Another glance at the map will convince you in a moment what would have happened if he had not made Bechuanaland British. To the east there is the ignorantly hostile Transvaal. Behind that and stretching far away to the northward is the Portuguese territory of Mozambique. Farther north are the southern confines of the Soudan, and the enormous virgin lands of Central Africa. To the west is German West Africa. Hence, but for that red strip, there would be no way either by sea or land through British territory--that is to say, through no territory that would not be hostile--to the Central African Empire of the future, most of which is, thanks to Cecil Rhodes, already called Rhodesia. People who only read the English papers, some of which would appear, like the Pretoria _Press_ and the _Standard and Diggers News_, to be in the pay of Mr. President Krüger and his corrupt legislature, have an idea, and a very natural one too, that the great company known as the De Beers Consolidated Mines is just a money-making concern and nothing else. There never was a greater mistake. The De Beers Company is the creation of Cecil Rhodes, and therefore it had to be an empire-making concern one way or the other. One night there was a conversation between three men in Kimberley, which deserves to become historical. The three men were Alfred Beit, Barnie Isaacs Barnato, and Cecil John Rhodes. Each of these three men had something that the others wanted. Beit and Barnato don’t seem to have wanted much more than good business, but Alfred Beit already knew Cecil Rhodes for something much greater and better than merely a business man and piler-up of money-bags, so he supported them. What Rhodes wanted was nothing less than the levying of a subsidy on the diamond mining industry of Kimberley, for the purpose of empire-making in the north. Barnie Barnato kicked at this. In the end he gave way, as he always did to Rhodes, and the result was that the De Beers Corporation was virtually taxed to the extent of half a million sterling for that northward expansion which Cecil Rhodes made possible when he persuaded Sir Hercules Robinson to proclaim the Bechuanaland Protectorate and checkmated the Germans on the west and the Boers on the east just as they were going to join hands across it. What they really meant to do may be easily inferred from Van Niekerk’s raid into the so-called Stella-Land which necessitated Sir Charles Warren’s expedition--for which the Pretorian Government still owes us about a million and a half--and Colonel Ferreira’s attempted raid across the Limpopo into Matabeleland which was only stopped by Dr. Jameson’s Maxims. If it had not been for Cecil Rhodes and the De Beers half million, the British flag would not now be flying over a region as large as France and Germany combined which, by all appearances, is destined to be the nucleus of the South African Empire of the day after to-morrow.