JAN C. SMUTS

PEACE AND EMPIRE

This speech is by a very remarkable man upon an extraordinary occasion. General Smuts was a resourceful and intrepid commander of the Boers against the English. Fifteen years later he was commander of the British forces in the East African campaign which destroyed the German power. But his ultimate fame may well rest less on his brilliant military exploits than upon his services to peace-in his advocacy of the League of Nations, in his promotion of the Irish Settlement, and in his leadership of South Africa as a member of the British Federation.

The speech was delivered before the Conference of Prime Ministers and Representatives of the United Kingdom, the Dominions, and India, held from June 20 to August 5, 1921, in London. The conference was opened by Mr. Lloyd George, Prime Minister of Great Britain, and General Smuts spoke as Prime Minister of South Africa. The Conference doubtless marks a new epoch in imperial federation. Another speech by General Smuts is given in Volume III.

I SHOULD like to associate myself with what has been said by the Prime Minister of Australia in regard to the speech which you made yesterday, and, in particular, speaking on behalf of South Africa, I should like to thank you very, very much for the reference you made to General Botha. General Botha was not only a great South African, but a great man, and his name will remain as one of the greatest men in the history of the British Empire, and I think the references made to him yesterday were fully justified. You opened yesterday, Mr. Prime Minister, in a speech, if I may say so, of such power and brilliance, that it is very difficult for us, in fact, impossible for me, to follow on, but we agreed yesterday that the Prime Ministers should each make a general preliminary statement,

and so I proceed to make a few remarks upon the topics on which we are called upon to deal here.

I think a discussion like this may be useful, because it will disclose in a preliminary and general way the attitude taken up by the Dominions on the topics which we have come here to discuss. I shall not attempt to break fresh ground in the few remarks I am going to make. I am going to adhere more or less to the tenor of what I said in the South African Parliament when the subject matters of this Conference were under debate. What I said was generally approved in Parliament and by the public in South Africa, and I shall therefore adhere to what I said there. I said on that occasion that what the world most needs to-day is peace, a return to a peaceful temper and to the resumption of peaceful and normal industry. To my mind that is the test of all true policy to-day. Peace is wanted by the world. Peace is wanted especially by the peoples of the British Empire. We are a peaceful Empire, our very nature is such that peace is necessary for us. We have no military aims to serve, we have no militaristic ideals, and it is only in a peaceful world that our ideals can be realized. It should, therefore, be the main, in fact, the only object of British policy to secure real peace for the Empire and the world generally. Now the Prime Minister stated in his speech what progress has been made toward the attainment of this ideal. He pointed out that some of the matters which gave us the greatest trouble in Paris had been settled. The question of reparations, which was, perhaps, the most difficult and intricate with which we had to deal in Paris, has finally, after some years of debate and trouble, been eliminated, in a settlement which, I venture to hope, will prove final and workable. That is a very great advance. The other great advance that has been made and it is an enormous advance-is the final disarmament of Germany. That the greatest military Empire that has ever existed in history should be reduced to a peace establishment of 100,000 men is something which I considered practically impossible. It is a great achievement, so far-reaching, indeed, that it ought to become the basis of a new departure in world policy. We cannot stop with Germany, we cannot stop with the disarmament of Germany.

It is impossible for us to continue to envisage the future of the world from the point of view of war. I believe it is impossible for us to contemplate the piling up of armaments in the future of the world and the exhaustion of our very limited remaining resources in order to carry out a policy of that kind.

Such a policy would be criminal, it would be the betrayal of the causes for which we fought during the War, and if we embarked on such a policy it would be our undoing. If we were to go forward into the future staggering under the load of military and naval armaments whilst our competitors in Central Europe were free from the incubus of great armies, we should be severely handicapped, and in the end we should have the fruits of victory lost to us by our post-war policy. Already circumstances are developing on those lines. Already under the operation of inexorable economic factors we find that the position is developing to the advantage of Central Europe. The depreciation of their currencies, the universal depreciation of currencies, and the unsettlement of the exchanges are having the effect of practical repudiation of liabilities on the part of a large part of the Continent. If we add to our financial responsibilities and have, in addition, to pile on the fresh burdens of new armies and navies I am afraid the future for us is very dark indeed, and we shall in the long run lose all we have won on the field of battle.

