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AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ADVENTURES IN INTERVIEWING
PEACE AND BUSINESS
S. O. S: AMERICAS'S MIRACLE IN FRANCE
THE BUSINESS OF WAR
THE REBIRTH OF RUSSIA
THE WAR AFTER THE WAR
LEONARD WOOD: PROPHET OF PREPAREDNESS
[Illustration: KING ALBERT]
AN AFRICAN
ADVENTURE
BY
ISAAC F. MARCOSSON
AUTHOR OF "ADVENTURES IN INTERVIEWING," ETC.
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
MCMXXI
COPYRIGHT · 1921
BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT · 1921
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
THE PLIMPTON PRESS
NORWOOD · MASS · U·S·A
_To_
THOMAS F. RYAN
WHO FIRST BEHELD THE VISION
OF AMERICA IN THE
CONGO
FOREWORD
From earliest boyhood when I read the works of Henry M. Stanley and
books about Cecil Rhodes, Africa has called to me. It was not until I
met General Smuts during the Great War, however, that I had a definite
reason for going there.
After these late years of blood and battle America and Europe seemed
tame. Besides, the economic war after the war developed into a struggle
as bitter as the actual physical conflict. Discord and discontent became
the portion of the civilized world. I wanted to get as far as possible
from all this social unrest and financial dislocation.
So much interest was evinced in the magazine articles which first set
forth the record of my journey that I was prompted to expand them into
this book. It may enable the reader to discover a section of the
one-time Dark Continent without the hardships which I experienced.
I. F. M.
NEW YORK, _April, 1921_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. SMUTS 15
II. "CAPE-TO-CAIRO" 57
III. RHODES AND RHODESIA 103
IV. THE CONGO TODAY 139
V. ON THE CONGO RIVER 177
VI. AMERICA IN THE CONGO 225
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
King Albert _Frontispiece_
Groote Schuur _facing page_ 28
General J. C. Smuts 44
Mr. Marcosson's Route in Africa 56
Cecil Rhodes 76
The Premier Diamond Mine 90
Victoria Falls 102
Cultivating Citrus Land in Rhodesia 110
The Grave of Cecil Rhodes 132
A Katanga Copper Mine 138
Lord Leverhulme 144
Robert Williams 144
On the Lualaba 150
A View on the Kasai 150
A Station Scene at Kongola 156
A Native Market at Kindu 162
Native Fish Traps at Stanley Falls 168
The Massive Bangalas 176
Congo Women in State Dress 176
Central African Pygmies 182
Women Making Pottery 190
The Congo Pickaninny 190
The Heart of the Equatorial Forest 198
Natives Piling Wood 204
A Wood Post on the Congo 204
Residential Quarters at Alberta 210
The Comte de Flandre 210
A Typical Oil Palm Forest 216
Bringing in the Palm Fruit 216
A Specimen of Cicatrization 220
A Sankuru Woman Playing Native Draughts 220
The Belgian Congo 224
Thomas F. Ryan 228
Jean Jadot 236
Emile Francqui 242
A Belle of the Congo 246
Women of the Batetelas 246
Fishermen on the Sankuru 254
The Falls of the Sankuru 254
A Congo Diamond Mine 260
How the Mines Are Worked 260
Gravel Carriers at a Congo Mine 266
Congo Natives Picking out Diamonds 266
Washing out Gravel 272
Donald Doyle and Mr. Marcosson 272
The Park at Boma 278
A Street in Matadi 278
A General View of Matadi 282
AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE
AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE
CHAPTER I--SMUTS
I
Turn the searchlight on the political and economic chaos that has
followed the Great War and you find a surprising lack of real
leadership. Out of the mists that enshroud the world welter only three
commanding personalities emerge. In England Lloyd George survives amid
the storm of party clash and Irish discord. Down in Greece Venizelos,
despite defeat, remains an impressive figure of high ideals and
uncompromising patriotism. Off in South Africa Smuts gives fresh
evidence of his vision and authority.
Although he was Britain's principal prop during the years of agony and
disaster, Lloyd George is, in the last analysis, merely an eloquent and
spectacular politician with the genius of opportunism. One reason why he
holds his post is that there is no one to take his place,--another
commentary on the paucity of greatness. There is no visible heir to
Venizelos. Besides, Greece is a small country without international
touch and interest. Smuts, youngest of the trio, looms up as the most
brilliant statesman of his day and his career has just entered upon a
new phase.
He is the dominating actor in a drama that not only affects the destiny
of the whole British Empire, but has significance for every civilized
nation. The quality of striking contrast has always been his. The
one-time Boer General, who fought Roberts and Kitchener twenty years
ago, is battling with equal tenacity for the integrity of the Imperial
Union born of that war. Not in all history perhaps, is revealed a more
picturesque situation than obtains in South Africa today. You have the
whole Nationalist movement crystallized into a single compelling
episode. In a word, it is contemporary Ireland duplicated without
violence and extremism.
I met General Smuts often during the Great War. He stood out as the most
intellectually alert, and in some respects the most distinguished figure
among the array of nation-guiders with whom I talked, and I interviewed
them all. I saw him as he sat in the British War Cabinet when the German
hosts were sweeping across the Western Front, and when the German
submarines were making a shambles of the high seas. I heard him speak
with persuasive force on public occasions and he was like a beacon in
the gloom. He had come to England in 1917 as the representative of
General Botha, the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, to
attend the Imperial Conference and to remain a comparatively short time.
So great was the need of him that he did not go home until after the
Peace had been signed. He signed the Treaty under protest because he
believed it was uneconomic and it has developed into the irritant that
he prophesied it would be.
In those war days when we foregathered, Smuts often talked of "the world
that would be." The real Father of the League of Nations idea, he
believed that out of the immense travail would develop a larger
fraternity, economically sound and without sentimentality. It was a
great and yet a practical dream.
