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Towards the end of his life my father Arthur Gillett remarked to me: 'The great thing in our lives has been our friendship with Jannie.' It lasted half a century from the time of the Boer War until the death of Smuts in 1950. Winston Churchill wrote to his widow describing him as 'a warrior-statesman and philosopher, who was probably more fitted to guide struggling and blundering humanity through its sufferings and perils towards a better day, than anyone who lived in any country during his epoch.' King George VI added 'The force of his intellect has enriched the wisdom of the whole human race.'
Unfortunately when I wrote a page about Smuts for a textbook for schools dealing with the United Nations, which was produced for the United Nations Association and adopted by the UN for translation into many languages, it was submitted to the African National Congress for their approval and then rejected at their request. This was unjust to him. He spoke against the colour bar (apartheid) at Stellenbosch University and when he came home that evening he retold the story of an African Chief, which he had told the students. 'The chief inflicted a crushing defeat on some Boer troops but then went to plead for peace. Would you pass a colour bar against a wise man like that?' he asked the audience. It is easy to dismiss the reputation of leaders of a past era, by applying contemporary values and end up with no one to admire. Smuts was the one leading politician to receive an African in his home. When he entered a football stadium for a rugby match against the New Zealanders, the crowd of ‘coloured people’ cheered Smuts

not the Prime Minister, the crowd then went on to cheer the New Zealanders not the South African team! Smuts was often kept out of power by being called a 'native lover.' It is the fate of many politicians to be too radical for some and too conservative for others, but I never heard him complain. In a sense he had no reason to be dissatisfied by his achievements. After military defeats in the Boer War he was able to help General Botha win the independence of South Africa by negotiation.
Within fifteen years he was invited to join the Imperial War Cabinet in the middle of the First World War. In the Versailles Treaty he failed to remove the desire for revenge expressed by Clemenceau, which encouraged the Germans to foment the Second World War. His life, as he might have said, was full of shadows but the sunshine made them all, the motto inscribed on one of the steamers that took us to South Africa. He must have been informed of the making of nuclear bombs, because he was drawn into consultation with Churchill from time to time. In his letters to my parents after the bombs were dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he wrote 'There can never be a war again.' The context provided no explanation of the way he arrived at this conclusion. Did he mean governments fearing a nuclear war would allow the United Nations to insist on settling their disputes in courts of law, or did he mean that war would end the day it began on account of the massive devastation? He was so optimistic in general that, I would guess he meant the first. His biographer Professor Hancock went so far as to call the first volume of his work The Sanguine Years . But there would be justification for using the same title for the second half of his life.
In a period of pessimism when politicians appear to be corrupt, journalists cynical, and businessmen slaves of profit, it is those who bring positive news who are capable of giving a lead by inviting their audiences to look to the future eagerly. In speaking to a meeting of fifteen hundred people and three thousand more in overflow rooms he spoke in this way: 'Let the greatest war in history be the prelude to the greatest peace. To make such will be the greatest glory of our age and its noblest bequest to the generations to come.' These were not empty words. In the First World War he had written The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion , at a corner of

our big dining room table. With this booklet which was used by President Wilson in setting up the League, it became the essential precursor of the United Nations, and Smuts lived long enough to give the opening address to the San Francisco Conference for establishing the United Nations, nearly thirty years later.
When writing a book entitled Men Against War, I chose Smuts for one of the eight biographies, not because I knew more about him than the others candidates for inclusion, but because it seemed important to show that some military people have done much for peace, other than 'fighting' for it! Not because there was a shortage among those who looked to political institutions such as the League of Nations and the United Nations and to the development of international law, but because Smuts combined these achievements with others. He opposed all those provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, which led to the Second World War. He insisted that the terms of peace were a form of revenge by crippling Germany. 'We cannot destroy Germany without destroying Europe … we cannot save Europe without the cooperation of Germany.' He wrote. Speaking to the British delegation he said 'If the Germans are prepared to swallow the treaty … it will make the operation of the League of Nations impossible: the fires will be kept burning and the pot be kept boiling until it again boils over.'
It was about this time that John Maynard Keynes wrote his important book The Economic Consequences of the Peace , with some help from a suggestion from my mother. Smuts exclaimed on one occasion 'I want no overwhelming victory.' This, when applied to the Boer War, meant making peace before being forced to do so, thus preventing a desire for revenge fomenting the desire for a victory later. When applied to the First World War it meant preventing Clemenceau,

