Holist from the Transvaal

Promptly at 7 a.m., Jan Christian Smuts begins his daily, imperial chores.

The white hair and beard have thinned; the furrows of nigh 74 years line the veld-weathered face that Frans Hals might have painted. But the pale blue eyes are tirelessly alert. The thinning figure, rather gaunt now, slippered and with a trace of a stoop, moves briskly.

From his London hotel window South Africa's Prime Minister can look across Hyde Park's greensward--too sleek and flat for one who loves to walk the rough sandstone of Table Mountain or the undulant, spacious land of the Transvaal. He breakfasts at leisure, on gift eggs from egg-rationed English friends. He listens to the radio's news, scans the Times, attends to cables and correspondence. By 10 o'clock he is ready for visitors in his big bay-windowed reception room. By n he has changed his slippers, buttoned up his red-tabbed bush jacket with the Field Marshal's insignia, and is off in his Daimler for another meeting of the Dominion Prime Ministers (see col. /).

After lunch, usually with old friends, an occasional glass of sherry or a mild wartime beer, Jan Smuts hurries back to his hotel. There, until tea time, he pores over documents, writes longhand memos and orders on war, peace, empire. By 5:30, the only Dominion Prime Minister in Britain's War Cabinet is ready for a conference with Winston Churchill and the little group of high & mighty Britons who run the domain on which the sun never sets.

There is one more chore: dinner and the evening out. Jan Smuts tries to be home and in bed by 11. Sometimes he must stay longer. One recent night, when he dined at Buckingham Palace, he sat beside Princess Elizabeth, the Heiress Presumptive, had a chance to get better acquainted with a pillar of her Empire. Most menacing to Jan Smuts's sleep are Winston Churchill's dinners. Britain's Prime Minister likes to talk on & on, until 2 or 3 a.m., sipping the South African brandy which his good right hand, Jan Smuts, thoughtfully brought along from the Cape.

On the rare evenings when he gets home early, Jan Smuts meditates a moment or two over a book of philosophy, or reads a verse of Shelley, or turns to the well-thumbed Greek Testament that goes with him everywhere.

Years of the Beginning. Such, last week, were the full days of Jan Smuts, whose years are full with an Empire's service. Britons were glad that he was at work in London. They welcomed him as an old enemy turned old friend, as an Empire figure with a deep feeling for Britain, as a world figure with a heart proud of Britain's greatness, a mind ever probing into Britain's and the Empire's weaknesses. In his versatility this statesman, warrior, philosopher, orator, scientist, author had a quality of the Elizabethans. Britons thought of him as South Africa's late Governor General Sir Patrick Duncan had called him in the anxious days of 1941: "A great rock in a weary world."

Sitting in his straight-backed chair, shuffling through the papers on his desk, the "great rock" could hear the bustle of the double-decked omnibuses in the street below, noisier than the hoofbeats of English carriages he knew half a century ago.

He was a pale and weedy Cambridge student then: a Boer-accented colonial, fresh from the schools of the Cape Colony, a grave and talented adolescent with a passion for reciting Prometheus Unbound, an enthusiasm for the Empire-building of Cecil Rhodes. From Cambridge he went back to the South Africa of diamond fields and booming gold mines, of growing friction between British and Boers, who had trekked northward from the Cape to the Transvaal to free their rude, patriarchal, Bible-reading lives of uitlander (foreign) rule.

Young, ambitious Barrister Smuts began his political career as a follower of Cecil Rhodes. No disciple ever suffered more heartsickening disillusion. Impatient Cecil Rhodes stood unmasked as one of the plotters of the famed Jameson Raid (1895), which would have pulled sturdy Oom (uncle) Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic into the British sphere. Jan Smuts tasted bitter ashes. None of his original ties to Britain & Empire had come to him by birth; his paternal ancestors had migrated from Holland more than a century before; he himself had grown up as an old-stock Dutchman among alien but ruling British colonials. Now he declaimed against naked imperialism, shed his British citizenship, trekked north, became a burgher and a leader of the Transvaal Republic.

