Take his experience at the Paris Peace Conference. He was distinguished not so much for what he did, (and that was considerable), but for what he opposed. No man was better qualified to voice the sentiment of the "small nation." Born of proud and liberty-loving people,—an infant among the giants—he was attuned to every aspiration of an hour that realized many a one-time forlorn national hope. Yet his statesmanship tempered sentimental impulse.
In that gallery of treaty-makers Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson focussed the "fierce light" that beat about the proceedings. But it was Smuts, in the shadow, who contributed largely to the mental power-plant that drove the work. Lloyd George had to consider the chapter he wrote in the great instrument as something in the nature of a campaign document to be employed at home, while Clemenceau guided a steamroller that stooped for nothing but France. The more or less unsophisticated idealism of Woodrow Wilson foundered on these obstacles.
Smuts, with his uncanny sense of prophecy, foretold the economic consequences of the peace. Looking ahead he visualized a surly and unrepentant Germany, unwilling to pay the price of folly; a bitter and disappointed Austria gasping for economic breath; an aroused and indignant Italy raging with revolt—all the chaos that spells "peace" today. He saw the Treaty as a new declaration of war instead of an antidote for discord. His judgment, sadly enough, has been confirmed. A deranged universe shot through with reaction and confusion, and with half a dozen wars sputtering on the horizon, is the answer. The sob and surge of tempest-born nations in the making are lost in the din of older ones threatened with decay and disintegration. It is not a pleasing spectacle.
Smuts signed the Treaty but, as most people know, he filed a memorandum of protest and explanation. He believed the terms uneconomic and therefore unsound, but it was worth taking a chance on interpretation, a desperate venture perhaps, but anything to stop the blare and bicker of the council table and start the work of reconstruction.
At Capetown he told me that for days he wrestled with the problem "to sign or not to sign." Finally, on the day before the Day of Days in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, he took a long solitary walk in the Champs Elysee, loveliest of Paris parades. Returning to his hotel he said to his secretary, Captain E. F. C. Lane, "I have decided to sign, but I will tell the reason why." He immediately sat down at his desk and in a handwriting noted for its illegibility wrote the famous memorandum.
III
What of the personal side of Smuts? While he is intensely human it is difficult to connect anecdote with him. I heard one at Capetown, however, that I do not think has seen the light of print. It reveals his methods, too.
When the Germans ran amuck in 1914 Smuts was Minister of Defense of the Union of South Africa. The Nationalists immediately began to make life uncomfortable for him. Balked in their attempt to keep the Union out of the struggle they took another tack. After the Botha campaign in German South-West Africa was well under way, a member of the Opposition asked the Minister of Defense the following question in Parliament: "How much has South Africa paid for horses in the field and the Nationalists sought to make some political capital out of an expenditure that they remounts?" The Union forces employed thousands of called "waste."
Smuts sent over to Army Headquarters to get the figures. He was told that it would take twenty clerks at least four weeks to compile the data.
"Never mind," was his laconic comment. The next day happened to be Question Day in the House. As soon as the query about the remount charge came up Smuts calmly rose in his seat and replied: