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.

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.

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.

CHAPTER III—RHODES AND RHODESIA

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.