Years of Happiness. Looking back, Jan Smuts says that his Boer War days were his happiest. He came out of them 30 pounds heavier, transformed from a bookish lawyer into a hardened leader of men. On their tough Basuto ponies, he and his tough commando (guerrilla) column made a record march (700 miles in five weeks) across veld and mountain. They repeatedly outwitted Lord Kitchener's proud British Army, which Winston Churchill was covering as a young correspondent. When the rains came, they rode in water, slept in water; they endured cold, hunger, rags, sudden surprise, desperate flight. Through it all, yellow-bearded, slouch-hatted Commandant-General Smuts carried in his saddlebags, along with his biltong (dried venison) and coffee, a Greek Testament and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In retrospect, he seems to have fought not so much for a free Boer State as for a more tolerant British imperialism. But he fought to the very end, to the war's last action, the siege of O'okiep.

In time, the new imperialism came, with Louis Botha as the warm heart and Jan Smuts as the cool brain of the Union of South Africa. Jan Smuts recovered his admiration for the British: "They gave us back--in everything but name--our country. . . . They're a big people." But many a Boer, clinging to the memory of the pioneer Voortrekkers, whose ox wagons and rifles had beaten aside the yellow-brown Hottentots and the black Kaffirs, remained unreconstructed. They called Smuts Rhodes redivivus (Rhodes reborn), or Slim (sly, cunning) Jannie, and other more barbed names.

In World War I the diehards saw a new chance for freedom. Prime Minister Botha and Defense Minister Smuts put down a rebellion of their old comrades-at-arms. Then in 1915, in a smartly led campaign, they captured German South West Africa for the Empire. In 1916 Jan Smuts commanded imperial troops which eventually seized control of German East Africa.

Years of Achievement. The Britain of 1915-16, weary of stalemate and death on the Western Front, heard eagerly of Jan Smuts's colonial victories, made him an honorary lieutenant general in the British Army, summoned him to London. There he was dined & wined, eulogized & lionized. Winston Churchill, who had met Smuts in the Boer War, called him "a new and altogether extraordinary man . . . from the outer marches of Empire." Jan Smuts spoke of himself as "only a simple Boer." But his incisive mind, unbeaten spirit and fresh faith in the British system had a tonic effect. Prime Minister Lloyd George gave him an unofficial post in the War Cabinet.

Jan Smuts, then as now, had a hand in almost everything. He pacified Welsh coal strikers, established a War Priorities Committee, bucked up the public morale, had a good deal to do with organizing the unified R.A.F., and reorganizing London's air-raid defenses, inspected the Western Front, advised on grand strategy and enemy peace feelers, turned down the command of the Palestine campaign.

One day he made a famous speech on empire: for history's greatest association of free peoples, the British Dominions as apart from the British colonies, he proposed a new name, "the British Commonwealth of Nations. . . ."

Years of Unhappiness. Looking back now, Jan Smuts says that the Versailles Treaty days were his unhappiest. In the old Bourbon palace he saw "the crack in life itself," a chill abyss that swallowed his high hopes. From London he brought a plan for a League of Nations, which Woodrow Wilson fused with his own ideas on world organization.

Jan Smuts and the U.S. President worked closely together; both saw the League Covenant as the keystone of peace, the "Magna Carta for the whole of humanity hereafter." From the South African's orderly, architectural mind came the ideas for mandates, sanctions, international bureaus and the League Assembly. Of this contribution to world government, Jan Smuts said later: "All else I have done in my lifetime is as nothing and as dust."

