The Caravan Moves On

The reluctance of United Nations leaders to get down to the subject of peace aims seemed about to be vigorously challenged. To London last week flew South Africa's Prime Minister Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts, and the distinguished mind of the slim, bearded old soldier-philosopher was ranging over the world of the future. Before plunging into conferences with Winston Churchill's War Cabinet, he said:

"With the coming of the offensive stage in our war effort, our thoughts should also begin to turn to the end, and to the conditions which may follow the end, of this greatest tragedy in the history of our race. . . . I hope that during this week or two I may have an opportunity to exchange thoughts with the leaders of this most important of all problems before us--the winning of the peace to follow the winning of the war."

There was no doubt about the general kind of future Prime Minister Smuts wanted to see. He was one of Woodrow Wilson's stoutest fighters for the League of Nations; he savagely attacked the Versailles Treaty while its ink was still wet. To David Lloyd George he wrote prophetically: "This Treaty breathes a poisonous spirit of revenge which may yet scorch the fair face, not of a corner of Europe, but of Europe." Of his yapping nationalistic political enemies in Africa he has often said: "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

Prime Minister Smuts was scheduled soon to address a special assembly of both Houses of Parliament--the first ever called to hear a Dominion statesman. His audience could be sure that the Dominions' Smuts would be global in his concern.

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