADVENTURE
BY
ISAAC F. MARCOSSON
AUTHOR OF "ADVENTURES IN INTERVIEWING," ETC.
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
MCMXXI
COPYRIGHT · 1921
BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT · 1921
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
THE PLIMPTON PRESS
NORWOOD · MASS · U·S·A
_To_
THOMAS F. RYAN
WHO FIRST BEHELD THE VISION
OF AMERICA IN THE
CONGO
FOREWORD
From earliest boyhood when I read the works of Henry M. Stanley and
books about Cecil Rhodes, Africa has called to me. It was not until I
met General Smuts during the Great War, however, that I had a definite
reason for going there.
After these late years of blood and battle America and Europe seemed
tame. Besides, the economic war after the war developed into a struggle
as bitter as the actual physical conflict. Discord and discontent became
the portion of the civilized world. I wanted to get as far as possible
from all this social unrest and financial dislocation.
So much interest was evinced in the magazine articles which first set
forth the record of my journey that I was prompted to expand them into
this book. It may enable the reader to discover a section of the
one-time Dark Continent without the hardships which I experienced.
I. F. M.
NEW YORK, _April, 1921_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. SMUTS 15
II. "CAPE-TO-CAIRO" 57
III. RHODES AND RHODESIA 103
IV. THE CONGO TODAY 139
V. ON THE CONGO RIVER 177
VI. AMERICA IN THE CONGO 225
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
King Albert _Frontispiece_
Groote Schuur _facing page_ 28
General J. C. Smuts 44
Mr. Marcosson's Route in Africa 56
Cecil Rhodes 76
The Premier Diamond Mine 90
Victoria Falls 102
Cultivating Citrus Land in Rhodesia 110
The Grave of Cecil Rhodes 132
A Katanga Copper Mine 138
Lord Leverhulme 144
Robert Williams 144
On the Lualaba 150
A View on the Kasai 150
A Station Scene at Kongola 156
A Native Market at Kindu 162
Native Fish Traps at Stanley Falls 168
The Massive Bangalas 176
Congo Women in State Dress 176
Central African Pygmies 182
Women Making Pottery 190
The Congo Pickaninny 190
The Heart of the Equatorial Forest 198
Natives Piling Wood 204
A Wood Post on the Congo 204
Residential Quarters at Alberta 210
The Comte de Flandre 210
A Typical Oil Palm Forest 216
Bringing in the Palm Fruit 216
A Specimen of Cicatrization 220
A Sankuru Woman Playing Native Draughts 220
The Belgian Congo 224
Thomas F. Ryan 228
Jean Jadot 236
Emile Francqui 242
A Belle of the Congo 246
Women of the Batetelas 246
Fishermen on the Sankuru 254
The Falls of the Sankuru 254
A Congo Diamond Mine 260
How the Mines Are Worked 260
Gravel Carriers at a Congo Mine 266
Congo Natives Picking out Diamonds 266
Washing out Gravel 272
Donald Doyle and Mr. Marcosson 272
The Park at Boma 278
A Street in Matadi 278
A General View of Matadi 282
AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE
AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE
CHAPTER I--SMUTS
I
Turn the searchlight on the political and economic chaos that has
followed the Great War and you find a surprising lack of real
leadership. Out of the mists that enshroud the world welter only three
commanding personalities emerge. In England Lloyd George survives amid
the storm of party clash and Irish discord. Down in Greece Venizelos,
despite defeat, remains an impressive figure of high ideals and
uncompromising patriotism. Off in South Africa Smuts gives fresh
evidence of his vision and authority.
Although he was Britain's principal prop during the years of agony and
disaster, Lloyd George is, in the last analysis, merely an eloquent and
spectacular politician with the genius of opportunism. One reason why he
holds his post is that there is no one to take his place,--another
commentary on the paucity of greatness. There is no visible heir to
Venizelos. Besides, Greece is a small country without international
touch and interest. Smuts, youngest of the trio, looms up as the most
brilliant statesman of his day and his career has just entered upon a
new phase.
He is the dominating actor in a drama that not only affects the destiny
of the whole British Empire, but has significance for every civilized
nation. The quality of striking contrast has always been his. The
one-time Boer General, who fought Roberts and Kitchener twenty years
ago, is battling with equal tenacity for the integrity of the Imperial
Union born of that war. Not in all history perhaps, is revealed a more
picturesque situation than obtains in South Africa today. You have the
whole Nationalist movement crystallized into a single compelling
episode. In a word, it is contemporary Ireland duplicated without
violence and extremism.
I met General Smuts often during the Great War. He stood out as the most
intellectually alert, and in some respects the most distinguished figure
among the array of nation-guiders with whom I talked, and I interviewed
them all. I saw him as he sat in the British War Cabinet when the German
hosts were sweeping across the Western Front, and when the German
submarines were making a shambles of the high seas. I heard him speak
with persuasive force on public occasions and he was like a beacon in
the gloom. He had come to England in 1917 as the representative of
General Botha, the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, to
attend the Imperial Conference and to remain a comparatively short time.
So great was the need of him that he did not go home until after the
Peace had been signed. He signed the Treaty under protest because he
believed it was uneconomic and it has developed into the irritant that
he prophesied it would be.
In those war days when we foregathered, Smuts often talked of "the world
that would be." The real Father of the League of Nations idea, he
believed that out of the immense travail would develop a larger
fraternity, economically sound and without sentimentality. It was a
great and yet a practical dream.
More than once he asked me to come to South Africa. I needed little
urging. From my boyhood the land of Cecil Rhodes has always held a lure
for me. Smuts invested it with fresh interest. So I went.
The Smuts that I found at close range on his native heath, wearing the
mantle of the departed Botha, carrying on a Government with a minority,
and with the shadow of an internecine war brooding on the horizon, was
the same serene, clear-thinking strategist who had raised his voice in
the Allied Councils. Then the enemy was the German and the task was to
destroy the menace of militarism. Now it was his own unreconstructed
Boer--blood of his blood,--and behind that Boer the larger problem of a
rent and dissatisfied universe, waging peace as bitterly as it waged
war. Smuts the dreamer was again Smuts the fighter, with the fight of
his life on his hands.
Thus it came about that I found myself in Capetown. Everybody goes out
to South Africa from England on those Union Castle boats so familiar to
all readers of English novels. Like the P. & O. vessels that Kipling
wrote about in his Indian stories, they are among the favorite first
aids to the makers of fiction. Hosts of heroes in books--and some in
real life--sail each year to their romantic fate aboard them.
It was the first day of the South African winter when I arrived, but
back in America spring was in full bloom. I looked out on the same view
that had thrilled the Portuguese adventurers of the fifteenth century
when they swept for the first time into Table Bay. Behind the harbor
rose Table Mountain and stretching from it downward to the sea was a
land with verdure clad and aglare with the African sun that was to
scorch my paths for months to come.
Capetown nestles at the foot of a vast flat-topped mass of granite
unique among the natural elevations of the world. She is another melting
pot. Here mingle Kaffir and Boer, Basuto and Britisher, East Indian and
Zulu. The hardy rancher and fortune-hunter from the North Country rub
shoulders with the globe-trotter. In the bustling streets modern
taxicabs vie for space with antiquated hansoms bearing names like "Never
Say Die," "Home Sweet Home," or "Honeysuckle." All the horse-drawn
public vehicles have names.
You get a familiar feel of America in this South African country and
especially in the Cape Colony, which is a place of fruits, flowers and
sunshine resembling California. There is the sense of newness in the
atmosphere, and something of the abandon that you encounter among the
people of Australia and certain parts of Canada. It comes from life
spent in the open and the spirit of pioneering that within a
comparatively short time has wrested a huge domain from the savage.
What strikes the observer at once is the sharp conflict of race, first,
between black and white, and then, between Briton and Boer. South of the
Zambesi River,--and this includes Rhodesia and the Union of South
Africa,--the native outnumbers the white more than six to one and he is
increasing at a much greater rate than the European. Hence you have an
inevitable conflict. Race lies at the root of the South African trouble
and the racial reconciliation that Rhodes and Botha set their hopes upon
remains an elusive quantity.
I got a hint of what Smuts was up against the moment I arrived. I had
cabled him of my coming and he sent an orderly to the steamer with a
note of welcome and inviting me to lunch with him at the House of
Parliament the next day. In the letter, among other things he said: "You
will find this a really interesting country, full of curious problems."
How curious they were I was soon to find out.
I called for him at his modest book-lined office in a street behind the
Parliament Buildings and we walked together to the House. Heretofore I
had only seen him in the uniform of a Lieutenant General in the British
Army. Now he wore a loose-fitting lounge suit and a slouch hat was
jammed down on his head. In the change from khaki to mufti--and few men
can stand up under this transition without losing some of the character
of their personal appearance,--he remained a striking figure. There is
something wistful in his face--an indescribable look that projects
itself not only through you but beyond. It is not exactly preoccupation
but a highly developed concentration. This look seemed to be enhanced by
the ordeal through which he was then passing. In his springy walk was a
suggestion of pugnacity. His whole manner was that of a man in action
and who exults in it. Roosevelt had the same characteristic but he
displayed it with much more animation and strenuosity.
We sat down in the crowded dining room of the House of Parliament where
the Prime Minister had invited a group of Cabinet Ministers and leading
business men of Capetown. Around us seethed a noisy swirl which
reflected the turmoil of the South African political situation.
Parliament had just convened after an historic election in which the
Nationalists, the bitter antagonists of Botha and Smuts, had elected a
majority of representatives for the first time. Smuts was hanging on to
the Premiership by his teeth. A sharp division of vote, likely at any
moment, would have overthrown the Government. It meant a régime hostile
to Britain that carried with it secession and the remote possibility of
civil war.
In that restaurant, as throughout the whole Union, Smuts was at that
moment literally the observed of all observers. Far off in London the
powers-that-be were praying that this blonde and bearded Boer could
successfully man the imperial breach. Yet he sat there smiling and
unafraid and the company that he had assembled discussed a variety of
subjects that ranged from the fall in exchange to the possibilities of
the wheat crop in America.
The luncheon was the first of various meetings with Smuts. Some were
amid the tumult of debate or in the shadow of the legislative halls,
others out in the country at _Groote Schuur_, the Prime Minister's
residence, where we walked amid the gardens that Cecil Rhodes loved, or
sat in the rooms where the Colossus "thought in terms of continents." It
was a liberal education.
Before we can go into what Smuts said during these interviews it is
important to know briefly the whole approach to the crowded hour that
made the fullest test of his resource and statesmanship. Clearly to
understand it you must first know something about the Boer and his long
stubborn struggle for independence which ended, for a time at least, in
the battle and blood of the Boer War.
Capetown, the melting pot, is merely a miniature of the larger boiling
cauldron of race which is the Union of South Africa. In America we also
have an astonishing mixture of bloods but with the exception of the
Bolshevists and other radical uplifters, our population is loyally
dedicated to the American flag and the institutions it represents. With
us Latin, Slav, Celt, and Saxon have blended the strain that proved its
mettle as "Americans All" under the Stars and Stripes in France. We have
given succor and sanctuary to the oppressed of many lands and these
foreign elements, in the main, have not only been grateful but have
proved to be distinct assets in our national expansion. We are a merged
people.
With South Africa the situation is somewhat different. The roots of
civilization there were planted by the Dutch in the days of the Dutch
East India Company when Holland was a world power. The Dutchman is a
tenacious and stubborn person. Although the Huguenots emigrated to the
Cape in considerable force in the seventeenth century and intermarried
with the transplanted Hollanders, the Dutch strain, and with it the
Dutch characteristics predominated. They have shaped South African
history ever since. This is why the Boer is still referred to in popular
parlance as "a Dutchman."
The Dutch have always been a proud and liberty-loving people, as the
Duke of Alva and the Spaniard learned to their cost. This inherited
desire for freedom has flamed in the hearts of the Boers. In the early
African day they preferred to journey on to the wild and unknown places
rather than sacrifice their independence. What is known as "The Great
Trek" of the thirties, which opened up the Transvaal and subsequently
the Orange Free State and Natal, was due entirely to unrest among the
Cape Boers. There is something of the epic in the narrative of those
doughty, psalm-singing trekkers who, like the Mormons in the American
West, went forth in their canvas-covered wagons with a rifle in one hand
and the Bible in the other. They fought the savage, endured untold
hardships, and met fate with a grim smile on their lips. It took Britain
nearly three costly years to subdue their descendants, an untrained army
of farmers.
A revelation of the Boer character, therefore, is an index to the South
African tangle. His enemies call the Boer "a combination of cunning and
childishness." As a matter of fact the Boer is distinct among
individualists. "Oom Paul" Kruger was a type. A fairly familiar story
will concretely illustrate what lies within and behind the race. On one
occasion his thumb was nearly severed in an accident. With his
pocket-knife he cut off the finger, bound up the wound with a rag, and
went about his business.
The old Boer--and the type survives--was a Puritan who loved his
five-thousand-acre farm where he could neither see nor hear his
neighbors, who read the Good Word three times a day, drank prodigious
quantities of coffee, spoke "_taal_" the Dutch dialect, and reared a
huge family. Botha, for example, was one of thirteen children, and his
father lamented to his dying day that he had not done his full duty by
his country!
Isolation was the Boer fetich. This instinct for aloofness,--principally
racial,--animates the sincere wing of the Nationalist Party today. Men
like Botha and Smuts and their followers adapted themselves to
assimilation but there remained the "bitter-end" element that rebelled
in arms against the constituted authority in 1914 and had to be put down
with merciless hand. This element now seeks to achieve through more
peaceful ends what it sought to do by force the moment Britain became
involved in the Great War. The reason for the revolt of 1914, in a
paragraph, was Britain's far-flung call to arms. The unreconstructed
Boers refused to fight for the Power that humbled them in 1902. They
seized the moment to make a try for what they called "emancipation."
To go back for a moment, when the British conquered the Cape and
thousands of Englishmen streamed out to Africa to make their fortunes,
the Boer at once bristled with resentment. His isolation was menaced. He
regarded the Briton as an "_Uitlander_"--an outsider--and treated him as
an undesirable alien. In the Transvaal and the Orange Free State he was
denied the rights that are accorded to law-abiding citizens in other
countries. Hence the Jameson Raid, which was an ill-starred protest
against the narrow, copper-riveted Boer rule, and later the final and
sanguinary show-down in the Boer War, which ended the dream of Boer
independence.
In 1910 was established the Union of South Africa, comprising the
Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Natal and the Cape Colony which
obtained responsible government and which is to all intents and purposes
a dominion as free as Australia or Canada. England sends out a
Governor-General, usually a high-placed and titled person but he is a
be-medalled figure-head,--an ornamental feature of the landscape. His
principal labours are to open fairs, attend funerals, preside at
harmless gatherings, and bestow decorations upon worthy persons. First
Botha, and later Smuts, have been the real rulers of the country.
The Union Constitution decreed that bi-lingualism must prevail. As a
result every public notice, document, and time-table is printed in both
English and Dutch. The tie of language is a strong one and this eternal
and unuttered presence of the "_taal_" has been an asset for the
Nationalists to exploit. It is a link with the days of independence.
Following the Boer War came a sharp cleavage among the Boers. That great
farm-bred soldier and statesman, Louis Botha, accepted the verdict and
became the leader of what might be called a reconciled reconstruction.
Firm in the belief that the future of South Africa was greater than the
smaller and selfish issue of racial pride and prejudice, he rallied his
open-minded and far-seeing countrymen around him. Out of this group
developed the South African Party which remains the party of the Dutch
loyal to British rule. To quote the program of principles, "Its
political object is the development of a South African spirit of
national unity and self-reliance through the attainment of the lasting
union of the various sections of the people."
Botha was made Premier of the Transvaal as soon as the Colony was
granted self-government and with the accomplishment of Union was named
Prime Minister of the Federation. The first man that he called to the
standard of the new order to become his Colonial Minister, or more
technically, Minister of the Interior, was Smuts, who had left his law
office in Johannesburg to fight the English in 1900 and who displayed
the same consummate strategy in the field that he has since shown in
Cabinet meeting and Legislative forum. With peace he returned to law but
not for long. Now began his political career--he has held public office
continuously ever since--that is a vital part of the modern history of
South Africa.
In the years immediately following Union the genius of Botha had full
play. He wrought a miracle of evolution. Under his influence the land
which still bore the scars of war was turned to plenty. He was a farmer
and he bent his energy and leadership to the rebuilding of the shattered
commonwealths. Their hope lay in the soil. His right arm was Smuts, who
became successively Minister of Finance and Minister of Public Defense.
The belief that reconciliation had dawned was rudely disturbed when the
Great War crashed into civilization. The extreme Nationalists rebelled
and it was Botha, aided by Smuts, who crushed them. Beyers, the
ringleader, was drowned while trying to escape across the Vaal River,
DeWet was defeated in the field, De la Rey was accidentally shot, and
Maritz became a fugitive. Botha then conquered the Germans in German
South-West Africa and Smuts subsequently took over the command of the
Allied Forces in German East Africa. When Botha died in 1919 Smuts not
only assumed the Premiership of the Union but he also inherited the
bitter enmity that General J. B. M. Hertzog bore towards his lamented
Chief.
Now we come to the crux of the whole business, past and present. Who is
Hertzog and what does he stand for?
If you look at your history of the Boer War you will see that one of the
first Dutch Generals to take the field and one of the last to leave it
was Hertzog, an Orange Free State lawyer who had won distinction on the
Bench. He helped to frame the Union Constitution and on the day he
signed it, declared that it was a distinct epoch in his life. A Boer of
the Boers, he seemed to catch for the moment, the contagion that
radiated from Botha and spelled a Greater South Africa.
Botha made him Minister of Justice and all was well. But deep down in
his heart Hertzog remained unrepentant. When the question of South
Africa's contribution to the Imperial Navy came up in 1912 he fought it
tooth and nail. In fiery utterances attacking the Government he
denounced Botha as a jingoist and an imperialist. Just about this time
he made the famous speech in which he stated his ideal of South Africa.
He declared that Briton and Boer were "two separate streams"--two
nationalities each flowing in a separate channel. The "two streams"
slogan is now the Nationalist battlecry.
Such procedure on the part of Hertzog demanded prompt action on the part
of Botha, who called upon his colleague either to suppress his
particular brand of anathema or resign. Hertzog not only built a bigger
bonfire of denunciation but refused to resign.
Botha thereupon devised a unique method of ridding himself of his
uncongenial Minister. He resigned, the Government fell, and the Cabinet
dissolved automatically. Hertzog was left out in the cold. The
Governor-General immediately re-appointed Botha Prime Minister and he
reorganized his Cabinet without the undesirable Hertzog.
Hertzog became the Stormy Petrel of South Africa, vowing vengeance
against Botha and Britain. He galvanized the Nationalist Party, which up
to this time had been merely a party of opposition, into what was
rapidly becoming a flaming secession movement. The South African Party
developed into the only really national party, while its opponent,
although bearing the name of National, was solely and entirely racial.
The first real test of strength was in the election of 1915. The
campaign was bitter and belligerent. The venom of the Nationalist Party
was concentrated on Smuts. Many of his meetings became bloody riots. He
was the target for rotten fruit and on one occasion an attempt was made
on his life. The combination of the Botha personality and the Smuts
courage and reason won out and the South African Party remained in
power.
Undaunted, Hertzog carried on the fight. He soon had the supreme
advantage of having the field to himself because Botha was off fighting
the Germans and Smuts had gone to England to help mould the Allied
fortunes. The Nationalist leader made hay while the red sun of war
shone. Every South African who died on the battlefield was for him just
another argument for separation from England.
