thinker.

We harked back to the days when I had first seen him in England. I asked him to tell me what he thought of the aftermath of the stupendous struggle. He said:

"The war was just a phase of world convulsion. It made the first rent in the universal structure. For years the trend of civilization was toward a super-Nationalism. It is easy to trace the stages. The Holy Roman Empire was a phase of Nationalism. That was Catholic. Then came the development of Nationalism, beginning with Napoleon. That was Protestant. Now began the building of water-tight compartments, otherwise known as nations. Germany represented the most complete development.

"But that era of 'my country,' 'my power,'—it is all a form of national ego,—is gone. The four great empires,—Turkey, Germany, Russia and Austria,—have crumbled. The war jolted them from their high estate. It started the universal cataclysm. Centuries in the future some perspective can be had and the results appraised.

"Meanwhile, we can see the beginning. The world is one. Humanity is one and must be one. The war, at terrible cost, brought the peoples together. The League of Nations is a faint and far-away evidence of this solidarity. It merely points the way but it is something. It is not academic formulas that will unite the peoples of the world but intelligence."

Smuts now turned his thought to a subject not without interest for America, for he said:

"The world has been brought together by the press, by wireless, indeed by all communication which represents the last word in scientific development. Yet political institutions cling to old and archaic traditions. Take the Presidency of the United States. A man waits for four months before he is inaugurated. The incumbent may work untold mischief in the meantime. It is all due to the fact that in the days when the American Constitution was framed the stagecoach and the horse were the only means of conveyance. The world now travels by aeroplane and express train, yet the antiquated habits continue.

"So with political parties and peoples, the British Empire included. They need to be brought abreast of the times. The old pre-war British Empire, for example, is gone in the sense of colonies or subordinate nations clustering around one master nation. The British Empire itself is developing into a real League of Nations,—a group of partner peoples."

"What of America and the future?" I asked him.

"America is the leaven of the future," answered Smuts. "She is the life-blood of the League of Nations. Without her the League is stifled. America will give the League the peace temper. You Americans are a pacific people, slow to war but terrible and irresistible when you once get at it. The American is an individualist and in that new and inevitable internationalism the individual will stand out, the American pre-eminently."

Throughout this particular experience at Groote Schuur I could not help marvelling on the contrast that the man and the moment presented. We walked through a place of surpassing beauty. Ahead brooded the black mystery of the mountains and all around was a fragrant stillness broken only by the quick, almost passionate speech of this seer and thinker, animate with an inspiring ideal of public service, whose mind leaped from the high places of poetry and philosophy on to the hiving battlefield of world event. It seemed almost impossible that nine miles away at Capetown raged the storm that almost within the hour would again claim him as its central figure.

The Smuts statements that I have quoted were made long before the Presidential election in America. I do not know just what Smuts thinks of the landslide that overwhelmed the Wilson administration and with it that well-known Article X, but I do know that he genuinely hopes that the United States somehow will have a share in the new international stewardship of the world. He would welcome any order that would enable us to play our part.

No one can have contact with Smuts without feeling at once his intense admiration for America. One of his ambitions is to come to the United States. It is characteristic of him that he has no desire to see skyscrapers and subways. His primary interest is in the great farms of the West. "Your people," he once said to me, "have made farming a science and I wish that South Africa could emulate them. We have farms in vast area but we have not yet attained an adequate development."

I was amazed at his knowledge of American literature. He knows Hamilton backwards, has read diligently about the life and times of Washington, and is familiar with Irving, Poe, Hawthorne and Emerson. One reason why he admires the first American President is because he was a farmer. Smuts knows as much about rotation of crops and successful chicken raising as he does about law and politics. He said:

"I am an eighty per cent farmer and a Boer, and most people think a Boer is a barbarian."

Despite his scholarship he remains what he delights to call himself, "a Boer." He still likes the simple Boer things, as this story will show. During the war, while he was a member of the British War Cabinet and when Lloyd George leaned on him so heavily for a multitude of services, a young South African Major, fresh from the Transvaal, brought him a box of home delicacies. The principal feature of this package was a piece of what the Boers call "biltong," which is dried venison. The Major gave the package to an imposing servant in livery at the Savoy Hotel, where the General lived, to be delivered to him. Smuts was just going out and encountered the man carrying it in. When he learned that it was from home, he grabbed the box, saying: "I'll take it up myself." Before he reached his apartment he was chewing away vigorously on a mouthful of "biltong" and having the time of his life.

The contrast between Smuts and his predecessor Botha is striking. These two men, with the possible exception of Kruger, stand out in the annals of the Boer. Kruger was the dour, stolid, canny, provincial trader. The only time that his interest ever left the confines of the Transvaal was when he sought an alliance with William Hohenzollern, and that person, I might add, failed him at the critical moment.

Botha was the George Washington of South Africa,—the farmer who became Premier. He was big of body and of soul,—big enough to know when he was beaten and to rebuild out of the ruins. Even the Nationalists trusted him and they do not trust Smuts. It is the old story of the prophet in his own country. There are many people in South Africa today who believe that if Botha were alive there would be no secession movement.

The Boers who oppose him politically call Smuts "Slim Jannie." The Dutch word "slim" means tricky and evasive. Not so very long ago Smuts was in a conference with some of his countrymen who were not altogether friendly to him. He had just remarked on the long drought that was prevailing. One of the men present went to the window and looked out. When asked the reason for this action he replied:

"Smuts says that there's a drought. I looked out to see if it was raining."

When you come to Smuts in this analogy you behold the Alexander Hamilton of his nation, the brilliant student, soldier, and advocate. Of all his Boer contemporaries he is the most cosmopolitan. Nor is this due entirely to the fact that he went to Cambridge where he left a record for scholarship, and speaks English with a decided accent. It is because he has what might be called world sense. His career, and more especially his part at the Peace Conference and since, is a dramatization of it.

To the student of human interest Smuts is a fertile subject. His life has been a cinema romance shot through with sharp contrasts. Here is one of them. When