The voice lifted for the League was raised as insistently against other clauses of the treaty. In vain Jan Smuts pleaded for more leniency for Germany. His voice was lost in the wrangling of tired, vindictive men : Clemenceau in a tantrum, Lloyd George taunting, the pair of them too much for Wilson. Smuts, like the others in the glittering Hall of Mirrors, signed the "monstrous" document when it was done. But he warned them: "This treaty is not the peace. . . . The real peace must still come." Jan Smuts was a prophet whose honor grew scant in his own country. Back in South Africa's race-muddied politics, he fell heir to the Prime Minister's mantle when Louis Botha died in 1919. But the tide of Boer chauvinism ran strong; day after day the nationalists vilified Slim Jannie as England's tool. Aided by Laborites who resented Smuts's harsh repression of strikers in the Rand gold fields, the Nationalists won the election of 1924.

Shrewd, Anglophobic General the Hon rable James Barry Munnik Hertzog be came Prime Minister. After 14 years in the Government, Jan Smuts retreated to the opposition benches in Cape Town's Parliament.

Years of Reflection. Now, at long last, Jan Smuts found time to turn to his farm house, rambling, tin-walled Doornkloof, on the veld not far from Pretoria. He watched his kindly, hospitable wife "Isie" (born Sybella Margaretha Krige, courted in his college days at Stellenbosch -- see cut -- while they studied Greek and the evolution of personality) pasting up her scrapbook (now no or more volumes) of newspaper clippings on Jan Smuts. He indulged his great fondness for children --his two sons and four daughters, his growing tribe of grandchildren. Of his family he once said sadly that they were with him much too seldom: "I am a distinguished stranger to them." At Doornkloof he was the botanist, striding across the grassland with walking stick and specimen case. He played the farmer, inspecting his pedigreed cows. He visited his Kaffir hands, paternally patted scruffy pickaninny heads, handed out sweets, pondered perhaps in his heart what destiny had reserved for these blacks, whose continent he saw as the white man's grand prize.

Best of all, he could retire to his sanctum sanctorum : Doornkloof 's treasured, book-and-memento-stocked library. There he browsed through Whitman, Bacon, Plato, Leibnitz, Darwin, Spinoza. There he wrote a philosophical book that had been a companion of his mind since Cambridge days: Holism and Evolution.

In this labor of love, Jan Smuts ex pounded his "idea of the whole," the essense of his life work and his unshakable optimism : that the whole is always greater than its parts, everywhere in the universe-- among electrons and protons, plants and animals, minds and personalities, conflicts and confusions of men, empires and world orders -- the forces of cooperation, fusion, "holism" are at work. (Philosopher Smuts derived "holism" from the Greek holos, or whole.)

Years of Return. World War II plunked Jan Smuts into the saddle again. Three days after Britain declared war on Germany, a passionate debate shook the Cape Town Parliament. Prime Minister Hertzog said flatly: "I sympathize with Hitler." Deputy Prime Minister Jan Smuts (he had re-entered the Government in

1933 on a coalition ticket) proposed that the Union ally herself with Britain. His argument won--by a narrow majority. Next day Jan Smuts became Prime Minister. Next day his Government declared war on Germany. Cocky Adolf Hitler, it was said, laughed when he heard the news.

To most of his countrymen nowadays Jan Smuts is not so much Slim Jannie as Oubaas, the Old Master. As in World War I, he has been the most dynamic among Dominion leaders. As in World War I, by wisdom, craft and sheer power of personality, he took his divided people into the war on England's side. As in World War I, his voice is second to no man's, save Winston Churchill's, in Empire councils; but now he speaks as the respected sage.

Sometimes, as last November in London, the sage speaks openly to the Empire (TIME, Dec. 13), and the Empire and all the world weigh his words. His vision, as always, is holistic: to him the Commonwealth & Empire is "a very great world community," a fusion in which might well be fused other nations--say, the powers of Western Europe. Within the

Commonwealth & Empire itself there might well be more fusion. Instead of Britain, the Dominions might supervise near by colonies. For example, Jan Smuts would like to see his Union of South Africa become part of a greater union of all Africa south of the Congo.