When Ireland declared herself a "republic" Hertzog took the cue and
counted his cause in with that of the "small nations" that needed
self-determination. "Afrika for the Afrikans," the old motto of the
_Afrikander Bond_, was unfurled from the masthead and the sedition
spread. It not only recruited the Boers who had an ancient grievance
against Great Britain, but many others who secretly resented the Botha
and Smuts intimacy with "the conquerors." Some were sons and grandsons
of the old "_Vortrekkers_," who not only delighted to speak the "_taal_"
exclusively but who had never surrendered the ideal of independence.
While the Dutch movement in South Africa strongly resembles the Irish
rebellion there are also some marked differences. In South Africa there
is no religious barrier and as a result there has been much
intermarriage between Briton and Boer. The English in South Africa bear
the same relation to the Nationalist movement there that the Ulsterites
bear to the Sinn Feiners in Ireland. Instead of being segregated as are
the followers of Sir Edward Carson, they are scattered throughout the
country.
At the General Election held early in 1920,--general elections are held
every five years,--the results were surprising. The Nationalists
returned a majority of four over the South African Party in Parliament.
It left Smuts to carry on his Government with a minority. To add to his
troubles, the Labour Party,--always an uncertain proposition,--increased
its representation from a mere handful to twenty-one, while the
Unionists, who comprise the straight-out English-speaking Party, whose
stronghold is Natal, suffered severe losses. Smuts could not very well
count the latter among his open allies because it would have alienated
the hard-shell Boers in the South African Party.
This was the situation that I found on my arrival in Capetown. On one
hand was Smuts, still Prime Minister, taxing his every resource as
parliamentarian and pacificator to maintain the Union and prevent a
revolt from Britain--all in the face of a bitter and hostile majority.
On the other hand was Hertzog, bent on secession and with a solid array
of discontents behind him. The two former comrades of the firing line,
as the heads of their respective groups, were locked in a momentous
political life-and-death struggle the outcome of which may prove to be
the precedent for Ireland, Egypt, and India.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright South African Railways_
GROOTE SCHUUR]
II
Yet Smuts continued as Premier which means that he brought the life of
Parliament to a close without a sharp division. Moreover, he
manœuvered his forces into a position that saved the day for Union
and himself. How did he do it?
I can demonstrate one way and with a rather personal incident. During
the week I spent in Capetown Smuts was an absorbed person as you may
imagine. The House was in session day and night and there were endless
demands on him. The best opportunities that we had for talk were at
meal-time. One evening I dined with him in the House restaurant. When we
sat down we thought that we had the place to ourselves. Suddenly Smuts
cast his eye over the long room and saw a solitary man just commencing
his dinner in the opposite corner. Turning to me he said:
"Do you know Cresswell?"
"I was introduced to him yesterday," I replied.
"Would you mind if I asked him to dine with us?"
When I assured him that I would be delighted, the Prime Minister got up,
walked over to Cresswell and asked him to join us, which he did.
The significant part of this apparently simple performance, which had
its important outcome, was this. Colonel F. H. P. Cresswell is the
leader of the Labour Party in South Africa. By profession a mining
engineer, he led the forces of revolt in the historic industrial
upheaval in the Rand in what Smuts denounced as a "Syndicalist
Conspiracy." Riot, bloodshed, and confusion reigned for a considerable
period at Johannesburg and large bodies of troops had to be called out
to restore order. At the very moment that we sat down to dine that night
no one knew just what Cresswell and the Labourites with their new-won
power would do. Smuts, as Minister of Finance, had deported some of
Cresswell's men and Cresswell himself narrowly escaped drastic
punishment.
When Smuts brought Cresswell over he said jokingly to me:
"Cresswell is a good fellow but I came near sending him to jail once."
Cresswell beamed and the three of us amiably discussed various topics
until the gong sounded for the assembling of the House.
What was the result? Before I left Capetown and when the first of the
few occasions which tested the real voting strength of Parliament arose,
Cresswell and some of his adherents voted with Smuts. I tell this little
story to show that the man who today holds the destiny of South Africa
in his hands is as skillful a diplomat as he is soldier and statesman.
It was at one of these quiet dinners with Smuts at the House that he
first spoke about Nationalism. He said: "The war gave Nationalism its
death blow. But as a matter of fact Nationalism committed suicide in the
war."
"But what is Nationalism?" I asked him.
"A water-tight nation in a water-tight compartment," he replied. "It is
a process of regimentation like the old Germany that will soon merge
into a new Internationalism. What seems to be at this moment an orgy of
Nationalism in South Africa or elsewhere is merely its death gasp. The
New World will be a world of individualism dominated by Britain and
America.
"What about the future?" I asked him. His answer was:
"The safety of the future depends upon Federation, upon a League of
Nations that will develop along economic and not purely sentimental
lines. The New Internationalism will not stop war but it can regulate
exchange, and through this regulation can help to prevent war.
"I believe in an international currency which will be a sort of legal
tender among all the nations. Why should the currency of the country
depreciate or rise with the fortunes of war or with its industrial or
other complications? Misfortune should not be penalized fiscally."
I brought up the question of the lack of accord which then existed
between Britain and America and suggested that perhaps the fall in
exchange had something to do with it, whereupon he said: "Yes, I think
it has. It merely illustrates the point that I have just made about an
international currency."
We came back to the subject of individualism, which led Smuts to say:
"The Great War was a striking illustration of the difference between
individualism and nationalism. Hindenberg commanded the only army in the
war. It was a product of nationalism. The individualism of the
Anglo-Saxon is such that it becomes a mob but it is an intelligent mob.
Haig and Pershing commanded such mobs."
I tried to probe Smuts about Russia. He was in London when I returned
from Petrograd in 1917 and I recall that he displayed the keenest
interest in what I told him about Kerensky and the new order that I had
seen in the making. I heard him speak at a Russian Fair in London. The
whole burden of his utterance was the hope that the Slav would achieve
discipline and organization. At that time Russia redeemed from autocracy
looked to be a bulwark of Allied victory. The night we talked about
Russia at Capetown she had become the prey of red terror and the
plaything of organized assassination.
Smuts looked rather wistful when he said:
"You cannot defeat Russia. Napoleon learned this to his cost and so will
the rest of the world. I do not know whether Bolshevism is advancing or
subsiding. There comes a time when the fiercest fires die down. But the
best way to revive or rally all Russia to the Soviet Government is to
invade the country and to annex large slices of it."
These utterances were made during those more or less hasty meals at the
House of Parliament when the Premier's mind was really in the
Legislative Hall nearby where he was fighting for his administrative
life. It was far different out at _Groote Schuur_, the home of the Prime
Minister, located in Rondebosch, a suburb about nine miles from
Capetown. In the open country that he loves, and in an environment that
breathed the romance and performance of England's greatest
empire-builder, I caught something of the man's kindling vision and
realized his ripe grasp of international events.
_Groote Schuur_ is one of the best-known estates in the world. Cecil
Rhodes in his will left it to the Union as the permanent residence of
the Prime Minister. Ever since I read the various lives of Rhodes I had
had an impatient desire to see this shrine of achievement. Here Rhodes
came to live upon his accession to the Premiership of the Cape Colony;
here he fashioned the British South Africa Company which did for
Rhodesia what the East India Company did for India; here came prince and
potentate to pay him honour; here he dreamed his dreams of conquest
looking out at mountain and sea; here lived Jameson and Kipling; here
his remains lay in state when at forty-nine the fires of his restless
ambition had ceased.
_Groote Schuur_, which in Dutch means "Great Granary," was originally
built as a residence and store-house for one of the early Dutch
Governors of the Cape. It is a beautiful example of the Dutch
architecture that you will find throughout the Colony and which is not
surpassed in grace or comfort anywhere. When Rhodes acquired it in the
eighties the grounds were comparatively limited. As his power and
fortune increased he bought up all the surrounding country until today
you can ride for nine miles across the estate. You find no neat lawns
and dainty flower-beds. On the place, as in the house itself, you get
the sense of bigness and simplicity which were the keynotes of the
Rhodes character.
One reason why Rhodes acquired _Groote Schuur_ was that behind it rose
the great bulk of Table Mountain. He loved it for its vastness and its
solitude. On the back _stoep_, which is the Dutch word for porch, he sat
for hours gazing at this mountain which like the man himself was
invested with a spirit of immensity.
It was a memorable experience to be at _Groote Schuur_ with Smuts, who
has lived to see the realization of the hope of Union which thrilled
always in the heart of Cecil Rhodes. I remember that on the first night
I went out the Prime Minister took me through the house himself. It has
been contended by Smuts' enemies that he was a "creature of Rhodes." I
discovered that Smuts, with the exception of having made a speech of
welcome when Rhodes visited the school that he attended as a boy, had
never even met the Englishman who left his impress upon a whole land.
_Groote Schuur_ has been described so much that it is not necessary for
me to dwell upon its charm and atmosphere here. To see it is to get a
fresh and intimate realization of the personality which made the
establishment an unofficial Chancellery of the British Empire.
Two details, however, have poignant and dramatic interest. In the
simple, massive, bed-room with its huge bay window opening on Table
Mountain and a stretch of lovely countryside, hangs the small map of
Africa that Rhodes marked with crimson ink and about which he made the
famous utterance, "It must be all red." Hanging on the wall in the
billiard room is the flag with Crescent and Cape device that he had made
to be carried by the first locomotive to travel from Cairo to the Cape.
That flag has never been unfurled to the breeze but the vision that
beheld it waving in the heart of the jungle is soon to become an
accomplished fact.
It was on a night at _Groote Schuur_, as I walked with Smuts through the
acres of hydrangeas and bougainvillea (Rhodes' favorite flowers), with a
new moon peeping overhead that I got the real mood of the man. Pointing
to the faint silvery crescent in the sky I said: "General, there's a new
moon over us and I'm sure it means good luck for you."
"No," he replied, "it's the man that makes the luck."
He had had a trying day in the House and was silent in the motor car
that brought us out. The moment we reached the country and he sniffed
the scent of the gardens the anxiety and preoccupation fell away. He
almost became boyish. But when he began to discuss great problems the
lightness vanished and he became the serious thinker.
We harked back to the days when I had first seen him in England. I asked
him to tell me what he thought of the aftermath of the stupendous
struggle. He said:
"The war was just a phase of world convulsion. It made the first rent in
the universal structure. For years the trend of civilization was toward
a super-Nationalism. It is easy to trace the stages. The Holy Roman
Empire was a phase of Nationalism. That was Catholic. Then came the
development of Nationalism, beginning with Napoleon. That was
Protestant. Now began the building of water-tight compartments,
otherwise known as nations. Germany represented the most complete
development.
"But that era of 'my country,' 'my power,'--it is all a form of national
ego,--is gone. The four great empires,--Turkey, Germany, Russia and
Austria,--have crumbled. The war jolted them from their high estate. It
started the universal cataclysm. Centuries in the future some
perspective can be had and the results appraised.
"Meanwhile, we can see the beginning. The world is one. Humanity is one
and must be one. The war, at terrible cost, brought the peoples
together. The League of Nations is a faint and far-away evidence of this
solidarity. It merely points the way but it is something. It is not
academic formulas that will unite the peoples of the world but
intelligence."
Smuts now turned his thought to a subject not without interest for
America, for he said:
"The world has been brought together by the press, by wireless, indeed
by all communication which represents the last word in scientific
development. Yet political institutions cling to old and archaic
traditions. Take the Presidency of the United States. A man waits for
four months before he is inaugurated. The incumbent may work untold
mischief in the meantime. It is all due to the fact that in the days
when the American Constitution was framed the stagecoach and the horse
were the only means of conveyance. The world now travels by aeroplane
and express train, yet the antiquated habits continue.
"So with political parties and peoples, the British Empire included.
They need to be brought abreast of the times. The old pre-war British
Empire, for example, is gone in the sense of colonies or subordinate
nations clustering around one master nation. The British Empire itself
is developing into a real League of Nations,--a group of partner
peoples."
"What of America and the future?" I asked him.
"America is the leaven of the future," answered Smuts. "She is the
life-blood of the League of Nations. Without her the League is stifled.
America will give the League the peace temper. You Americans are a
pacific people, slow to war but terrible and irresistible when you once
get at it. The American is an individualist and in that new and
inevitable internationalism the individual will stand out, the American
pre-eminently."
Throughout this particular experience at _Groote Schuur_ I could not
help marvelling on the contrast that the man and the moment presented.
We walked through a place of surpassing beauty. Ahead brooded the black
mystery of the mountains and all around was a fragrant stillness broken
only by the quick, almost passionate speech of this seer and thinker,
animate with an inspiring ideal of public service, whose mind leaped
from the high places of poetry and philosophy on to the hiving
battlefield of world event. It seemed almost impossible that nine miles
away at Capetown raged the storm that almost within the hour would again
claim him as its central figure.
The Smuts statements that I have quoted were made long before the
Presidential election in America. I do not know just what Smuts thinks
of the landslide that overwhelmed the Wilson administration and with it
that well-known Article X, but I do know that he genuinely hopes that
the United States somehow will have a share in the new international
stewardship of the world. He would welcome any order that would enable
us to play our part.
No one can have contact with Smuts without feeling at once his intense
admiration for America. One of his ambitions is to come to the United
States. It is characteristic of him that he has no desire to see
skyscrapers and subways. His primary interest is in the great farms of
the West. "Your people," he once said to me, "have made farming a
science and I wish that South Africa could emulate them. We have farms
in vast area but we have not yet attained an adequate development."
I was amazed at his knowledge of American literature. He knows Hamilton
backwards, has read diligently about the life and times of Washington,
and is familiar with Irving, Poe, Hawthorne and Emerson. One reason why
he admires the first American President is because he was a farmer.
Smuts knows as much about rotation of crops and successful chicken
raising as he does about law and politics. He said:
"I am an eighty per cent farmer and a Boer, and most people think a Boer
is a barbarian."
Despite his scholarship he remains what he delights to call himself, "a
Boer." He still likes the simple Boer things, as this story will show.
During the war, while he was a member of the British War Cabinet and
when Lloyd George leaned on him so heavily for a multitude of services,
a young South African Major, fresh from the Transvaal, brought him a box
of home delicacies. The principal feature of this package was a piece of
what the Boers call "biltong," which is dried venison. The Major gave
the package to an imposing servant in livery at the Savoy Hotel, where
the General lived, to be delivered to him. Smuts was just going out and
encountered the man carrying it in. When he learned that it was from
home, he grabbed the box, saying: "I'll take it up myself." Before he
reached his apartment he was chewing away vigorously on a mouthful of
"biltong" and having the time of his life.
The contrast between Smuts and his predecessor Botha is striking. These
two men, with the possible exception of Kruger, stand out in the annals
of the Boer. Kruger was the dour, stolid, canny, provincial trader. The
only time that his interest ever left the confines of the Transvaal was
when he sought an alliance with William Hohenzollern, and that person, I
might add, failed him at the critical moment.
Botha was the George Washington of South Africa,--the farmer who became
Premier. He was big of body and of soul,--big enough to know when he was
beaten and to rebuild out of the ruins. Even the Nationalists trusted
him and they do not trust Smuts. It is the old story of the prophet in
his own country. There are many people in South Africa today who believe
that if Botha were alive there would be no secession movement.
The Boers who oppose him politically call Smuts "Slim Jannie." The
Dutch word "slim" means tricky and evasive. Not so very long ago Smuts
was in a conference with some of his countrymen who were not altogether
friendly to him. He had just remarked on the long drought that was
prevailing. One of the men present went to the window and looked out.
When asked the reason for this action he replied:
"Smuts says that there's a drought. I looked out to see if it was
raining."
When you come to Smuts in this analogy you behold the Alexander Hamilton
of his nation, the brilliant student, soldier, and advocate. Of all his
Boer contemporaries he is the most cosmopolitan. Nor is this due
entirely to the fact that he went to Cambridge where he left a record
for scholarship, and speaks English with a decided accent. It is because
he has what might be called world sense. His career, and more especially
his part at the Peace Conference and since, is a dramatization of it.
To the student of human interest Smuts is a fertile subject. His life
has been a cinema romance shot through with sharp contrasts. Here is one
of them. When leaders of the shattered Boer forces gathered in
_Vereeniging_ to discuss the Peace Terms with Kitchener in 1902, Smuts,
who commanded a flying guerilla column, was besieging the little mining
town of O'okiep. He received a summons from Botha to attend. It was
accompanied by a safe-conduct pass signed "D. Haig, Colonel." Later Haig
and Smuts stood shoulder to shoulder in a common cause and helped to
save civilization.
Smuts is more many-sided than any other contemporary Prime Minister and
for that matter, those that have gone into retirement, that is, men like
Asquith in England and Clemenceau in France. Among world statesmen the
only mind comparable to his is that of Woodrow Wilson. They have in
common a high intellectuality. But Wilson in his prime lacked the hard
sense and the accurate knowledge of men and practical affairs which are
among the chief Smuts assets.
Speaking of Premiers brings me to the inevitable comparison between
Smuts and Lloyd George. I have seen them both in varying circumstances,
both in public and in private and can attempt some appraisal.
Each has been, and remains, a pillar of Empire. Each has emulated the
Admirable Crichton in the variety and multiplicity of public posts.
Lloyd George has held five Cabinet posts in England and Smuts has
duplicated the record in South Africa. Each man is an inspired orator
who owes much of his advancement to eloquent tongue. Their platform
manner is totally different. Lloyd George is fascinatingly magnetic in
and out of the spotlight while Smuts is more coldly logical. When you
hear Lloyd George you are stirred and even exalted by his golden
imagery. The sound of his voice falls on the ear like music. You admire
the daring of his utterance but you do not always remember everything he
says.
With Smuts you listen and you remember. He has no tricks of the
spellbinder's trade. He is forceful, convincing, persuasive, and what is
more important, has the quality of permanency. Long after you have left
his presence the words remain in your memory. If I had a case in court I
would like to have Smuts try it. His specialty is pleading.
Lloyd George seldom reads a book. The only volumes I ever heard him say
that he had read were Mr. Dooley and a collection of the Speeches of
Abraham Lincoln. He has books read for him and with a Roosevelt faculty
for assimilation, gives you the impression that he has spent his life in
a library.
Smuts is one of the best-read men I have met. He seems to know something
about everything. He ranges from Joseph Conrad to Kant, from Booker
Washington to Tolstoi. History, fiction, travel, biography, have all
come within his ken. I told him I proposed to go from Capetown to the
Congo and possibly to Angola. His face lighted up. "Ah, yes," he said,
"I have read all about those countries. I can see them before me in my
mind's eye."
One night at dinner at _Groote Schuur_ we had sweet potatoes. He asked
me if they were common in America. I replied that down in Kentucky where
I was born one of the favorite negro dishes was "'possum and sweet
potatoes." He took me up at once saying:
"Oh, yes, I have read about ''possum pie' in Joel Chandler Harris'
books." Then he proceeded to tell me what a great institution "Br'er
Rabbit" was.
We touched on German poetry and I quoted two lines that I considered
beautiful. When I remarked that I thought Heine was the author he
corrected me by proving that they were written by Schiller.
Lloyd George could never carry on a conversation like this for the
simple reason that he lacks familiarity with literature. He feels
perhaps like the late Charles Frohman who, on being asked if he read the
dramatic papers said: "Why should I read about the theatre. I _make_
dramatic history."
I asked Smuts what he was reading at the moment. He looked at me with
some astonishment and answered, "Nothing except public documents. It's a
good thing that I was able to do some reading before I became Prime
Minister. I certainly have no time now."
Take the matter of languages. Lloyd George has always professed that he
did not know French, and on all his trips to France both during and
since the war he carried a staff of interpreters. He understands a good
deal more French than he professes. His widely proclaimed ignorance of
the language has stood him in good stead because it has enabled him to
hear a great many things that were not intended for his ears. It is part
of his political astuteness. Smuts is an accomplished linguist. It has
been said of him that he "can be silent in more languages than any man
in South Africa."
Lloyd George is a clever politician with occasional inspired moments but
he is not exactly a statesman as Disraeli and Gladstone were. Smuts has
the unusual combination of statesmanship with a knowledge of every
wrinkle in the political game.
