The Pleasures of Reading

Cecil Rhodes gasped his seven last words: "So little done --so much to do." The brazen colossus with the lungs of clay lost his battle against time, that grisly fourth dimension. Time it is which Stuart Cloete pits "Against These Three" (Houghton-Mifflin, $3.50) --Rhodes, President Kruger of the South African Republic, and Lobengula, savage tribal ruler of the Matabele. The articulate author of this triplex biography, whose name is pronounced clew-tee, recounts the struggle for South Africa among Rhodes, who wanted the country for Britain; "Oom" (Uncle) Paul Kruger, who strove to hold it for the Boers, and Lobengula, who was intelligent enough to know that his cause was hopeless.