ehalf of the French government, demanding reparations for far beyond what could be paid, if it had been successful it would have either prevented Hitler's rise to power or at least removed the sting from his speeches. A Carthaginian peace, as Smuts termed it, referring to Cato's regularly repeated four-word speech 'Carthage must be destroyed,' is both foolish and wrong, Smuts argued.
Despite writing frequently to those mainly concerned he had to give way to Prime Minister Botha's need for signing on behalf of South Africa, despite all the letters to his wife, my aunts and parents suggesting that he would protest by refusing to sign, as described by Hancock. 'It is a terrible document, not a peace treaty but a war treaty, and I am troubled in my conscience.' He wrote to his wife. If any people were entitled to keep writing on this subject by virtue of experience it was certain that Smuts was one of them. He had identified one of the causes of war and shown how it could be overcome. He knew it was not easy from the difficulty the British and Boer South Africans found in overcoming the hatreds engendered by the Boer War. Smuts spent much of his public life seeking reconciliation between Boers and British in South Africa. Reconciliation is often a thankless task and he suffered for it politically by having to serve under nationalistic Prime Ministers belonging to the Nationalist Party when a coalition was formed.
Few had suffered more in the Boer War or distinguished themselves more, nevertheless people grumbled. They never forgave Smuts for changing sides as they saw it, and never associated themselves with the thought that: 'You can have the Boers as opponents or you can have us as friends.' The offer made to the British Liberal Prime Minister Cambell-Bannerman, before home rule for South Africa was wisely granted.
Fortunately Smuts was much more than a wise military statesman. He was famed as a philosopher after completing his two-volume work on Holism and Evolution . It recorded his reflections on nature, the universe, and existence, and would therefore be beyond me to think that I understood it well. On the other hand it is easy to start pondering some of the issues it raised. If, for example, a cell is based on a cooperative principle leading towards its own replication, at what point in the history of the Earth did this begin? The scientists did not take kindly to the implications that they had anything to learn from philosophers. Being inclined to eclectic conclusions, I would be prepared to argue in favour of periods of analytical thinking being followed by periods devoted to holism. The extreme specialists from the present are more apt to favour this view. I have always regretted my refusal to travel to South Africa to spend my last long vacation talking philosophy and walking with Oom Jannie, as we always called him, on the fa

und Doornkloof. I was shocked by my parent's extravagance, but there was also a young lady at that time, who influenced my decision.
Another feature of the Smuts’ book was the proposal for a new field of study which would be called 'personology,' a suggestion which the psychologists and psychiatrists did not take to kindly, but which has a strong appeal to teachers.
Mediators and diplomats attempt to make friends with unlikely people, sometimes they sound as insincere as salesmen because they have an axe to grind. They might benefit from some help from personology, particularly if it were to be reinforced by believing in there being good in everyone, as Quakers try to do. Teachers of difficult or emotionally disturbed children are taught to find out how their pupils were treated at home, how their personalities were formed, so as to have more sympathy for them.
Despite the criticisms of Holism as presented by Smuts it was a very great achievement, considering the time he had available for writing and that his library at Doornkloof was his main resource. Professor Hancock calculated that Smuts had written the 140,000 words in 29 weeks, nearly 700 words a day, while serving as leader of the Opposition. My mother was a great help to him by acting as his reader. Astonishingly large parcels of books arrived from Blackwell's bookshop from time to time. She read them or skimmed through them with understanding, separating those she thought he would wish to read, and posting them to Doornkloof, from those, which she considered of less interest, which were returned to the bookshop. Her degree which, combined philosophy and political economy, was exactly what she needed for this welcome task, to help Jannie's work as a politician, peacemaker, and philosopher.
The weekly exchange of letters often dealt with the books my mother had read, and the family read aloud Oom Jannie's replies when we were older, for discussion. In addition to philosophy, which sometimes took the form of communing with Nature, often when riding one of his horses, he had farms to supervise, and he was a keen botanist, especially in regard to South African grasses in which he was one of half-a-dozen experts. He might be regarded as both a Renaissance Man and as an example of Plato's philosopher-kings who were to be trained not just to rule but also to rule wi

