1919 Парис буюу дэлхийг өөрчилсан 6 сар 1-р хэсэг

speeches, Smuts could, above all the other peacemakers, sing to them.195 Smuts had advised on the great issues of the war; it was natural that he would also advise on the peace.

Smuts had greeted Wilson’s appearance on the world stage with enthusiasm. “It is this moral idealism and this vision of a better world which has up-borne us through the dark night of this war,” he told a group of American newspapermen. The world was shattered but there now lay before it a gigantic opportunity. “It is for us to labour in the remaking of that world to better ends, to plan its international reorganization on lines of universal freedom and justice, and to re-establish among the classes and nations that good-will which is the only sure foundation for any enduring international system.” The words, and the exhortations, poured out.

“Let us not underrate our opportunity,” he cried to a weary world.

“The age of miracles is never past.” Perhaps they had come to the moment when they could end war itself forever.196 What Smuts said less loudly was that the League of Nations could also be useful to the British empire. In December 1918 he prepared one of his dazzling analyses of the world for his British colleagues. With Austria-Hungary gone, Russia in turmoil and Germany defeated, there were only three major powers left in the world: the British empire, the United States and France. The French could not be trusted. They were rivals to the British in Africa and in the Middle East. (The French returned Smuts’s antipathy, especially after he inadvertently left some of his confidential papers behind at a meeting in Paris.) It made perfect sense, Smuts argued, for the British to look to the United States for friendship and cooperation.

“Language, interest, and ideals alike” had marked out their common path. The best way to get the Americans to realize this was to support the League. Wilson, everyone knew, thought the League his most important task; if he got British support, he would probably drop awkward issues such as his insistence on freedom of the seas.197 Smuts set himself to put what he described as Wilson’s “rather nebulous ideas” into coherent form. Working at great speed, he wrote what he modestly called “A Practical Suggestion.” A general