The age-herald., 1899-01-22
THE GREATEST MAN
 IN ALL ENGLAND Cecil Rhodes the Center Of h. tePoSt.
 WILD DREAMS OF EMPIRE
Are FOStered and Cherished by the
 British Foreign Office.
THE "LITTLE HIGHLANDER" HOSTILE
Thinks South African Kings Latest Fantasies Are But Schemes to En- rich Himself at the Expense of
 the British Exchequer.

London, January 21.-Great Britain seems to shake to it's foundations whenever MT. Cecil Rhodes steps foot on the island. He is the b ggest man in the kingdom today. Cabinet ministers, promoters and Munchau- sen schemers, duchesses craving for tips on "Kafirs" or South African securities, workmen who cherish dreams of emigration and bishops solicitous for African souls, haunt the hotel and beg even for the brief est interviews, as though he had already his inspiration. The popular mind credits him with being the potentate of the African continent.
 The cabinet met yesterday especially to discuss MT. Rhodes scheme for govern ment guarantees of the Cape to Cairo rail- road and telegraph. Mir Rhodes afterward conferred with MT. Joseph Chamberla Il, the secretary of state for the colonies and Sir Michael Hicks Beach, the chancellor of the exchequer.
 Cecil Rhodes Ideas
 MT. Rhodes says a10,000 900 will cover the entire cost of the work and there is little doubt that he will carry his point with the government and ra SC all the money he needs in the city. Before the projectors can act in the matter there will be a for maity in the shape of parliamentary bill but the imperialists may be backed to drive over the so-called little England
 
 the scheme declaring that the Rhodesian empire is making for gigantic fiasco and that MT. Rhodes wants the government to lift him out of hole by throwing good money after bad into a railroad through wilderness. They also find a coincidence in Mir Rhodes homecoming and the revival of newspaper outbursts against the Boers oppression of British subjects in the Trans vaal.
 By slow steps, so as not to arouse the violent antagonism of the powers, but in pursuance of a definite plan, Great Britain is tightening her grip on North Africa. The Egyptian situation so far as the Soudan IS concerned accomplishes all that those who prodded the Marquis of Salisbury to declare a protectorate could have desired
 Now Co-Equal Ruler
 Great Britain no longer governs through the Khedive. She becomes a co-equal ruler and ignores the mixed tribunals. This means that the governor-general is respon- sible only to Downing street and parlia- ment. sS
 The comment of the Liberte of Paris that Great Britain does not annex the Soudan-she palms it like a sleight-of-hand professor" is specimen of the spirit in which France, already incensed at Great Britain, regards Great Britain's progress toward absolute sovereignty in Egypt
 Samoa commands but small interests in Great Britain and the belief seems to pre- vail that the dispatches magnify the im- portance of the consuls' battles and that Germany will manage to gracefully disavow the acts of her agents.
 A diplomat remarked that Germany is fill ing for the United States the role Russia has played in the eyes of the Anglo-Indian, that of the consprator to be looked for be- hind every war cloud.
 But Another Link
 The British government, however, well comes the Samoan incident as another link of the Anglo-American understanding, which they are so desirous of fostering.
 Some of the financiers are beginning to take a gloomy view of the future of the Philippines. MT. Ernest Ruffert, the head of a Lombard street house, who bought large tracts of land about Manila said to a representative of the Associated Press:
 "The land is useless under the present conditions We could not plant crops with out the possibility of the natives destroying them over night. The United States will be unable to rule more than the fringe of the islands without an army of 100000 men. They might buy the native leaders, but they would not stay bought and the United States must re-buy them periodically. The end of the matter will be that the United States will sell the Philippines