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

Middle Temple he was equally distinguished, and received in 1894 a special prize for constitutional law (English and Colonial) and legal history.

This hard mental training was to stand him in good stead when he came to one of the great tasks of his life, a share in framing the constitution of South Africa. But when he returned from England and established himself in Capetown at the Bar he was not at first particularly successful, and, like many another young lawyer, eked out his meagre earnings by journalism. At that time he was slight, delicatelooking, 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 main tained 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," he said, "the position will soon become untenable in the face of the overwhelming majority of prolific barbarism."

His

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. 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

pacity for hard brain work. It used to be said in later days that Botha sat all day before a clean sheet of blotting paper, while General Smuts's desk was loaded with a mountain of papers and blue books.

Both men had courage in a remarkable degree. General Sir Ian Hamilton says of General Smuts: "Smuts has the double dose of courage; the strategical courage which conceives and the tactical courage which executes. Smuts, of all others, was the man who urged old Joubert to storm Ladysmith, an operation which, because Joubert delayed it too long, broke itself into fragments against Caesar's Camp and Waggon Hill." And, describing his later exploits in the war, he says: "Always on the offensive, always for the attack when a fair chance offered; resourceful he is, persuasive and full of ideas. But it is his courage which makes the man-his sheer courage. Nevertheless his valour was tempered with the wariness which British soldiers learned to associate with Boer mentality, and which he owed to his Dutch parentage and traditions. In the early days of the war Botha, De Wet and Delarey were the names which the English learned to know and to hear with some apprehension. Presently a fourth began to attract notice, that of Jan Smuts, a young man of 30. "Keep your eye on Smuts," said one who had known him at Cambridge. "He is one of the most brilliant men of