ol of Africa meant for her a big step toward world conquest. Paul
Kruger, President of the Transvaal Republic, which touched the southern
edge of this unclaimed domain, saw in it the logical extension of his
dominions.

Down at Capetown was Rhodes, dreaming of a Greater Britain and
determined to block the Kaiser and Kruger. It was largely due to his
efforts while a member of the Cape Parliament that Britain was persuaded
to annex Bechuanaland as a Crown Colony. Forestalled here, Kruger was
determined to get the rest of the country beyond Bechuanaland and
reaching to the southern border of the Congo. His emissaries began to
dicker with chiefs and he organized an expedition to invade the
territory. Once more Rhodes beat him to it, this time in history-making
fashion.

Following his theory that it is better to deal with a man than fight
him, he sent C. D. Rudd, Rochfort Maguire, and F. R. ("Matabele")
Thompson up to deal directly with Lobengula. They were ideal envoys for
Thompson in particular knew every inch of the country and spoke the
native languages. From the crafty chieftain they obtained a blanket
concession for all the mineral and trading rights in Matabeleland for
L1,200 a year and one thousand rifles. Rhodes now converted this
concession into a commercial and colonizing achievement without
precedent or parallel. It became the Magna Charta of the great British
South Africa Company, which did for Africa what the East India Company
did for India. Counting in Bechuanaland, it added more than 700,000
square miles to the British Empire.

Like the historic document so inseparably associated with the glories of
Clive and Hastings, its Charter shaped the destiny of the empire and is
associated with battle, blood, and the eventual triumph of the
Anglo-Saxon over the man of colour. Other chartered companies have
wielded autocratic power over millions of natives but the royal right to
exist and operate, bestowed by Queen Victoria upon the British South
Africa Company--the Chartered Company as it is commonly known--was the
first that ever gave a corporation the administrative authority over a
politically active country with a white population. The record of its
rule is therefore distinct in the annals of Big Business.

It was in 1899 that Rhodes got the Charter. In his conception of the
Rhodesia that was to be--(it was first called Zambesia)--he had two
distinct purposes in view. One was the larger political motive which