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