sdom.
This was the man who came to London in 1917 at the age of forty-seven from fighting first in German South West Africa and afterwards in German East Africa. He was to attend an Imperial conference of representatives of the Dominions but was soon offered various posts by Lloyd George, the Prime Minister who followed Asquith. He ended up becoming a member of the War Cabinet, though the British Constitution did not provide for any such appointments. The question arose whether he would accept a constituency to regularise his position, but that offer he refused. Already towns and universities seemed to be queuing up to honour him. He brought words of encouragement and hope at a time when the German submarines were threatening the sparse food rations in Britain. As a boy of three I remember the lack of sugar and the black treacle with my porridge, and Oom Jannie bringing boxes of sweets for us, something which became unobtainable in Oxford.
He came to us at weekends for the most part. Like one of John Macmurray's 'real people,' we felt his presence as soon as he entered the house. My first memory at the age of two was of his car. Cars were a great rarity in those days. In the road near our house the Hansom cabs with their horses stood instead of taxis, and when we went to the station we hired a Victoria Coach. Once or twice he travelled in his car, a green, open Vauxhall that he had used in Africa. Driving along one day he took both hands off the wheel and exclaimed 'See what a good car it is? It drives by itself.' He seemed to adjust to us whatever age we were, how he did it I cannot understand. He had a large family of six children at Doornkloof by the time the First World War began and no doubt they helped him.
He could tell stories to quieten us before bedtime, but earlier in the evening there might be riotous games such as when he looked for a walking stick to chase us round the house or garden. There can be few biographers who have been chased by their subjects with a big stick! At the age of three, during one of these chases, I slipped on a mat and cut my knee on a sharp piece of furniture. My mother would not help me until I stopped crying. I think she was afraid of upsetting Oom Jannie and anyway believed in the stiff upper lip response to pain, the scar remained for fifty years. I felt she did not understand what had happened. I had already formed a view that soldiers must be very brave people and especial

om Jannie.
It was in 1906, that Smuts attended the Quaker Meeting at Street in Somerset, dressed in a General's uniform with my mother and her parents, he explained: 'I had nothing else to wear.' It caused some doubts among Friends but it inspired him and certainly helped me to make friends with military people at various points in my life, despite my pacifist views. My mother and his biographer, Piet Beukes, believed that in that Meeting for Worship a turning point in his life was reached. Some kind of vision came to him of a world fit for making friends rather than enemies.
One characteristic puzzled us greatly. Like Napoleon and a number of other outstanding people, his hours of sleep were few, but when he slept he slept very soundly. His active mind did not prevent him going to sleep and when he woke after his short night he read avidly. He read so many books about philosophy and politics that he must have been wide awake at this time. Fortunately for us we were encouraged to go and visit him early in the morning and he sometimes welcomed us with a remark about 'The old Hippo is rolling over to make room.' Then conversations about the plans for the day might follow or he could sometimes tell another story. Perhaps because he spoke High Dutch and Afrikaans in addition to English, he was fond of playing with words. Here are a couple of examples:

There was an old man called Britz
Who sits on his stoep and spits
He sits and he spits
And spits and sits
He's a funny old man is Britz.

Little Rex the labourer
Little wrecks (or recks) the labourer
When his day's work is done.

Laughter would break out at the mere mention of the word rex, in whatever context it was placed. Smuts sometimes complained that his own work was never done, but he never said 'I've got a lot of things to do today.' Which has become the password at Oakcroft, where I currently live. He always appeared to have organised his work well. How such a busy person had time to write so many letters it is hard to say. It was customary last century t

