"LEST WE FORGET!** 263

their interests and sought to find a solution of the native problem
which had been the chief stumbling block between the two
European races. His aim was their equal status in a South
African union freed from the centralising trammels of White-
hall1 but linked with the rest of the Empire by the Crown, the
flag and imperial preference.

Rhodes wanted that union, like the wider world common-
wealth of self-governing nations he envisaged, to follow the
English tradition of freedom, fair play and opportunity for all.
He once said in a speech in the Cape Parliament that England
had two cardinal and historic principles: that its word, once
pledged, was never broken, and that when a man accepted citizen-
ship of the British Empire there was no further distinction of
races. He did not want the South Africa of his dream to be
exclusive but open "to all men who loved truth, freedom and
the welfare of mankind."

After a time Rhodes won the trust of the Dutch. Those in
the British colonies of the Cape and Natal came to look on him
as their leader—an unheard-of position for an Englishman. In
the independent Orange Free State also he made friends. But
he had one serious obstacle—the character of the primitive
Dutch Transvaal and, above all, of its leader, Kruger. For the
little republic of Boer farmers that lay in the centre of the new
South Africa, bestriding its internal communications,, had no
sympathy with Rhodes's ideals. Its leader had no dream of
the future nor belief in human progress: only a stubborn
resolve to live the life of bygone generations and preserve their
simple pastoral ways. To the old Dutch President, with his
spittoon and his Bible, Rhodes's ideal of "equal rights for all
civilised men, irrespective of race, south of the Zambesi,** made no
appeal. His ideal was exclusion of all foreigners from the vddt
and if possible from South Africa. He excluded their goods by
dapping on a 33 per cent, tariff against all imports. He even
tried to exclude their railways and telegraphs.

But mammon is a powerful dissolvent of conservative com-
munities. The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in the
'eighties put President Kruger and his farmers in a dilemma.
They could only secure the profit of that lucky find by admitting
foreigners with capital and mining skill. And when they did
so foreigners entered the country in such numbers that in a few

1 He supported Irish Home Rule as part of his policy of imperial self-government