The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-03-31
HAD CECIL RHODES BEEN
 A NORMAL ENGLISHMAN

Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, in the New York Mail.
 MO man in modern times has had a M more potent influence upon a whole continent, a whole section of the world, than Cecil John Rhodes, who died in 1902 in Cape Town, had upon the cori- tinent of Africa and it's affairs. This man possessed a strong political instinct and an intense imperial patriotism. He also had brains, energy and enormous wealth. all joining to enable him to make a deep impression upon public affairs. It was Rhodes influence which led to the Boer war. His hand put in motion the forces that extinguished, for a term of years at least Boer rule in South Africa. It was due to him that all of South Africa except the unimportan. German possessions on the west and tic Portuguese territory on the east and nearly all of Central Africa, except the German and Congo Free State possessions on opposite sides of Lake Tanganyika are now colored the British red on the map. It is wholly his infuence and in considerable part his money, which is building tile Cape-to-Cairo railway from the remote southern seas to the Mediter- rantean. and removing the Cape commer- cially from the antarctic to the European world.
 It was Rhodes, in short, who made Af- rlca preponderantly British.
 It was Rhodes, too, who developed gold and diamond mining in South Africa to such an extent as to bring wealth to many thousands of people in Europe, and to trtNtN art ff, ,I,ts ment interests of Great Britain stimu- Jus which greatly masnifed the conse- qucnoe of London in the exchanges of the world. And finally it was he who, by his death gift of vast sum to pro- vide for the education of colonial and American youths at Oxford university laid the foundations of a possible deeper future understanding between all Eng iish-speaking countries.
 Yet, but for one circumstance, Cecil Rhodes would never have gone to South Africa, and would not have exercised a particle of this influence He was a younger son of poor country clergyman in England. He was sent to school to prepare for Oxford and the clerical pro- fession. Destined from his boyhood for the church, he is not understood to have offered any objection to the programme. But for the circumstance to which I have
 
 ister of the Church of England, in Eng land. It is very likely that his native abilities would have made him bishop if he had followed this plan. At any rate he would have settled down to an ec- clesastical career in England.
 All this if Cecil Rhodes had been a normal. healthy English boy. But this he was not. At the age of Is heart trouble developed in his case. The physicians gave his father little hope that he would survive the affection. It became neces- sary to take him out of school. It hap pened that one of his older brothers had emigrated to Natal, in South Africa, and had a farm there. As a last resort, it was decided to send the ailing Cecil out to this farm and try the effect of the climate upon him.
 He was sent. and his health began to improve almost immediately. He became interested in agriculture. and obtained prize at colonial exhibition for cot ton which he raised. After year he joined in the rush to the diamond fields at Kimberley, and there succeeded so bril- liantly that before he was IS years old he was one of the richest men in South Africa. His health. too, appeared to he restored and dne decided to return to Eng land and complete his education. In the meantime, however, he had been on a long trip to the northward. He became