ard letters as a form of literature, written not as a message for the day, as perennials rather than annuals, as gardeners might say. Written between friends they might range through all the realms of human thought, rather than dealing with the trivialities of day-to-day existence.
Such a person as Smuts endeared himself to my brothers and me, I know less about my sister Helen's reactions to him, and she is the youngest in the family. Smuts provided, not at part, but at all stages of our growing up, an educational experience, such as few schools can claim to do. The core of education takes place when the teacher passes on to the pupil a zest for his own enlightened interests; the personal contact is usually essential to the flowering of a personality slowly taking shape. He gave us memorable presents as though he knew what we wanted, a pocket knife at four or five, when we visited him in the Savoy Hotel, a silver spoon with a cock on the handle presented to him at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. He never commented on the cock but I think he must have known it was an offensive French emblem representing the chauvinism of the time. A further gift was a book on Arabia, on which he commented: ‘this is the country of the future to be watched’. Finally, on getting married to Ruth, Smuts gave us a set of floor mats from the little industry set up by mother when she was working with Emily Hobhouse in the camps during the Boer war. How far these gifts were suggestions of my mother it was hard to tell.
We knew him both in Oxford in what must have seemed to him very urban surroundings but from time to time he would take a few days off and stay on or near the Berkshire Downs. On one of these occasions he went to see a Mrs. Smart, the owner of a large house near the Thames. Being war time and he, dressed in his general’s uniform, she was taken aback when he said 'I'm wanting your house.' He soon added 'No not this house. All I want to borrow is your empty game-keepers cottage in Ham Wood.' The deal was soon settled. He was always fond of pulling legs, regardless of the consternation caused.
It was while staying there with Oom Jannie and my parents in Ham Wood that they were walking through the village of Aldworth, the nearest village to that cottage. It was Armist

ay in November 1918. An elderly Vicar came out into the lane and greeted them: 'Should the church bells be rung?' He asked. Oom Jannie replied without a pause 'If you think it's a time for rejoicing.' The old man looked baffled. Oom Jannie was already aware that making a just and lasting peace was going to be a greater difficulty than winning the war.
The advantage of the gamekeepers cottage was that it was close to the open unfenced Downs. There the grass grew so tall and yellow that it reminded him of the tall, yellow grass of the High Veld round Doornkloof, where he sometimes rode a horse, sometimes walked to examine the flowers more closely. He found his own name for a small wood of Scots Pines; 'Sacred Grove' he called it and the name stuck. It was about the time when he wrote “The League of Nations – A Practical Suggestion”.
My father was over-stretched by keeping the family bank going, with a minimum of help during the war, and his break-down led to him welcoming any opportunity for enjoying fresh air and exercise. After the Bank was sold he was able to combine some work for Barclays Bank in South Africa with prolonged holidays, following his newly found hobby of ornithology and this was repeated many times. Each time they took two of us four children with them. My first time at the age of eight and nine was with Helen. The second time I was thirteen and fourteen and was with Jan, the botanist, and again with him when I had been seriously ill.
Travel is likely to help children in their lateral thinking, a skill that is essential for peacemakers. The acceptance of war, which is such a cruel, devastating, despicable form of human behaviour, over a long period of time, points to the need for drastic new responses. The enlightened despots of the eighteenth century contrived a partial civilisation of the armed forces, when total war was unheard of, but since then war has grown worse, weapons are worse, and those who make and use them have become more callous. Now is the time for some fresh thinking. It is time to 'Disarm or perish,' in the words of the inscription in the original building for the League of Nations in Geneva.
The first journey to South Africa was on the ‘Saxon Castle’ of the Union Castle Line and among the passengers one caug

whiff of the Empire. At that time the Cape to Cairo road, the length of Africa, passed over 'British' territory all the way. There may have been a hint of decay, but not noticeable to an eight year old. When the ship anchored at Madeira, small boys of my size came in boats to climb up to the deck to dive for silver coins thrown by passengers. Their bravery in diving the great height marking the pressure of poverty which I was soon to meet face to face. Writing nearly eighty years later I can recall some of the feelings I had at the time, unfortunately the diaries I kept to maintain academic skills dealt with bare facts not feelings so I let them go. They were as dull to read, as they were arduous to write. I suppose I needed some coaching about what would be of lasting interest.
I had little preparation for the spectacles of flying fish, spouting whales or those sinister fins of sharks, looking like submarines. The sense of wonder was stretched to the limit. Having seventeen days together the passengers exchanged travel tales in plenty and some were told to me. I was never quite sure what to believe. It is not only in war that truth is the first casualty. I recall some questionable stories of fishing for sharks with the help of petrol cans as floats. They sounded very convincing, on the other hand fishermen and storytellers do not have a good reputation. Yet those flying fish really did fly, I saw them with my own eyes. It was later that I had good reason to disbelieve my own eyes.
We passed Robben Island where later Nelson Mandela spent many of his twenty-seven years of imprisonment, and where he planned his remarkable contribution to peaceful government, and we landed at Cape Town. The Boer War between the Boers defending their two republics fought, it seemed vainly against the might of the British superpower of those years. It was still fresh in people's minds. Bitter memories linger for centuries if nothing is done to counteract them, from time to time I caught glimpses from fragments of conversation. To begin with my mind was taken up with Groote Schuur (Big Barn) where Oom Jannie lived while Parliament was in session as it is the Prime Minister's residence. The Dutch grandfather clocks with their rolling ships and other clockwork marvels, the huge sea chests and outside the peacocks overwhelmed me. Is it any wonder that powerful politicians, housed in this way, become corrupted by power

