ffection that made him keenly
alive to the dangers that might threaten the latter, and anxious to avert
them. But during those eventful months of the war the influence of the
Doctor also had been weakened by the peculiar circumstances which had
arisen in consequence of the length of the Boer resistance. Before the war
broke out it had been generally supposed that three months would see the
end of the Transvaal Republic, and Rhodes himself, more often than I care
to remember, had prophesied that a few weeks would be the utmost that the
struggle could last. That this did not turn out to be the case had been a
surprise to the world at large and an intense disappointment to Cecil
Rhodes. He had all along nourished a bitter animosity against Kruger, and
in regard to him, as well as Messrs. Schreiner, Merriman, Hofmeyr, Sauer
and other one-time colleagues, he carried his vindictiveness to an extent
so terrible that more than once it led him into some of the most
regrettable actions in his life.

Cecil Rhodes possessed a curious shyness which gave to his character an
appearance the more misleading in that it hid in reality a will of iron
and a ruthlessness comparable to a _Condottiere_ of the Middle Ages. The
fact was that his soul was thirsting for power, and he was inordinately
jealous of successes which anyone but himself had or could achieve in
South Africa. I am persuaded that one of the reasons why he always tried
by inference to disparage Sir Alfred Milner was his annoyance at the
latter's calm way of going on with the task which he had mapped out for
himself without allowing his mind to be troubled by the outcries of a mob
whom he despised from the height of his great integrity, unsullied honour,
and consciousness of having his duty to perform. Neither could Rhodes ever
see in political matters the necessities of the moment often made it the
duty of a statesman to hurl certain facts into oblivion and to reconcile
himself to new circumstances.

That he did disparage Sir Alfred Milner is unfortunately certain. I
sincerely believe that the war would never have dragged on so long had not
Rhodes contrived to convey to the principal Boer leaders the impression
that while Sir Alfred Milner remained in South Africa no settlement would
be arrived at with the British Government, because the High Commissioner
would always oppose any concessions that might bring it to a successful
and prompt issue. Of course Cecil Rhodes never sai