More than once he asked me to come to South Africa. I needed little
urging. From my boyhood the land of Cecil Rhodes has always held a lure
for me. Smuts invested it with fresh interest. So I went.
The Smuts that I found at close range on his native heath, wearing the
mantle of the departed Botha, carrying on a Government with a minority,
and with the shadow of an internecine war brooding on the horizon, was
the same serene, clear-thinking strategist who had raised his voice in
the Allied Councils. Then the enemy was the German and the task was to
destroy the menace of militarism. Now it was his own unreconstructed
Boer--blood of his blood,--and behind that Boer the larger problem of a
rent and dissatisfied universe, waging peace as bitterly as it waged
war. Smuts the dreamer was again Smuts the fighter, with the fight of
his life on his hands.
Thus it came about that I found myself in Capetown. Everybody goes out
to South Africa from England on those Union Castle boats so familiar to
all readers of English novels. Like the P. & O. vessels that Kipling
wrote about in his Indian stories, they are among the favorite first
aids to the makers of fiction. Hosts of heroes in books--and some in
real life--sail each year to their romantic fate aboard them.
It was the first day of the South African winter when I arrived, but
back in America spring was in full bloom. I looked out on the same view
that had thrilled the Portuguese adventurers of the fifteenth century
when they swept for the first time into Table Bay. Behind the harbor
rose Table Mountain and stretching from it downward to the sea was a
land with verdure clad and aglare with the African sun that was to
scorch my paths for months to come.
Capetown nestles at the foot of a vast flat-topped mass of granite
unique among the natural elevations of the world. She is another melting
pot. Here mingle Kaffir and Boer, Basuto and Britisher, East Indian and
Zulu. The hardy rancher and fortune-hunter from the North Country rub
shoulders with the globe-trotter. In the bustling streets modern
taxicabs vie for space with antiquated hansoms bearing names like "Never
Say Die," "Home Sweet Home," or "Honeysuckle." All the horse-drawn
public vehicles have names.
You get a familiar feel of America in this South African country and
especially in the Cape Colony, which is a place of fruits, flowers and
sunshine resembling California. There is the sense of newness in the
atmosphere, and something of the abandon that you encounter among the
people of Australia and certain parts of Canada. It comes from life
spent in the open and the spirit of pioneering that within a
comparatively short time has wrested a huge domain from the savage.
What strikes the observer at once is the sharp conflict of race, first,
between black and white, and then, between Briton and Boer. South of the
Zambesi River,--and this includes Rhodesia and the Union of South
Africa,--the native outnumbers the white more than six to one and he is
increasing at a much greater rate than the European. Hence you have an
inevitable conflict. Race lies at the root of the South African trouble
and the racial reconciliation that Rhodes and Botha set their hopes upon
remains an elusive quantity.
I got a hint of what Smuts was up against the moment I arrived. I had
cabled him of my coming and he sent an orderly to the steamer with a
note of welcome and inviting me to lunch with him at the House of
Parliament the next day. In the letter, among other things he said: "You
will find this a really interesting country, full of curious problems."
How curious they were I was soon to find out.
I called for him at his modest book-lined office in a street behind the
Parliament Buildings and we walked together to the House. Heretofore I
had only seen him in the uniform of a Lieutenant General in the British
Army. Now he wore a loose-fitting lounge suit and a slouch hat was
jammed down on his head. In the change from khaki to mufti--and few men
can stand up under this transition without losing some of the character
of their personal appearance,--he remained a striking figure. There is
something wistful in his face--an indescribable look that projects
itself not only through you but beyond. It is not exactly preoccupation
but a highly developed concentration. This look seemed to be enhanced by
the ordeal through which he was then passing. In his springy walk was a
suggestion of pugnacity. His whole manner was that of a man in action
and who exults in it. Roosevelt had the same characteristic but he
displayed it with much more animation and strenuosity.
We sat down in the crowded dining room of the House of Parliament where
the Prime Minister had invited a group of Cabinet Ministers and leading
business men of Capetown. Around us seethed a noisy swirl which
reflected the turmoil of the South African political situation.
Parliament had just convened after an historic election in which the
Nationalists, the bitter antagonists of Botha and Smuts, had elected a
majority of representatives for the first time. Smuts was hanging on to
the Premiership by his teeth. A sharp division of vote, likely at any
moment, would have overthrown the Government. It meant a régime hostile
to Britain that carried with it secession and the remote possibility of
civil war.
In that restaurant, as throughout the whole Union, Smuts was at that
moment literally the observed of all observers. Far off in London the
powers-that-be were praying that this blonde and bearded Boer could
successfully man the imperial breach. Yet he sat there smiling and
unafraid and the company that he had assembled discussed a variety of
subjects that ranged from the fall in exchange to the possibilities of
the wheat crop in America.
The luncheon was the first of various meetings with Smuts. Some were
amid the tumult of debate or in the shadow of the legislative halls,
others out in the country at _Groote Schuur_, the Prime Minister's
residence, where we walked amid the gardens that Cecil Rhodes loved, or
sat in the rooms where the Colossus "thought in terms of continents." It
was a liberal education.
Before we can go into what Smuts said during these interviews it is
important to know briefly the whole approach to the crowded hour that
made the fullest test of his resource and statesmanship. Clearly to
understand it you must first know something about the Boer and his long
stubborn struggle for independence which ended, for a time at least, in
the battle and blood of the Boer War.
Capetown, the melting pot, is merely a miniature of the larger boiling
cauldron of race which is the Union of South Africa. In America we also
have an astonishing mixture of bloods but with the exception of the
Bolshevists and other radical uplifters, our population is loyally
dedicated to the American flag and the institutions it represents. With
us Latin, Slav, Celt, and Saxon have blended the strain that proved its
mettle as "Americans All" under the Stars and Stripes in France. We have
given succor and sanctuary to the oppressed of many lands and these
foreign elements, in the main, have not only been grateful but have
proved to be distinct assets in our national expansion. We are a merged
people.