It had been the home of Cecil Rhodes, who had grandiose ideas about the Empire; he is believed to have started the Boer War for the sake of the newly discovered gold in Johannesburg. This is an example of a war for scarce resources, not essential resources such as water or oil but luxuries, though gold for many countries with currencies fixed on the gold standard might be regarded as essential.
When not staying with Oom Jannie at Cape Town or Doornkloof his farm outside Irene, we visited mother's many hospitable friends elsewhere. When staying with the widow of President Steyn of the Orange Free State I recall my confusion when I overheard my father in discussion with her son-in-law a Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Minister admitted to preaching sermons against making peace with the British, and against reconciliation and I overheard my father say angrily 'I don’t know how you can preach such hatred in the name of a religion of love?' I was mystified, 'How could such words be used when we were visitors in the home of his parents-in-law?' I asked myself.
Even the opposition of black and coloured Africans did not compel cooperation between the Boers and the British. The power of hatred is very great and very few people know how to deal with their own prejudices let alone the hatred in others. Some months later on Dingaans Day December 16th we accompanied Oom Jannie to a large outdoor meeting of Boers who came to hear his speech marking a Boer victory over the forces of an African Chief. He spoke about reconciliation and paused to bring the four of us up onto the long ox-cart traditionally used as a speakers platform. He wanted to illustrate that there are many different views among the British so he spoke about Emily Hobhouse and my mother's work in the camps, let bygones be bygones was the theme of his speech. It is easier for a democratic leader to act as a demagogue maintaining his influence by stirring up hatred like Hitler and Ian Paisley than to offer the less attractive, but wiser path to reconciliation and peace. If only Boers and British could learn the skills of peace making, he thought, they would become capable of respecting the Africans and of cooperating more justly with them. Tolerance and friendship thrive on cooperation and a willingness to put the pa

hind.
At Groote Schuur we made many excursions and on one day I came across a snake in a garden some twenty miles from Capetown. I had heard such stories of snakes moving as fast as a galloping horse that I had became convinced, as I lay in bed at night, that the snake might be finding its way and would climb into my bed and bite me, so I burst into tears. Some days later I could be brave, despite the lapse, by running on the sharp gravel at the back of the house in my bare feet. The soles grew hot as I ran.
One thing about the garden puzzled me very much. Red-shirted convicts under armed guards came to pick up the acorns under the oak trees for pig food. Who were these people? What had they done? Would the guards really shoot them if they tried to run away? It was something I had never heard of, something sad and perhaps evil, so I did not ask the adults and no one spoke about them to me. Similarly on the road back from our bathing place at Muizenberg on Friday evenings we saw a number of drunkards and drove carefully past them. It was said that Friday was payday and some were paid partly in wine, so they got drunk on their way home. I wanted to know more, they were the first drunkards I had ever seen.
Money was carefully managed in my banking family; even at the age of eight I earned my pocket money by keeping accounts. What did these people do when they got home? How did they explain? There was little talk about such things, little opportunity to digest experiences. My sister was too young at that time and my parents had little gift for talking to children of that age. I have since attributed this to my grandmother's mother having died when my grandmother was only two years old so that the passing on of good mothering practices down the generations was broken in this way. I hasten to add that my parent's intentions were always for the best, they were always kind, and for older children able to make good contacts and provide a stimulating informal education. We regarded the cold baths before breakfast as a challenge rather than an imposition!
On the rail journey north to Irene, beyond Johannesburg, I was baffled by surprises. As the train slowly climbed up the long gradient to the plateau of the Karoo, I was looking down the slope into the grass far below, suddenly I saw little animals about