Take his experience at the Paris Peace Conference. He was distinguished
not so much for what he did, (and that was considerable), but for what
he opposed. No man was better qualified to voice the sentiment of the
"small nation." Born of proud and liberty-loving people,--an infant
among the giants--he was attuned to every aspiration of an hour that
realized many a one-time forlorn national hope. Yet his statesmanship
tempered sentimental impulse.
In that gallery of treaty-makers Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson
focussed the "fierce light" that beat about the proceedings. But it was
Smuts, in the shadow, who contributed largely to the mental power-plant
that drove the work. Lloyd George had to consider the chapter he wrote
in the great instrument as something in the nature of a campaign
document to be employed at home, while Clemenceau guided a steamroller
that stooped for nothing but France. The more or less unsophisticated
idealism of Woodrow Wilson foundered on these obstacles.
Smuts, with his uncanny sense of prophecy, foretold the economic
consequences of the peace. Looking ahead he visualized a surly and
unrepentant Germany, unwilling to pay the price of folly; a bitter and
disappointed Austria gasping for economic breath; an aroused and
indignant Italy raging with revolt--all the chaos that spells "peace"
today. He saw the Treaty as a new declaration of war instead of an
antidote for discord. His judgment, sadly enough, has been confirmed. A
deranged universe shot through with reaction and confusion, and with
half a dozen wars sputtering on the horizon, is the answer. The sob and
surge of tempest-born nations in the making are lost in the din of older
ones threatened with decay and disintegration. It is not a pleasing
spectacle.
Smuts signed the Treaty but, as most people know, he filed a memorandum
of protest and explanation. He believed the terms uneconomic and
therefore unsound, but it was worth taking a chance on interpretation, a
desperate venture perhaps, but anything to stop the blare and bicker of
the council table and start the work of reconstruction.
At Capetown he told me that for days he wrestled with the problem "to
sign or not to sign." Finally, on the day before the Day of Days in the
Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, he took a long solitary walk in the
Champs Elysee, loveliest of Paris parades. Returning to his hotel he
said to his secretary, Captain E. F. C. Lane, "I have decided to sign,
but I will tell the reason why." He immediately sat down at his desk and
in a handwriting noted for its illegibility wrote the famous
memorandum.
III
What of the personal side of Smuts? While he is intensely human it is
difficult to connect anecdote with him. I heard one at Capetown,
however, that I do not think has seen the light of print. It reveals his
methods, too.
When the Germans ran amuck in 1914 Smuts was Minister of Defense of the
Union of South Africa. The Nationalists immediately began to make life
uncomfortable for him. Balked in their attempt to keep the Union out of
the struggle they took another tack. After the Botha campaign in German
South-West Africa was well under way, a member of the Opposition asked
the Minister of Defense the following question in Parliament: "How much
has South Africa paid for horses in the field and the Nationalists
sought to make some political capital out of an expenditure that they
remounts?" The Union forces employed thousands of called "waste."
Smuts sent over to Army Headquarters to get the figures. He was told
that it would take twenty clerks at least four weeks to compile the
data.
"Never mind," was his laconic comment. The next day happened to be
Question Day in the House. As soon as the query about the remount charge
came up Smuts calmly rose in his seat and replied:
"It was exactly eight million one hundred and sixty-nine thousand
pounds, ten shillings and sixpence." He then sat down without any
further remark.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright by Harris & Ewing_
GENERAL J. C. SMUTS]
When one of his colleagues asked him where he got this information he
said:
"I dug it out of my own mind. It will take the Nationalists a month to
figure it out and by that time they will have forgotten all about it."
And it was forgotten.
Smuts not only has a keen sense of humor but is swift on the retort.
While speaking at a party rally in his district not many years after the
Boer War he was continually interrupted by an ex-soldier. He stopped his
speech and asked the man to state his grievance. The heckler said:
"General de la Rey guaranteed the men fighting under him a living."
Quick as a flash Smuts replied:
"Nonsense. What he guaranteed you was certain death."
Like many men conspicuous in public life Smuts gets up early and has
polished off a good day's work before the average business man has
settled down to his job. There is a big difference between his methods
of work and those of Lloyd George. The British Prime Minister only goes
to the House of Commons when he has to make a speech or when some
important question is up for discussion. Smuts attends practically every
session of Parliament, at least he did while I was in Capetown.
One reason was that on account of the extraordinary position in which he
found himself, any moment might have produced a division carrying with
it disastrous results for the Government. The crisis demanded that he
remain literally on the job all the time. He left little to his
lieutenants. Confident of his ability in debate he was always willing to
risk a showdown but he had to be there when it came.
I watched him as he sat in the House. He occupied a front bench directly
opposite Hertzog and where he could look his arch enemy squarely in the
eyes all the time. I have seen him sit like a Sphinx for an hour without
apparently moving a muscle. He has cultivated that rarest of arts which
is to be a good listener. He is one of the great concentrators. In this
genius, for it is little less, lies one of the secrets of his success.
During a lull in legislative proceedings he has a habit of taking a
solitary walk out in the lobby. More than once I saw him pacing up and
down, always with an ear cocked toward the Assembly Room so he could
hear what was going on and rush to the rescue if necessary.
In the afternoon he would sometimes go into the members' smoking room
and drink a cup of coffee, the popular drink in South Africa. In the old
Boer household the coffee pot is constantly boiling. With a cup of
coffee and a piece of "biltong" inside him a Boer could fight or trek
all day. Coffee bears the same relation to the South African that tea
does to the Englishman, save that it is consumed in much larger
quantities. I might add that Smuts neither drinks liquor of any kind nor
smokes, and he eats sparingly. He admits that his one dissipation is
farming.
This comes naturally because he was born fifty years ago on a farm in
what is known as the Western Province in the Karoo country. He did his
share of the chores about the place until it was time for him to go to
school. His father and his grandfather were farmers. Inbred in him, as
in most Boers, is an ardent love of country life and especially an
affection for the mountains. On more than one occasion he has climbed to
the top of Table Mountain, which is no inconsiderable feat.
There are two ways of appraising Smuts. One is to see him in action as
I did at Capetown, while Parliament was in session. The other is to get
him with the background of his farm at Irene, a little way station about
ten miles from Pretoria. Here, in a rambling one-story house surrounded
by orchards, pastures, and gardens, he lives the simple life. In the
western part of the Transvaal he owns a real farm. He showed his
shrewdness in the acquisition of this property because he bought it at a
time when the region was dubbed a "desert." Now it is a garden spot.
Irene has various distinct advantages. For one thing it is his permanent
home. _Groote Schuur_ is the property of the Government and he owes his
tenancy of it entirely to the fortunes of politics. At Irene is planted
his hearthstone and around it is mobilized his considerable family.
There are six little Smutses. Smuts married the sweetheart of his youth
who is a rarely congenial helpmate. It was once said of her that she
"went about the house with a baby under one arm and a Greek dictionary
under the other."
Most people do not realize that the Union of South Africa has two
capitals. Capetown with the House of Parliament is the center of
legislation, while Pretoria, the ancient Kruger stronghold, with its
magnificent new Union buildings atop a commanding eminence, is the
fountain-head of administration. With Irene only ten miles away it is
easy for Smuts to live with his family after the adjournment of
Parliament, and go in to his office at Pretoria every day.
I have already given you a hint of the Smuts personal appearance. Let us
now take a good look at him. His forehead is lofty, his nose arched, his
mouth large. You know that his blonde beard veils a strong jaw. The eyes
are reminiscent of those marvelous orbs of Marshal Foch only they are
blue, haunting and at times inexorable. Yet they can light up with humor
and glow with friendliness.
Smuts is essentially an out-of-doors person and his body is wiry and
rangy. He has the stride of a man seasoned to the long march and who is
equally at home in the saddle. He speaks with vigour and at times not
without emotion. The Boer is not a particularly demonstrative person and
Smuts has some of the racial reserve. His personality betokens potential
strength,--a suggestion of the unplumbed reserve that keeps people
guessing. This applies to his mental as well as his physical capacity.
Frankly cordial, he resents familiarity. You would never think of
slapping him on the shoulder and saying, "Hello, Jan." More than one
blithe and buoyant person has been frozen into respectful silence in
such a foolhardy undertaking.
His middle name is Christian and it does not belie a strong phase of his
character. Without carrying his religious convictions on his
coat-sleeve, he has nevertheless a fine spiritual strain in his make-up.
He is an all-round dependable person, with an adaptability to
environment that is little short of amazing.
IV
Now let us turn to another and less conspicuous South African whose
point of view, imperial, personal and patriotic, is the exact opposite
of that of Smuts. Throughout this chapter has run the strain of Hertzog,
first the Boer General fighting gallantly in the field with Smuts as
youthful comrade; then the member of the Botha Cabinet; later the bitter
insurgent, and now the implacable foe of the order that he helped to
establish. What manner of man is he and what has he to say?
I talked to him one afternoon when he left the floor leadership to his
chief lieutenant, a son of the late President Steyn of the Orange Free
State. Like his father, who called himself "President" to the end of his
life although his little republic had slipped away from him, he has
never really yielded to English rule.
We adjourned to the smoking room where we had the inevitable cup of
South African coffee. I was prepared to find a fanatic and fire-eater.
Instead I faced a thin, undersized man who looked anything but a general
and statesman. Put him against the background of a small New England
town and you would take him for an American country lawyer. He resembles
the student more than the soldier and, like many Boers, speaks English
with a British accent. Nor is he without force. No man can play the rôle
that he has played in South Africa those past twenty-five years without
having substance in him.
When I asked him to state his case he said:
"The republican idea is as old as South Africa. There was a republic
before the British arrived. The idea came from the American Revolution
and the inspiration was Washington. The Great Trek of 1836 was a protest
very much like the one we are making today.
"President Wilson articulated the Boer feeling with his gospel of
self-determination. He also voiced the aspirations of Ireland, India and
Egypt. It is a great world idea--a deep moral conviction of mankind,
this right of the individual state, as of the individual for freedom.
"Never again will Transvaal and Orange Free State history be repeated.
No matter how a nation covets another--and I refer to British
covetousness,--if the nation coveted is able to govern itself it cannot
and must not be assimilated. It is one result of the Great War."
"What is the Nationalist ideal?" I asked.
"It is the right to self-rule," replied Hertzog. "But there must be no
conflict if it can be avoided. It must prevail by reason and education.
At the present time I admit that the majority of South Africans do not
want republicanism. The Nationalist mission today is to keep the torch
lighted."
"How does this idea fit into the spirit of the League of Nations?" I
queried.
"It fits in perfectly," was the response. "We Nationalists favor the
League as outlined by Wilson. But I fear that it will develop into a
capitalistic, imperialistic empire dominating the world instead of a
league of nations."
I asked Hertzog how he reconciled acquiescence to Union to the present
Nationalist revolt. The answer was:
"The Nationalists supported the Government because of their attachment
to General Botha. Deep down in his heart Botha wanted to be free and
independent."
"How about Ireland?" I demanded.
The General smiled as he responded: "Our position is different. It does
not require dynamite, but education. With us it is a simple matter of
the will of the people. I do not think that conditions in South Africa
will ever reach the state at which they have arrived in Ireland."
Commenting on the Union and its relations to the British Empire Hertzog
continued:
"The Union is not a failure but we could be better governed. The thing
to which we take exception is that the British Government, through our
connection with it, is in a position by which it gets an undue advantage
directly and indirectly to influence legislation. For example, we were
not asked to conquer German South-West Africa; it was a command.
"Very much against the feeling of the old population, that is the Dutch
element, we were led into participation in the war. Today this old
population feels as strongly as ever against South Africa being involved
in European politics. It feels that all this Empire movement only leads
in that direction and involves us in world conflicts.
"One of the strongest reasons in favor of separation and the setting up
of a South African republic is to get solidarity between the English and
the Dutch. I cannot help feeling that our interests are being constantly
subordinated to those of Great Britain. My firm conviction is that the
freer we are, and the more independent of Great Britain we become, the
more we shall favor a close co-operation with her. We do not dislike the
British as such but we do object to the Britisher coming out as a
subject of Great Britain with a superior manner and looking upon the
Dutchman as a dependent or a subordinate. There will be a conflict so
long as they do not recognize our heroes, traditions and history. In
short, we are determined to have a republic of South Africa and England
must recognize it. To oppose it is fatal."
"Will you fight for it?" I asked.
"I hardly think that it will come to force," said the General. "It must
prevail by reason and education. It may not come in one year but it will
come before many years."
Hertzog's feeling is not shared, as he intimated, by the majority of
South Africans and this includes many Dutchmen. An illuminating analysis
of the Nationalist point of view was made for me by Sir Thomas Smartt,
the leader of the Unionist Party and a virile force in South African
politics. He brought the situation strikingly home to America when he
said:
"The whole Nationalist movement is founded on race. Like the Old Guard,
the Boer may die but it is hard for him to surrender. His heart still
rankles with the outcome of the Boer War. Would the American South have
responded to an appeal to arms in the common cause made by the North in
1876? Probably not. Before your Civil War the South only had individual
states. The Boers, on the other hand, had republics with completely
organized and independent governments. This is why it will take a long
time before complete assimilation is accomplished. A second Boer War is
unthinkable."
We can now return to Smuts and find out just how he achieved the miracle
by which he not only retained the Premiership but spiked the guns of the
opposition.
When I left Capetown he was in a corner. The Nationalist majority not
only made his position precarious but menaced the integrity of Union,
and through Union, the whole Empire. For five months,--the whole session
of Parliament,--he held his ground. Every night when he went to bed at
_Groote Schuur_ he did not know what disaster the morrow would bring
forth. It was a constant juggle with conflicting interests, ambitions
and prejudices. He was like a lion with a pack snapping on all sides.
Now you can see why he sat in that front seat in the House morning, noon
and night. He placated the Labourites, harmonized the Unionists, and
flung down the gauntlet openly to the Nationalists. Throughout that
historic session, and although much legislation was accomplished, he did
not permit the consummation of a single decisive division. It was a
triumph of parliamentary leadership.
When the session closed in July,--it is then mid-winter in Africa,--he
was still up against it. The Nationalist majority was a phantom that
dogged his official life and political fortunes. The problem now was to
take out sane insurance against a repetition of the trial and
uncertainty which he had undergone.
Fate in the shape of the Nationalist Party played into his hands. Under
the stimulation of the Nationalists a _Vereeniging_ Congress was called
at Bloenfontein late last September. The Dutch word _Vereeniging_ means
"reunion." Hertzog and Tielman Roos, the co-leader of the
secessionists, believed that by bringing the leading representatives of
the two leading parties together the appeal to racial pride might carry
the day. Smuts did not attend but various members of his Cabinet did.
Reunion did anything but reunite. The differences on the republican
issues being fundamental were likewise irreconcilable. The Nationalists
stood pat on secession while the South African Party remained loyal to
its principles of Imperial unity. The meeting ended in a deadlock.
Smuts, a field marshal of politics, at once saw that the hour of
deliverance from his dilemma had arrived. The Nationalists had declared
themselves unalterably for separation. He converted their battle-cry
into coin for himself. He seized the moment to issue a call for a new
Moderate Party that would represent a fusion of the South Africanists
and the Unionists. In one of his finest documents he made a plea for the
consolidation of these constructive elements.
In it he said:
Now that the Nationalist Party is firmly resolved to continue its
propaganda of fanning the fires of secession and of driving the
European races apart from each other and ultimately into conflict
with each other, the moderate elements of our population have no
other alternative but to draw closer to one another in order to
fight that policy.
A new appeal must, therefore, be made to all right-minded South
Africans, irrespective of party or race, to join the new Party,
which will be strong enough to safeguard the permanent interests of
the Union against the disruptive and destructive policy of the
Nationalists. Such a central political party will not only continue
our great work of the past, but is destined to play a weighty rôle
in the future peaceable development of South Africa.
The end of October witnessed the ratification of this proposal by the
Unionists. The action at once consolidated the Premier's position. I
doubt if in all political history you can uncover a series of events
more paradoxical or perplexing or find a solution arrived at with
greater skill and strategy. It was a revelation of Smuts with his ripe
statesmanship put to the test, and not found wanting.
At the election held four months later Smuts scored a brilliant triumph.
The South African Party increased its representation by eighteen seats,
while the Nationalists lost heavily. The Labour Party was almost lost in
the wreckage. The net result was that the Premier obtained a working
majority of twenty-two, which guarantees a stable and loyal Government
for at least five years.
It only remains to speculate on what the future holds for this
remarkable man. South Africa has a tragic habit of prematurely
destroying its big men. Rhodes was broken on the wheel at forty-nine,
and Botha succumbed in the prime of life. Will Smuts share the same
fate?
No one need be told in the face of the Smuts performance that he is a
world asset. The question is, how far will he go? A Cabinet Minister at
twenty-eight, a General at thirty, a factor in international affairs
before he was well into the forties, he unites those rare elements of
greatness which seem to be so sparsely apportioned these disturbing
days. That he will reconstruct South Africa there is no doubt. What
larger responsibilities may devolve upon him can only be guessed.
Just before I sailed from England I talked with a high-placed British
official. He is in the councils of Empire and he knows Smuts and South
Africa. I asked him to indicate what in his opinion would be the next
great milepost of Smuts' progress. He replied:
"The destiny of Smuts is interwoven with the destiny of the whole
British Empire. The Great War bound the Colonies together with bonds of
blood. Out of this common peril and sacrifice has been knit a closer
Imperial kinship. During the war we had an Imperial War Cabinet composed
of overseas Premiers, which sat in London. Its logical successor will be
a United British Empire, federated in policy but not in administration.
Smuts will be the Prime Minister of these United States of Great
Britain."
It is the high goal of a high career.
[Illustration: THE HEAVY LINE INDICATES MR. MARCOSSON'S ROUTE IN
AFRICA]
CHAPTER II--"CAPE-TO-CAIRO"
I
When you take the train for the North at Capetown you start on the first
lap of what is in many respects the most picturesque journey in the
world. Other railways tunnel mighty mountains, cross seething rivers,
traverse scorching deserts, and invade the clouds, but none has so
romantic an interest or is bound up with such adventure and imagination
as this. The reason is that at Capetown begins the southern end of the
famous seven-thousand-mile Cape-to-Cairo Route, one of the greatest
dreams of England's prince of practical dreamers, Cecil Rhodes. Today,
after thirty years of conflict with grudging Governments, the project is
practically an accomplished fact.
Woven into its fabric is the story of a German conspiracy that was as
definite a cause of the Great War as the Balkan mess or any other phase
of Teutonic international meddling. Along its highway the American
mining engineer has registered a little known evidence of his
achievement abroad. The route taps civilization and crosses the last
frontiers of progress. The South African end discloses an illuminating
example of profitable nationalization. Over it still broods the
personality of the man who conceived it and who left his impress and his
name on an empire. Attention has been directed anew to the enterprise
from the fact that shortly before I reached Africa two aviators flew
from Cairo to the Cape and their actual flying time was exactly
sixty-eight hours.
The unbroken iron spine that was to link North and South Africa and
which Rhodes beheld in his vision of the future, will probably not be
built for some years. Traffic in Central Africa at the moment does not
justify it. Besides, the navigable rivers in the Belgian Congo, Egypt,
and the Soudan lend themselves to the rail and water route which, with
one short overland gap, now enables you to travel the whole way from
Cape to Cairo.
The very inception of the Cape-to-Cairo project gives you a glimpse of
the working of the Rhodes mind. He left the carrying out of details to
subordinates. When he looked at the map of Africa,--and he was forever
studying maps,--and ran that historic line through it from end to end
and said, "It must be all red," he took no cognizance of the
extraordinary difficulties that lay in the way. He saw, but he did not
heed, the rainbow of many national flags that spanned the continent. A
little thing like millions of square miles of jungle, successions of
great lakes, or wild and primitive regions peopled with cannibals, meant
nothing. Money and energy were to him merely means to an end.