Britons know that Jan Smuts has grown great under their Empire; that if in his time their Empire has diminished in stature, it would have diminished further without him. (Cabled TIME'S much-traveled London Correspondent Walter Graebner, after interviewing Smuts last week: "Smuts is one of the few men I have met since I came abroad in 1937 whom I would unhesitatingly call 'great.' ") But in his greatness, as in himself, there is an aloof austerity. When Jan Smuts considers greatness in others, he puts Wilson, the idealist, above Lincoln, the humanitarian.

Land of Division. South Africa's unholistic divisions tempered Jan Smuts's holistic greatness. His is a rugged, challenging land of vineyards and cattle ranches, of vast deserts and wind-whipped mountains, of cities like Johannesburg built on gold and cities like Kimberley built on diamonds, of lonely prairies where the farmer cannot see the smoke of his neighbor's chimney, of vanishing Hottentots, and Zulus still proud of their tribal glory, of a Negro proletariat, of Boers who feel that this land is their home and of Britons who still look across the seas as exiled sons.

South Africa is neither the biggest nor the most important dominion. Australia and Canada are greater in area, effective manpower and vital resources. At state dinners it is Canada's Mackenzie King, not Smuts, who sits next to Churchill. But South Africa remains a key dominion. It is a key to Empire lines: it watches at the confluence of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. It is a key to Empire morale: so long as it stands by Britain, it bears classic witness, in British eyes, to the basic soundness, the durability of the British Commonwealth & Empire.

Land of Races. The Union's 2,000,000 whites are 45% British stock, 55% Afrikaner (South African Dutch). They dominate 7,000,000 blacks, who are politically inarticulate, socially and economically depressed, the potent quantity X in South Africa's future, as Jan Smuts well knows. Many (and, at times, most) of the Union's Afrikaners are anti-British, susceptible to Nazi racial dogma, at least outwardly in favor of cutting Commonwealth ties.

The result, at times of crisis, has been a highly unstable majority, which in two wars has been kept in line only by the will and personality of Jan Smuts. Few of the fellow Afrikaners who go along with him share his love for Britain; but few Afrikaners, for all their talk, would really dare to cut entirely loose from Britain. Not until 1943, when the most anti-British dolts had to agree with Smuts that he and Britain were on the winning side, did the harassed Prime Minister and his United Party win a solid majority in Parliament. Smuts's chief political opponent and onetime Sunday Schoolfellow, myopic Dr. Daniel Franc,ois Malan, leader of the Nationalists, still beats the drum of South African isolationism, but the noise seems to grow fainter.

For a New World. As domestic pressure eases, Jan Smuts shows a sharpening distaste for his country's bread-&-butter politics. More & more Smuts tends to leave affairs at home to his able heir apparent, Hon. Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr. Minister of Finance and Education, and his loyal "Harry Hopkins," Louis Esselen. More & more he tends to see himself in the role he has always cherished: an enlightened, holistic statesman of the Empire and the World. He likes to move at the center of things: he popped up rather unexpectedly at the Cairo Conference last November and met Franklin Roosevelt for the first time (they had often talked over the transatlantic phone). Later Smuts said: "We two old Dutchmen get along splendidly!"

Now, sitting at his desk in London, Jan Smuts's thoughts are first of all on the coming shape of Europe, in which he foresees Russia as the colossus, France as a lesser nation, Britain in need of a fresh orientation of power. He says, emphasizing his words by drawing, with his index finger, neat holistic circles in the air: "The axis of the new world, the greatest new development today, is the cooperation of America and the Commonwealth."

Bearded, unforgiving Boers, who have spent their lives fighting bearded, undeviating Slim Jannie, still do not like to hear of him beside an English princess, or playing the international game. But now they pay him the ultimate tribute: "We hate his guts, but dammit, he's still an Afrikaner who can teach the uitlanders!"

Britons, willing enough to be taught by Jan Smuts, never think of him as an Afrikaner. They think of him as their elder counselor. In drawing rooms and pubs, when Jan Smuts's dry, old man's voice comes over the radio, the small talk and the bar laughter hushes, and they listen quietly; he is not quite one of themselves, but they respect him and are proud of him.

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