This organisation was more a dictatorship than anything else, and had
about it something at once genial and Mephistophelian. The conquest of
Rhodesia was nothing in comparison with the power attained by this
combine, which arrogated to itself almost unchallenged the right to
domineer over every white man and to subdue every coloured one in the
whole of the vast South African Continent. Rhodesia, indeed, was only
rendered possible through the power wielded in Cape Colony to bring the
great Northward adventure to a successfully definite issue.

In referring to Rhodesia, I am reminded of a curious fact which, so far as
I am aware, has never been mentioned in any of the biographies of Mr.
Rhodes, but which, on the contrary, has been carefully concealed from the
public knowledge by his admirers and his satellites. The concession
awarded by King Lobengula to Rhodes and to the few men who together with
him took it upon themselves to add this piece of territory to the British
Empire had, in reality, already been given by the dusky monarch--long
before the ambitions of De Beers had taken that direction--to a Mr.
Sonnenberg, a German Jew who had very quickly amassed a considerable
fortune in various speculations. This Mr. Sonnenberg--who was subsequently
to represent the Dutch party in the Cape Parliament, and who became one of
the foremost members of the Afrikander Bond--during one of his journeys
into the interior of the country from Basutoland, where he resided for
some time, had taken the opportunity of a visit to Matabeleland to obtain
a concession from the famous Lobengula. This covered the same ground and
advantages which, later, were granted to Mr. Rhodes and his business
associates.

Owing in some measure to negligence and partly through the impossibility
of raising the enormous capital necessary to make anything profitable out