When General "Chinese" Gordon, for example, told him that he had refused
a roomful of silver for his services in exterminating the Mongolian
bandits Rhodes looked at him in surprise and said: "Why didn't you take
it? What is the earthly use of having ideas if you haven't the money
with which to carry them out?" Here you have the keynote of the whole
Rhodes business policy. A project had to be carried through regardless
of expense. It applied to the Cape-to-Cairo dream just as it applied to
every other enterprise with which he was associated.
The all-rail route would cost billions upon billions, although now that
German prestige in Africa is ended it would not be a physical and
political impossibility. A modification of the original plan into a
combination rail and river scheme permits the consummation of the vision
of thirty years ago. The southern end is all-rail mainly because the
Union of South Africa and Rhodesia are civilized and prosperous
countries. I made the entire journey by train from Capetown to the
rail-head at Bukama in the Belgian Congo, a distance of 2,700 miles, the
longest continuous link in the whole scheme. This trip can be made, if
desirable, in a through car in about nine days.
I then continued northward, down the Lualaba River,--Livingstone thought
it was the Nile--then by rail, and again on the Lualaba through the
posts of Kongolo, Kindu and Ponthierville to Stanleyville on the Congo
River. This is the second stage of the Cape-to-Cairo Route and knocks
off an additional 890 miles and another twelve days. Here I left the
highway to Egypt and went down the Congo and my actual contact with the
famous line ended. I could have gone on, however, and reached Cairo,
with luck, in less than eight weeks.
From Stanleyville you go to Mahagi, which is on the border between the
Congo and Uganda. This is the only overland gap in the whole route. It
covers roughly,--and the name is no misnomer I am told,--680 miles
through the jungle and skirts the principal Congo gold fields. A road
has been built and motor cars are available. The railway route from
Stanleyville to Mahagi, which will link the Congo and the Nile, is
surveyed and would have been finished by this time but for the outbreak
of the Great War. The Belgian Minister of the Colonies, with whom I
travelled in the Congo assured me that his Government would commence the
construction within the next two years, thus enabling the traveller to
forego any hiking on the long journey.
Mahagi is on the western side of Lake Albert and is destined to be the
lake terminus of the projected Congo-Nile Railway which will be an
extension of the Soudan Railways. Here you begin the journey that
enlists both railways and steamers and which gives practically a
straight ahead itinerary to Cairo. You journey on the Nile by way of
Rejaf, Kodok,--(the Fashoda that was)--to Kosti, where you reach the
southern rail-head of the Soudan Railways. Thence it is comparatively
easy, as most travellers know, to push on through Khartum, Berber, Wady
Halfa and Assuan to the Egyptian capital. The distance from Mahagi to
Cairo is something like 2,700 miles while the total mileage from
Capetown to Cairo, along the line that I have indicated, is 7,000 miles.
This, in brief, is the way you make the trip that Rhodes dreamed about,
but not the way he planned it. There are various suggestions for
alternate routes after you reach Bukama or, to be more exact, after you
start down the first stage of the journey on the Lualaba. At Kabalo,
where I stopped, a railroad runs eastward from the river to Albertville,
on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Rhodes wanted to use the 400-mile
waterway that this body of water provides to connect the railway that
came down from the North with the line that begins at the Cape. The idea
was to employ train ferries. King Leopold of Belgium granted Rhodes the
right to do this but Germany frustrated the scheme by refusing to
recognize the cession of the strip of Congo territory between Lake
Tanganyika and Lake Kivu, which was an essential link.
This incident is one evidence of the many attempts that the Germans made
to block the Cape-to-Cairo project. Germany knew that if Rhodes, and
through Rhodes the British Empire, could establish through communication
under the British flag, from one end of Africa to the other, it would
put a crimp into the Teutonic scheme to dominate the whole continent.
She went to every extreme to interfere with its advance.
This German opposition provided a reason why the consummation of the
project was so long delayed. Another was, that except for the explorer
and the big game hunter, there was no particular provocation for moving
about in certain portions of Central Africa until recently. But Germany
only afforded one obstacle. The British Government, after the fashion of
governments, turned a cold shoulder to the enterprise. History was only
repeating itself. If Disraeli had consulted his colleagues England would
never have acquired the Suez Canal. So it goes.
Most of the Rhodesian links of the Cape-to-Cairo Route were built by
Rhodes and the British South Africa Company, while the line from Broken
Hill to the Congo border was due entirely to the courage and tenacity of
Robert Williams, who is now constructing the so-called Benguella Railway
from Lobito Bay in Portuguese Angola to Bukama. It will be a feeder to
the Cape-to-Cairo road and constitute a sort of back door to Egypt. It
will also provide a shorter outlet to Europe for the copper in the
Katanga district of the Congo.
When you see equatorial Africa and more especially that part which lies
between the rail-head at Bukama and Mahagi, you understand why the
all-rail route is not profitable at the moment. It is for the most part
an uncultivated area principally jungle, with scattered white
settlements and hordes of untrained natives. The war set back the
development of the Congo many years. Now that the world is beginning to
understand the possibilities of Central Africa for palm oil, cotton,
rubber, and coffee, the traffic to justify the connecting railways will
eventually come.
II
Shortly after my return from Africa I was talking with a well-known
American business man who, after making the usual inquiries about lions,
cannibals and hair-breadth escapes, asked: "Is it dangerous to go about
in South Africa?" When I assured him that both my pocket-book and I were
safer there than on Broadway in New York or State Street in Chicago, he
was surprised. Yet his question is typical of a widespread ignorance
about all Africa and even its most developed area.
What people generally do not understand is that the lower part of that
one-time Dark Continent is one of the most prosperous regions in the
world, where the home currency is at a premium instead of a discount;
where the high cost of living remains a stranger and where you get
little suggestion of the commercial rack and ruin that are disturbing
the rest of the universe. While the war-ravaged nations and their
neighbors are feeling their dubious way towards economic reconstruction,
the Union of South Africa is on the wave of a striking expansion. It
affords an impressive contrast to the demoralized productivity of Europe
and for that matter the United States.
South Africa presents many economic features of distinct and unique
interest. A glance at its steam transportation discloses rich material.
Fundamentally the railroads of any country are the real measures of its
progress. In Africa particularly they are the mileposts of
civilization. In 1876 there were only 400 miles on the whole continent.
Today there are over 30,000 miles. Of this network of rails exactly
11,478 miles are in the Union of South Africa and they comprise the
second largest mileage in the world under one management.
More than this, they are Government owned and operated. Despite this
usual handicap they pay. No particular love of Government
control,--which is invariably an invitation for political influence to
do its worst,--animated the development of these railways. As in
Australia, where private capital refused to build, it was a case of
necessity. In South Africa there was practically no private enterprise
to sidestep the obligation that the need of adequate transportation
imposed. The country was new, hostile savages still swarmed the
frontiers, and the white man had to battle with Zulu and Kaffir for
every area he opened. In the absence of navigable rivers--there are none
in the Union--the steel rail had to do the pioneering. Besides, the
Boers had a strong prejudice against the railroads and regarded the iron
horse as a menace to their isolation.
The first steam road on the continent of Africa was constructed by
private enterprise from the suburb of Durban in Natal into the town. It
was a mile and three-quarters in length and was opened for traffic in
1860. Railway construction in the Cape Colony began about the same time.
The Government ownership of the lines was inaugurated in 1873 and it has
continued without interruption ever since. The real epoch of railway
building in South Africa started with the great mineral discoveries.
First came the uncovering of diamonds along the Orange River and the
opening up of the Kimberley region, which added nearly 2,000 miles of
railway. With the finding of gold in the Rand on what became the site
of Johannesburg, another 1,500 miles were added.
Since most nationalized railways do not pay it is interesting to take a
look at the African balance sheet. Almost without exception the South
African railways have been operated at a considerable net profit. These
profits some years have been as high as £2,590,917. During the
war, when there was a natural slump in traffic and when all soldiers and
Government supplies were carried free of cost, they aggregated in 1915,
for instance, £749,125.
One fiscal feature of these South African railroads is worth
emphasizing. Under the act of Union "all profits, after providing for
interest, depreciation and betterment, shall be utilized in the
reduction of tariffs, due regard being had to the agricultural and
industrial development within the Union and the promotion by means of
cheap transport of the settlement of an agricultural population in the
inland portions of the Union." The result is that the rates on
agricultural products, low-grade ores, and certain raw materials are
possibly the lowest in the world. In other countries rates had to be
increased during the war but in South Africa no change was made, so as
not to interfere with the agricultural, mineral and industrial
development of the country.
Nor is the Union behind in up-to-date transportation. A big program for
electrification has been blocked out and a section is under conversion.
Some of the power generated will be sold to the small manufacturer and
thus production will be increased.
Stimulating the railway system of South Africa is a single personality
which resembles the self-made American wizard of transportation more
than any other Britisher that I have met with the possible exception of
Sir Eric Geddes, at present Minister of Transport of Great Britain and
who left his impress on England's conduct of the war. He is Sir William
W. Hoy, whose official title is General Manager of the South African
Railways and Ports. Big, vigorous, and forward-looking, he sits in a
small office in the Railway Station at Capetown, with his finger
literally on the pulse of nearly 12,000 miles of traffic. During the war
Walker D. Hines, as Director General of the American Railways, was
steward of a vaster network of rails but his job was an emergency one
and terminated when that emergency subsided. Sir William Hoy, on the
other hand, is set to a task which is not equalled in extent, scope or
responsibility by any other similar official.
Like James J. Hill and Daniel Willard he rose from the ranks. At
Capetown he told me of his great admiration for American railways and
their influence in the system he dominates. Among other things he said:
"We are taking our whole cue for electrification from the railroads of
your country and more especially the admirable precedent established by
the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. I believe firmly in wide
electrification of present-day steam transport. The great practical
advantages are more uniform speed and the elimination of stops to take
water. It also affords improved acceleration, greater reliability as to
timing, especially on heavy grades, and stricter adherence to schedule.
There are enormous advantages to single lines like ours in South Africa.
Likewise, crossings and train movements can be arranged with greater
accuracy, thereby reducing delays. Perhaps the greatest saving is in
haulage, that is, in the employment of the heavy electric locomotive. It
all tends toward a denser traffic.
"Behind this whole process of electrification lies the need, created by
the Great War, for coal conservation and for a motive power that will
speed up production of all kinds. We have abundant coal in the Union of
South Africa and by consuming less of it on our railways we will be in a
stronger position to export it and thus strengthen our international
position and keep the value of our money up."
Since Sir William has touched upon the coal supply we at once get a
link,--and a typical one--with the ramified resource of the Union of
South Africa. No product, not even those precious stones that lie in the
bosom of Kimberley, or the glittering golden ore imbedded in the Rand,
has a larger political or economic significance just now. Nor does any
commodity figure quite so prominently in the march of world events.
In peace, as in war, coal spells life and power. It was the cudgel that
the one-time proud and arrogant Germany held menacingly over the head of
the unhappy neutral, and extorted special privilege. At the moment I
write, coal is the storm center of controversy that ranges from the Ruhr
Valley of Germany to the Welsh fields of Britain and affects the
destinies of statesmen and of countries. We are not without fuel
troubles, as our empty bins indicate. The nation, therefore, with cheap
and abundant coal has a bargaining asset that insures industrial peace
at home and trade prestige abroad.
South Africa not only has a low-priced and ample coal supply but it is
in a convenient point for distribution to the whole Southern
hemisphere,--in fact Europe and other sections. On past production the
Union ranked only eleventh in a list of coal-producing countries, the
output being about 8,000,000 tons a year before the war and something
over 10,000,000 tons in 1919. This output, however, is no guide to the
magnitude of its fields. Until comparatively recent times they have been
little exploited, not because of inferiority but because of the
restricted output prior to the new movement to develop a bunker and
export trade. Without an adequate geological survey the investigations
made during the last twelve months indicate a potential supply of over
60,000,000 tons and immense areas have not been touched at all.
The war changed the whole coal situation. Labour conflicts have reduced
the British output; a huge part of Germany's supply must go to France as
an indemnity, while our own fields are sadly under-worked, for a variety
of causes. All these conditions operate in favor of the South African
field, which is becoming increasingly important as a source of supply.
Despite her advantage the prices remain astonishingly low, when you
compare them with those prevailing elsewhere. English coal, which in
1912 cost about nine shillings a ton at pithead, costs considerably more
than thirty shillings today. The average pithead price of South African
coal in 1915 was five shillings twopence a ton and at the time of my
visit to South Africa in 1919 was still under seven shillings a ton.
Capetown and Durban, the two principal harbours of the Union, are
coaling stations of Empire importance. There you can see the flags of a
dozen nations flying from ships that have put in for fuel. Thanks to the
war these ports are in the center of the world's great trade routes and
thus, geographically and economically their position is unique for
bunkering and for export.
The price of bunker coal is a key to the increased overhead cost of
world trade, as a result of the war. The Belgian boat on which I
travelled from the shores of the Congo to Antwerp coaled at Teneriffe,
where the price per ton was seven pounds. It is interesting to compare
this with the bunker price at Capetown of a little more than two pounds
per ton, or at Durban where the rate is one pound ten shillings a ton.
In the face of these figures you can readily see what an economic
advantage is accruing to the Union of South Africa with reference to the
whole vexing question of coal supply.
We can now go into the larger matter of South Africa's business
situation in the light of peace and world reconstruction. I have already
shown how the war, and the social and industrial upheaval that followed
in its wake have enlarged and fortified the coal situation in the Union.
Practically all other interests are similarly affected. The outstanding
factor in the prosperity of the Union has been the development of
war-born self-sufficiency. I used to think during the conflict that
shook the world, that this gospel of self-containment would be one of
the compensations that Britain would gain for the years of blood and
slaughter. So far as Britain is concerned this hope has not been
realized. When I was last in England huge quantities of German dyes were
being dumped on her shores to the loss and dismay of a new coal-tar
industry that had been developed during the war. German wares like toys
and novelties were now pouring in. And yet England wondered why her
exchange was down!
In South Africa the situation has been entirely different. She alone of
all the British dominions is asserting an almost pugnacious
self-sufficiency. Cut off from outside supplies for over four years by
the relentless submarine warfare, and the additional fact that nearly
all the ships to and from the Cape had to carry war supplies or
essential products, she was forced to develop her internal resources.
The consequence is an expansion of agriculture, industry and
manufactures. Instead of being as she was often called, "a country of
samples," she has become a domain of active production, as is attested
by an industrial output valued at £62,000,000 in 1918. Before the
war the British and American manufacturer,--and there is a considerable
market for American goods in the Cape Colony,--could undersell the South
African article. That condition is changed and the home-made article
produced with much cheaper labour than obtains either in Europe or the
United States, has the field.
Let me emphasize another striking fact in connection with this South
African prosperity. During the war I had occasion to observe at
first-hand the economic conditions in every neutral country in Europe. I
was deeply impressed with the prosperity of Sweden, Spain and
Switzerland, and to a lesser extent Holland, who made hay while their
neighbors reaped the tares of war. Japan did likewise. These nations
were largely profiteers who capitalized a colossal misfortune. They got
much of the benefit and little of the horror of the upheaval.
Not so with South Africa. She played an active part in the war and at
the same time brought about a legitimate expansion of her resources. One
point in her favor is that while she sent tens of thousands of her sons
to fight, her own territory escaped the scar and ravage of battle. All
the fighting in Africa, so far as the Union was concerned, was in German
South-West Africa and German East Africa. After my years in
tempest-tossed Europe it was a pleasant change to catch the buoyant,
confident, unwearied spirit of South Africa.
I have dwelt upon coal because it happens to be a significant economic
asset. Coal is merely a phase of the South African resources. In 1919
the Union produced £35,000,000 in gold and £7,200,000 in
diamonds. The total mining production was, roughly, £50,000,000.
This mining treasure is surpassed by the agricultural output, of which
nearly one-third is exported. Land is the real measure of permanent
wealth. The hoard of gold and diamonds in time becomes exhausted but the
soil and its fruits go on forever.
The moment you touch South African agriculture you reach a real romance.
Nowhere, not even in the winning of the American West by the Mormons, do
you get a more dramatic spectacle of the triumph of the pioneer over
combative conditions. The Mormons made the Utah desert bloom, and the
Boers and their British colleagues wrested riches from the bare veldt.
The Mormons fought Indians and wrestled with drought, while the Dutch in
Africa and their English comrades battled with Kaffirs, Hottentots and
Zulus and endured a no less grilling exposure to sun.
The crops are diversified. One of the staples of South Africa, for
example, is the mealie, which is nothing more or less than our own
American corn, but not quite so good. It provides the principal food of
the natives and is eaten extensively by the European as well. On a dish
of mealie porridge the Kaffir can keep the human machine going for
twenty-four hours. Its prototype in the Congo is manice flour. In the
Union nearly five million acres are under maize cultivation, which is
exactly double the area in 1911. The value of the maize crop last year
was approximately a million six hundred thousand pounds. Similar
expansion has been the order in tobacco, wheat, fruit, sugar and half a
dozen other products.
South Africa is a huge cattle country. The Boers have always excelled in
the care of live stock and it is particularly due to their efforts that
the Union today has more than seven million head of cattle, which
represents another hundred per cent increase in less than ten years.
This matter of live stock leads me to one of the really picturesque
industries of the Union which is the breeding of ostriches, "the birds
with the golden feathers." Ask any man who raises these ungainly birds
and he will tell you that with luck they are far better than the
proverbial goose who laid the eighteen-karat eggs. The combination of
F's--femininity, fashion and feathers--has been productive of many
fortunes. The business is inclined to be fickle because it depends upon
the female temperament. The ostrich feather, however, is always more or
less in fashion. With the outbreak of the war there was a tremendous
slump in feathers, which was keenly felt in South Africa. With peace,
the plume again became the thing and the drooping industry expanded with
get-rich-quick proportions.
Port Elizabeth in the Cape Colony is the center of the ostrich feather
trade. It is the only place in the world, I believe, devoted entirely to
plumage. Not long before I arrived in South Africa £85,000 of
feathers were disposed of there in three days. It is no uncommon thing
for a pound of prime plumes to fetch £100. The demand has become
so keen that 350,000 ostriches in the Union can scarcely keep pace with
it. Before the war there were more than 800,000 of these birds but the
depression in feathers coupled with drought, flood and other causes,
thinned out the ranks. It takes three years for an ostrich chick to
become a feather producer.
America has a considerable part in shaping the ostrich feather market.
As with diamonds, we are the largest consumers. You can go to Port
Elizabeth any day and find a group of Yankees industriously bidding
against each other. On one occasion two New York buyers started a
competition that led to an eleven weeks orgy that registered a total net
sale of more than £100,000 of feathers. They are still talking
about it down there.
South Africa has not only expanded in output but her area is also
enlarged. The Peace Conference gave her the mandate for German
South-West Africa, which was the first section of the vanished Teutonic
Empire in Africa. It occupies more than a quarter of the whole area of
the continent south of the Zambesi River. While the word "mandate" as
construed by the peace sharks at Paris is supposed to mean the amiable
stewardship of a country, it really amounts to nothing more or less than
an actual and benevolent assimilation. This assimilation is very much
like the paternal interest that holding companies in the good old Wall
Street days felt for small and competitive concerns. In other words, it
is safe to assume that henceforth German South-West Africa will be a
permanent part of the Union.
The Colony's chief asset is comprised in the so-called German South-West
African Diamond Fields, which, with the Congo Diamond Fields, provide a
considerable portion of the small stones now on the market. These two
fields are alike in that they are alluvial which means that the diamonds
are easily gathered by a washing process. No shafts are sunk. It is
precisely like gold washing.
