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To our great disappointment an order came up to the Convoy that all cameras were to be sent back to England, and everyone rushed round frantically finishing off their rolls of films. Lowson appeared and took one of the cook-house "staff" armed with kettles and more or less covered with smuts. It was rightly entitled, "The abomination of desolation" when it came to be gummed into my War Album!
At first I was rather in the dark as to what it all meant until we discovered that the British had won Smuts' position, and from it were firing upon us. We fell down flat behind the nearest "klips" and returned the fire, but were at a disadvantage, since the British were above us. I never heard where General Smuts and his burghers finally got to.
Smuts, with his uncanny sense of prophecy, foretold the economic consequences of the peace. Looking ahead he visualized a surly and unrepentant Germany, unwilling to pay the price of folly; a bitter and disappointed Austria gasping for economic breath; an aroused and indignant Italy raging with revolt all the chaos that spells "peace" today.
Smuts had entrusted the inflammatory work in the midlands to local leaders before he left the district, and now set himself to trespass beyond the furthest point reached by Scheepers, and to make a bold entry into the extreme S.W. corner of the Cape Colony. Early in November he penetrated into the Ceres district, where he was less than 100 miles in a direct line from Capetown.
At that time Russia redeemed from autocracy looked to be a bulwark of Allied victory. The night we talked about Russia at Capetown she had become the prey of red terror and the plaything of organized assassination. Smuts looked rather wistful when he said: "You cannot defeat Russia. Napoleon learned this to his cost and so will the rest of the world.
The great question in the correspondence in April between us and the British Government was the question of independence; and now, after having consulted the nation, we come here and say that we are prepared to sacrifice in some degree our independence, and we indicate how far we will give it up. And, as General Smuts has said, that is the basis which we have laid down in our present proposal."
It seemed almost impossible that nine miles away at Capetown raged the storm that almost within the hour would again claim him as its central figure. The Smuts statements that I have quoted were made long before the Presidential election in America.
Van Deventer was successful, and at Moschi blocked the Germans' retreat westwards; they managed, however, to slip away south-eastwards by Lake Jipe, but the Kilimanjaro massif had been cleared, and Smuts established his headquarters at Moschi.
The other was the day when he gave self-government to South Africa, and won the tribute thus nobly rendered by General Smuts: "The Boer War was supplemented, and compensated for, by one of the wisest political settlements ever made in the history of the British Empire, and in reckoning up the list of Empire-builders I hope the name of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who brought into being a united South Africa, will never be forgotten."
General T. Smuts could not be present, as he was busy keeping Colonel Bullock amused. At this meeting we discussed the general situation, and decided to send a letter to President Steyn, but our communication afterwards fell into the enemy's hands. In accordance with this letter, President Steyn and Generals De Wet and De la Rey joined our Government, and a meeting was held later on.
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