Rhodes and the Boers.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 15, 10 April 1902, Page 1

Rhodes and the Boers.

During- the earlier years of his career in South Africa no public man was in greater favor with the Boers or more deeply in their confidence than Mr. Rhodes. He thoroughly understood the Boer character and never had the slightest difficulty in getting intosympathteic touch with it. In this respect he was a complete contrast to Lord Milner, who has never taken the trouble to comprehend the Boers, and whose want of tact during the conference with Kruger at Bloemfontein undoubtedly helped to precipitate the war. ' How different,' remarked a Cape Minister, ' would Rhodes have handled the business in the days before the Raid had made him an impossible negotiator. Instead of bombarding the old man with a display of officialism, and seeking to wrest from him admissions by dint of academic argument, Rhodes would have said to his attache's, " Now, all you fellows, clear out," and then he would have sat down by the fire, lighting cigarettes, while the old man smoked his long pipe, and they would have talked over things for a

couple of days, so as to get to really understand one another before entering on any formal attempt at settlement. 1 Partly by his personal magnetism and partly by lowering the British ideal as to the treatment of native labor, Mr. Rhodes had done a very great deal towards reconciling the English and the Dutch interests in South Africa, and, as we have said, he was universally trusted. His connection with the Jamieson Raid, however, and the part he played in the Outlander agitation changed all that, and latterly his name was hated by the Dutch element from one end of South Africa to the other. Olive Schreiner, the well-known author, who has lived for many years as teacher and as friend among the Dutch farmers, gave the following vivid account, in a public interview, of the Boer feeling towards Mr. Rhodes. ' Whom, then,' she was asked, ' do they hold responsible for the trouble ? '

' It is not Mr. Chamberlain, nor Sir A. Milner, though they say, "He has blackened us." Their anger is reserved for one man, whom they regard as the root of the evil. The whole face will harden at the name Rhodes — " the traitor," as they always term him. Before the matter had fully ripened into war I was talking with an old Boer farmer, a man of substance and of great influence in his district. He put it in this way : " When I think over the matter, it seems to me Rhodes and those men won't be able to make war; for 'our old Lady ' has always been good to us and loved justice, and she won't let it be.'"

c Was it altogether Rhodes they blamed ? ' 1 Well, chiefly Rhodes ; sometimes the capitalists. They would sum up the discussion^thus : " And the root of the matter is Naboth's vineyard — the gold and the capitalists that want it." There can be no doubt that the Boers felt that Mr. Rhodes, who first won their favor by identifying himself with the Africander party, had betrayed them, and the news that " Rhodes is dead,' while it evoked unparalleled manifestations of grief in British circles, would hnng to the Boers nothing but a feeling of thankfulness and of relief.