With South Africa the situation is somewhat different. The roots of
civilization there were planted by the Dutch in the days of the Dutch
East India Company when Holland was a world power. The Dutchman is a
tenacious and stubborn person. Although the Huguenots emigrated to the
Cape in considerable force in the seventeenth century and intermarried
with the transplanted Hollanders, the Dutch strain, and with it the
Dutch characteristics predominated. They have shaped South African
history ever since. This is why the Boer is still referred to in popular
parlance as "a Dutchman."
The Dutch have always been a proud and liberty-loving people, as the
Duke of Alva and the Spaniard learned to their cost. This inherited
desire for freedom has flamed in the hearts of the Boers. In the early
African day they preferred to journey on to the wild and unknown places
rather than sacrifice their independence. What is known as "The Great
Trek" of the thirties, which opened up the Transvaal and subsequently
the Orange Free State and Natal, was due entirely to unrest among the
Cape Boers. There is something of the epic in the narrative of those
doughty, psalm-singing trekkers who, like the Mormons in the American
West, went forth in their canvas-covered wagons with a rifle in one hand
and the Bible in the other. They fought the savage, endured untold
hardships, and met fate with a grim smile on their lips. It took Britain
nearly three costly years to subdue their descendants, an untrained army
of farmers.
A revelation of the Boer character, therefore, is an index to the South
African tangle. His enemies call the Boer "a combination of cunning and
childishness." As a matter of fact the Boer is distinct among
individualists. "Oom Paul" Kruger was a type. A fairly familiar story
will concretely illustrate what lies within and behind the race. On one
occasion his thumb was nearly severed in an accident. With his
pocket-knife he cut off the finger, bound up the wound with a rag, and
went about his business.
The old Boer--and the type survives--was a Puritan who loved his
five-thousand-acre farm where he could neither see nor hear his
neighbors, who read the Good Word three times a day, drank prodigious
quantities of coffee, spoke "_taal_" the Dutch dialect, and reared a
huge family. Botha, for example, was one of thirteen children, and his
father lamented to his dying day that he had not done his full duty by
his country!
Isolation was the Boer fetich. This instinct for aloofness,--principally
racial,--animates the sincere wing of the Nationalist Party today. Men
like Botha and Smuts and their followers adapted themselves to
assimilation but there remained the "bitter-end" element that rebelled
in arms against the constituted authority in 1914 and had to be put down
with merciless hand. This element now seeks to achieve through more
peaceful ends what it sought to do by force the moment Britain became
involved in the Great War. The reason for the revolt of 1914, in a
paragraph, was Britain's far-flung call to arms. The unreconstructed
Boers refused to fight for the Power that humbled them in 1902. They
seized the moment to make a try for what they called "emancipation."
To go back for a moment, when the British conquered the Cape and
thousands of Englishmen streamed out to Africa to make their fortunes,
the Boer at once bristled with resentment. His isolation was menaced. He
regarded the Briton as an "_Uitlander_"--an outsider--and treated him as
an undesirable alien. In the Transvaal and the Orange Free State he was
denied the rights that are accorded to law-abiding citizens in other
countries. Hence the Jameson Raid, which was an ill-starred protest
against the narrow, copper-riveted Boer rule, and later the final and
sanguinary show-down in the Boer War, which ended the dream of Boer
independence.
In 1910 was established the Union of South Africa, comprising the
Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Natal and the Cape Colony which
obtained responsible government and which is to all intents and purposes
a dominion as free as Australia or Canada. England sends out a
Governor-General, usually a high-placed and titled person but he is a
be-medalled figure-head,--an ornamental feature of the landscape. His
principal labours are to open fairs, attend funerals, preside at
harmless gatherings, and bestow decorations upon worthy persons. First
Botha, and later Smuts, have been the real rulers of the country.
The Union Constitution decreed that bi-lingualism must prevail. As a
result every public notice, document, and time-table is printed in both
English and Dutch. The tie of language is a strong one and this eternal
and unuttered presence of the "_taal_" has been an asset for the
Nationalists to exploit. It is a link with the days of independence.
Following the Boer War came a sharp cleavage among the Boers. That great
farm-bred soldier and statesman, Louis Botha, accepted the verdict and
became the leader of what might be called a reconciled reconstruction.
Firm in the belief that the future of South Africa was greater than the
smaller and selfish issue of racial pride and prejudice, he rallied his
open-minded and far-seeing countrymen around him. Out of this group
developed the South African Party which remains the party of the Dutch
loyal to British rule. To quote the program of principles, "Its
political object is the development of a South African spirit of
national unity and self-reliance through the attainment of the lasting
union of the various sections of the people."
Botha was made Premier of the Transvaal as soon as the Colony was
granted self-government and with the accomplishment of Union was named
Prime Minister of the Federation. The first man that he called to the
standard of the new order to become his Colonial Minister, or more
technically, Minister of the Interior, was Smuts, who had left his law
office in Johannesburg to fight the English in 1900 and who displayed
the same consummate strategy in the field that he has since shown in
Cabinet meeting and Legislative forum. With peace he returned to law but
not for long. Now began his political career--he has held public office
continuously ever since--that is a vital part of the modern history of
South Africa.
In the years immediately following Union the genius of Botha had full
play. He wrought a miracle of evolution. Under his influence the land
which still bore the scars of war was turned to plenty. He was a farmer
and he bent his energy and leadership to the rebuilding of the shattered
commonwealths. Their hope lay in the soil. His right arm was Smuts, who
became successively Minister of Finance and Minister of Public Defense.
The belief that reconciliation had dawned was rudely disturbed when the
Great War crashed into civilization. The extreme Nationalists rebelled
and it was Botha, aided by Smuts, who crushed them. Beyers, the
ringleader, was drowned while trying to escape across the Vaal River,
DeWet was defeated in the field, De la Rey was accidentally shot, and
Maritz became a fugitive. Botha then conquered the Germans in German
South-West Africa and Smuts subsequently took over the command of the
Allied Forces in German East Africa. When Botha died in 1919 Smuts not
only assumed the Premiership of the Union but he also inherited the
bitter enmity that General J. B. M. Hertzog bore towards his lamented
Chief.
