chuur_ has been described so much that it is not necessary for
me to dwell upon its charm and atmosphere here. To see it is to get a
fresh and intimate realization of the personality which made the
establishment an unofficial Chancellery of the British Empire.

Two details, however, have poignant and dramatic interest. In the
simple, massive, bed-room with its huge bay window opening on Table
Mountain and a stretch of lovely countryside, hangs the small map of
Africa that Rhodes marked with crimson ink and about which he made the
famous utterance, "It must be all red." Hanging on the wall in the
billiard room is the flag with Crescent and Cape device that he had made
to be carried by the first locomotive to travel from Cairo to the Cape.
That flag has never been unfurled to the breeze but the vision that
beheld it waving in the heart of the jungle is soon to become an
accomplished fact.

It was on a night at _Groote Schuur_, as I walked with Smuts through the
acres of hydrangeas and bougainvillea (Rhodes' favorite flowers), with a
new moon peeping overhead that I got the real mood of the man. Pointing
to the faint silvery crescent in the sky I said: "General, there's a new
moon over us and I'm sure it means good luck for you."

"No," he replied, "it's the man that makes the luck."

He had had a trying day in the House and was silent in the motor car
that brought us out. The moment we reached the country and he sniffed
the scent of the gardens the anxiety and preoccupation fell away. He
almost became boyish. But when he began to discuss great problems the
lightness vanished and he became the serious thinker.

We harked back to the days when I had first seen him in England. I asked
him to tell me what he thought of the aftermath of the stupendous
struggle. He said:

"The war was just a phase of world convulsion. It made the first rent in
the universal structure. For years the trend of civilization was toward
a super-Nationalism. It is easy to trace the stages. The Holy Roman
Empire was a phase of Nationalism. That was Catholic. Then came the
development of Nationalism, beginning with Napoleon. That was
Protestant. Now began the building of water-tight compartments,
otherwise known as nations. Germany represented the most complete
development.

"But that era of 'my country,' 'my power,'--it is all a form of national
ego,--is gone. The four great empires,--Turkey, Germany, Russia and
Austria,--have crumbled. The war