356 



The Review of /?ev;eivs. 



October 1, 1906. 



donor. It would certainly not have been regarded 

 by Mr. Rhodes with complacency. No doubt there 

 is something magnificent — at least in the eyes of the 

 Englishmen, who are not accustomed to the largesse 

 of Americans — in a will which distributes t\vo mil- 

 lions sterling axnong various public trusts and charit- 

 able funds. But everything is relative in this world, 

 and two millions out of an estate of ten millions is 

 nothing like so large a sum as the widow's mite. 

 No one knows how much Mr. Beit was worth, to 

 use a somewhat significant term, at the time of his 

 death. He probably did not know to a million or 

 two how much he was worth himself. Most people 

 agree that if his estate was worth _;£io, 000,000 at 

 the time of his death, it was worth twice as much 

 when prices were at their zenith. In other words. 

 the slump in South African securities cost Mr. Beit 

 half his fortune. If prices had boomed instead of 

 falling as the result of the war, he could have given 

 away ten millions instead of two, and still have had 

 more left for his relatives. 



MB. RHODES ON MR. BEITS WILL. 



His last will and testament was dated April, 

 1905. He made a previous will during Mr. Rhodes's 

 lifetime which was much more liberal. But, liberal 

 as it was, it was not liberal enough to satisfy Mr. 

 Rhodes. 1 have the liveliest recollection of seeing 

 Mr. Rhodes once in a real temper. As a rule Mr. 

 Rhodes was very self-possessed when we were to- 

 gether, but one day he burst into my office in a state 

 of furious indignation. " Would you believe it,'' he 

 exclaimed, " would you believe it ? I can do nothing 

 with little Beit. He has been making his will this 

 morning, and do what T could and say what I might, 

 I could not prevent him doing a monstrous thing. 

 Just imagine I Think of it ! I could not possibly 

 induce him to leave more than half of his fortune 

 to public purposes. Only half to the Trust, and all 

 the rest to his relatives. It is wicked, but he would 

 do it. Only half." Mr. Rhodes went on to fulmi- 

 nate against the wickedness and cruelty of leaving 

 fortunes to relatives. " You can do nothing worse 

 for a man than to leave him a fortune." was one of 

 Mr. Rhodes's favourite sayings. " The result is 

 nearly always the same; when men have no need to 

 work for their living they take to drinking, gambling 

 and women, and go to the devil by a short road." 

 And it irked him sore that .\lfred Beit, who was of 

 all men the most amenable in his teachings, should 

 have so far forgotten the Rhodesian gospel as to 

 reserve as much as half — a whole half — of his estate 

 for his relatives. But in 1905, less than four years 

 after Mr. Rhodes's death, the proportion reserved 

 for relatives has swelled while the share of the pub- 

 lic has dwindled, and the Rhodes trust, which Mr. 

 Rhodes hoped was like the residuary legatee of a 

 whole string of millionaires. Mr. Beit at their head, 

 receives nothing. If Mr. Rhodes be still the man 

 he was, Mr. Beit had probably a bad quarter of an 



hour when the contents of his will came to be dis- 

 cussed on the other side. 



HIS DEVOTION TO HIS FAMILY. 



On all affairs political Mr. Beit surrendered him- 

 self absolutely to Mr. Rhodes. He became as clay 

 in the hands of that Imperial potter. But stronger 

 even than his devotion to Mr. Rhodes was his devo- 

 tion to his own familv. He loved his old mother 

 even more than he loved Mr. Rhodes. The Beit 

 family had become Christian generations back. He 

 was no son of the Synagogue. For his own race he 

 had little enthusiasm. Zionism was nothing to him, 

 and he never to mv knowledge betrayed any prac- 

 tical svmpathy with the Jews of Eastern Europe. 

 For Germanv, the land of his birth, he had much 

 svmpathv : but he elected to repudiate his German 

 n'ation.alitv in order that he might be. naturalised as 

 a British 'subject. At the fateful crisis of his life, 

 when British and German interests were apparently 

 in diametrical opposition in .South Africa, he never 

 hesitated in opposing German designs. Americans 

 are familiar with the phenomenon of the ultra- 

 Americanism of those who have been born under an- 

 other flag. With the zeal of a convert a man is 

 usually more enthusiastic for the flag which he has 

 adopted than he is for d:iat under which he was born. 

 Mr. Beit could not help being born a German. But 

 as soon as he was in a position to weigh the com- 

 parative merits of the different Empires competing 

 for his allegiance, .he chose to belong to Mr. Rhodes's 

 country— a decision which, oddly enough, was men- 

 tioned' to his special credit by the clergyman who 

 pronounced the funeral oration in the little church 

 at Tewin. Mr. Beit, in the eyes of his parish priest, 

 had, like Marv, chosen the better part in deciding 

 to be a Britisher when he might have remained a 

 foreigner. No one who knew Mr. Beit_ could be 

 under any delusion as to the sincerity of his love for 

 England and his devotion to what lie believed to be 

 the interests of her Empire. 



WHY HE WAS so BRITISH 



Many things contributed to make this German Jew 

 a red-hot British patriot. First, no doubt, came his 

 personal devotion to Mr. Rhodes. There was some- 

 thing contagious in Rhodes's patriotism. " Just think 

 for a m.ome'nt." he once told Lord Grey, " what it is 

 to have been born an Englishman in Englatid ! You 

 can never be sufiicientlv grateful for having been 

 born an Englishman." ' The constant pressure of 

 Mr. Rhodes's gratitude for having been born an 

 Englishman naturally impelled Mr. Beit to seek the 

 next highest honour in the world and become an 

 Englishman by adoption. In the second place, he 

 was an .\fricander. and he was convinced that it was 

 better for e\eryhody that South Africa should be 

 under the British flag. The Germans were out of 

 the running. His interests lay in South Africa, and 

 so he transferred his allegiance to the Suzerain of 

 the Sub-Continent. In the third place, he was wont 