Now we come to the crux of the whole business, past and present. Who is
Hertzog and what does he stand for?
If you look at your history of the Boer War you will see that one of the
first Dutch Generals to take the field and one of the last to leave it
was Hertzog, an Orange Free State lawyer who had won distinction on the
Bench. He helped to frame the Union Constitution and on the day he
signed it, declared that it was a distinct epoch in his life. A Boer of
the Boers, he seemed to catch for the moment, the contagion that
radiated from Botha and spelled a Greater South Africa.
Botha made him Minister of Justice and all was well. But deep down in
his heart Hertzog remained unrepentant. When the question of South
Africa's contribution to the Imperial Navy came up in 1912 he fought it
tooth and nail. In fiery utterances attacking the Government he
denounced Botha as a jingoist and an imperialist. Just about this time
he made the famous speech in which he stated his ideal of South Africa.
He declared that Briton and Boer were "two separate streams"--two
nationalities each flowing in a separate channel. The "two streams"
slogan is now the Nationalist battlecry.
Such procedure on the part of Hertzog demanded prompt action on the part
of Botha, who called upon his colleague either to suppress his
particular brand of anathema or resign. Hertzog not only built a bigger
bonfire of denunciation but refused to resign.
Botha thereupon devised a unique method of ridding himself of his
uncongenial Minister. He resigned, the Government fell, and the Cabinet
dissolved automatically. Hertzog was left out in the cold. The
Governor-General immediately re-appointed Botha Prime Minister and he
reorganized his Cabinet without the undesirable Hertzog.
Hertzog became the Stormy Petrel of South Africa, vowing vengeance
against Botha and Britain. He galvanized the Nationalist Party, which up
to this time had been merely a party of opposition, into what was
rapidly becoming a flaming secession movement. The South African Party
developed into the only really national party, while its opponent,
although bearing the name of National, was solely and entirely racial.
The first real test of strength was in the election of 1915. The
campaign was bitter and belligerent. The venom of the Nationalist Party
was concentrated on Smuts. Many of his meetings became bloody riots. He
was the target for rotten fruit and on one occasion an attempt was made
on his life. The combination of the Botha personality and the Smuts
courage and reason won out and the South African Party remained in
power.
Undaunted, Hertzog carried on the fight. He soon had the supreme
advantage of having the field to himself because Botha was off fighting
the Germans and Smuts had gone to England to help mould the Allied
fortunes. The Nationalist leader made hay while the red sun of war
shone. Every South African who died on the battlefield was for him just
another argument for separation from England.
When Ireland declared herself a "republic" Hertzog took the cue and
counted his cause in with that of the "small nations" that needed
self-determination. "Afrika for the Afrikans," the old motto of the
_Afrikander Bond_, was unfurled from the masthead and the sedition
spread. It not only recruited the Boers who had an ancient grievance
against Great Britain, but many others who secretly resented the Botha
and Smuts intimacy with "the conquerors." Some were sons and grandsons
of the old "_Vortrekkers_," who not only delighted to speak the "_taal_"
exclusively but who had never surrendered the ideal of independence.
While the Dutch movement in South Africa strongly resembles the Irish
rebellion there are also some marked differences. In South Africa there
is no religious barrier and as a result there has been much
intermarriage between Briton and Boer. The English in South Africa bear
the same relation to the Nationalist movement there that the Ulsterites
bear to the Sinn Feiners in Ireland. Instead of being segregated as are
the followers of Sir Edward Carson, they are scattered throughout the
country.
At the General Election held early in 1920,--general elections are held
every five years,--the results were surprising. The Nationalists
returned a majority of four over the South African Party in Parliament.
It left Smuts to carry on his Government with a minority. To add to his
troubles, the Labour Party,--always an uncertain proposition,--increased
its representation from a mere handful to twenty-one, while the
Unionists, who comprise the straight-out English-speaking Party, whose
stronghold is Natal, suffered severe losses. Smuts could not very well
count the latter among his open allies because it would have alienated
the hard-shell Boers in the South African Party.
This was the situation that I found on my arrival in Capetown. On one
hand was Smuts, still Prime Minister, taxing his every resource as
parliamentarian and pacificator to maintain the Union and prevent a
revolt from Britain--all in the face of a bitter and hostile majority.
On the other hand was Hertzog, bent on secession and with a solid array
of discontents behind him. The two former comrades of the firing line,
as the heads of their respective groups, were locked in a momentous
political life-and-death struggle the outcome of which may prove to be
the precedent for Ireland, Egypt, and India.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright South African Railways_
GROOTE SCHUUR]
II
Yet Smuts continued as Premier which means that he brought the life of
Parliament to a close without a sharp division. Moreover, he
manœuvered his forces into a position that saved the day for Union
and himself. How did he do it?
I can demonstrate one way and with a rather personal incident. During
the week I spent in Capetown Smuts was an absorbed person as you may
imagine. The House was in session day and night and there were endless
demands on him. The best opportunities that we had for talk were at
meal-time. One evening I dined with him in the House restaurant. When we
sat down we thought that we had the place to ourselves. Suddenly Smuts
cast his eye over the long room and saw a solitary man just commencing
his dinner in the opposite corner. Turning to me he said:
"Do you know Cresswell?"
"I was introduced to him yesterday," I replied.
"Would you mind if I asked him to dine with us?"
When I assured him that I would be delighted, the Prime Minister got up,
walked over to Cresswell and asked him to join us, which he did.
