A REAL LEADER

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 107, 6 May 1916, Page 16

A REAL LEADER

GENERAL SMUTS.

The question as to who, and what manner of man is General the Honourable Jan Christiaan Smuts, K.C., lawyer, Cambridge graduate, builder of the Union of South Africa's Constitution, Dutchman, and Commander of the Expedition in "East Africa, is answered in a pen portrait that Mr. Alfred G. Gardiner contributes'-,to'1 the Daily "Keep your eye-on Smuts," said one who had known him at Cambridge. "He is one of the most brilliant .men of the new generation—lawyer, philosopher, man of letters, man of action, subtle, far-seeing, fearless. He will be dangerous. He will go far." , "General Smuts is," writes A.G.,G., "now that; Sir Wilfrid Laurier has passed out of active affairs, the most considerable figure in Greater Britain. There is no one else who.suggests anything approaching his potentiality as an influence on the future. ; General Botha, it is true, is a greater name, makes a more direct appeal to the mind, is a simpler, more obvious, and. more engaging*' personality. But he himself would be the first to admit_ his indebtedness to the intellectual gifts of General Smuts. It is Botha who has hurled the bolts, but it is in Smuts's capacious brain that ths bolts have been, forged. - " There was a time when General Smuts was regarded with some suspicion. His powers were apparent, but his; purposes seemed obscure. The suspicion did him injustice, but it was a tribute to a character far too spacious and complex to be read off-hand. There is about him a suggestion of wide intellectual hinterlands where he does not exactly invite you to trespass, and where you feel that far-reaching and deeply-considered schemes are being fashioned. His face, which is typically Dutch like that of, Raemakers,. is not revealing.. Tlie light blue eye searches you with an extraordinarily penetrating gaze, but it does not easily yield up the secrets of that wary, calculating, and self-possessed mind. " You have an uncomfortable feeling that he reads you like an open book while he remains to you a hidden purpose. " He loves letters, has, or had, .a passion for Whitman's poetry, is deeply versed in philosophy and the things of the mind, finds his * greatest delight in the simple pleasures of the country and of hi3 own family; but his emotions are under an iron discipline. lie seems to glitter like finely-tempered steel, and you could not conceive him yielding' to any impulse of fear or weakness, or even of any human sympathy that had not received the sanction of his cold and deliberate judgment. . He is a man whom, you would give. much to havo at your back m a row. You would feel that then no harm could come to you in that quarter."