"Nobody Expected It!"

A quiet dinner chez Thomas William Lamont last week appropriately closed the brief U. S. visit of the most famed living native-born South African. No blackamoor is General Rt. Hon. Jan Christiaan Smuts. Indeed he roused the ire of U. S. blackamoors by alluding to their African ancestors and relatives as "the most patient of all animals" (TIME, Jan. 20). But Europeans will not be angry at what Africa's slim* Smuts said of Europe last week, just before he sailed on the Ile de France. Said he:

"There is an impression in America that Europe is decadent, on the down grade, because of the War. Let me assure you that Europe was never younger than today! It is almost as if the forces of youth had been released anew in the Old World.

"Europe is freer, more democratic than before. It is a most curious aftereffect of the War: nobody would have expected it! Class distinctions are going. The haremlike isolation of women is going or gone. The Old Europe is dead, the New Europe not yet born. We are living in a time of transition."

*His Dutch nickname, "slim Jannie," means "shrewd Jannie," not "slender Jannie."

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