The significant part of this apparently simple performance, which had
its important outcome, was this. Colonel F. H. P. Cresswell is the
leader of the Labour Party in South Africa. By profession a mining
engineer, he led the forces of revolt in the historic industrial
upheaval in the Rand in what Smuts denounced as a "Syndicalist
Conspiracy." Riot, bloodshed, and confusion reigned for a considerable
period at Johannesburg and large bodies of troops had to be called out
to restore order. At the very moment that we sat down to dine that night
no one knew just what Cresswell and the Labourites with their new-won
power would do. Smuts, as Minister of Finance, had deported some of
Cresswell's men and Cresswell himself narrowly escaped drastic
punishment.
When Smuts brought Cresswell over he said jokingly to me:
"Cresswell is a good fellow but I came near sending him to jail once."
Cresswell beamed and the three of us amiably discussed various topics
until the gong sounded for the assembling of the House.
What was the result? Before I left Capetown and when the first of the
few occasions which tested the real voting strength of Parliament arose,
Cresswell and some of his adherents voted with Smuts. I tell this little
story to show that the man who today holds the destiny of South Africa
in his hands is as skillful a diplomat as he is soldier and statesman.
It was at one of these quiet dinners with Smuts at the House that he
first spoke about Nationalism. He said: "The war gave Nationalism its
death blow. But as a matter of fact Nationalism committed suicide in the
war."
"But what is Nationalism?" I asked him.
"A water-tight nation in a water-tight compartment," he replied. "It is
a process of regimentation like the old Germany that will soon merge
into a new Internationalism. What seems to be at this moment an orgy of
Nationalism in South Africa or elsewhere is merely its death gasp. The
New World will be a world of individualism dominated by Britain and
America.
"What about the future?" I asked him. His answer was:
"The safety of the future depends upon Federation, upon a League of
Nations that will develop along economic and not purely sentimental
lines. The New Internationalism will not stop war but it can regulate
exchange, and through this regulation can help to prevent war.
"I believe in an international currency which will be a sort of legal
tender among all the nations. Why should the currency of the country
depreciate or rise with the fortunes of war or with its industrial or
other complications? Misfortune should not be penalized fiscally."
I brought up the question of the lack of accord which then existed
between Britain and America and suggested that perhaps the fall in
exchange had something to do with it, whereupon he said: "Yes, I think
it has. It merely illustrates the point that I have just made about an
international currency."
We came back to the subject of individualism, which led Smuts to say:
"The Great War was a striking illustration of the difference between
individualism and nationalism. Hindenberg commanded the only army in the
war. It was a product of nationalism. The individualism of the
Anglo-Saxon is such that it becomes a mob but it is an intelligent mob.
Haig and Pershing commanded such mobs."
I tried to probe Smuts about Russia. He was in London when I returned
from Petrograd in 1917 and I recall that he displayed the keenest
interest in what I told him about Kerensky and the new order that I had
seen in the making. I heard him speak at a Russian Fair in London. The
whole burden of his utterance was the hope that the Slav would achieve
discipline and organization. At that time Russia redeemed from autocracy
looked to be a bulwark of Allied victory. The night we talked about
Russia at Capetown she had become the prey of red terror and the
plaything of organized assassination.
Smuts looked rather wistful when he said:
"You cannot defeat Russia. Napoleon learned this to his cost and so will
the rest of the world. I do not know whether Bolshevism is advancing or
subsiding. There comes a time when the fiercest fires die down. But the
best way to revive or rally all Russia to the Soviet Government is to
invade the country and to annex large slices of it."
These utterances were made during those more or less hasty meals at the
House of Parliament when the Premier's mind was really in the
Legislative Hall nearby where he was fighting for his administrative
life. It was far different out at _Groote Schuur_, the home of the Prime
Minister, located in Rondebosch, a suburb about nine miles from
Capetown. In the open country that he loves, and in an environment that
breathed the romance and performance of England's greatest
empire-builder, I caught something of the man's kindling vision and
realized his ripe grasp of international events.
_Groote Schuur_ is one of the best-known estates in the world. Cecil
Rhodes in his will left it to the Union as the permanent residence of
the Prime Minister. Ever since I read the various lives of Rhodes I had
had an impatient desire to see this shrine of achievement. Here Rhodes
came to live upon his accession to the Premiership of the Cape Colony;
here he fashioned the British South Africa Company which did for
Rhodesia what the East India Company did for India; here came prince and
potentate to pay him honour; here he dreamed his dreams of conquest
looking out at mountain and sea; here lived Jameson and Kipling; here
his remains lay in state when at forty-nine the fires of his restless
ambition had ceased.
_Groote Schuur_, which in Dutch means "Great Granary," was originally
built as a residence and store-house for one of the early Dutch
Governors of the Cape. It is a beautiful example of the Dutch
architecture that you will find throughout the Colony and which is not
surpassed in grace or comfort anywhere. When Rhodes acquired it in the
eighties the grounds were comparatively limited. As his power and
fortune increased he bought up all the surrounding country until today
you can ride for nine miles across the estate. You find no neat lawns
and dainty flower-beds. On the place, as in the house itself, you get
the sense of bigness and simplicity which were the keynotes of the
Rhodes character.
One reason why Rhodes acquired _Groote Schuur_ was that behind it rose
the great bulk of Table Mountain. He loved it for its vastness and its
solitude. On the back _stoep_, which is the Dutch word for porch, he sat
for hours gazing at this mountain which like the man himself was
invested with a spirit of immensity.
It was a memorable experience to be at _Groote Schuur_ with Smuts, who
has lived to see the realization of the hope of Union which thrilled
always in the heart of Cecil Rhodes. I remember that on the first night
I went out the Prime Minister took me through the house himself. It has
been contended by Smuts' enemies that he was a "creature of Rhodes." I
discovered that Smuts, with the exception of having made a speech of
welcome when Rhodes visited the school that he attended as a boy, had
never even met the Englishman who left his impress upon a whole land.
_Groote Schuur_ has been described so much that it is not necessary for
me to dwell upon its charm and atmosphere here. To see it is to get a
fresh and intimate realization of the personality which made the
establishment an unofficial Chancellery of the British Empire.
