CHAPTER II.—HIS CONVERSATIONS.
Since Mr. Rhodes’s death I have had opportunities of making a close inquiry among those who have been most intimately associated with him from his college days until his death, with this result. I found that to none of them had Mr. Rhodes spoken as fully, as intimately, and as frequently as he talked to me concerning his aims and the purposes to which he wished his wealth to be devoted after his death. This is not very surprising, because from the year 1891 till the year 1899 I was designated by Mr. Rhodes in the wills which preceded that of 1899 as the person who was charged with the distribution of the whole of his fortune. From 1891–3 I was one of two, from 1893 to 1899 one of three, to whom his money was left; but I was specifically appointed by him to direct the application of his property for the promotion of the ideas which we shared in common.
I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Rhodes in 1889. Although that was the first occasion on which I met him, or was aware of the ideas which he entertained, he had already for some years been one of the most enthusiastic of my readers—indeed, ever since I succeeded to the direction of the Pall Mall Gazette (when Mr. Morley entered Parliament in the year 1883), and began the advocacy of what I called the Imperialism of responsibility as opposed to Jingoism, which has been the note of everything that I have said or written ever since. It was in the Pall Mall Gazette that I published an article on Anglo-American reunion which brought me a much-prized letter from Russell Lowell, in which he said: “It is a beautiful dream, but it’s none the worse on that account. Almost all the best things that we have in the world to-day began by being dreams.” It was in the Pall Mall Gazette in those days that I conducted a continuous and passionate apostolate in favour of a closer union with the Colonies. It is amusing to look back at the old pages, and to find how the preservation of the trade route from the Cape to the Zambesi was stoutly contended for