The German South-West mines have an American interest. In the
reorganization following the conquest of German South-West Africa by the
South African Army under General Botha the control had to become
Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-American Corporation which has extensive
interests in South Africa and which is financed by London and New York
capitalists, the latter including J. P. Morgan, Charles H. Sabin and W.
B. Thompson, acquired these fields. It is an interesting commentary on
post-war business readjustment to discover that there is still a German
interest in these mines. It makes one wonder if the German will ever be
eradicated from his world-wide contact with every point of commercial
activity.
It is not surprising, therefore, that South Africa, in the light of all
the facts that I have enumerated, should be prosperous. Take the money,
always a test of national economic health. At Capetown I used the first
golden sovereign that I had seen since early in 1914. This was not only
because the Union happens to be a great gold-producing country but
because she has an excess of exports over imports. Her money, despite
its intimate relation with that of Great Britain, which has so sadly
depreciated, is at a premium.
I got expensive evidence of this when I went to the bank at Capetown to
get some cash. I had a letter of credit in terms of English pounds. To
my surprise, I only got seventeen shillings and sixpence in African
money for every English pound, which is nominally worth twenty
shillings. Six months after I left, this penalty had increased to three
shillings. To such an extent has the proud English pound sterling
declined and in a British dominion too!
South Africa has put an embargo on the export of sovereigns. One reason
was that during the first three years of the war a steady stream of
these golden coins went surreptitiously to East India, where an
unusually high premium for gold rules, especially in the bazaars. The
goldsmiths find difficulty in getting material. The inevitable smuggling
has resulted. In order to put a check on illicit removal, all passengers
now leaving the Union are searched before they board their ships. Nor is
it a half-hearted procedure. It is as drastic as the war-time scrutiny
on frontiers.
To sum up the whole business situation in the Union of South Africa is
to find that the spirit of production,--the most sorely needed thing in
the world today--is that of persistent advance. I dwell on this because
it is in such sharp contrast with what is going on throughout the rest
of a universe that staggers under sloth, and where the will-to-work has
almost become a lost art. That older and more complacent order which is
represented for example by France, Italy and England may well seek
inspiration from this South African beehive.
III
With this economic setting for the whole South African picture and a
visualization of the Cape-to-Cairo Route let us start on the long
journey that eventually took me to the heart of equatorial Africa. The
immediate objectives, so far as this chapter is concerned, are
Kimberley, Johannesburg and Pretoria, names and towns that are
synonymous with thrilling chapters in the development of Africa and more
especially the Union.
You depart from Capetown in the morning and for hours you remain in the
friendly company of the mountains. Table Mountain has hovered over you
during the whole stay at the capital and you regretfully watch this
"Gray Father" fade away in the distance. In the evening you pass through
the Hex River country where the canyon is reminiscent of Colorado. Soon
there bursts upon you the famous Karoo country, so familiar to all
readers of South African novels and more especially those of Olive
Schreiner, Richard Dehan and Sir Percy Fitz Patrick. It is an almost
treeless plain dotted here and there with Boer homesteads. Their
isolation suggests battle with element and soil. The country immediately
around Capetown is a paradise of fruit and flowers, but as you travel
northward the whole character changes. There is less green and more
brown. After the Karoo comes the equally famous veldt, studded with
the _kopjes_ that became a part of the world vocabulary with the Boer
War. Behind these low, long hills,--they suggest flat, rocky
hummocks--the South African burghers made many a desperate stand against
the English.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright by W. & D. Downey_
CECIL RHODES]
When you see the _kopjes_ you can readily understand why it took so long
to conquer the Boers. The Dutch knew every inch of the land and every
man was a crack shot from boyhood. In these hills a handful could hold a
small army at bay. All through this region you encounter places that
have become part of history. You pass the ruins of Kitchener's
blockhouses,--they really ended the Boer War--and almost before you
realize it, you cross the Modder River, where British military prestige
got a bloody repulse. Instinctively there come to mind the struggles of
Cronje, DeWet, Joubert, and the rest of those Boer leaders who made this
region a small Valhalla.
Late in the afternoon of the second day you suddenly get a "feel" of
industry. The veldt becomes populated and before long huge smokestacks
loom against the sky. You are at Kimberly. The average man associates
this place with a famous siege in the Boer War and the equally famous
diamond mines. But it is much more for it is packed with romance and
reality. Here came Cecil Rhodes in his early manhood and pulled off the
biggest business deal of his life; here you find the first milepost that
the American mining engineer set up in the mineral development of
Africa: here is produced in greater quantities than in any other place
in the world the glittering jewel that vanity and avarice set their
heart upon.
Kimberley is one of the most unique of all the treasure cities. It is
practically built on a diamond mine in the same way that Johannesburg
rests upon a gold excavation. When the great diamond rush of the
seventies overwhelmed the Vaal and Orange River regions, what is now the
Kimberley section was a rocky plain with a few Boer farms. The influx of
fortune-hunters dotted the area with tents and diggings. Today a
thriving city covers it and the wealth produced--the diamond output is
ninety per cent of the world supply--exceeds in value that of a big
manufacturing community in the United States.
At Kimberley you touch the intimate life of Rhodes. He arrived in 1872
from Natal, where he had gone to retrieve his health on a farm. The
moment he staked out a claim he began a remarkable career. In his early
Kimberley days he did a characteristic thing. He left his claims each
year to attend lectures at Oxford where he got his degree in 1881, after
almost continuous commuting between England and Africa. Hence the Rhodes
Scholarship at Oxford created by his remarkable will. History contains
no more striking contrast perhaps than the spectacle of this tall
curly-haired boy with the Caesar-like face studying a Greek book while
he managed a diamond-washing machine with his foot.
Rhodes developed the mines known as the DeBeers group. His great rival
was Barney Barnato, who gave African finance the same erratic and
picturesque tradition that the Pittsburgh millionaires brought to
American finance. His real name was Barnett Isaacs. After kicking about
the streets of the East End of London he became a music hall performer
under the name by which he is known to business history. The diamond
rush lured him to Kimberley, where he displayed the resource and
ingenuity that led to his organization of the Central mine interests
which grouped around the Kimberley Mine.
A bitter competition developed between the Rhodes and Barnato groups.
Kimberley alternated between boom and bankruptcy. The genius of diamond
mining lies in tempering output to demand. Rhodes realized that
indiscriminate production would ruin the market, so he framed up the
deal that made him the diamond dictator. He made Barnato an offer which
was refused. With the aid of the Rothschilds in London Rhodes secretly
bought out the French interests in the Barnato holdings for $6,000,000,
which got his foot, so to speak, in the doorway of the opposition. But
even this did not give him a working wedge. He was angling with other
big stockholders and required some weeks time to consummate the deal.
Meanwhile Barnato accumulated an immense stock of diamonds which he
threatened to dump on the market and demoralize the price. The release
of these stones before the completion of Rhodes' negotiations would have
upset his whole scheme and neutralized his work and expense.
He arranged a meeting with Barnato who confronted him with the pile of
diamonds that he was about to throw on the market. Rhodes, so the story
goes, took him by the arm and said: "Barney, have you ever seen a
bucketful of diamonds? I never have. I'll make a proposition to you. If
these diamonds will fill a bucket, I'll take them all from you at your
own price."
Without giving his rival time to answer, Rhodes swept the glittering
fortune into a bucket which happened to be standing nearby. It also
happened that the stones did not fill it. This incident shows the extent
of the Rhodes resource, for a man at Kimberly told me that Rhodes knew
beforehand exactly how many diamonds Barnato had and got the right
sized bucket. Rhodes immediately strode from the room, got the time he
wanted and consummated the consolidation which made the name DeBeers
synonymous with the diamond output of the world. One trifling feature of
this deal was the check for $26,000,000 which Rhodes gave for some of
the Barnato interests acquired.
The deal with Barnato illustrated the practical operation of one of the
rules which guided Rhodes' business life. He once said, "Never fight
with a man if you can deal with him." He lived up to this maxim even
with the savage Matabeles from whom he wrested Rhodesia.
Not long after the organization of the diamond trust Rhodes gave another
evidence of his business acumen. He saw that the disorganized marketing
of the output would lead to instability of price. He therefore formed
the Diamond Syndicate in London, composed of a small group of middlemen
who distribute the whole Kimberley output. In this way the available
supply is measured solely by the demand.
Rhodes had a peculiar affection for Kimberley. One reason perhaps was
that it represented the cornerstone of his fortune. He always referred
to the mines as his "bread and cheese." He made and lost vast sums
elsewhere and scattered his money about with a lavish hand. The diamond
mines did not belie their name and gave him a constant meal-ticket.
In Kimberley he made some of the friendships that influenced his life.
First and foremost among them was his association with Doctor,
afterwards Sir, Starr Jameson, the hero of the famous Raid and a
romantic character in African annals. Jameson came to Kimberley to
practice medicine in 1878. No less intimate was Rhodes' life-long
attachment for Alfred Beit, who arrived at the diamond fields from
Hamburg in 1875 as an obscure buyer. He became a magnate whose
operations extended to three continents. Beit was the balance wheel in
the Rhodes financial machine.
The diamond mines at Kimberley are familiar to most readers. They differ
from the mines in German South-West Africa and the Congo in that they
are deep level excavations. The Kimberley mine, for example, goes down
3,000 feet. To see this almost grotesque gash in the earth is to get the
impression of a very small Grand Canyon of the Colorado. It is an
awesome and terrifying spectacle for it is shot through with green and
brown and purple, is more than a thousand feet wide at the top, and
converges to a visible point a thousand feet below. You feel that out of
this color and depth has emerged something that itself incarnates lure
and mystery. Even in its source the diamond is not without its element
of elusiveness.
The diamonds at Kimberley are found in a blue earth, technically known
as kimberlite and commonly called "blue ground." This is exposed to sun
and rain for six months, after which it is shaken down, run over a
grease table where the vaseline catches the real diamonds, and allows
the other matter to escape. After a boiling process it is the "rough"
diamond.
I spent a day in the Dutoitspan Mine where I saw thousands of Kaffirs
digging away at the precious blue substance soon to be translated into
the gleaming stone that would dangle on the bosom or shine from the
finger of some woman ten thousand miles away. I got an evidence of
American cinema enterprise on this occasion for I suddenly debouched on
a wide level and under the flickering lights I saw a Yankee operator
turning the crank of a motion picture camera. He was part of a movie
outfit getting travel pictures. A hundred naked Zulus stared with
open-eyed wonder at the performance. When the flashlight was touched off
they ran for their lives.
This leads me to the conspicuous part that Americans have played at
Kimberley. Rhodes had great confidence in the Americans, and employed
them in various capacities that ranged from introducing California
fruits into South Africa and Rhodesia to handling his most important
mining interests. When someone asked him why he engaged so many he
answered, "They are so thorough."
First among the Americans that Rhodes brought to Kimberley was Gardner
F. Williams, a Michigander who became General Manager of the DeBeers
Company in 1887 and upon the consolidation, assumed the same post with
the united interests. He developed the mechanical side of diamond
production and for many years held what was perhaps the most conspicuous
technical and administrative post in the industry. He retired in favor
of his son, Alpheus Williams, who is the present General Manager of all
the diamond mines at Kimberley.
A little-known American had a vital part in the siege of Kimberley.
Among the American engineers who rallied round Gardner Williams was
George Labram. When the Boers invested the town they had the great
advantage of superiority in weight of metal. Thanks to Britain's lack of
preparedness, Kimberley only had a few seven pounders, while the Boers
had "Long Toms" that hurled hundred pounders. At Rhodes' suggestion
Labram manufactured a big gun capable of throwing a thirty-pound shell
and it gave the besiegers a big and destructive surprise. This gun,
which was called "Long Cecil," was built and booming in exactly
twenty-eight days. Tragically enough, Labram was killed by a Boer shell
while shaving in his room at the Grand Hotel exactly a week after the
first discharge of his gun.
IV
The part that Americans had in the development of Kimberley is slight
compared with their participation in the exploitation of the Rand gold
mines. Not only were they the real pioneers in opening up this greatest
of all gold fields but they loomed large in the drama of the Jameson
Raid. One of their number, John Hays Hammond, the best-known of the
group, was sentenced to death for his rôle in it. The entire technical
fabric of the Rand was devised and established by men born, and who had
the greater part of their experience, in the United States.
The capital of the Rand is Johannesburg. When you ride in a taxicab down
its broad, well-paved streets or are whirled to the top floor of one of
its skyscrapers, it is difficult to believe that thirty years ago this
thriving and metropolitan community was a rocky waste. We are accustomed
to swift civic transformations in America but Johannesburg surpasses any
exhibit that we can offer in this line. Once called "a tin town with a
gold cellar," it has the atmosphere of a continuous cabaret with a jazz
band going all the time.
No thoroughly acclimated person would ever think of calling Johannesburg
by its full and proper name. Just as San Francisco is contracted into
"'Frisco," so is this animated joytown called "Joburg." I made the
mistake of dignifying the place with its geographical title when I
innocently remarked, "Johannesburg is a live place." My companion looked
at me with pity--it was almost sorrow, and replied,
"We think that 'Joburg' (strong emphasis on 'Joburg') is one of the
hottest places in the world."
The word Rand is Dutch for ridge or reef. Toward the middle of the
eighties the first mine was discovered on what is the present site of
Johannesburg. The original excavation was on the historic place known as
_Witwatersrand_, which means White Water Reef. Kimberley history
repeated itself for the gold rush to the Transvaal was as noisy and
picturesque as the dash on the diamond fields. It exceeded the Klondike
movement because for one thing it was more accessible and in the second
place there were no really adverse climatic conditions. Thousands died
in the snow and ice of the Yukon trail while only a few hundred
succumbed to fever, exposure to rain, and inadequate food on the Rand.
It resembled the gold rush to California in 1849 more than any other
similar event.
The Rand gold fields, which in 1920 produced half of the world's gold,
are embodied in a reef about fifty miles long and twenty miles wide. All
the mines immediately in and about Johannesburg are practically
exhausted. The large development today is in the eastern section. People
do everything but eat gold in Johannesburg. Cooks, maids, waiters,
bootblacks--indeed the whole population--are interested, or at some time
have had an interest in a gold mine. Some historic shoestrings have
become golden cables. J. B. Robinson, for example, one of the well-known
magnates, and his associates converted an original interest of
£12,000 into £18,000,000. This Rand history sounds like an
Aladdin fairy tale.
What concerns us principally, however, is the American end of the whole
show. Hardly were the first Rand mines uncovered than they felt the
influence of the American technical touch. Among the first of our
engineers to go out were three unusual men, Hennen Jennings, H. C.
Perkins and Captain Thomas Mein. Together with Hamilton Smith, another
noted American engineer who joined them later, they had all worked in
the famous El Callao gold mine in Venezuela. Subsequently came John Hays
Hammond, Charles Butters, Victor M. Clement, J. S. Curtis, T. H.
Leggett, Pope Yeatman, Fred Hellman, George Webber, H. H. Webb, and
Louis Seymour. These men were the big fellows. They marshalled hundreds
of subordinate engineers, mechanics, electricians, mine managers and
others until there were more than a thousand in the field.
This was the group contemporaneous and identified with the Jameson Raid.
After the Boer War came what might be called the second generation of
American engineers, which included Sidney Jennings, a brother of Hennen,
W. L. Honnold, Samuel Thomson, Ruel C. Warriner, W. W. Mein, the son of
Capt. Thomas Mein, and H. C. Behr.
Why this American invasion? The reason was simple. The American mining
engineer of the eighties and the nineties stood in a class by himself.
Through the gold development of California we were the only people who
had produced gold mining engineers of large and varied practical
experience. When Rhodes and Barnato (they were both among the early nine
mine-owners in the Rand) cast about for capable men they naturally
picked out Americans. Hammond, for example, was brought to South America
in 1893 by Barnato and after six months with him went over to Rhodes,
with whom he was associated both in the Rand and Rhodesia until 1900.
Not only did Americans create the whole technical machine but one of
them--Hennen Jennings--really saved the field. The first mines were
"outcrop," that is, the ore literally cropped out at the surface. This
outcrop is oxidized, and being free, is easily amalgamated with mercury.
Deeper down in the earth comes the unoxidized zone which continues
indefinitely. The iron pyrites found here are not oxidized. They hold
the gold so tenaciously that they are not amalgamable. They must
therefore be abstracted by some other process than with mercury. At the
time that the outcrop in the Rand become exhausted, what is today known
as the "cyanide process" had never been used in that part of the world.
The mine-owners became discouraged and a slump followed. Jennings had
heard of the cyanide operation, insisted upon its introduction, and it
not only retrieved the situation but has become an accepted adjunct of
gold mining the world over. In the same way Hammond inaugurated
deep-level mining when many of the owners thought the field was
exhausted because the outcrop indications had disappeared.
These Americans in the Rand made the mines and they also made history as
their part in the Jameson Raid showed. Perhaps a word about the Reform
movement which ended in the Raid is permissible here. It grew out of the
oppression of the _Uitlander_--the alien--by the Transvaal Government
animated by Kruger, the President. Although these outsiders, principally
English and Americans, outnumbered the Boers three to one, they were
deprived of the rights of citizenship. The Reformers organized an armed
campaign to capture Kruger and hold him as a hostage until they could
obtain their rights. The guns and ammunition were smuggled in from
Kimberley as "hardware" under the supervision of Gardner Williams. It
was easy to bring the munitions as far as Kimberley. The Boers set up
such a careful watch on the Transvaal border, however, that every
subterfuge had to be employed to get them across.
Dr. Jameson, who at that time was Administrator of Southern Rhodesia,
had a force of Rhodesian police on the Transvaal border ready to come to
the assistance of the Committee if necessary. The understanding was that
Jameson should not invade the Transvaal until he was needed. His
impetuosity spoiled the scheme. Instead of waiting until the Committee
was properly armed and had seized Kruger, he suddenly crossed the border
with his forces. The Raid was a fizzle and the commander and all his men
were captured by the Boers. This abortive attempt was the real prelude
to the Boer War, which came four years later.
Most Americans who have read about this episode believe that John Hays
Hammond was the only countryman of theirs in it. This was because he had
a leading and spectacular part and was one of the four ringleaders
sentenced to death. He afterwards escaped by the payment of a fine of
$125,000. As a matter of fact, four other prominent American mining
engineers were up to their necks in the reform movement and got long
terms in prison. They were Capt. Thomas Mein, J. S. Curtis, Victor M.
Clement and Charles Butters. They obtained their freedom by the payment
of fines of $10,000 each. This whole enterprise netted Kruger something
like $2,000,000 in cash.
The Jameson Raid did more than enrich old Kruger's coffers and bring the
American engineers in the Rand to the fore. Indirectly it blocked a
German scheme that might have played havoc in Africa the moment the
inevitable Great War broke. If the Boer War had not developed in 1899 it
is altogether likely that, judging from her whole campaign of world-wide
interference, Germany would have arranged so that it should break out in
1914. In this unhappy event she could have struck a death blow at
England in South Africa because in the years between the Boer War and
1914 she created close-knit colonial organizations in South-West and
East Africa; built strategic railways; armed and drilled thousands of
natives, and could have invaded the Cape Colony and the Transvaal.
In connection with the Jameson Raid is a story not without interest.
Jameson and Rudyard Kipling happened to be together when the news of
Roosevelt's coup in Panama was published. The author read it first and
handed the paper to his friend with the question: "What do you think of
it?"
Jameson glanced at the article and then replied somewhat sadly, "This
makes the Raid look like thirty cents."
I cannot leave the Rand section of the Union of South Africa without a
word in passing about Pretoria, the administrative capital, which is
only an hour's journey from Johannesburg. Here you still see the old
house where Kruger lived. It was the throne of a copper-riveted
autocracy. No modern head of a country ever wielded such a despotic rule
as this psalm-singing old Boer whose favorite hour for receiving
visitors was at five o'clock in the morning, when he had his first cup
of strong coffee, a beverage which he continued to consume throughout
the day.
