ability to
environment that is little short of amazing.

IV

Now let us turn to another and less conspicuous South African whose
point of view, imperial, personal and patriotic, is the exact opposite
of that of Smuts. Throughout this chapter has run the strain of Hertzog,
first the Boer General fighting gallantly in the field with Smuts as
youthful comrade; then the member of the Botha Cabinet; later the bitter
insurgent, and now the implacable foe of the order that he helped to
establish. What manner of man is he and what has he to say?

I talked to him one afternoon when he left the floor leadership to his
chief lieutenant, a son of the late President Steyn of the Orange Free
State. Like his father, who called himself "President" to the end of his
life although his little republic had slipped away from him, he has
never really yielded to English rule.

We adjourned to the smoking room where we had the inevitable cup of
South African coffee. I was prepared to find a fanatic and fire-eater.
Instead I faced a thin, undersized man who looked anything but a general
and statesman. Put him against the background of a small New England
town and you would take him for an American country lawyer. He resembles
the student more than the soldier and, like many Boers, speaks English
with a British accent. Nor is he without force. No man can play the role
that he has played in South Africa those past twenty-five years without
having substance in him.

When I asked him to state his case he said:

"The republican idea is as old as South Africa. There was a republic
before the British arrived. The idea came from the American Revolution
and the inspiration was Washington. The Great Trek of 1836 was a protest
very much like the one we are making today.

"President Wilson articulated the Boer feeling with his gospel of
self-determination. He also voiced the aspirations of Ireland, India and
Egypt. It is a great world idea--a deep moral conviction of mankind,
this right of the individual state, as of the individual for freedom.

"Never again will Transvaal and Orange Free State history be repeated.
No matter how a nation covets another--and I refer to British
covetousness,--if the nation coveted is able to govern itself it cannot
and must not be assimilated. It is one result of the Great War."

"What is the Nationalist ideal?" I asked.

"It is the right to self-rule," replied Hertzog. "But there must be no
conflict if it can