this friend of his younger days, and would never acknowledge
that Doctor Jim's desire to enter public life as a member of the Cape
Parliament ought not to be gratified.

On his side, Doctor Jameson was determined that the opportunity to do so
should be offered to him, and he used Rhodes' influence in order to obtain
election. He knew very well that without it his candidature would have no
chance.

Later on, when judging the events which preceded the last two years of
Rhodes' life, many people expressed the opinion that Jameson, being a
physician of unusual ability, was perfectly well aware that his friend was
not destined to live to a very old age, and therefore wished to obtain
from him while he could all the political support he required to establish
his career as the statesman he fully believed he was. In fact, Doctor
Jameson had made up his mind to outlive the odium of the Raid, and to
become rehabilitated in public opinion to the extent of being allowed to
take up the leadership of the party which had once owned Rhodes as its
chief. By a strange freak of Providence, helped no doubt by an iron will
and opportunities made the most of, Jameson, who had been the great
culprit in the mad adventure of the Raid, became the foremost man in Cape
Colony for a brief period after the war, while Rhodes, who had been his
victim, bore the full consequences of his weakness in having permitted
himself to be persuaded to look through his fingers on the enterprise.

Rhodes never recovered any real political influence, was distrusted by
English and Dutch alike, looked upon with caution by the Cape Government,
and with suspicion even among his followers. The poor man had no friends
worthy of the name, and those upon whom he relied the most were the first
to betray his confidence. Unfortunately for himself, he had a profound
contempt for humanity, and imagined himself capable of controlling all
those whom he had elected to rule. He imagined he could turn and twist
anyone according to his own impulses. In support of this assertion let me
relate an incident in which I played a part.

When the Boer War showed symptoms of dragging on for a longer time than
expected, some Englishmen proposed that Rhodes should be asked to stand
again for Prime Minister, to do which he resolutely refused. Opinions,
however, were very much divided. Some people declared that he was the only
man capable of conciliating the Dutch and bringing the war to a happy