The most striking feature of the country around Pretoria is the Premier
diamond mine, twenty-five miles east of the town and the world's
greatest single treasure-trove. The mines at Kimberley together
constitute the largest of all diamond fields but the Premier Mine is the
biggest single mine anywhere. It produces as much as the four largest
Kimberley mines combined, and contributes eighteen per cent of the
yearly output allotted to the Diamond Syndicate.
It was discovered by Thomas M. Cullinan, who bought the site from a Boer
farmer for $250,000. The land originally cost this farmer $2,500. The
mine has already produced more than five hundred times what Cullinan
paid for it and the surface has scarcely been scraped. You can see the
natives working in its two huge holes which are not more than six
hundred feet deep. It is still an open mine. In the Premier Mine was
found the Cullinan diamond, the largest ever discovered and which made
the Koh-i-noor and all other fabled gems look like small pebbles. It
weighed 3,200 karats and was insured for $2,500,000 when it was sent to
England to be presented to King Edward. The Koh-i-noor, by the way,
which was found in India only weighs 186 karats.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright by South African Railways_
THE PREMIER DIAMOND MINE]
V
No attempt at an analysis of South Africa would be complete without some
reference to the native problem, the one discordant note in the economic
and productive scheme. The race question, as the Smuts dilemma showed,
lies at the root of all South African trouble. But the racial conflict
between Briton and Boer is almost entirely political and in no way
threatens the commercial integrity. Both the Dutchman and the Englishman
agree on the whole larger proposition and the necessity of settling once
and for all a trouble that carries with it the danger of sporadic
outbreak or worse. Now we come to the whole irritating labor trouble
which has neither color, caste, nor creed, or geographical line.
First let me bring the South African color problem home to America. In
the United States the whites outnumber the blacks roughly ten to one.
Our coloured population represents the evolution of the one-time African
slave through various generations into a peaceful, law-abiding, and
useful social unit. The Southern "outrage" is the rare exception. We
have produced a Frederick Douglass and a Booker Washington. Our Negro is
a Christian, fills high posts, and invades the professions.
In South Africa the reverse is true. To begin with, the natives
outnumber the whites four and one-half to one--in Rhodesia they are
twenty to one--and they are increasing at a much greater rate than the
Europeans. Moreover, the native population draws on half a dozen races,
including the Zulus, Kaffirs, Hottentots and Basutos. These Negroes
represent an almost primitive stage of development. They are mainly
heathens and a prey to savagery and superstition. The Cape Colony is the
only one that permits the black man to go to school or become a skilled
artisan. Elsewhere the white retains his monopoly on the crafts and at
the same time refuses to do any labour that a Negro can perform. Hence
the great need of white immigration into the Union. The big task,
therefore, is to secure adequate work for the Negro without permitting
him to gain an advantage through it.
It follows that the moment the Kaffir becomes efficient and picks up a
smattering of education he begins to think about his position and unrest
is fomented. It makes him unstable as an employee, as the constant
desertions from work show. The only way that the gold and diamond mines
keep their thousands of recruited native workers is to confine them in
compounds. The ordinary labourer has no such restrictions and he is here
today and gone tomorrow.
It is not surprising to discover that in a country teeming with blacks
there are really no good servants, a condition with which the American
housewife can heartily sympathize. Before I went to Africa nearly every
woman I knew asked me to bring her back a diamond and a cook. They were
much more concerned about the cook than the diamond. Had I kept every
promise that I made affecting this human jewel, I would have had to
charter a ship to convey them. The only decent servant I had in Africa
was a near-savage in the Congo, a sad commentary on domestic service
conditions.
The one class of stable servants in the Colony are the "Cape Boys," as
they are called. They are the coloured offspring of a European and a
Hottentot or a Malay and are of all shades, from a darkish brown to a
mere tinge. They dislike being called "niggers." The first time I saw
these Cape Boys was in France during the war. South Africa sent over
thousands of them to recruit the labour battalions and they did
excellent work as teamsters and in other capacities. The Cape Boy,
however, is the exception to the native rule throughout the Union, which
means that most native labour is unstable and discontented.
Not only is the South African native a menace to economic expansion but
he is likewise something of a physical danger. In towns like Pretoria
and Johannesburg there is a considerable feeling of insecurity. Women
shrink from being left alone with their servants and are filled with
apprehension while their little ones are out under black custodianship.
The one native servant, aside from some of the Cape Boys, who has
demonstrated absolute fidelity, is the Zulu whom you see in largest
numbers in Natal. He is still a proud and kingly-looking person and he
carried with him a hint of the vanished greatness of his race. Perhaps
one reason why he is safe and sane reposes in his recollection of the
repeated bitter and bloody defeats at the hands of the white men. Yet
the Zulu was in armed insurrection in Natal in the nineties.
South Africa enjoys no guarantee of immunity from black uprising even
now in the twentieth century when the world uses the aeroplane and the
wireless. During the past thirty years there have been outbreaks
throughout the African continent. As recently as 1915 a fanatical form
of Ethiopianism broke out in Nyassaland which lies north-east of
Rhodesia, under the sponsorship of John Chilembwe, a negro preacher who
had been educated in the United States. The natives rose, killed a
number of white men and carried off the women. Of course, it was
summarily put down and the leaders executed. But the incident was
significant.
Prester John, whose story is familiar to readers of John Buchan's fine
romance of the same name, still has disciples. Like Chilembwe he was a
preacher who had acquired so-called European civilization. He dreamed of
an Africa for the blacks and took his inspiration from the old kings of
Abyssinia. He too met the fate of all his kind but his spirit goes
marching on. In 1919 a Pan-African Congress was held in Paris to discuss
some plan for what might be called Pan-Ethiopianism. The following year
a negro convention in New York City advocated that all Africa should be
converted into a black republic.
One example of African native unrest was brought strikingly to my
personal attention. At Capetown I met one of the heads of a large Cape
Colony school for Negroes which is conducted under religious auspices.
The occasion was a dinner given by J. X. Merriman, the Grand Old Man of
the Cape Colony. This particular educator spoke with glowing enthusiasm
about this institution and dwelt particularly upon the evolution that
was being accomplished. He gave me a pressing invitation to visit it. He
happened to be on the train that I took to Kimberley, which was also the
first stage of his journey home and he talked some more about the great
work the school was doing.
When I reached Kimberley the first item of news that I read in the
local paper was an account of an uprising in the school. Hundreds of
native students rebelled at the quality of food they were getting and
went on the rampage. They destroyed the power-plant and wrecked several
of the buildings. The constabulary had to be called out to restore
order.
In many respects most Central and South African Negroes never really
lose the primitive in them despite the claims of uplifters and
sentimentalists. Actual contact is a disillusioning thing. I heard of a
concrete case when I was in the Belgian Congo. A Belgian judge at a post
up the Kasai River acquired an intelligent Baluba boy. All personal
servants in Africa are called "boys." This particular native learned
French, acquired European clothes and became a model servant. When the
judge went home to Belgium on leave he took the boy along. He decided to
stay longer than he expected and sent the negro back to the Congo. No
sooner did the boy get back to his native heath than he sold his
European clothes, put on a loin cloth, and squatted on the ground when
he ate, precisely like his savage brethren. It is a typical case, and
merely shows that a great deal of so-called black-acquired civilization
in Africa falls away with the garb of civilization.
The only African blacks who have really assimilated the civilizing
influence so far as my personal observation goes are those of the West
Coast. Some of the inhabitants of Sierra Leone will illustrate what I
mean. Scores have gone to Oxford and Cambridge and have become doctors,
lawyers and competent civil servants. They resemble the American Negro
more than any others in Africa. This parallel even goes to their
fondness for using big words. I saw hundreds of them holding down
important clerical positions in the Belgian Congo where they are known
as "Coast-men," because they come from the West Coast.
I had an amusing experience with one when I was on my way out of the
Congo jungle. I sent a message by him to the captain of the little
steamboat that took me up and down the Kasai River. In this message I
asked that the vessel be made ready for immediate departure. The
Coast-man, whose name was Wilson--they all have English names and speak
English fluently--came back and said:
"I have conveyed your expressed desire to leave immediately to the
captain of your boat. He only returns a verbal acquiescence but I assure
you that he will leave nothing undone to facilitate your speedy
departure."
He said all this with such a solemn and sober face that you would have
thought the whole destiny of the British Empire depended upon the
elaborateness of his utterance.
To return to the matter of unrest, all the concrete happenings that I
have related show that the authority of the white man in Africa is still
resented by the natives. It serves to emphasize what Mr. Lothrop
Stoddard, an eminent authority on this subject, so aptly calls "the
rising tide of colour." We white people seldom stop to realize how
overwhelmingly we are outnumbered. Out of the world population of
approximately 1,700,000,000 persons (I am using Mr. Stoddard's figures),
only 550,000,000 are white.
A colour conflict is improbable but by no means impossible. We have only
to look at our own troubles with the Japanese to get an intimate glimpse
of what might lurk in a yellow tidal wave. The yellow man humbled Russia
in the Russo-Japanese War and he smashed the Germans at Kiao Chow in
the Great War. The fact that he was permitted to fight shoulder to
shoulder with the white man has only added to his cockiness as we have
discovered in California.
Remember too that the Germans stirred up all Islam in their mad attempt
to conquer the world. The Mohammedan has not forgotten what the Teutonic
propagandists told him when they laid the cunning train of bad feeling
that precipitated Turkey into the Great War. These seeds of discord are
bearing fruit in many Near Eastern quarters. One result is that a
British army is fighting in Mesopotamia now. A Holy War is merely the
full brother of the possible War of Colour. In East Africa the Germans
used thousands of native troops against the British and Belgians. The
blacks got a taste, figuratively, of the white man's blood and it did
his system no good.
Throughout the globe there are 150,000,000 blacks and all but 30,000,000
of them are south of the Sahara Desert in Africa. They lack the high
mental development of the yellow man as expressed in the Japanese, but
even brute force is not to be despised, especially where it outnumbers
the whites to the extent that they do in South Africa. I am no alarmist
and I do not presume to say that there will be serious trouble. I merely
present these facts to show that certainly so far as affecting
production and economic security in general is concerned, the native
still provides a vexing and irritating problem, not without danger.
The Union of South Africa is keenly alive to this perplexing native
situation. Its policy is what might be called the Direct Rule, in which
the whole administration of the country is in the hands of the Europeans
and which is the opposite of the Indirect Rule of India, for example,
which recognizes Rajahs and other potentates and which permits the brown
man to hold a variety of public posts.
The Government of the Cape Colony is becoming convinced that Booker
Washington's idea is the sole salvation of the race. That great leader
maintained that the hope for the Negro in the United States and
elsewhere lay in the training of his hands. Once those hands were
skilled they could be kept out of mischief. I recall having discussed
this theory one night with General Smuts at Capetown and he expressed
his hearty approval of it.
The lamented Botha died before he could put into operation a plan which
held out the promise of still another kind of solution. It lay in the
soil. He contended that an area of forty million acres should be set
aside for the natives, where many could work out their destinies
themselves. While this plan offered the opportunity for the
establishment of a compact and perhaps dangerous black entity, his
feeling was that by the avoidance of friction with the whites the
possibility of trouble would be minimized. This scheme is likely to be
carried out by Smuts.
Since the Union of South Africa profited by the whirligig of war to the
extent of acquiring German South-West Africa it only remains to speak of
the new map of Africa, made possible by the Great Conflict. Despite the
return of Alsace-Lorraine to France one fails to see concrete evidence
of Germany's defeat in Europe. Her people are still cocky and defiant.
There is no mistake about her altered condition in Africa. Her flag
there has gone into the discard along with the wreck of militarism. The
immense territory that she acquired principally by browbeating is lost,
down to the last square mile.
Up to 1884 Germany did not own an inch of African soil. Within two years
she was mistress of more than a million square miles. Analyze her whole
performance on the continent and a definite cause of the World War is
discovered. It is part of an international conspiracy studded with
astonishing details.
Africa was a definite means to world conquest. Germany knew of her vast
undeveloped wealth. It is now no secret that her plan was to annex the
greater part of French, Belgian, Italian and Portuguese Africa in the
event that she won. The Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway would have hitched up
the late Teutonic Empire with the Near East and made it easy to link the
African domain with this intermediary through the Turkish dominions.
Here was an imposing program with many advantages. For one thing it
would have given Germany an untold store of raw materials and it would
also have put her into a position to dictate to Southern Asia and even
South America.
The methods that Germany adopted to acquire her African possessions were
peculiarly typical. Like the madness that plunged her into a struggle
with civilization they were her own undoing. Into a continent whose
middle name, so far as colonization goes, is intrigue she fitted
perfectly. Practically every German colony in Africa represented the
triumph of "butting in" or intimidation. The Kaiser That Was regarded
himself as the mentor, and sought to recast continents in the same grand
way that he lectured his minions.
The first German colony in Africa was German South-West, as it was
called for short, and grew out of a deal made between a Bremen merchant
and a native chief. On the strength of this Bismarck pinched out an area
almost as big as British East Africa. Before twelve months had passed
the German flag flew over what came to be known as German East Africa,
and also over Togoland and the The Cameroons on the West Coast.
Germany really had no right to invade any of this country but she was
developing into a strong military power and rather than have trouble,
the other nations acquiesced. Once intrenched, she started her usual
interference. The prize mischief-maker of the universe, she began to
stir up trouble in every quarter. She embroiled the French at Agadir and
got into a snarl with Portugal over Angola.
The Kaiser's experience with Kruger is typical. When the Jameson Raid
petered out William Hohenzollern sent the dictator of the Transvaal a
telegram of congratulation. The old Boer immediately regarded him as an
ally and counted on his aid when the Boer War started. Instead, he got
the double-cross after he had sent his ultimatum to England. At that
time the Kaiser warily side-stepped an entanglement with Britain for the
reason that she was too useful.
It is now evident that a large part of the Congo atrocity was a German
scheme. The head and front of the exposé movement was Sir Roger Casement
of London. He sought to foment a German-financed revolution in Ireland
and was hanged as a traitor in the Tower.
Behind this atrocity crusade was just another evidence of the German
desire to control Africa. By rousing the world against Belgium, Germany
expected to bring another Berlin Congress, which would be expected to
give her the stewardship of the Belgian Congo. The result would have
been a German belt across Africa from the Indian to the Atlantic Oceans.
She could thus have had England and France at a disadvantage on the
north, and England and Portugal where she wanted them, to the south.
Hence the Great War was not so much a matter of German meddling in the
Balkans as it was her persistent manipulation of other nations' affairs
in Africa. She was playing "freeze-out" on a stupendous scale. You can
see why Germany was so much opposed to the Cape-to-Cairo Route. It
interfered with her ambitions and provided a constant irritant to her
"benevolent" plans.
So much for the war end. Turn to the peace aspect. With Germany
eliminated from the African scheme the whole region can enter upon a
harmonious development. More than this, the fact that she is now
deprived of colonies prevents her from recovering the world-wide
economic authority she commanded before the war. A congested population
allows her no more elbow room at home. Before she went mad her whole
hope of the future lay in a colonization where her flag could fly in
public, and in a penetration which cunningly masked the German hand. The
world is now wise to the latter procedure.
The new colour scheme of the African map may now be disclosed. The Union
of South Africa, as you have seen, has taken over German South-West
Africa; Great Britain has assumed the control of all German East Africa
with the exception of Ruanda and Urundu, which have become part of the
Belgian Congo. Togoland is divided between France and Britain, while the
greater part of The Cameroons is merged into the Lower French West
African possessions of which the French Congo is the principal one.
Britain gets the Cameroon Mountains.
The one-time Dark Continent remains dark only for Germany.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright British South Africa Co._
VICTORIA FALLS]
CHAPTER III--RHODES AND RHODESIA
I
For fifty-eight hours the train from Johannesburg had travelled steadily
northward, past Mafeking and on through the apparently endless stretches
of Bechuanaland. Alternately frozen and baked, I had swallowed enough
dust to stock a small-sized desert. Dawn of the third day broke and with
it came a sharp rap on my compartment door. I had been dreaming of a
warm bath and a joltless life when I was rudely restored to reality. The
car was stationary and a blanketed Matabele, his teeth chattering with
the cold, peered in at the window.
"What is it?" I asked.
"You are in Rhodesia and I want to know who you are," boomed a voice out
in the corridor.
I opened the door and a tall, rangy, bronzed man--the immigration
inspector--stepped inside. He looked like a cross between an Arizona
cowboy and an Australian overseas soldier. When I proved to his
satisfaction that I was neither Bolshevik nor Boche he departed with the
remark: "We've got to keep a watch on the people who come into this
country."
Such was my introduction to Rhodesia, where the limousine and the
ox-team compete for right of way on the veldt and the 'rickshaw yields
to the motor-cycle in the town streets. Nowhere in the world can you
find a region that combines to such vivid and picturesque extent the
romance and hardship of the pioneer age with the push and practicality
of today. Here existed the "King Solomon's Mines" of Rider Haggard's
fancy: here the modern gold-seekers of fact sought the treasures of
Ophir; here Nature gives an awesome manifestation of her power in the
Victoria Falls.
It is the only country where a great business corporation rules, not by
might of money but by chartered authority. Linked with that rule is the
story of a conflict between share-holder and settler that is unique in
the history of colonization. It is the now-familiar and well-nigh
universal struggle for self-determination waged in this instance between
all-British elements and without violence.
All the way from Capetown I had followed the trail of Cecil Rhodes,
which like the man himself, is distinct. It is not the succession of
useless and conventional monuments reared by a grateful posterity.
Rather it is expressed in terms of cities and a permanent industrial and
agricultural advance. "Living he was the land," and dead, his imperious
and constructive spirit goes marching on. The Rhodes impress is
everywhere. Now I had arrived at the cap-stone of it all, the domain
that bears his name and which he added to the British Empire.
Less than two hours after the immigration inspector had given me the
once-over on the frontier I was in Bulawayo, metropolis of Rhodesia,
which sprawls over the veldt just like a bustling Kansas community
spreads out over the prairie. It is definitely American in energy and
atmosphere. Save for the near-naked blacks you could almost imagine
yourself in Idaho or Montana back in the days when our West was young.
Before that first day ended I had lunched and dined in a club that would
do credit to Capetown or Johannesburg; had met women who wore French
frocks, and had heard the possibilities of the section acclaimed by a
dozen enthusiasts. Everyone in Rhodesia is a born booster. Again you get
the parallel with our own kind.
To the average American reader Rhodesia is merely a name, associated
with the midnight raid of stealthy savage and all the terror and tragedy
of the white man's burden amid the wild confines. All this happened, to
be sure, but it is part of the past. While South Africa still wrestles
with a serious native problem, Rhodesia has settled it once and for all.
It would be impossible to find a milder lot than the survivors and sons
of the cruel and war-like Lobengula who once ruled here like a despot of
old. His tribesmen--the Matabeles--were put in their place by a strong
hand and they remain put.
Bulawayo was the capital of Lobengula's kingdom. The word means "Place
of Slaughter," and it did not belie the name. You can still see the tree
under which the portly potentate sat and daily dispensed sanguinary
judgment. His method was quite simple. If anyone irritated or displeased
him he was haled up "under the greenwood" and sentenced to death. If
gout or rheumatism racked the royal frame the chief executed the first
passerby and then considered the source of the trouble removed. The only
thing that really departed was the head of the innocent victim.
Lobengula had sixty-eight wives, which may account for some of his
eccentricities. Chaka, the famous king of the Zulus, whose favourite
sport was murdering his sons (he feared a rival to the throne), was an
amateur in crime alongside the dusky monarch whom the British
suppressed, and thereby gained what is now the most prosperous part of
Southern Rhodesia.
