ould you mind if I asked him to dine with us?"

When I assured him that I would be delighted, the Prime Minister got up,
walked over to Cresswell and asked him to join us, which he did.

The significant part of this apparently simple performance, which had
its important outcome, was this. Colonel F. H. P. Cresswell is the
leader of the Labour Party in South Africa. By profession a mining
engineer, he led the forces of revolt in the historic industrial
upheaval in the Rand in what Smuts denounced as a "Syndicalist
Conspiracy." Riot, bloodshed, and confusion reigned for a considerable
period at Johannesburg and large bodies of troops had to be called out
to restore order. At the very moment that we sat down to dine that night
no one knew just what Cresswell and the Labourites with their new-won
power would do. Smuts, as Minister of Finance, had deported some of
Cresswell's men and Cresswell himself narrowly escaped drastic
punishment.

When Smuts brought Cresswell over he said jokingly to me:

"Cresswell is a good fellow but I came near sending him to jail once."

Cresswell beamed and the three of us amiably discussed various topics
until the gong sounded for the assembling of the House.

What was the result? Before I left Capetown and when the first of the
few occasions which tested the real voting strength of Parliament arose,
Cresswell and some of his adherents voted with Smuts. I tell this little
story to show that the man who today holds the destiny of South Africa
in his hands is as skillful a diplomat as he is soldier and statesman.

It was at one of these quiet dinners with Smuts at the House that he
first spoke about Nationalism. He said: "The war gave Nationalism its
death blow. But as a matter of fact Nationalism committed suicide in the
war."

"But what is Nationalism?" I asked him.

"A water-tight nation in a water-tight compartment," he replied. "It is
a process of regimentation like the old Germany that will soon merge
into a new Internationalism. What seems to be at this moment an orgy of
Nationalism in South Africa or elsewhere is merely its death gasp. The
New World will be a world of individualism dominated by Britain and
America.

"What about the future?" I asked him. His answer was:

"The safety of the future depends upon Federation, upon a League of
Nations that will develop along economic and not purely sentimental
lines. The New Internationalism will not stop war but it can regulate
ex