With Smuts you listen and you remember. He has no tricks of the spellbinder's trade. He is forceful, convincing, persuasive, and what is more important, has the quality of permanency. Long after you have left his presence the words remain in your memory. If I had a case in court I would like to have Smuts try it. His specialty is pleading.
Lloyd George seldom reads a book. The only volumes I ever heard him say that he had read were Mr. Dooley and a collection of the Speeches of Abraham Lincoln. He has books read for him and with a Roosevelt faculty for assimilation, gives you the impression that he has spent his life in a library.
Smuts is one of the best-read men I have met. He seems to know something about everything. He ranges from Joseph Conrad to Kant, from Booker Washington to Tolstoi. History, fiction, travel, biography, have all come within his ken. I told him I proposed to go from Capetown to the Congo and possibly to Angola. His face lighted up. "Ah, yes," he said, "I have read all about those countries. I can see them before me in my mind's eye."
One night at dinner at Groote Schuur we had sweet potatoes. He asked me if they were common in America. I replied that down in Kentucky where I was born one of the favorite negro dishes was "'possum and sweet potatoes." He took me up at once saying:
"Oh, yes, I have read about ''possum pie' in Joel Chandler Harris' books." Then he proceeded to tell me what a great institution "Br'er Rabbit" was.
We touched on German poetry and I quoted two lines that I considered beautiful. When I remarked that I thought Heine was the author he corrected me by proving that they were written by Schiller.
Lloyd George could never carry on a conversation like this for the simple reason that he lacks familiarity with literature. He feels perhaps like the late Charles Frohman who, on being asked if he read the dramatic papers said: "Why should I read about the theatre. I make dramatic history."
I asked Smuts what he was reading at the moment. He looked at me with some astonishment and answered, "Nothing except public documents. It's a good thing that I was able to do some reading before I became Prime Minister. I certainly have no time now."
Take the matter of languages. Lloyd George has always professed that he did not know French, and on all his trips to France both during and since the war he carried a staff of interpreters. He understands a good deal more French than he professes. His widely proclaimed ignorance of the language has stood him in good stead because it has enabled him to hear a great many things that were not intended for his ears. It is part of his political astuteness. Smuts is an accomplished linguist. It has been said of him that he "can be silent in more languages than any man in South Africa."
Lloyd George is a clever politician with occasional inspired moments but he is not exactly a statesman as Disraeli and Gladstone were. Smuts has the unusual combination of statesmanship with a knowledge of every wrinkle in the political game.