The occupation and development of Rhodesia are so comparatively
recent--(Rhodes and Dr. Jameson were fighting the Matabeles at Bulawayo
in 1896)--that any account of the country must at the outset include a
brief historical approach to the time of my visit last May. Probe into
the beginnings of any African colony and you immediately uncover
intrigue and militant imperialism. Rhodesia is no exception.
For ages the huge continent of which it is part was veiled behind
mystery and darkness. The northern and southern extremes early came into
the ken of the explorer and after him the builder. So too with most of
the coast. But the vast central belt, skirted by the arid reaches of
Sahara on one side and unknown territory on the other, defied
civilization until Livingstone, Stanley, Speke, and Grant blazed the
way. Then began the scramble for colonies.
Early in the eighties more than one European power cast covetous glances
at what might be called the South Central area. Thanks to the economic
foresight of King Leopold, Belgium had secured the Congo. Between this
region which was then a Free State, and the Transvaal, was an immense
and unappropriated country,--a sort of no man's land, rich with
minerals, teeming with forests and peopled by savages. Two territories,
Matabeleland, ruled by Lobengula, and Mashonaland, inhabited by the
Mashonas, who were to all intents and purposes vassals to Lobengula,
were the prize portions. Another immense area--the present British
protectorate of Bechuanaland--was immediately south and touched the Cape
Colony and the Transvaal. Portuguese East Africa lay to the east but
the backbone of Africa south of the Congo line lay ready to be plucked
by venturesome hands.
Nor were the hands lacking for the enterprise. Germany started to
strengthen the network of conspiracy that had already yielded her a
million square miles of African soil and she was reaching out for more.
Control of Africa meant for her a big step toward world conquest. Paul
Kruger, President of the Transvaal Republic, which touched the southern
edge of this unclaimed domain, saw in it the logical extension of his
dominions.
Down at Capetown was Rhodes, dreaming of a Greater Britain and
determined to block the Kaiser and Kruger. It was largely due to his
efforts while a member of the Cape Parliament that Britain was persuaded
to annex Bechuanaland as a Crown Colony. Forestalled here, Kruger was
determined to get the rest of the country beyond Bechuanaland and
reaching to the southern border of the Congo. His emissaries began to
dicker with chiefs and he organized an expedition to invade the
territory. Once more Rhodes beat him to it, this time in history-making
fashion.
Following his theory that it is better to deal with a man than fight
him, he sent C. D. Rudd, Rochfort Maguire, and F. R. ("Matabele")
Thompson up to deal directly with Lobengula. They were ideal envoys for
Thompson in particular knew every inch of the country and spoke the
native languages. From the crafty chieftain they obtained a blanket
concession for all the mineral and trading rights in Matabeleland for
£1,200 a year and one thousand rifles. Rhodes now converted this
concession into a commercial and colonizing achievement without
precedent or parallel. It became the Magna Charta of the great British
South Africa Company, which did for Africa what the East India Company
did for India. Counting in Bechuanaland, it added more than 700,000
square miles to the British Empire.
Like the historic document so inseparably associated with the glories of
Clive and Hastings, its Charter shaped the destiny of the empire and is
associated with battle, blood, and the eventual triumph of the
Anglo-Saxon over the man of colour. Other chartered companies have
wielded autocratic power over millions of natives but the royal right to
exist and operate, bestowed by Queen Victoria upon the British South
Africa Company--the Chartered Company as it is commonly known--was the
first that ever gave a corporation the administrative authority over a
politically active country with a white population. The record of its
rule is therefore distinct in the annals of Big Business.
It was in 1899 that Rhodes got the Charter. In his conception of the
Rhodesia that was to be--(it was first called Zambesia)--he had two
distinct purposes in view. One was the larger political motive which was
to widen the Empire and keep the Germans and Boers from annexing
territory that he believed should be British. This was Rhodes the
imperialist at work. The other aspect was the purely commercial side and
revealed the same shrewdness that had registered so successfully in the
creation of the Diamond Trust at Kimberley. This was Rhodes the business
man on the job.
The Charter itself was a visualization of the Rhodes mind and it matched
the Cape-to-Cairo project in bigness of vision. It gave the Company the
right to acquire and develop land everywhere, to engage in shipping, to
build railway, telegraph and telephone lines, to establish banks, to
operate mines and irrigation undertakings and to promote commerce and
manufacture of all kinds. Nothing was overlooked. It meant the union of
business and statesmanship.
Under the Charter the Company was given administrative control of an
area larger than that of Great Britain, France and Prussia. It divided
up into Northern and Southern Rhodesia with the Zambesi River as the
separating line. Northern Rhodesia remains a sparsely settled
country--there are only 2,000 white inhabitants to 850,000 natives--and
the only industry of importance is the lead and zinc development at
Broken Hill. Southern Rhodesia, where there are 35,000 white persons and
800,000 natives, has been the stronghold of Chartered interests and the
battleground of the struggle to throw off corporate control. It is the
Rhodesia to be referred to henceforth in this chapter without prefix.
The Charter is perpetual but it contained a provision that at the end of
twenty-five years, (1914) and at the end of each succeeding ten years,
the Imperial Government has the power to alter, amend or rescind the
instrument so far as the administration of Rhodesia is concerned. No
vital change in the original document has been made so far, but by the
time the next cycle expires in 1924 it is certain that the Company
control will have ended and Rhodesia will either be a part of the Union
of South Africa or a self-determining Colony.
The Company is directed by a Board of Directors in London, but no
director resides in the country itself. Thus at the beginning the
fundamental mistake was made in attempting to run an immense area at
long range. With the approval of the Foreign Office the Company names an
Administrator,--the present one is Sir Drummond Chaplin,--who, like the
average Governor-General, has little to say. The Company has exercised
a copper-riveted control and this rigid rule led to its undoing, as you
will see later on.
The original capitalization was £1,000,000,--it was afterwards
increased to £9,000,000,--but it is only a part of the stream of
pounds sterling that has been poured into the country. In all the years
of its existence the company has never paid a dividend. It is only since
1914 that the revenue has balanced expenditures. More than 40,000
shareholders have invested in the enterprise. Today the fate of the
country rests practically on the issue between the interests of these
shareholders on one hand and the 35,000 inhabitants on the other. Once
more you get the spectacle, so common to American financial history, of
a strongly intrenched vested interest with the real exploiter or the
consumer arrayed against it. The Company rule has not been harsh but it
has been animated by a desire to make a profit. The homesteaders want
liberty of movement without handicap or restraint. An irreconcilable
conflict ensued.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright by British South Africa Co._
CULTIVATING CITRUS LAND IN RHODESIA]
II
We can now go into the story of the occupation of Rhodesia, which not
only unfolds a stirring drama of development but discloses something of
an epic of adventure. With most corporations it is an easy matter to get
down to business once a charter is granted. It is only necessary to
subscribe stock and then enter upon active operations, whether they
produce soap, razors or automobiles. The market is established for the
product.
With the British South Africa Company it was a far different and
infinitely more difficult performance, to translate the license to
operate into action. Matabeleland and Mashonaland were wild regions
where war-like tribes roamed or fought at will. There were no roads. The
only white men who had ventured there were hunters, traders, and
concession seekers. Occupation preceded exploitation. A white man's
civilization had to be set up first. The rifle and the hoe went in
together.
In June, 1890, the Pioneer Column entered. Heading it were two men who
left an impress upon African romance. One was Dr. Jameson, hero of the
Raid and Rhodes' most intimate friend. The first time I met him I
marvelled that this slight, bald, mild little man should have been the
central figure in so many heroic exploits. The other was the famous
hunter, F. C. Selous, who was Roosevelt's companion in British East
Africa. Under them were less than two hundred white men, including
Captain Heany, an American, who now invaded a country where
Lobengula had an army of 20,000 trained fighters, organized into
_impis_--(regiments)--after the Zulu fashion and in every respect a
formidable force. Although the old chief had granted the concession, no
one trusted him and Jameson and Selous had to feel their way, sleep
under arms every night, and build highways as they went.
Upon Lobengula's suggestion it was decided to occupy Mashonaland first.
This was achieved without any trouble and the British flag was raised on
what is now the site of Salisbury, the capital of Southern Rhodesia.
Most of the members of the expedition remained as settlers, and farms
sprang up on the veldt. The Company had to organize a police force to
patrol the land and keep off predatory natives. But this was purely
incidental to the larger troubles that now crowded thick and fast. In
the South the Boers launched an expedition to occupy Matabeleland by
force and it had to be headed off. To the east rose friction with the
Portuguese and a Rhodesian contingent was compelled to occupy part of
Portuguese East Africa until the boundary line was adjusted.
In 1893 came the first of the events that made Rhodesia a storm center.
A Matabele regiment raided the new town of Victoria and killed some of
the Company's native servants. The Matabeles then went on the warpath
and Dr. Jameson took the field against them. For five weeks a bitter
struggle raged. It ended with the defeat and disappearance of Lobengula
and the occupation of Bulawayo by the Company forces. This brought the
whole of Matabeleland under the direct authority of the British South
Africa Company. The campaign cost the Company $500,000.
Three years of peace and progress followed. Railway construction
started in two directions. One line was headed from the south through
Bechuanaland toward Bulawayo and another from Beira, the Indian Ocean
port in Portuguese East Africa, westward toward Salisbury. Gold mines
were opened and farms extended. At the end of 1895 came the Jameson
Raid. Practically the entire force under the many-sided Doctor was
recruited from the Rhodesian police and they were all captured by the
Boers. Rhodesia was left defenceless.
The Matabeles seized this moment to strike again. Ever since the defeat
of 1893 they had been restless and discontented. Various other causes
contributed to the uprising. One is peculiarly typical of the African
savage. An outbreak of rinderpest, a disease hitherto unknown in
Southern Africa, came down from the North and ravaged the cattle herds.
In order to check the advance of the pest the Government established a
clear belt by shooting all the cattle in a certain area. It was
impossible for the Matabeles to understand the wisdom of this procedure.
They only saw it as an outrage committed by the white men on their
property for they were extensive cattle owners. In addition many died
after eating infected meat and they also held the settlers responsible.
The net result of it all was a sudden descent upon the white settlements
and scores of white men, women and children were slaughtered.
This time the operations against them were on a large scale. The present
Lord Plumer, who commanded the Fourth British Army in France against the
Germans,--he was then a Lieutenant Colonel--came up with eight hundred
soldiers and drove the Matabeles into the fastnesses of the Matopos,--a
range of hills fifty miles long and more than twenty wide. Here the
savages took refuge in caves and could not be driven out.
You now reach one of the remarkable feats in the life of Cecil Rhodes.
The moment that the second Matabele war began he hastened northward to
the country that bore his name. As soon as the Matabeles took refuge in
the Matopos he boldly went out to parley with them. With three unarmed
companions, one of them an interpreter, he set up a camp in the wilds
and sent emissaries to the syndicate of the chiefs who had succeeded
Lobengula. He had become Premier of the Cape Colony, was head of the
great DeBeers Diamond Syndicate, and had other immense interests. He was
also Managing Director of the British South Africa Company and the
biggest stockholder. He was determined to protect his interests and at
the same time preserve the integrity of the country that he loved so
well.
He exposed himself every night to raids by the most blood-thirsty
savages in all Africa. Plumer's command was camped nearly five miles
away but Rhodes refused a guard.
Rhodes waited patiently and his perseverance was eventually rewarded.
One by one the chiefs came down from the hills and succumbed to the
persuasiveness and personality of this remarkable man who could deal
with wild and naked warriors as successfully as he could dictate to a
group of hard-headed business men. After two months of negotiating the
Matabeles were appeased and permanent peace, so far as the natives were
concerned, dawned in Rhodesia. After his feat in the Matopos the
Matabeles called Rhodes "The Man Who Separated the Fighting Bulls." It
was during this period in Rhodesia that Rhodes discovered the place
which he called "The View of the World," and where his remains now lie
in lonely grandeur.
At Groote Schuur, the Rhodes house near Capetown, which he left as the
permanent residence of the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa,
I saw a prized souvenir of the Matopos conferences with the Matabeles.
On the wall in Rhodes' bedroom hangs the faded picture of an old and
shriveled Matabele woman. When I asked General Smuts to tell me who she
was he replied: "That is the woman who acted as the chief negotiator
between Rhodes and the rebels." I afterwards found out that she was one
of the wives of Umziligazi, father of Lobengula, and a noted Zulu
chieftain. Rhodes never forgot the service she rendered him and caused
the photograph of her to be taken.
Following the last Matabele insurrection the Imperial Government which
is represented in Rhodesia by a Resident Commissioner assumed control of
the natives. The Crown was possibly guided by the precedent of Natal,
where a premature Responsible Government was followed by two Zulu wars
which well-nigh wrecked the province. It has become the policy of the
Home Government not to permit a relatively small white population to
rule the natives. Whatever the influence, Rhodesia has had no trouble
with the natives since Rhodes made the peace up in the hills of the
Matopos.
The moment that the war of force ended, another and bloodless war of
words began and it has continued ever since. I mean the fight for
self-government that the settlers have waged against the Chartered
Company. This brings us to a contest that contributes a significant and
little-known chapter to the whole narrative of self-determination among
the small peoples.
Through its Charter the British South Africa Company was able to fasten
a copper-rivetted rule on Rhodesia. Most of the Directors in London,
with the exception of men like Dr. Jameson, knew very little about the
country. There was no resident Director in Africa and the members of the
Board only came out just before the elections. The Administrator was
always a Company man and until 1899 his administrative associates in the
field were the members of an Executive Council nominated by the Company.
Meanwhile thousands of men had invested their fortunes in the land and
the inevitable time came when they believed that they should have a
voice in the conduct of its affairs.
This sentiment became so widespread that in 1899 the country was given a
Legislative Council which for the first time enabled the Rhodesians to
elect some of their own people to office. At first they were only
allowed three members, while the Company nominated six others. This
always gave the Chartered interests a majority. Subsequently, as the
clamour for popular representation grew, the number of elected
representatives was increased to thirteen, while those nominated by
Charter remained the same. To get a majority under the new deal it was
only necessary for the Company to get the support of four elected
members and on account of its relatively vast commercial interest it was
usually easy to do this.
It would be difficult to find an exact parallel to this situation. In
America we have had many conflicts with what our campaign orators call
"Special Privilege," an institution which thrived before the searchlight
of publicity was turned on corporate control and prior to the time when
fangs were put into the stewardship of railways. These contestants were
sometimes decided at the polls with varying degrees of success. Perhaps
the nearest approach to the Rhodesian line-up was the struggle of the
California wheat growers against the Southern Pacific Railway, which
Frank Norris dramatized in his book, "The Octopus."
All the while the feeling for Responsible Government in Rhodesia grew. A
strong group which opposed the Chartered régime sprang up. At the
beginning of the struggle the line was sharply drawn between the Charter
adherents on one side and unorganized opponents on the other. By 1914
the issue was sharply defined. The first twenty-five years of the
Charter were about to end and the insurgents realized that it was an
opportune moment for a show of strength. The opposition had three plans.
Some advocated the conversion of Rhodesia into a Crown Colony, others
strongly urged admission to the Union of South Africa, while still
another wing stood for Responsible Government. It was decided to unite
on a common platform of Responsible Government.
For the first time the Company realized that it had a fight on its hands
and Dr. Jameson, who had become president of the corporation, went out
to Rhodesia and made speeches urging loyalty to the Charter. His
appearance stirred memories of the pioneer days and almost without
exception the old guard rallied round him. A red-hot campaign ensued
with the result that the whole pro-Charter ticket, with one exception,
was elected, although the antis polled 45 per cent of the total vote.
Out of this defeat came a partial victory for the Progressives. The
Imperial Government saw the handwriting on the wall and acting within
its powers, which permitted an administrative change in the Charter at
the end of every ten years, granted a Supplemental Charter which
provided that the Legislative Council could by an absolute majority of
all its members pass a resolution "praying the Crown to establish in
Southern Rhodesia the form of Government known as Responsible
Government," provided that it could financially support this procedure.
It gave the insurgents fresh hope and it made the Company realize that
sooner or later its authority must end.
Then the Great War broke. Every available man that could possibly be
spared went to the Front and the life of the Council was extended until
1920, when a conclusive election was to be held. Meanwhile the Company,
realizing that it must sooner or later bow to the people's will, got
busy with an attempt to realize on its assets. Chief among them were the
millions of acres of so-called "unalienated" or Crown land in Southern
Rhodesia. The Chartered Company claimed this land as a private asset.
The settlers alleged that it belonged to them. The Government said it
was an imperial possession. The Privy Council in London upheld the
latter contention. Thereupon the Company filed a claim for
$35,000,000.00 against the Government to cover the value of this land
and its losses throughout the years of administration.
Yielding to pressure the Legislative Council in 1919 asked the British
Government to declare itself on the question of replacing the Charter
with some form of Government suited to the needs of the country. Lord
Milner, the Colonial Secretary, answered in what came to be known as the
"Milner Despatch." In it he said that he did not believe the territory
"in its present stage of development was equal to the financial burden
of Responsible Government." He mildly suggested representative
government under the Crown.
The general expectation throughout Rhodesia was that no election would
be held until a Government Commission then sitting, had inquired into
the validity of the Company's immense claim for damages. Early in March
1920, however, the Legislative Council gave notice that the election was
set for April 30th. It proved to be the most exciting ever held in
Rhodesia. The Chartered Company made no fight. The contest was really
waged between the two wings of the anti-Charter crowd. One favored
Responsible Government and the other, admission to the Union of South
Africa.
The arguments for Responsible Government briefly were these: That under
the Supplemental Charter it was the only constitutional change possible;
that the financial burden was not too heavy; that the native question
was no bar; that the Imperial Government would never saddle the country
with the huge debt of the Company; that under the Union a hateful
bi-lingualism would be introduced; that taxation would not be excessive,
and that finally, the right of self-determination as to Government was
the birthright of the British people.
The adherents of Union contended that the original idea of Cecil Rhodes
was to make Rhodesia a part of the Union of South Africa; that by this
procedure the vexing problem of customs with the Union would be solved;
that the system of self-government in South Africa meets every
requirement of self-determination. Moreover, the point was made that by
becoming a part of the Union the whole railway question would be
settled. At present the Rhodesian railways have three ends, one in South
Africa at Vryburg, another on the Belgian border, and a third at the sea
at Beira. It was claimed that through the Union, Rhodesia would benefit
by becoming a part of the nationalized railway system there and get the
advantage of a British port at the Cape instead of Beira, which is
Portuguese. In other words, Union meant stability of credit, politics,
finance and industry.
The outcome of the election was that twelve Responsible Government
candidates, one of them a woman, were elected. Women voted for the first
time in Rhodesia and they solidly opposed the union with South Africa.
The thirteenth member elected stood for the conversion of the country
into a Crown Colony under representative government. Throughout the
campaign the Chartered Company remained neutral, although it was
obviously opposed to Responsible Government. The feeling throughout
Rhodesia is that it favors Union because it could dispose of its assets
to better advantage.
I arrived in Rhodesia immediately after the election. The country still
sizzled with excitement. Curiously enough, the head, brains and front of
the fight for union with South Africa was a former American, now a
British subject and who has been a ranchman in Rhodesia for some years.
He prefers to be nameless.
In the light of the landslide at the polls it naturally followed that
the new Legislative Council at its first meeting passed a resolution
declaring for Responsible Government. The vote was twelve to five. Since
this was not an absolute majority, as required by the Supplementary
Charter, it is expected that the Imperial Government will decide against
granting this form of government just now. The next procedure will
probably be a request for representative government under the Crown or
some modification of the Charter, and for an Imperial loan. Rhodesia has
no borrowing power and the country needs money just as much as its needs
men. The adherents of Union claim that on a straight show-down between
Crown Colony or Union at the next election, Union will win. From what I
gathered in conversation with the leaders of both factions, there would
have been a bigger vote, possibly victory for Union, but for the
Nationalist movement in South Africa, which I described in a previous
chapter. The Rhodesians want no racial entanglements.
