RHODES AND THE RAID After the Raid, faithful to his usual tactics of making others responsible for his own misdeeds, Cecil Rhodes grew to hate with ferocity all those whose silence and quiet disapproval reminded him of the fatal error into which he had been led.

He was loud in his expressions of resentment against Mr.Schreiner and the other members of the Afrikander party who had not been able to conceal from him their indignation at his conduct on the memorable occasion which ruined his own political life.

They had compelled him--one judged by his demeanour--to resign his office of Prime Minister at the very time when he was about to transform it into something far more important--to use it as the stepping-stone to future grandeurs of which he already dreamt, although he had so far refrained from speaking about them to others.

Curious to say, however, he never blamed the authors of this political mistake, and never, in public at least, reproached Jameson for the disaster he had brought upon him.
What his secret thoughts were on this subject it is easy to guess.
Circumstances used to occur now and then when a stray word spoken on impulse allowed one to discern that he deplored the moment of weakness into which he had been inveigled.

For instance, during a dinner-party at Groote Schuur, when talking about the state of things prevailing in Johannesburg just before the war, he mentioned the names of five Reformers who, after the Raid, had been condemned to death by President Kruger, and added that he had paid their fine of twenty-five thousand pounds each.
"Yes," he continued, with a certain grim accent of satire in his voice, "I paid L25,000 for each of these gentlemen." And when one of his guests tactlessly remarked, "But surely you need not have done so, Mr.Rhodes?
It was tacitly admitting that you had been a party to their enterprise!" he retorted immediately, "And if I choose to allow the world to think that such was the case, what business is it of yours ?" I thought the man was going to drop under the table, so utterly flabbergasted did he look.
It is, of course, extremely difficult to know what was the actual part played by Rhodes in the Raid.