MY FATHER. 



575 



RHODES, LEOPOLD AND THE KAISER. 



Rhodes told father some years later, 

 after he had interviewed the Belgian 

 ruler, that he was the hardest man to 

 deal with he had ever met. " He is a 

 regular Jew," said the Empire builder. 

 " You could easier get blood from a 

 stone than any concession from King 

 Leopold." Rhodes, on the other hand, 

 found the Kaiser as generous and graci- 

 ous as Leopold was the reverse. That 

 is why the North to South African rail- 

 way does not go through what with 

 hollow mockery was called the Congo 

 " Free " State. 



A " GOOD, SQUARE TALK " WITH THE TSAR. 



Ever since his boyhood days, when at 

 the office of a merchant in Newcastle, 

 who acted as Russian Consul there, 

 father had been deepl)^ interested in 

 Russia. His was often the only pen 

 urging in the Press a better understand- 

 ing between Russia and England. It 

 was in 1888 that he thought it possible 

 and advisable to have what he called " a 

 good, square talk " with the Tsar. He 

 was then still editing the Pall Mall 

 Gazette, and by the vigorous method in 

 which he had championed the Russian 

 cause during the Penjdeh dispute and 

 afterwards, had succeeded in establish- 

 ing for himself a more or less recognised 

 position as a Russian organ. He was 

 abused as a Russian agent, was said to 

 be in the pay of the Russian Embassy, 

 and, in short, enjoyed the distinction of 

 being pelted by all the vituperative 

 brickbats- which came handiest to those 

 gentlemen who were not of his way of 

 thinking. It is hardly necessary to say 

 that these ridiculous assertions were ab- 

 solutely false. He worked resolutely for 

 an Anglo-Russian entente — and saw it 

 brought about in his lifetime. In work- 

 ing for this, he became fast friends with 

 men of such opposing thought and per- 

 sonality as Tolstoy and Pobyedonos- 

 tzeff, Prince Koropotkin and M. Lessar, 

 whilst he was trusted implicitly by many 

 Nihilists, as well as by the Tsar himself. 



Seeing that the British public, without 

 any ground for doing so, insisted upon 

 looking to him as the man who gave 

 authoritative expression to the views of 

 the Russian Government, he thought it 

 highly desirable to ascertain directly 



from the Emperor what his policy 

 actually was. So to Russia he went, and 

 Mme. Novikoff, with whom he had 

 worked for many years to bring about 

 better relations between the two coun- 

 tries, arranged an inter\iew with Alexan- 

 der III. at Gatschina. 



A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY. 



When, he said, I met the Tsar, I put 

 the case frankly before him, pointing 

 out the danger of having accorded to 

 me a position to which I had no claim, 

 and suggesting that as I could not, 

 despite my disclaimers, rid myself of 

 the reputation of being his English 

 organ, it would at least be safer if he 

 could give me more or less definite in- 

 formation as to what were his ideas 

 upon the questions which were involved 

 in the relations between England and 

 Russia. The Emperor thought a little 

 and then said he thought the suggestion 

 was reasonable. "What," he asked, " did I 

 want to know ?" " Ever)'thing," I replied 

 at which he smiled and said, " Ask what 

 questions you like, and I will answer 

 them if I can." I availed myself of the 

 opportunity to the full, and the Em- 

 peror was as good as his word. I asked, 

 he answered, and by the time that the 

 interview was over I had received a com- 

 prehensive and definite exposition direct 

 from the Emperor's own lips of the 

 policy he intended to pursue in relation 

 to all the questions in which England 

 was interested. 



Sir Robert Alorier, our Ambassador 

 at St. Petersburg, speaking of this inter- 

 view, said that no Russian Emperor had 

 ever spoken so freel}' and fully upon all 

 questions of foreign policy to any Eng- 

 lishman, and he added that he could not 

 conceive of any circumstances better cal- 

 culated to secure absolute candour on 

 the part of the Tsar than those in which 

 our interview took place. 



Much that the Emperor told me was 

 a good deal questioned at the time. I 

 was ridiculed for mv credulity. One 

 emment statesman told me flatly that he 

 did not believe what the Emperor had 

 said, and he laughed me to scorn for my 

 simplicity in accepting his word. But 

 time passed, and the result proved that 

 in ever}' single item the Tsar had stated 

 exactly the course which he actually 



