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area, which covered not merely a small strip of our own land, but practically the whole of the interior of South Africa. Defeated, broken, utterly exhausted, my little people also had to bow to the will of the conqueror. But it was not an impossible peace. The war was not continued in another form after the peace. The Boers were not treated as moral pariahs and outcasts. Decent human relations were reestablished, and a spirit of mutual understanding grew up. The human atmosphere improved until in the end simple human fellow feelings solved the problems which had proved too difficult for statesmanship.

Four or five years after the conclusion of the war a new settlement was come to, based on mutual trust and friendship between the races. And South Africa today is perhaps the most outstanding witness in the realm of politics to the value of a policy of give and take, of moderation and generosity, of trust and friendship, applied to the affairs of men. What wisdom and moderation could achieve in Africa they can also achieve in Europe. Let us have faith in the great human principles and values, and our faith will not be brought to confusion. Human nature is the same in all continents, and what could be done for the descendants in Africa can surely also be done for the parent peoples in Europe.'' (Cheers.) b

General Smuts brings to the European problem

other things beside this fundamental experience. He brings a trained legal mind, superlative courage, and a complex and, on the surface, contradictory mixture of human sympathy and cold, deliberate judgment. Intellect is the controlling partner in his case, and, as there is nothing which the average man suspects more than intellectual strength, General Smuts has not been without enemies in his brilliant career.

Jan Christian Smuts was the son of a Dutch farmer in the Malmesbury district of the Cape Colony. When he was eight years old the family were established on a grain farm at Klipfontein. Until he was twelve he ran wild on the farm, helping with the poultry, the cattle and the horses, and then was sent to school in Riebeek village. He rapidly made up for lost time, proceeded to Stellenbosch College, where on the occasion of an official visit from Cecil Rhodes, he was chosen to be the spokesman of the College. In due course he took a brilliant degree in the Cape University and won the Ebden scholarship, which enabled him to go to Cambridge University, England, to study law. He was entered at Christ's College, and there established a record by being placed senior in both parts of the Law Tripos in the same term. Then he won the gold medal and the George Long prize for Roman Law and Jurisprudence. At the

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This hard mag was to stand him in god sai via le ame to me of the great tasks off is a 2 stare frming the constitution of South Africa But when be returned from England and established himself in Capetown at the Bar he was not at first particularly successful, and, like many Another young lawyen, eked out his meagre earnings by journalism. At that time he was slight, delicatelocking, and his delivery was hesitating and diffident.

He entered political life as a supporter of Mr. Hofmeyr, who was then in close touch with Cecil Rhodes. His first important speech was made in the Town Hall at Kimberley in defence of the Glen Grey Act, which proposed to encourage the native to work by remitting taxation to those who did. He maintained the contention, familiar enough in the Transvaal but not then popular in the Cape Colony, where it was regarded as retrograde, that there could be no sort of real equality between the white and black races. "Unless the white race closes its ranks, said, "the position will soon become untenable in he the face of the overwhelming majority of prolific barbarism."

It must not be supposed that Advocate Smuts was anything but a keen Afrikander because he spoke in favour of the proposals of Mr. Rhodes, for Rhodes was at that time in close association with the Dutch leaders. When the Jamieson Raid came the young Dutch advocate felt the defection of Rhodes intensely and bitterly, left the Bar at Capetown, and went to Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal, to practise there. He did not take part in any of the famous cases of those years, but he won a considerable reputa. tion. On the political situation he was silent. His disillusion had been complete and devastating. On general domestic questions he had no sympathy with the conservative views which dominated Het Volk, and found their expression in President Kruger. But when the issue between Chamberlain and Kruger was joined he took his stand unhesitatingly by his own people. He made a series of speeches throughout the Transvaal towns attacking Rhodes, and was marked out as one of the leaders of the Dutch resistance.

His age he was only 28-prevented him from being made State Secretary in succession to Dr. Leyds, and it was only after President Kruger had imposed his views as he knew how to do when he pleased-on a refractory Volksraad that young Smuts became State Attorney and the President's right hand man

in drafting the documents exchanged with the British Government in the quarrel which led to war. He also had something to do with the preparation of the indictment of British rule known as "A Century of Wrong," of which his opponents have since made great capital. In a passage in that book he called for a united South Africa under the Vierkleur flag. This was no part of the official policy of the Boer Government of the Transvaal, which wanted to be allowed to manage its own affairs and not to be bothered with a great "Uitlander" population such as that of the Colony and of Natal. But the truth is that Advocate Smuts belonged to the new generation. He saw even then that without unity South Africa was lost, and at that crisis the Vierkleur flag seemed to be a possibility, for the Raid and its sequel had alienated the Dutch people of the Cape Colony as well as those of the Transvaal and the Free State from English rule.

When war was declared the State Attorney left his desk and his papers and started for Ladysmith on a train which also conveyed some of the big Boer guns that were to be directed on that harassed city. From that day began his close association with General Botha one of the most fruitful collaborations of our time. Botha had the large and simple humanity, the breadth of appeal, the power of inspiring confidence. Smuts had quick intuitive intelligence and a vast ca

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