Armaments depend upon policy, and therefore I press very strongly that our policy should be such as to make the race for armaments impossible. That should be the cardinal feature of our foreign policy. We should not go into the future under this awful handicap of having to support great armaments, build new fleets, raise new armies, whilst our economic competitors are free of that liability under the Peace Treaty. The most fatal mistake of all, in my humble opinion, would be a race of armaments against America. America is the nation that is closest to us in all the human ties. The Dominions look upon her as the oldest of them. She is the relation with whom we most closely agree, and with whom we can most cordially work together. She left our circle a long time ago because of a great historic mistake. I am not sure that a wise

policy after the great events through which we have recently passed might not repair the effects of that great historic error, and once more bring America on to lines of general coöperation with the British Empire. America, after all, has proved a stanch and tried friend during the War. She came in late because she did not realize what was at stake. In the very darkest hour of the War she came in and ranged herself on our side. That was, I believe, the determining factor in the victory of our great cause.

Since the War we have somewhat drifted apart. I need not go into the story-I do not know the whole story-it is only known to you here. There are matters on which we have not seen eye to eye, to some extent springing from what happened at Paris and also from mistakes made by statesmen. But these mistakes do not affect the fundamental attitude of the two peoples. To my mind it seems clear that the only path of safety for the British Empire is a path on which she can walk together with America. In saying this I do not wish to be understood as advocating an American alliance. Nothing of the kind. I do not advocate an alliance or any exclusive arrangement with America. It would be undesirable, it would be impossible and unnecessary. The British Empire is not in need of exclusive allies. It emerged from the War quite the greatest Power in the world, and it is only unwisdom or unsound policy that could rob her of that great position. She does not want exclusive alliances. What she wants to see established is more universal friendship in the world. The nations of the British Empire wish to make all the nations of the world more friendly to each other. We wish to remove grounds for misunderstandings and causes of friction, and to bring together all the free peoples of the world in a system of friendly conferences and consultations in regard to their difficulties. We wish to see a real Society of Nations, away from the old ideas and practices of national domination or imperial domination, which were the real root causes of the Great War. No, not in alliances, in any exclusive alliances, but in a new spirit of amity and coöperation do we seek the solution of the problems of the future. Although America is not a member of the League of Nations, there is no doubt that coöperation between her and the British Empire

would be the easy and natural thing, and there is no doubt it would be the wise thing.

In shaping our course for the future, we must bear in mind that the whole world position has radically altered as a result of the War. Europe is no longer what she was, and the power and the position which she once occupied in the world has been largely lost. The great Empires have disappeared. Austria will never rise again. Russia and Germany will no doubt revive, but not in this generation nor in the next; and when they do, they may be very different countries in a world which may be a very different world. The position, therefore, has completely altered. The old viewpoint from which we considered Europe has completely altered. She suffers from an exhaustion, which is the most appalling fact of history; and the victorious countries of Europe are not much better off than the vanquished. No, the scene has shifted on the great stage. To my mind that is the most important fact in the world situation to-day, and the fact to which our foreign policy should have special regard. Our temptation is still to look upon the European stage as of the first importance. It is no longer so; and I suggest we should not be too deeply occupied with it. Let us be friendly and helpful all round to the best of our ability, but let us not be too deeply involved in it. The fires are still burning there, the pot is occasionally boiling over, but there are not really firstrate events any more. This state of affairs in Central Europe will probably continue for many years to come, and no act on our part could very largely alter the situation. Therefore, not from feelings of selfishness, but in a spirit of wisdom, one would counsel prudence and reserve in our Continental commitments, and that we do not let ourselves in for European entanglements more than is necessary, and that we be impartial, friendly and helpful to all alike, and avoid any partisan attitude in the concerns of the continent of Europe. Undoubtedly the scene has shifted away from Europe to the Far East and to the Pacific. The problems of the Pacific are to my mind the world problems of the next fifty years or more. In these problems we are, as an Empire, very vitally interested. Three of the Dominions border on the Pacific; India is next door; there, too, are the United States and Japan. There, also, is China;