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He trekked across Africa afoot, thinking what he would do with himself, when the expansive, fertile beauty of the unexplored country he was passing through gave him an answer. He would, after studying at Oxford University, strive to make the English race governors of air Africa, of all the world.
He wrote his name on Oxford's roster—Cecil John Rhodes—but never studied overhard. Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius, two boyhood friends, were about all he took back to Africa with him. Few men have as much; besides, the spirit of Cecil John Rhodes, essentially practical, essentially forthright and upright, needed little bolstering.
There was gold near Rhodes' diamonds, over in the Transvaal. The Dutch were there first, but Rhodes went in with them. Soon he controlled a huge combination — De Beers Mining Co., British South Africa Co. and Gold Fields of South Africa Co. He became Prime Minister of the Cape Town Colony, which he governed as a benevolent despot, even strengthening the British grip on lower Africa with a vision in his head of "Africa British, from Cape Town to Cairo."
Then there was a raid on the Transvaal properties by foreign gold interests out to beat the Dutch control, led by Sir Leander S. Jameson, the administrator of Rhodesia, associate of Rhodes in this and other enterprises. As the biggest foreign mine-owner in the Transvaal, Rhodes was implicated. As Premier of the neighboring colony, he was deeply embarrassed, some said disgraced. With fine candor he accepted his responsibility for what had happened, resigned his office, set off for Rhodesia, an undeveloped portion of Africa up country, where he labored before his health broke and he went back to Cape Town to die, to build into the empire the colony that bears his name.
Rhodes wrote his will when he was 22. All that he had, he left to forward his "highest purpose," empire-building. One bequest designated that 176 selected scholars from the colonies and the U. S., and 5 from Germany should attend Oxford for three years each. Colonials and Americans were to receive £300 apiece per annum; the Germans, being nearer England, would get £250 each. Rhodes included the Americans because he believed there was an advantage to mankind in the union of English speaking peoples, to be gained "without . . . withdrawing them or their sympathies from the land of their adoption or birth."
Of the Germans he said: "I note the German Emperor has made instruction in English compulsory in German schools. I leave five yearly scholarships at Oxford . . . for scholars of German birth, the scholars to be nominated by the German Emperor for the time being." The object was to "render war impossible."
The U. S. Rhodes scholars in residence at Oxford each year number 96, two per state. They are elected from their states by old Rhodes scholars living therein, two elections coming in each state every three years. Last week, Dr. Frank Aydelotte, President of Swarthmore College and American secretary to the Rhodes trustees, announced the names of 32 appointees chosen from 507 candidates on the customary three-fold basis of "character, intellectual ability and physical vigor."
Alabama—Robert J. Van de Graf of Paris, University of Alabama.
Arkansas—J. W. Fulbright of Fayeteville, Ark., University of Arkansas.