ches long moving among the grass. I exclaimed with delight at the thought of such toy-sized animals being real. It was very disappointing to be told that my eyes had taken no account of the dryness of the atmosphere near the Karoo desert, and that I was looking at ordinary cattle. It was more difficult to accept this optical illusion than it was later when the train approached a vast lake and I was looking for a railway bridge ahead, only to be told that the lake was a mirage. Yes, I had heard of mirages but had not expected them to look so real!
We spent some time on that long journey talking about surprising weather conditions. A storm wrenched a corrugated iron roof from a house and sent it spinning up into the air. Many stories were told of strange winds and unlikely accidents. At Christmas time there was a hailstorm of hailstones nearly as big as tennis balls. I did not know how worried the adults were about the cattle. Could they live in such a bombardment, they wondered. Fortunately they were half a mile away in perfect safety because the storm missed them completely. However, my parents went out for a walk and saw a 'fireball' four feet high moving across the Veld. On another occasion the loudest noise I had ever heard startled me in my outside room, it sounded like a clap of thunder on my doorstep. I opened the door and a dog pushed its way past me. It was terrified. A few days later I discovered that lightning had struck a metal pole a few yards away but it was not earthed, so it bored its way in a zigzag through the dry soil, like a mole half underground, and finished up at the trunk of a pine tree. It was so close that I was lucky that my room had not been struck and burned.
Looking back on such frightening events, it appears that they provide good practice in coping with emergencies and hardships. I began to feel quite wrongly that I could cope with anything. When we set out with Oom Jannie on horseback he looked as though he had been bred in the saddle and he needed that confidence. He seemed to relish the crises that punctuated his life and liked to tell the story of the African pastor who leading his congregation in prayer, said 'Times are very bad, Oh Lord, so bad you must come to us yourself this time and not just send your son.'
As I think about these three periods of four months in South Africa I realise what an inspiration it was to be with Oom Jannie

. Sharing his wisdom, his sense of fun and his readiness to talk about all the things that matter in life; people more than success, spiritual values more than shopping, good conversation more than food, and nature which is at its best in South Africa at dawn and dusk.
When Oom Jannie shared his wisdom it was not so much the slow wisdom of a sage as the quick reply that Gandhi also favoured. He knew when the law required him to send Gandhi to prison that he was up against a great man each of them quick to out-manoeuvre an opponent. Gandhi when in prison made him a pair of sandals. The thought behind the gift was much appreciated but the sandals were passed on to my mother. Oom Jannie living in a different countryside even slept in his boots when camping. When we asked him why he did not do the same as everyone else, he replied, 'Once in the war (meaning the Boer War) we were surprised by the British at night. I didn't have time to put on my boots and had to run barefoot through prickly pear country. Never again.'
The Afrikaners often called Smuts 'Slim Jan' which means much the same as crafty. When the Welsh miners threatened to go on strike during World War I, he was the cabinet minister chosen to go to Cardiff to speak to them. 'I come from a little country far away,' he told them 'but I've heard of the fame of your singing. Before we come to business may I hear you sing?' Their response was so enthusiastic the sound filled the large hall and afterwards they proved willing to do as they were requested and keep their grievances until the war was finished.
So far as we were concerned the best times of all were when cars were loaded with camping equipment and we went off to distant places in search of plants and birds. One day, high in the eastern part of the Zoutpansberg Mountains, he commented 'You know Nicco, we may be walking where no white man has walked before.' He had a great sense of the adventure and magic of Africa and used it to throw light on the equally adventurous advances of the human race, exemplified by his work on the League of Nations. He looked back not to be immersed in history but so as to look forward the better. Camping at his Bushveld farm Rooikop he walked off one day to visit an old lady of whom he had heard. He came back full of wonder, it seemed likely that she was right that she really remembered being left for dead when the Zulu

