His self-interrogation did not cease. He decided that his first great duty was to his country. What is this duty?—he asked himself. Naturally, to further her interests. Her interests are?—Those of the British Empire. And those are?—To advance civilization and the cause of universal peace. What could he do? He decided that he would ‘paint as much as possible of the map of South Africa British red’. But patriotism should not be selfish—nor should it be narrow. He looked beyond the boundaries of the Empire. ‘What race can do, is doing, and will do most to advance civilization?’ He answered himself that the Anglo-Saxon race was the race of the Present and of the Future—the instrument of Destiny. Therefore, he would devote himself to the ideas which the Anglo-Saxon race represents. These conclusions were recorded in a ‘draft of some of my ideas’ which Rhodes put upon paper while in Kimberley, when he was about twenty-four years of age (1877). He continued with a consideration of how his ideas might be made effective. His fancy suggested the formation of a kind of secular church which should have its members in all parts of the Empire, especially at the Universities, and whose common interest should be the extension of the Empire. He sketched the kind of men upon whom he could depend, the method by which they might be recruited, keeping ever in mind ‘the closer union of England and her Colonies’. [Sidenote: First Will, 1877.] That same year he wrote a Will in which he directed that all his estates and effects of every kind should be administered to promote British rule; to perfect a system of emigration from the United Kingdom to the Colonies; to further the consolidation of the British Empire; to assist towards the restoration of Anglo-Saxon unity; towards securing the representation of the Colonies in Parliament, and the foundation of a Power so great as to render wars impossible and to promote the best interests of humanity. At that early period, then, we find—not the idea of the Rhodes Scholarships—but the ideas which dominated Rhodes’s subsequent imperial theories, the soil which was ready to receive the suggestion which seems later to have come spontaneously, of founding and defining a scholarship system. [Sidenote: Second Will, 1882.] [Sidenote: Third Will, 1888.] This Will of 1877 was suspended in 1882 by a very informal Will written on a single sheet of note-paper, and that in turn was revoked and replaced by a third in 1888. In 1889 Rhodes met Mr. W. T. Stead, then editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and the two men discovered a remarkable coincidence in their ideas, especially on the subjects of an English-speaking reunion and a society for the promotion of world welfare and peace.[1] Mr. Rhodes set forth a number of his political ideals at considerable length.