Smuts: A Journey with Maps
| Date | 01 March 1967 |
| Published date | 01 March 1967 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206702200107 |
| Author | A. P. Thornton |
| Subject Matter | Review Article |
Review
Articles
A.
P
Thornton,
Uimversity
of
Toronto
Smuts:
A
Journey
With
Maps
Sir
Keith
Hancock's
biography
of
Jan
Smuts,
the
first
volume
of
which
appeared
in
1962
and
was
reviewed
by
the present
writer
in
this
journal,:
has
now been
complemented
by
four
massive
volumes
of
letters
and
papers
2
-as
much
a
monument
to
the
technical
expertise
of
the
Cambridge Umversity
Press
as
to
the
range
of
the
statesman
himself.
This
documentation
has
been selected
from
the
archive
that
has
been
brought together
since
Smuts' death
in
1950,
at
the
University
of
Cape Town,
under
the
direction
of
Dr. Jean
van
der
Poel.
The
Han-
cock
biography takes
its
hero
to
the
Versailles
settlement
of
1919,
which
he
signed
but
disagreed
with:
the
letters
accompany his
journey,
each
part
of
It
planned,
to
that
same
time,
place,
and
state
of mind.
Sir
Keith
is
now
working
on
the
second
and
final
volume
of
the
biography
and
when
this
has
been
published
a
second
swathe
of
documentary
material
will
appear.
By
the
time
the
whole
exercise
has
been completed,
therefore,
there
will
be
at
least ten
volumes
dealing
with
Smuts'
career
on
the
shelf
of
every
scholar
who
can
afford
them
and
whose business
concerns
him
with
the
development
of
South Africa,
with
inter-imperal
relations,
with
the
Royal
Air
Force, with
the
League
of
Nations,
with
the
British
Commonwealth,
with
the
United
Nations,
with
the
twentieth-
century
revolution
brought
about
by
two
world
wars,
and
with
a
host
of
other
matters
in
which
Smuts,
a
factotum
without
parallel
in
his
time,
came
to
deal.
Smuts was
a
constant
man.
Thoughts
that
came
to
him
he
kept.
The
people
he
was
writing
to
in
1895
he
continued
to
write
to.
The
affections
he
bestowed
he
honoured.
The
friends
he found
did
not
leave
him.
It
is
very
noticeable
however
that
many
of
these
tried
to change
him, and
equally
obvious
that
all
of
them
had
to
give
this
up
as
a
bad
Job.
From
these
letters
and
papers
here
collected
emerges
the
same
image
that
the
biography
displayed:
that
of
a
man
who when
his
mind
was
once
made
up
saw no
reason
to change
it,
of
a
man
who
valued
contact with
others
not
for
intellectual but
for
humane reasons,
of
one who
knew himself
to
be
a
solitary
but
who
could
never
bring
him-
self
to
indulge
in
any
kind
of
"popular" activity.
He
had
no
real
love
for
the
political
process,
which
was probably
the
reason
why
he
never
found
the
skill
at
it
that
lesser
men
could
seize
on-but
he
could
never
find
anything
much
either
in
law
or
in
philosophy
to
accommodate
his
1
International
Journal
vol.
XVIII,
No. 2,
Spring
1963, pp.
224-6.
2
W
K.
Hancock
and
iean
van
der
Poel
eds,
Selections
from
the
Smuts
Papers.
(London:
Cambridge
University Press,
1966.)
VoIs.
I-II,
75/-
each;
vol.
IV
55/-
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