Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/73

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HIS WRITINGS.
59

Added to this, the absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars.” He then asks himself what are the objects for which he should work, and answers his question as follows: “The furtherance of the British Empire, for the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire. What a dream! but yet it is probable. It is possible.”

“I once heard it argued—so low have we fallen—in my own college, I am sorry to own it, by Englishmen, that it was a good thing for us that we have lost the United States. There are some subjects on which there can be no argument, and to an Englishman this is one of them. But even from an American’s point of view just picture what they have lost. . . . . All this we have lost and that country has lost owing to whom? Owing to two or three ignorant, pigheaded statesmen in the last century. At their door is the blame. Do you ever feel mad, do you ever feel murderous? I think I do with these men.”

The rest of his paper is devoted to a discussion as to the best means of attaining these objects.

After recalling how the Roman Church utilises enthusiasm, he suggests the formation of a kind of secular Church for the extension of British Empire which should have its members in every part of the British Empire working with one object and one idea, who should have its members placed at our universities and our schools, and should watch the English youth passing through their hands. Mr. Rhodes then proceeded to sketch the kind of men upon whose