unity of the Empire.35
The young scholars selected were to be all-round men, studious but also fond of outdoor sports. Moreover, they were to be chosen on the basis of moral character and leadership potential. This will marked a great turning point in Rhodes' thinking. There was no mention of a secret society or of any indoctrination of the students while they were in Oxford. Rhodes still believed in the virtues of unity among English-speaking peoples, but this did not necessarily have to come through any rigid, powerful imperial framework.
In 1899 he dictated his eighth and final will. There were to be two scholars from each state in the United States and twenty “colonials,” as he called them (three from Canada, six from Australia, five from South Africa, three from Rhodesia, and one each from New Zealand, Bermuda, and Jamaica.)36 In a codicil of 1901 Rhodes added five annual scholarships for Germany. He considered the Germans to be a nordic, Anglo-Saxon race akin to the English. Rhodes also liked the Kaiser personally. Moreover, Wilhelm II had recently ordered English to be taught in all German schools. Given this token of friendship, plus the fact that Germany was nearly equal to Britain and the United States in economic and military power, Rhodes thought it best to join Germans with English-speakers in his great enterprise for world harmony. All of these students would be expected to remain in Oxford for three years, the normal span required to complete a B.A. degree.
The final will remains the basic document guiding the scholarship system. Whenever there is a question about how the program should be administered or how scholars should be chosen, everyone turns to the will to see what it says explicitly or to speculate about Rhodes' intentions.
The total value of Rhodes' estate was set at about £5 million, netting slightly under £4 million after death duties were deducted. At that time sterling was worth many times what it is today. (In 1997 the Trust's assets were worth approximately £150 million). Rhodes was wealthy, but his estate was modest compared to those of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and other American “robber barons.” Undoubtedly the size of his bequest would have been much larger if not for other factors. In the last dozen years of his life he devoted his attentions as much to politics as to private business affairs. He died too young to gain any returns on the vast amounts he invested in developing Rhodesia.
To oversee all the prescriptions of the will, Rhodes created what has come to be called the Rhodes Trust. The initial trustees whom he selected included distinguished elder statesmen, one of his closest business partners, his friend Jameson, his banker, and his lawyer. The Rhodes Trust continues to operate today. Over the decades it has included prominent politicians, academics, writers (including Rudyard Kipling), and persons from a variety of other professions.
Though the scholarships constitute the most famous part of the will, Rhodes also made other bequests. For example, he donated his stately residence at Groote Schuur (outside Cape Town) to the government of South Africa as an official residence for future prime ministers. He allocated £100,000 for Oriel College. That was a small part of his total estate but sufficient to raise faculty salaries and construct the formidable Rhodes Building that today still looms on Oxford's main street, “The High.” Rhodes would be pleased to see it. Far above the central doorway is a large statue of Rhodes himself looking benevolently downward. Below him, to his left and right, are statues of King George V and King Edward VII.
The will gave great leeway to the trustees in the discretionary disbursement of any excess funds not needed for the scholarships. Over succeeding decades the trustees have used this discretionary power to give millions of pounds to the Oxford colleges and libraries and to the university as a whole. The Trust has also endowed several chairs and created special lectureships.
Nevertheless, the scholarships were the central feature of the will. Rhodes chose Oxford because it was his alma mater, but also because it was the oldest and still one of the best universities in the English-speaking world. He also liked its system of residential colleges. Oxford, like the “other” place (Cambridge) was not so much a university as a confederation of small, independent colleges. In his day there were twenty men's colleges in Oxford, each with between one hundred and three hundred students. In the small, enclosed atmosphere of one's college a student gained an education. Equally important, however, were the close, lasting friendships that one formed. Rhodes wanted future leaders from around the world to mix with future British leaders, thereby ensuring a united effort for peace and prosperity.
As formulated in his final will, Rhodes listed four main criteria to be used in selecting candidates:
My desire being that the students who shall be elected to the scholarships shall not be merely bookworms I direct that in the election of a student to a Scholarship regard shall be had to
1. his literary and scholastic attainments
2. his fondness of and success in manly outdoor sports such as cricket, football and the like
3. his qualities of manhood, truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness unselfishness and fellowship
4. his exhibition during school days of moral force of character and of instincts to lead and to take an interest in his schoolmates for those latter attributes will be likely in afterlife to guide him to esteem the performance of public duties as his highest aim.
What made these scholarships extraordinary was that they were to be based not just on academic merit but on other criteria as well. Rhodes hoped that those doing the evaluating would use good judgment and intuition in spotting candidates who had a special spark of character and greatness. To guide selectors, Rhodes provided a gauge for the importance of each of the four criteria he listed. In the final tally for every candidate, 3/10 should go for scholarship, 2/10 for manly sports, 3/10 for concern about one's fellow human beings, and 2/10 for character and leadership.
As will become clear in the chapters that follow, Rhodes' criteria and his arithmetical marking system were anything but clear to future selection committees. What, for example, did one mean by “manly outdoor sports” or “public service?” Obviously, Rhodes wanted multi-talented, energetic, forceful leaders who would somehow make the world a better place. However, the precise formula for selecting such persons would be open to discussion.
What were Rhodes' motives in establishing the scholarships? He himself claimed that he wanted to produce men who would use their Oxford education and friendships to create world harmony and progress. Some authors have scoffed at this, saying that he did it purely for public relations and for eternal fame. As early as 1891 he told a friend “I find I am human and should like to be living after my death.” At another time he wrote that he wanted to “leave a monument to posterity which shall convince mankind that [I] had really lived.”37 Very probably, as with so much else in his life, he did it for a combination of altruistic and selfish reasons.
Rhodes' interest in manly vigor, sports, and energetic Anglo-Saxon leadership was something that he shared with several other world leaders of that era. The two most famous were Theodore Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Like Rhodes, Roosevelt was considered to be a sickly child; his adventures as a cowboy, a
Rough Rider, and an African hunter may have meant for him what South African conquests signified for Rhodes. Roosevelt preached the cult of masculinity in several of his books, especially The Strenuous Life. Wilhelm II had a deformed left arm. Many authorities have concluded that the Kaiser's zeal to compensate for this handicap contributed to his dismissal of Bismarck, his drive to build up the German navy, and his imperialistic dreams.
Rhodes' stipulation that the scholarships were for men only was sexist, but perfectly acceptable by standards of his day. In 1900 if one spoke of well-educated leaders in government and other fields, one was speaking almost exclusively of men. In 1902 no women's groups in the United States or elsewhere protested their ineligibility for the
