he was its most eloquent advocate in this country. His draft scheme of the Covenant appeared in the beginning of January 1919, and was substantially that eventually adopted at the Peace Conference. In that pamphlet he wrote: "The very foundations have been shaken and loosened, and things are again fluid. The tents have been struck, and the great caravan of humanity is once more on the march. Vast social and industrial changes are coming, perhaps upheavals which may, in their magnitude and effects, be comparable to war itself. A steadying, controlling, regulating influence will be required to give stability to progress, and to remove that wasteful friction which has dissipated so much social force in the past, and in this war more than ever before.'

As a member of the peace delegation in Paris he exercised a constant pressure for a reasonable settlement. Had he been in authority in Paris instead of in a subordinate capacity, there cannot be any doubt in an informed mind that the history of the past five years would have been profoundly different; that instead of leaving President Wilson to be manacled and destroyed by more supple minds he would have cooperated with him in imposing a just peace, and that the tragedy of Europe which we are witnessing to-day would have been greatly modified if not entirely averted. As it is he shares with Mr. Wilson and Lord

Robert Cecil the lasting honour of having framed that Covenant of the League of Nations which still stands, however feebly and uncertainly, as the only hope of a reconstructed Europe and as the instrument for ultimately undoing the wrong done by the treaty of peace. He signed that treaty under protest, as the only means of escape from what he considered to be a worse alternative, the disruption of the Conference and the immediate collapse of Europe into unthinkable disorder; but he accompanied his signature by a public declaration that amounted to an indictment of the treaty-a declaration which, in the light of subsequent events, reads like a judgment on its authors, and which still embodies the only inspiration for the future. One passage from this memorable document will convey its spirit:

"The promise of the new life, the victory of the great human ideals, for which the peoples have shed their blood and their treasure without stint, the fulfilment of their aspirations towards a new international order, and a fairer, better world, are not written in this Treaty, and will not be written in treaties. 'Not in this Mountain, nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth,' as the Great Master said, must the foundations of the new order be laid. A new heart must be given, not only to our enemies but also to us; a contrite spirit for the woes which

have overwhelmed the world; a spirit of pity, mercy, and forgiveness for the sins and wrongs which we have suffered. A new spirit of generosity and humanity, born in the hearts of the peoples in this great hour of common suffering and sorrow, can alone heal the wounds which have been inflicted on the body of Christendom."

He urged that at the earliest possible moment the enemy peoples should be invited to join the League of Nations, and pleaded that a real peace of the nations should follow the peace of the statesmen.

This manifesto naturally aroused much criticism. Here was a member of the peace delegation who shared the responsibility for the treaty of Versailles and yet denounced it to the world. In further explanations made at Manchester he showed how to his mind the safety and prosperity of Great Britain itself depended on a sound European settlement. "The brutal fact," he declared, "is that Great Britain is a very small island on the fringe of the Continent, and that on that Continent the 70 million odd Germans represent the most important and formidable national factor. You cannot have a stable Europe without a stable settled Germany; and you cannot have a stable, settled, prosperous Great Britain while Europe is weltering in confusion and unsettlement next door." He went on to urge that Russia was a sick man for

whom healing must come from within, and he deprecated any interference from without. His advice was to leave Russia alone, to raise the blockade, to adopt a policy of friendly neutrality and Gallio-like impartiality to all factions in that distressed country.

There was much anxiety as to whether General Smuts could retain his power and influence in South Africa, where party spirit still ran high, when he spent so much time in Europe and in preoccupation with European affairs. For even after the Peace he was still kept busy in the great theatre of affairs. He was sent in 1919 by the Conference in Paris to Hungary, then under the "red" rule of Bela Kun, in order to report on the situation. In 1921 he went to Dublin to confer with the leaders of the Irish parties, and with the memory of the South African settlement always present with him, urged the Sinn Feiners to accept the British offer, to leave Ulster alone until such time as she should enter the Union of her own accord.

General Smuts is not one of those who would thrust on the British Empire a cast-iron constitution. He regards the British Empire no longer as a group of smaller nations revolving around Great Britian but as he wrote to Mr. De Valera, as a wide circle of great nations, each with its own individual character. Where their status or their rights in connection with

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the mother country are in question they have their tribunal in the Imperial Conference, which is the Council of the League of the Nations of the Empire. And from his utterances in connection with the last Conference it would appear that he does not think the time is yet ripe for further plans for the closer political organisation which may yet be necessary.

In the matter of world politics they have representatives in constant touch with one another at Geneva on the League of Nations. It is sometimes objected by the other partners in that wider association that the British Empire is too heavily represented but it is common knowledge that there are very few questions which come up before the League on which the representatives of the British Empire preserve a united front.

General Smuts believes that the foundations of the British Empire are spiritual foundations. Speaking of the situation before he left this country in 1923, he said:

"It is an inspiring, I had almost said awe-inspiring, spectacle to see our great Commonwealth, or rather our League of Nations, gathering from the ends of the earth. Here in a tumbling, falling world, here in a world where all the foundations are quaking, you have something solid and enduring. The greatest thing on earth, the greatest political structure of all time, it has