Natal, in spite of the preponderance of the English element there.

That Rhodes might have achieved such a success is scarcely to be doubted,
and personally I feel sure that there had been moments in his life when
the idea of it had seriously occurred to him. At least I was led to think
so in the course of a conversation which we had together on this subject a
few weeks before the Boer War broke out. At that moment Rhodes knew that
war was imminent, but it would be wrong to interpret that knowledge in the
sense that he had ever thought of or planned rebellion against the Queen.
Those who accused him of harbouring the idea either did not know him or
else wished to harm him. Rhodes was essentially an Englishman, and set his
own country above everything else in the world. Emphatically this is so;
but it is equally true that his strange conceptions of morality in matters
where politics came into question made him totally oblivious of the fact
that he thought far more of his own self than of his native land in the
plans which he conceived and formulated for the supremacy of England in
South Africa. He was absolutely convinced that his election as Life
President of a South African Republic would not be in any way detrimental
to the interests of Great Britain; on the contrary, he assured himself it
would make the latter far more powerful than it had ever been before in
the land over which he would reign. By nature something of an Italian
_condottieri_, he considered his native land as a stepping-stone to his
own grandeur.

For a good many years he had chosen his best friends among Dutchmen of
influence in the Cape Colony and in the Transvaal. He flattered, courted
and praised them until he quite persuaded them that nowhere else would
they find such a staunch supporter of their rights and of their claims.
Men like Mr. Schreiner,[A] for instance, trusted him absolutely, and
believed quite sincerely that in time he would be able to establish firm