Two details, however, have poignant and dramatic interest. In the
simple, massive, bed-room with its huge bay window opening on Table
Mountain and a stretch of lovely countryside, hangs the small map of
Africa that Rhodes marked with crimson ink and about which he made the
famous utterance, "It must be all red." Hanging on the wall in the
billiard room is the flag with Crescent and Cape device that he had made
to be carried by the first locomotive to travel from Cairo to the Cape.
That flag has never been unfurled to the breeze but the vision that
beheld it waving in the heart of the jungle is soon to become an
accomplished fact.
It was on a night at _Groote Schuur_, as I walked with Smuts through the
acres of hydrangeas and bougainvillea (Rhodes' favorite flowers), with a
new moon peeping overhead that I got the real mood of the man. Pointing
to the faint silvery crescent in the sky I said: "General, there's a new
moon over us and I'm sure it means good luck for you."
"No," he replied, "it's the man that makes the luck."
He had had a trying day in the House and was silent in the motor car
that brought us out. The moment we reached the country and he sniffed
the scent of the gardens the anxiety and preoccupation fell away. He
almost became boyish. But when he began to discuss great problems the
lightness vanished and he became the serious 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 leaders of the shattered Boer forces gathered in
_Vereeniging_ to discuss the Peace Terms with Kitchener in 1902, Smuts,
who commanded a flying guerilla column, was besieging the little mining
town of O'okiep. He received a summons from Botha to attend. It was
accompanied by a safe-conduct pass signed "D. Haig, Colonel." Later Haig
and Smuts stood shoulder to shoulder in a common cause and helped to
save civilization.
Smuts is more many-sided than any other contemporary Prime Minister and
for that matter, those that have gone into retirement, that is, men like
Asquith in England and Clemenceau in France. Among world statesmen the
only mind comparable to his is that of Woodrow Wilson. They have in
common a high intellectuality. But Wilson in his prime lacked the hard
sense and the accurate knowledge of men and practical affairs which are
among the chief Smuts assets.
Speaking of Premiers brings me to the inevitable comparison between
Smuts and Lloyd George. I have seen them both in varying circumstances,
both in public and in private and can attempt some appraisal.
Each has been, and remains, a pillar of Empire. Each has emulated the
Admirable Crichton in the variety and multiplicity of public posts.
Lloyd George has held five Cabinet posts in England and Smuts has
duplicated the record in South Africa. Each man is an inspired orator
who owes much of his advancement to eloquent tongue. Their platform
manner is totally different. Lloyd George is fascinatingly magnetic in
and out of the spotlight while Smuts is more coldly logical. When you
hear Lloyd George you are stirred and even exalted by his golden
imagery. The sound of his voice falls on the ear like music. You admire
the daring of his utterance but you do not always remember everything he
says.
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.
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:
"It was exactly eight million one hundred and sixty-nine thousand
pounds, ten shillings and sixpence." He then sat down without any
further remark.
[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright by Harris & Ewing_
GENERAL J. C. SMUTS]
When one of his colleagues asked him where he got this information he
said:
"I dug it out of my own mind. It will take the Nationalists a month to
figure it out and by that time they will have forgotten all about it."
And it was forgotten.
Smuts not only has a keen sense of humor but is swift on the retort.
While speaking at a party rally in his district not many years after the
Boer War he was continually interrupted by an ex-soldier. He stopped his
speech and asked the man to state his grievance. The heckler said:
"General de la Rey guaranteed the men fighting under him a living."
Quick as a flash Smuts replied:
"Nonsense. What he guaranteed you was certain death."
Like many men conspicuous in public life Smuts gets up early and has
polished off a good day's work before the average business man has
settled down to his job. There is a big difference between his methods
of work and those of Lloyd George. The British Prime Minister only goes
to the House of Commons when he has to make a speech or when some
important question is up for discussion. Smuts attends practically every
session of Parliament, at least he did while I was in Capetown.
One reason was that on account of the extraordinary position in which he
found himself, any moment might have produced a division carrying with
it disastrous results for the Government. The crisis demanded that he
remain literally on the job all the time. He left little to his
lieutenants. Confident of his ability in debate he was always willing to
risk a showdown but he had to be there when it came.
I watched him as he sat in the House. He occupied a front bench directly
opposite Hertzog and where he could look his arch enemy squarely in the
eyes all the time. I have seen him sit like a Sphinx for an hour without
apparently moving a muscle. He has cultivated that rarest of arts which
is to be a good listener. He is one of the great concentrators. In this
genius, for it is little less, lies one of the secrets of his success.
During a lull in legislative proceedings he has a habit of taking a
solitary walk out in the lobby. More than once I saw him pacing up and
down, always with an ear cocked toward the Assembly Room so he could
hear what was going on and rush to the rescue if necessary.
In the afternoon he would sometimes go into the members' smoking room
and drink a cup of coffee, the popular drink in South Africa. In the old
Boer household the coffee pot is constantly boiling. With a cup of
coffee and a piece of "biltong" inside him a Boer could fight or trek
all day. Coffee bears the same relation to the South African that tea
does to the Englishman, save that it is consumed in much larger
quantities. I might add that Smuts neither drinks liquor of any kind nor
smokes, and he eats sparingly. He admits that his one dissipation is
farming.
This comes naturally because he was born fifty years ago on a farm in
what is known as the Western Province in the Karoo country. He did his
share of the chores about the place until it was time for him to go to
school. His father and his grandfather were farmers. Inbred in him, as
in most Boers, is an ardent love of country life and especially an
affection for the mountains. On more than one occasion he has climbed to
the top of Table Mountain, which is no inconsiderable feat.
There are two ways of appraising Smuts. One is to see him in action as
I did at Capetown, while Parliament was in session. The other is to get
him with the background of his farm at Irene, a little way station about
ten miles from Pretoria. Here, in a rambling one-story house surrounded
by orchards, pastures, and gardens, he lives the simple life. In the
western part of the Transvaal he owns a real farm. He showed his
shrewdness in the acquisition of this property because he bought it at a
time when the region was dubbed a "desert." Now it is a garden spot.