Northern Rhodesia has no part in the fight against the Charter. It is
only a question of time, however, when she will be merged into Southern
Rhodesia for, with the passing of the Company, her destiny becomes
identical with that of her sister territory. Northern Rhodesia's chief
complaint against the Company was that it did not spend any money within
her borders. After reading the story of the crusade for Responsible
Government you can understand the reason why.
Whatever happens, Charter rule in Rhodesia is doomed and the great
Company, born of the vision and imperialism of Cecil Rhodes, and which
battled with the wild man in the wilderness, will eventually vanish from
the category of corporations. But Rhodesia remains a thriving part of
the British Empire and the dream of the founder is realized.
III
Rhodesia produces much more than trouble for the Chartered Company. She
is pre-eminently a land of ranches and farms. Here you get still another
parallel with the United States because it is no uncommon thing to find
a farm of 50,000 acres or more.
I doubt if any other new region in the world contains a finer or
sturdier manhood than Rhodesia. Like the land itself it is a stronghold
of youth. Likewise, no other colony, and for that matter, no other
matured country exercises such a rigid censorship upon settlers. Until
the high cost of living disorganized all economic standards, no one
could establish himself in Rhodesia without a minimum capital of
£1,000. So far as farming is concerned, this is now increased to
£2,000. Therefore, you do not see the signs of failure which so
often dot the semi-virgin landscape. Knowing this, you can understand
why the immigration inspector gives the incoming travellers a rigid
cross-examination at the frontier.
Also it is simon-pure British, and more like Natal in this respect than
any other territory under the Union-jack. I had a convincing
demonstration in a personal experience. I made a speech at the Bulawayo
Club. The notice was short but I was surprised to find more than a
hundred men assembled after dinner, many in evening clothes. Some had
travelled all day on horseback or in buckboards to get there, others had
come hundreds of miles by motor car.
I never addressed a more responsive audience. What impressed me was the
kindling spirit of affection they manifested for the Mother Country. In
conversation with many of them afterwards it was interesting to hear the
sons of settlers referring to the England that they had never seen, as
"home." That night I realized as never before,--not even amid the agony
and sacrifice of the Somme or the Ancre in France,--one reason why the
British Empire is great and why, despite all muddling, it carries on. It
lies in the feeling of imperial kinship far out at the frontiers of
civilization. The colonial is in many respects a more devoted loyalist
than the man at home.
Wherever I went I found the Rhodesian agriculturist--and he constitutes
the bulk of the white population,--essentially modern in his methods. He
reminds me more of the Kansas farmer than any other alien agriculturists
that I have met. He uses tractors and does things in a big way. There is
a trail of gasoline all over the country. Motorcycles have become an
ordinary means of transport for district officials and engineers, who
fly about over the native paths that are often the merest tracks. You
find these machines in the remotest regions. The light motor car is also
beginning to be looked upon as a necessary part of the outfit of the
farmer.
There was a time when the average Rhodesian believed that gold was the
salvation of the country. Repeated "booms" and the inevitable losses
have brought the people to agree with the opinion of one of the
pioneers, that "the true wealth of the country lies in the top twelve
inches of the soil." Agriculture is surpassing mining as the principal
industry.
The staple agricultural product is maize, which is corn in the American
phraseology. Until a few years ago the bulk of it was consumed at home.
Recently, however, on account of the farm expansion, there is an
increasing surplus for export to the Union of South Africa, the Belgian
Congo, and even to Europe.
The facts about maize are worth considering. Every year 200,000,000
bags, each weighing 200 pounds, are consumed throughout the world.
Heretofore the principal sources of supply have been the Argentine and
the United States. We have come to the time, however, when we absorb
practically our whole crop. Formerly we exported about 10,000,000 bags.
There is no decrease in corn consumption despite prohibition. Hence
Rhodesia is bound to loom large in the situation. Last year she produced
more than a million bags. Maize is a crop that revels in sunshine and in
Rhodesia the sun shines brilliantly throughout the year practically
without variation. This enables the product to be sun-dried.
Other important crops are tobacco, beans, peanuts (which are invariably
called monkey nuts in that part of the universe), wheat and oranges.
Under irrigation, citrus fruits, oats and barley do well.
Cattle are a bulwark of Rhodesian prosperity. The immense pasturage
areas are reminiscent of Texas and Montana. For a hundred years before
the white settlers came, the Matabeles and the Mashonas raised live
stock. The natives still own about 700,000 head, nearly as many as the
whites. I was interested to find that the British South Africa Company
has imported a number of Texas ranchmen to act as cattle experts and
advise the ranchers generally. This is due to a desire to begin a
competition with the Argentine and the United States in chilled and
frozen meats. One of the greatest British manufactures of beef extracts
owns half a dozen ranches in Rhodesia and it is not unlikely that
American meat men will follow. Mr. J. Ogden Armour is said to be keenly
interested in the country with the view of expanding the resources of
the Chicago packers. This is one result of the World War, which has
caused the producer of food everywhere to bestir himself and insure
future supplies.
In connection with Rhodesian farming and cattle-raising is a situation
well worthy of emphasis. There is no labour problem. You find, for
example, that miracle of miracles which is embodied in a native at work.
It is in sharp contrast with South Africa and the Congo, where, with
millions of coloured people it is almost impossible to get help. The
Rhodesian black still remains outside the leisure class. Whether it is
due to his fear of the whites or otherwise, he is an active member of
the productive order.
The native will work for the white man but, save to raise enough maize
for himself, he will not become an agriculturist. I heard a typical
story about Lewaniki, Chief of the Barotses, who once ruled a large part
of what is now Northern Rhodesia. Someone asked him to get his people to
raise cotton. His answer was:
"What is the use? They cannot eat it."
In Africa the native's world never extends beyond his stomach. I was
soon to find costly evidence of this in the Congo.
The African native is quite a character. He is not only a born actor but
has a quaint humor. In the center of the main street at Bulawayo is a
bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes, bareheaded, and with his face turned
toward the North. Just as soon as it was unveiled the Matabeles
expressed considerable astonishment over it. They could not understand
why the figure never moved. Shortly afterwards a great drought came. A
native chief went to see the Resident Commissioner and solemnly told him
that he was quite certain that there would be no rain "until they put a
hat on Mr. Rhodes' head."
The Lewaniki anecdote reminds me of an admirable epigram that was
produced in Rhodesia. Out there food is commonly known as "skoff," just
as "chop" is the equivalent in the Congo. A former Resident
Commissioner, noted for the keenness of his wit, once asked a travelling
missionary to dine with him. After the meal the guest insisted upon
holding a religious service at the table. In speaking of the performance
the Commissioner said: "My guest came to 'skoff' and remained to pray."
Whenever you visit a new land you almost invariably discover mental
alertness and progressiveness that often put the older civilizations to
shame. Let me illustrate. Go to England or France today and you touch
the really tragic aftermath of the war. You see thousands of demobilized
officers and men vainly searching for work. Many are reduced to the
extremity of begging. It has become an acute and poignant problem, that
is not without its echo over here.
Rhodesia, through the British South Africa Company, is doing its bit
toward solution. It has set aside 500,000 acres which are being allotted
free of charge to approved soldier and sailor settlers from overseas.
Not only are they being given the land but they are provided with expert
advice and supervision. The former service men who are unable to borrow
capital with which to exploit the land, are merged into a scheme by
which they serve an apprenticeship for pay on the established farms and
ranches until they are able to shift for themselves.
The Chartered Company, despite its political machine, has developed
Rhodesia "on its own," and in rather striking fashion. It operates
dairies, gold mines, citrus estates, nurseries, ranches, tobacco
warehouses, abattoirs, cold storage plants and dams, which insures
adequate water supply in various sections. It is a profitable example of
constructive paternalism whose results will be increasingly evident long
after the famous Charter has passed into history.
No phase of the Company's activities is more important than its
construction of the Rhodesian railways. They represent a
double-barrelled private ownership in that they were built and are
operated by the Company. There are nearly 2,600 miles of track. One
section of the system begins down at Vryburg in Bechuanaland, where it
connects with the South African Railways, and extends straight northward
through Bulawayo and Victoria Falls to the Congo border. The other
starts at Beira on the Indian Ocean and runs west through Salisbury, the
capital, to Bulawayo.
These railways have a remarkable statistical distinction in that there
is one mile of track for every thirteen white inhabitants. No other
system in the world can duplicate it. The Union of South Africa comes
nearest with 143 white inhabitants per mile or just eleven times as
many. Canada has 27, Australia 247, the United States and New Zealand
400 each, while the United Kingdom has over 200 inhabitants for every
mile of line.
Rhodesia is highly mineralized. Coal occurs in three areas and one of
them, Wankie,--a vast field,--is extensively operated. Gold is found
over the greater part of the country. Here you not only touch an
American interest but you enter upon the region that Rider Haggard
introduced to readers as the setting of some of his most famous
romances. We will deal with the practical side first.
Rhodes had great hopes of Rhodesia as a gold-producing country. He
wanted the economic value of the country to rank with the political.
Thousands of years ago the natives dug mines and many of these ancient
workings are still to be seen. They never exceed forty or fifty feet in
depth. Many leading authorities claimed that the South Arabians of the
Kingdom of Saba often referred to in the Bible were the pioneers in the
Rhodesian gold fields and sold the output to the Phoenicians. Others
contended that the Phoenicians themselves delved here. Until recently it
was also maintained by some scientists and Biblical scholars that modern
Southern Rhodesia was the famed land of Ophir, whence came the gold and
precious stones that decked the persons and palaces of Solomon and
David. This, however, has been disproved, and Ophir is still the butt of
archaeological dispute. It has been "located" in Arabia, Spain, Peru,
India and South-East Africa.
Rhodes knew all about the old diggings so he engaged John Hays Hammond,
the American engineer, to accompany him on a trip through Rhodesia in
1894 and make an investigation of the workings. His report stated that
the rock mines were undoubtedly ancient, that the greatest skill in
mining had been displayed and that scores of millions of pounds worth of
the precious metal had been extracted. It also proved that practically
all this treasure had been exported from the country for no visible
traces remain. This substantiates the theory that perhaps it did go to
the Phoenicians or to a potentate like King Solomon. Hammond wrote the
mining laws of Rhodesia which are an adaptation of the American code.
The Rhodesian gold mines, which are operated by the Chartered Company
and by individuals, have never fully realized their promise. One reason,
so men like Hammond tell me, is that they are over-capitalized and are
small and scattered. Despite this handicap the country has produced
£45,227,791 of gold since 1890. The output in 1919 was worth
£2,500,000. In 1915 it was nearly £4,000,000.
Small diamonds in varying quantities have also been found in Rhodesia.
In exchange for having subscribed heavily to the first issue of British
South Africa Company stock, the DeBeers which Rhodes formed received a
monopoly on the diamond output and with it the assurance of a rigid
enforcement of the so-called Illicit Diamond Buying Act. This law, more
commonly known as "I. D. B." and which has figured in many South African
novels, provided drastic punishment for dishonest dealing in the stones.
More than one South African millionaire owed the beginnings of his
fortune to evasion of this law.
Just about the time that Rhodes made the Rhodesian diamond deal a
prospector came to him and said: "If I bring you a handful of rough
diamonds what will I get?"
"Fifteen years," was the ready retort. He was never at a loss for an
answer.
We can now turn to the really romantic side of the Rhodesian mineral
deposits. One of the favorite pilgrimages of the tourist is to the
Zimbabwe ruins, located about seventeen miles from Victoria in Southern
Rhodesia. They are the remains of an ancient city and must at various
times have been the home of large populations. There seems little doubt
that Zimbabwe was the work of a prehistoric and long-forgotten people.
Over it hangs a mantle of mystery which the fictionist has employed to
full, and at times thrilling advantage. In this vicinity were the "King
Solomon's Mines," that Rider Haggard wrote about in what is perhaps his
most popular book. Here came "Allan Quartermain" in pursuit of love and
treasure. The big hill at Zimbabwe provided the residence of "She," the
lovely and disappearing lady who had to be obeyed. The ruins in the
valley are supposed to be those of "the Dead City" in the same romance.
The interesting feature of all this is that "She" and "King Solomon's
Mines" were written in the early eighties when comparatively nothing was
known of the country. Yet Rider Haggard, with that instinct which
sometimes guides the romancer, wrote fairly accurate descriptions of the
country long before he had ever heard of its actual existence. Thus
imagination preceded reality.
The imagination miracles disclose in the Haggard books are surpassed by
the actual wonder represented by Victoria Falls. Everybody has heard of
this stupendous spectacle in Rhodesia but few people see it because it
is so far away. I beheld it on my way from Bulawayo to the Congo. Like
the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, it baffles description.
The first white man to visit the cataract was Dr. Livingstone, who named
it in honor of his Queen. This was in 1855. For untold years the natives
of the region had trembled at its fury. They called it _Mois-oa-tunga_,
which means "Smoke That Sounds." When you see the falls you can readily
understand why they got this name. The mist is visible ten miles away
and the terrific roar of the falling waters can be heard even farther.
The fact that the casual traveller can see Victoria Falls from the train
is due entirely to the foresight and the imagination of Cecil Rhodes. He
knew the publicity value that the cataract would have for Rhodesia and
he combined the utilitarian with his love of the romantic. In planning
the Rhodesian railroad, therefore, he insisted that the bridge across
the gorge of the Zambesi into which the mighty waters flow after their
fall, must be sufficiently near to enable the spray to wet the railway
carriages. The experts said it was impossible but Rhodes had his way,
just as Harriman's will prevailed over that of trained engineers in the
construction of the bridge across Great Salt Lake.
The bridge across the Zambesi is a fit mate in audacity to the falls
themselves. It is the highest in the world for it rises 400 feet above
the low water level. Its main parabolic arch is a 500 foot span while
the total length is 650 feet. Although its construction was fraught with
contrast hazard it only cost two lives, despite the fact that seven
hundred white men and two thousand natives were employed on it. In the
building of the Firth of Forth bridge which was much less dangerous,
more than fifty men were killed.
I first saw the Falls in the early morning when the brilliant African
sun was turned full on this sight of sights. It was at the end of the
wet season and the flow was at maximum strength. The mist was so great
that at first I could scarcely see the Falls. Slowly but defiantly the
foaming face broke through the veil. Niagara gives you a thrill but this
toppling avalanche awes you into absolute silence.
The Victoria Falls are exactly twice as broad and two and one-half
times as high as Niagara Falls. This means that they are over a mile in
breadth and four hundred and twenty feet high. The tremendous flow has
only one small outlet about 100 yards wide. The roar and turmoil of this
world of water as it crashes into the chasm sets up what is well called
"The Boiling Pot." From this swirling melee the Zambesi rushes with
unbridled fury through a narrow and deep gorge, extending with many
windings for forty miles.
In the presence of this marvel, wars, elections, economic upheavals, the
high cost of living, prohibition,--all "that unrest which men miscall
delight"--fade into insignificance. Life itself seems a small and
pitiful thing. You are face to face with a force of Nature that is
titanic, terrifying, and irresistible.
[Illustration: THE GRAVE OF CECIL RHODES]
IV
Since we bid farewell to Cecil Rhodes in this chapter after having
almost continuously touched his career from the moment we reached
Capetown, let us make a final measure of his human side,--and he was
intensely human--particularly with reference to Rhodesia, which is so
inseparably associated with him. His passion for the country that bore
his name exceeded his interest in any of his other undertakings. He
liked the open life of the veldt where he travelled in a sort of gypsy
wagon and camped for the night wherever the mood dictated. It enabled
him to gratify his fondness for riding and shooting.
He was always accompanied by a remarkable servant named Tony, a
half-breed in whom the Portuguese strain predominated. Tony bought his
master's clothes, paid his bills, and was a court of last resort "below
stairs." Rhodes declared that his man could produce a satisfactory meal
almost out of thin air.
Rhodes and Tony were inseparable. Upon one occasion Tony accompanied him
when he was commanded by Queen Victoria to lodge at Sandringham. While
there Rhodes asked Tony what time he could get breakfast, whereupon the
servant replied:
"Royalty does not breakfast, sir, but you can have it in the dining-room
at half past nine." Tony seemed to know everything.
Throughout Rhodesia I found many of Rhodes' old associates who
affectionately referred to him as "The Old Man." I was able to collect
what seemed to be some new Rhodes stories. A few have already been
related. Here is another which shows his quickness in capitalizing a
situation.
In the days immediately following the first Matabele war Rhodes had more
trouble with concession-hunters than with the savages, the Boers, or the
Portuguese. Nearly every free-lance in the territory produced some fake
document to which Lobengula's alleged mark was affixed and offered it to
Rhodes at an excessive price.
One of these gentry framed a plan by which one of the many sons of
Lobengula was to return to Matabeleland, claim his royal rights, and
create trouble generally. The whole idea was to start an uprising and
derange the machinery of the British South Africa Company. The name of
the son was N'jube and at the time the plan was devised he held a place
as messenger in the diamond fields at Kimberley. By the system of
intelligence that he maintained, Rhodes learned of the frame-up, the
whereabouts of the boy, and furthermore, that he was in love with a
Fingo girl. These Fingoes were a sort of bastard slave people. Marriage
into the tribe was a despised thing, and by a native of royal blood,
meant the abrogation of all his claims to the succession.
Rhodes sent for N'jube and asked him if he wanted to marry the Fingo
girl. When he replied that he did, the great man said: "Go down to the
DeBeers office, get £50 and marry the girl. I will then give you a
job for life and build you a house."
N'jube took the hint and the money and married the girl. Rhodes now sent
the following telegram to the conspirator at Bulawayo:
"Your friend N'jube was divided between love and empire, but he has
decided to marry the Fingo girl. It is better that he should settle
down in Kimberley and be occupied in creating a family than to plot at
Bulawayo to stab you in the stomach."
This ended the conspiracy, and N'jube lived happily and peacefully ever
afterwards.
Rhodes was an incorrigible imperialist as this story shows. Upon one
occasion at Bulawayo he was discussing the Carnegie Library idea with
his friend and associate, Sir Abe Bailey, a leading financial and
political figure in the Cape Colony.
"What would you do if you had Carnegie's money?" asked Bailey.
"I wouldn't waste it on libraries," he replied. "I would seize a South
American Republic and annex it to the United States."
Rhodes had great admiration for America. He once said to Bailey: "The
greatest thing in the world would be the union of the English-speaking
people. I wouldn't mind if Washington were the capital." He believed
implicitly in the invincibility of the Anglo-Saxon race, and he gave his
life and his fortune to advance the British part of it.
For the last I have reserved the experience that will always rank first
in my remembrance of Rhodesia. It was my visit to the grave of Rhodes.
Most people who go to Rhodesia make this pilgrimage, for in the
well-known tourist language of Mr. Cook, like Victoria Falls, it is "one
of the things to see." I was animated by a different motive. I had often
read about it and I longed to view the spot that so eloquently
symbolized the vision and the imagination of the man I admired.
The grave is about twenty-eight miles from Bulawayo, in the heart of the
Matopo Hills. You follow the road along which the body was carried
nineteen years ago. You see the native hut where Rhodes often lived and
in which the remains rested for the night on the final journey. You pass
from the green low-lands to the bare frontiers of the rocky domain where
the Matabeles fled after the second war and where the Father of Rhodesia
held his historic parleys with them.
Soon the way becomes so difficult that you must leave the motor and
continue on foot. The Matopos are a wild and desolate range. It is not
until you are well beyond the granite outposts that there bursts upon
you an immense open area,--a sort of amphitheatre in which the Druids
might have held their weird ritual. Directly ahead you see a battlement
of boulders projected by some immemorial upheaval. Intrenched between
them is the spot where Rhodes rests and which is marked by a brass plate
bearing the words: "Here Lie the Remains of Cecil John
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/25569