But neither, too, would he help the Dutch unless they were willing to eat humble pie before him.

In fact, it was this for which Rhodes had been waiting ever since the Raid.

He wanted people to ask his forgiveness for the faults he himself had committed.

He would have liked Sir Alfred Milner to beg of him as a favour to take the direction of public affairs, and he would have desired the whole of the Dutch party to come down _in corpore_ to Groote Schuur, to implore him to become their leader and to fight not only for them but also for the rights of President Kruger, whom he professed to ridicule and despise, but to whom he had caused assurances of sympathy to be conveyed.
During the first period of the war, and especially during the siege, Cecil Rhodes was in Kimberley.

He had gone with the secret hope that he might be able from that centre to retain a stronger hold on South African politics than could have been the case at Groote Schuur, in which region the only authority recognised by English and Dutch alike was that of Sir Alfred Milner.