Credit Grabber Quotes

Many of my countrymen, knowing of my close relations with Rhodes, have asked me about the man, and before I could answer, they would begin to describe him to me as a monstrous land grabber, a greedy capitalist, and so on; accusing him of wickedly and cruelly conquering inoffensive natives and of destroying the noble Free Republic of South Africa. Perhaps the easiest and most rational way of replying to such accusations would be to begin to decry Lincoln as the ruthless destroyer of the noble South, or to arraign Marshall for limiting liberty by law, or to blame Monroe for scheming the subjection of South America. If the causing of pain is itself a sin and an evil, then no one should ever have been born. Nations, like human beings, always experience pain at birth. It is a law as immutable as gravity. The conquest of South Africa caused much pain to conquerors and conquered, but from that event came a beautiful new life, a wonderful nation, a flower of civilization where once grew only rank weeds of savagery and ignorance, and the chief credit for that noble result should be given to the prophetic genius and wise efforts of Cecil John Rhodes.