Irene has various distinct advantages. For one thing it is his permanent
home. _Groote Schuur_ is the property of the Government and he owes his
tenancy of it entirely to the fortunes of politics. At Irene is planted
his hearthstone and around it is mobilized his considerable family.
There are six little Smutses. Smuts married the sweetheart of his youth
who is a rarely congenial helpmate. It was once said of her that she
"went about the house with a baby under one arm and a Greek dictionary
under the other."
Most people do not realize that the Union of South Africa has two
capitals. Capetown with the House of Parliament is the center of
legislation, while Pretoria, the ancient Kruger stronghold, with its
magnificent new Union buildings atop a commanding eminence, is the
fountain-head of administration. With Irene only ten miles away it is
easy for Smuts to live with his family after the adjournment of
Parliament, and go in to his office at Pretoria every day.
I have already given you a hint of the Smuts personal appearance. Let us
now take a good look at him. His forehead is lofty, his nose arched, his
mouth large. You know that his blonde beard veils a strong jaw. The eyes
are reminiscent of those marvelous orbs of Marshal Foch only they are
blue, haunting and at times inexorable. Yet they can light up with humor
and glow with friendliness.
Smuts is essentially an out-of-doors person and his body is wiry and
rangy. He has the stride of a man seasoned to the long march and who is
equally at home in the saddle. He speaks with vigour and at times not
without emotion. The Boer is not a particularly demonstrative person and
Smuts has some of the racial reserve. His personality betokens potential
strength,--a suggestion of the unplumbed reserve that keeps people
guessing. This applies to his mental as well as his physical capacity.
Frankly cordial, he resents familiarity. You would never think of
slapping him on the shoulder and saying, "Hello, Jan." More than one
blithe and buoyant person has been frozen into respectful silence in
such a foolhardy undertaking.
His middle name is Christian and it does not belie a strong phase of his
character. Without carrying his religious convictions on his
coat-sleeve, he has nevertheless a fine spiritual strain in his make-up.
He is an all-round dependable person, with an adaptability to
environment that is little short of amazing.
IV
Now let us turn to another and less conspicuous South African whose
point of view, imperial, personal and patriotic, is the exact opposite
of that of Smuts. Throughout this chapter has run the strain of Hertzog,
first the Boer General fighting gallantly in the field with Smuts as
youthful comrade; then the member of the Botha Cabinet; later the bitter
insurgent, and now the implacable foe of the order that he helped to
establish. What manner of man is he and what has he to say?
I talked to him one afternoon when he left the floor leadership to his
chief lieutenant, a son of the late President Steyn of the Orange Free
State. Like his father, who called himself "President" to the end of his
life although his little republic had slipped away from him, he has
never really yielded to English rule.
We adjourned to the smoking room where we had the inevitable cup of
South African coffee. I was prepared to find a fanatic and fire-eater.
Instead I faced a thin, undersized man who looked anything but a general
and statesman. Put him against the background of a small New England
town and you would take him for an American country lawyer. He resembles
the student more than the soldier and, like many Boers, speaks English
with a British accent. Nor is he without force. No man can play the rôle
that he has played in South Africa those past twenty-five years without
having substance in him.
When I asked him to state his case he said:
"The republican idea is as old as South Africa. There was a republic
before the British arrived. The idea came from the American Revolution
and the inspiration was Washington. The Great Trek of 1836 was a protest
very much like the one we are making today.
"President Wilson articulated the Boer feeling with his gospel of
self-determination. He also voiced the aspirations of Ireland, India and
Egypt. It is a great world idea--a deep moral conviction of mankind,
this right of the individual state, as of the individual for freedom.
"Never again will Transvaal and Orange Free State history be repeated.
No matter how a nation covets another--and I refer to British
covetousness,--if the nation coveted is able to govern itself it cannot
and must not be assimilated. It is one result of the Great War."
"What is the Nationalist ideal?" I asked.
"It is the right to self-rule," replied Hertzog. "But there must be no
conflict if it can be avoided. It must prevail by reason and education.
At the present time I admit that the majority of South Africans do not
want republicanism. The Nationalist mission today is to keep the torch
lighted."
"How does this idea fit into the spirit of the League of Nations?" I
queried.
"It fits in perfectly," was the response. "We Nationalists favor the
League as outlined by Wilson. But I fear that it will develop into a
capitalistic, imperialistic empire dominating the world instead of a
league of nations."
I asked Hertzog how he reconciled acquiescence to Union to the present
Nationalist revolt. The answer was:
"The Nationalists supported the Government because of their attachment
to General Botha. Deep down in his heart Botha wanted to be free and
independent."
"How about Ireland?" I demanded.
The General smiled as he responded: "Our position is different. It does
not require dynamite, but education. With us it is a simple matter of
the will of the people. I do not think that conditions in South Africa
will ever reach the state at which they have arrived in Ireland."
Commenting on the Union and its relations to the British Empire Hertzog
continued:
"The Union is not a failure but we could be better governed. The thing
to which we take exception is that the British Government, through our
connection with it, is in a position by which it gets an undue advantage
directly and indirectly to influence legislation. For example, we were
not asked to conquer German South-West Africa; it was a command.
"Very much against the feeling of the old population, that is the Dutch
element, we were led into participation in the war. Today this old
population feels as strongly as ever against South Africa being involved
in European politics. It feels that all this Empire movement only leads
in that direction and involves us in world conflicts.
"One of the strongest reasons in favor of separation and the setting up
of a South African republic is to get solidarity between the English and
the Dutch. I cannot help feeling that our interests are being constantly
subordinated to those of Great Britain. My firm conviction is that the
freer we are, and the more independent of Great Britain we become, the
more we shall favor a close co-operation with her. We do not dislike the
British as such but we do object to the Britisher coming out as a
subject of Great Britain with a superior manner and looking upon the
Dutchman as a dependent or a subordinate. There will be a conflict so
long as they do not recognize our heroes, traditions and history. In
short, we are determined to have a republic of South Africa and England
must recognize it. To oppose it is fatal."
