358 



The Review of Reviews. 



October 1, 190e. 



HIS PHENOMENAL HEMORY. 



If anyone wants to know the kind of man Alfred 

 Beit was, let him imagine the typical Randlord, the 

 sordid and vulgar Hoggenheimer of the Radical 

 lampoons, and then let him realise that Alfred Beit 

 was in almost every respect its exact antithesis and 

 antipodes. He was a man of refinement, sensitive 

 as a woman, with the taste of an artist and the en- 

 thusiasm of a political visionary. If there is any- 

 thing in reincarnation, Alfred Beit must have been 

 rearing the end of his experiences on this plane. 

 The inner soul of him was highly developed ; the 

 higher senses of the Ego imprisoned in flesh were 

 marvellouslv developed ; his power of intuition 

 amounted almost to divirtation. His conscious mind 

 seemed capable of reading every inscription made by 

 the unconscious mind upon the tablets of memory. 

 Mr. Rhodes and his other friends relied upon him 

 as a universal index renoit. He remembered every- 

 thing, he forgot nothing. Everyone has heard the 

 f jmiliar s;or\ which illustrates at once Mr. Rhodes's 

 reliance upon his friend's memory and the instant 

 automatic wav in which it responded to every ap- 

 peal ; — 



Late one ni^ht. in Kimberley. Mr. Rhodes. Mr. Beit and 

 some others had an important business transaction to- 

 gether, and an agreement was signed, which Mr. Rliodes 

 took possession ot. Now. Mr. Rliodes. in small matters, 

 was exceedingly careless, and the ne-xt morning he failed 

 to remember where he liad put the document. Active 

 search was made without its being discovered. 



"Go and knock up Alfred," said Mr. Rhodes; "he'll re- 

 member where I put it.' 



Mr. Beit was duly knocked up. Said he. turning round 

 sleepily in his bed, "It is in his left-hand waistcoat pocket. 

 He took bis waistcoat otf because he felt too hot. and threw 

 it under the sofa " The waistcoat was found. There, in 

 tile left-hand pocket, was tlie missing document. 



I remember once differing from Mr. Beit as to the 

 contents of a letter. It was a letter which was in my 

 possession, and which was' of vital importance to me. 

 I had once shown it to Mr. Beit, and then filed it 

 awav. Years after we recalled the letter. He quoted 

 its contents. I thought incorrectly. 'When reference 

 was made to the letter in my pigeon-holes, Mr, Beit 

 was proved to ha\'e remembered its contents better 

 than I whom they solely concerned. 



HIS LOYALTY TO HIS FRIENDS. 



Nor was it onlv in remembering things that Mr. 

 Beit was phenomenal. He had a gift of diving to 

 the heart of things, of tearing out the soul of a re- 

 port that was almost uncanny. At times it seemed 

 almost a kind of clairvoyance. In judging human 

 beings he seemed to have a kind of sixth sense, Mr, 

 Rhodes was far inferior to him in this respect. But 

 both when they made friends stuck to them. No one 

 ever put a severer strain upon the loyalty of his 

 friends than I did during the Boer 'War, The friend- 

 ship of some of mv English friends was not equal 

 to the strain. But although my pro-Boerism must 

 have been much more galling to my African friends, 

 they never broke with me. ^^^^ile deploring what 

 they considered my incorrigible eccentricity, they re 

 cognised in me the same honesty of purpose and sin- 



cere desire to serve the Empire which I recognised 

 in them. 



MR. BEIT AND THE KAISER. 



Mr. Beit was a financier, but he had a soul above 

 finance. He was ever keenly interested in the great 

 affairs of mankind. He was much more intelligently 

 concerned, for instance, in the internal affairs of 

 Russia than most of our Cabinet Ministers, Almost 

 the last conversation I had with him he descrited 

 with the keenest interest the long conversation which 

 he had just had with the Kaiser. Mr. Beit had 

 given a Gainsborough valued at ^'Sooo to the Berlin 

 National Gallery, and the Kaiser asked him to the 

 Palace to thank him for his munificence. The con- 

 versation lasted more than an hour, and it covered 

 the whole range of Anglo-German politics, 1 was 

 much impressed bv the minute accuracy with which 

 Mr, Beit recounted everything that had passed, and 

 the almost pa'nful anxiety which he expressed lest 

 anv word of the interview should be published. But 

 one observation of the Kaiser Mr, Beit would not 

 object to mv reproducing here. They were talking 

 of Mr. Rhodes, of whom the Kaiser expressed the 

 highest opinion. " Did he ever tell you," said the 

 Kaiser, "what Mr. Rhodes said to me about the 

 Jameson Raid? He told me that if he had met me 

 before 1896 there never would have been any Jame- 

 son Raid " - a tribute which the Kaiser evidently 

 valued very highly. Mr. Rhodes was not altogether 

 devoid of the gifts of the courtier, but although the 

 Kaiser's telegram to Kruger enabled him to ride off 

 cin an anti-German outcry, it is very doubtful to me 

 whether the conspiracy at Johannesburg was really 

 prompted so much by alarm about German designs 

 as was freely asserted at the time. What Rhodes 

 really feared was not the German Empire so much 

 as the Republican anti-British notions of the Ameri- 

 cans and the Sydney Bulletin Australians, who, he 

 believed, were quite capable of transforming the 

 Boer Republic into an American kind of Indepen- 

 dent State round which all the Africander forces 

 would rally, 



HIS GERMAN NATIONALITY, 



It has sometimes been made a subject of remark 

 that Mr, Beit, being a German, should nevertheless 

 have offered so staunch an opposition to German in- 

 trigues in the Transvaal, The explanation is simple, 

 Mr, Beit regarded German finaiicial and commercial 

 interests as solid realities, German political aspira- 

 tions in those countries he knew to be mere moon- 

 shine. He regarded it as the best ser^dce he could 

 do to his nati\e land to choke off her rainbow-chas- 

 ing imaginarv political aims in South Africa in order 

 that German commerce might flourish under the Bri- 

 tish flag. 



The following extract from his evidence before the 

 Hush-up Committee makes this clear: — 



You are. I believe, a German by birth?— Yes. 



Have vou any views as to the interests of GermaDv in 



South Africa.'— Yes. 