"Will you fight for it?" I asked.
"I hardly think that it will come to force," said the General. "It must
prevail by reason and education. It may not come in one year but it will
come before many years."
Hertzog's feeling is not shared, as he intimated, by the majority of
South Africans and this includes many Dutchmen. An illuminating analysis
of the Nationalist point of view was made for me by Sir Thomas Smartt,
the leader of the Unionist Party and a virile force in South African
politics. He brought the situation strikingly home to America when he
said:
"The whole Nationalist movement is founded on race. Like the Old Guard,
the Boer may die but it is hard for him to surrender. His heart still
rankles with the outcome of the Boer War. Would the American South have
responded to an appeal to arms in the common cause made by the North in
1876? Probably not. Before your Civil War the South only had individual
states. The Boers, on the other hand, had republics with completely
organized and independent governments. This is why it will take a long
time before complete assimilation is accomplished. A second Boer War is
unthinkable."
We can now return to Smuts and find out just how he achieved the miracle
by which he not only retained the Premiership but spiked the guns of the
opposition.
When I left Capetown he was in a corner. The Nationalist majority not
only made his position precarious but menaced the integrity of Union,
and through Union, the whole Empire. For five months,--the whole session
of Parliament,--he held his ground. Every night when he went to bed at
_Groote Schuur_ he did not know what disaster the morrow would bring
forth. It was a constant juggle with conflicting interests, ambitions
and prejudices. He was like a lion with a pack snapping on all sides.
Now you can see why he sat in that front seat in the House morning, noon
and night. He placated the Labourites, harmonized the Unionists, and
flung down the gauntlet openly to the Nationalists. Throughout that
historic session, and although much legislation was accomplished, he did
not permit the consummation of a single decisive division. It was a
triumph of parliamentary leadership.
When the session closed in July,--it is then mid-winter in Africa,--he
was still up against it. The Nationalist majority was a phantom that
dogged his official life and political fortunes. The problem now was to
take out sane insurance against a repetition of the trial and
uncertainty which he had undergone.
Fate in the shape of the Nationalist Party played into his hands. Under
the stimulation of the Nationalists a _Vereeniging_ Congress was called
at Bloenfontein late last September. The Dutch word _Vereeniging_ means
"reunion." Hertzog and Tielman Roos, the co-leader of the
secessionists, believed that by bringing the leading representatives of
the two leading parties together the appeal to racial pride might carry
the day. Smuts did not attend but various members of his Cabinet did.
Reunion did anything but reunite. The differences on the republican
issues being fundamental were likewise irreconcilable. The Nationalists
stood pat on secession while the South African Party remained loyal to
its principles of Imperial unity. The meeting ended in a deadlock.
Smuts, a field marshal of politics, at once saw that the hour of
deliverance from his dilemma had arrived. The Nationalists had declared
themselves unalterably for separation. He converted their battle-cry
into coin for himself. He seized the moment to issue a call for a new
Moderate Party that would represent a fusion of the South Africanists
and the Unionists. In one of his finest documents he made a plea for the
consolidation of these constructive elements.
In it he said:
Now that the Nationalist Party is firmly resolved to continue its
propaganda of fanning the fires of secession and of driving the
European races apart from each other and ultimately into conflict
with each other, the moderate elements of our population have no
other alternative but to draw closer to one another in order to
fight that policy.
A new appeal must, therefore, be made to all right-minded South
Africans, irrespective of party or race, to join the new Party,
which will be strong enough to safeguard the permanent interests of
the Union against the disruptive and destructive policy of the
Nationalists. Such a central political party will not only continue
our great work of the past, but is destined to play a weighty rôle
in the future peaceable development of South Africa.
The end of October witnessed the ratification of this proposal by the
Unionists. The action at once consolidated the Premier's position. I
doubt if in all political history you can uncover a series of events
more paradoxical or perplexing or find a solution arrived at with
greater skill and strategy. It was a revelation of Smuts with his ripe
statesmanship put to the test, and not found wanting.
At the election held four months later Smuts scored a brilliant triumph.
The South African Party increased its representation by eighteen seats,
while the Nationalists lost heavily. The Labour Party was almost lost in
the wreckage. The net result was that the Premier obtained a working
majority of twenty-two, which guarantees a stable and loyal Government
for at least five years.
It only remains to speculate on what the future holds for this
remarkable man. South Africa has a tragic habit of prematurely
destroying its big men. Rhodes was broken on the wheel at forty-nine,
and Botha succumbed in the prime of life. Will Smuts share the same
fate?
No one need be told in the face of the Smuts performance that he is a
world asset. The question is, how far will he go? A Cabinet Minister at
twenty-eight, a General at thirty, a factor in international affairs
before he was well into the forties, he unites those rare elements of
greatness which seem to be so sparsely apportioned these disturbing
days. That he will reconstruct South Africa there is no doubt. What
larger responsibilities may devolve upon him can only be guessed.
Just before I sailed from England I talked with a high-placed British
official. He is in the councils of Empire and he knows Smuts and South
Africa. I asked him to indicate what in his opinion would be the next
great milepost of Smuts' progress. He replied:
"The destiny of Smuts is interwoven with the destiny of the whole
British Empire. The Great War bound the Colonies together with bonds of
blood. Out of this common peril and sacrifice has been knit a closer
Imperial kinship. During the war we had an Imperial War Cabinet composed
of overseas Premiers, which sat in London. Its logical successor will be
a United British Empire, federated in policy but not in administration.
Smuts will be the Prime Minister of these United States of Great
Britain."
It is the high goal of a high career.
[Illustration: THE HEAVY LINE INDICATES MR. MARCOSSON'S ROUTE IN
AFRICA]