d advanced across the country, killing as they went. If so she must have been about a hundred and twenty years old. His son Jannie was my age and took up archaeology. On two occasions we came across stones convenient for sitting where some person had been making stone tools or weapons. Some of the chips even fitted together with a discarded spearhead; the Stone Age came to life. Recently I read how some prospectors for uranium in northeast India had been chased away by indignant tribesmen using bows and arrows. They might be still living in the Stone Age but they were aware of the dangers of mining uranium in their hunting area.
It was in the evening when the campfire was alight and its warmth welcome in the cool evening air that the best stories were told. At Fuggers Paradise where a lion visited our camp, one story was told of a piccaninny who had wandered too far beyond shouting distance from the village and was caught by a large python. I had a photograph of a python containing a fifty-three pound pig in my diary so I guessed what would happen. The boy was old enough to know what to do, he pretended to be quite dead, so limp that the python did not bother to squeeze him anymore, but began to prepare its meal by spewing its lubricating saliva from side to side and from head to foot. Then just as the snake had finished it turned to move round and start swallowing. Quick as a flash the clever boy rolled over from front to back.
The snake appeared to be puzzled by the lack of lubrication and went through the whole process again from side to side and head to toe. The boy lay perfectly still until the snake had finished and had turned away. Quick as a flash the boy turned over again and presented to the snake a gritty mixture of sand and gravel stuck in the lubrication. When the hungry snake tried to begin its meal it found itself in such difficulties that it went away unsatisfied and the lucky boy got up and ran for all he was worth. You could not tell from Oom Jannie's face whether the story was true or not, so we did not dare to laugh. The lion roared.
In South Africa real life is so extraordinary there is no need to make up stories. At Dudley Zoo the visitors found the feeding of pythons so terrifying that they had to be fed in private. The visitors may have had too much imagination and yet imaginat

ch as is promoted by make believe is in short supply. How does this come to be?
The other kinds of stories that he liked to invent were about the disappearance of the Transvaal Republic's gold hoard during the Boer War. A common theme among these was the tendency of the robbers to quarrel among themselves, often leaving only one robber alive. My father was entirely in accord with this theme and enjoyed reading Sister Gold, by Laurence Housman in the Little Plays of St. Francis.
Often Oom Jannie was unable to be free for camping expeditions, so we would then visit other friends. On one occasion we stayed with a man who had been blowing up railway bridges during the Boer War and the next night with a man who had been rebuilding them. They should have been paired off in some way perhaps! The stupidity of war needs to be exposed and there is not much to say for it except that it keeps people busy. Only now is it recognised fully in high circles that finding work for ex-combatants is an essential part of peace building as Marrack Goulding of the UN pointed out recently in a lecture. How can the IRA in Northern Ireland find another way of living after thirty-five years?
We also went six thousand feet down a goldmine, that is one thousand feet below sea level. I was appalled by the coarse language used by the Afrikaner foremen of the team of Africans. It lingers with me to this day and I wonder whether Nelson Mandela has made a difference.
When I was fourteen I met Mandela's favourite teacher at Fort Hare, Davidson Jabavu, a Quaker. Later Smuts invited him to coffee, arranged by my mother, a brave move for a politician at that time. In Mandela's autobiography there is an important and informative account of a non-violent campaign supported by a minimum of force to right the wrongs of apartheid. It is a warning to military dictators of all kinds that there is a limit to their power even though it may depend on an astonishing freedom from bitterness and a willingness to forget. Due to the development and diversification of ever worsening weapons of oppression even so-called realists can consider the merits of well-organised civilian defence. Modern armies look more and more like wallowing dinos

, embarrassed by their own clumsy weight and with bad prospects for the future. Kosovo was a case in point.
We travelled through the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and Cape Province mainly by car, stopping here and there to suit my father and me for birding, or for mother and Jan for plant collecting. Mother and Jan were so successful that they have a number of plants and even bushes named after them. In Africa, bird species are more numerous than in England but in any case having one's name used in this way can be a mixed honour. Who was Jardine, who had a variety of Babbler, named after him? I thought I would prefer to avoid it, no doubt in the spirit of sour grapes.
The behaviour of the birds was far more interesting to me than the rather tiresome identification of species, though I set myself the task of learning the Latin names and finding out their meaning. For example there is a shrike belonging to the large family of Butcherbirds once common in England that hang up their insect prey on thorns or barbed wire until they were ready to eat them.
Another extraordinary example of cooperation is the teamwork between human beings and the family of birds called the Honey guides. They make their call to draw attention and then lead people through bushes and trees to the place they have discovered containing a bee's nest. They wait close by while the bees are smoked out and expect a reward in the form of a piece of comb containing grubs or honey. There are a number of species of honey guides, some work with animals, as well as people, and some actually vary the call note when they get close to the bees nest.
Rooks in England have difficulty in controlling anti-social members of their rookery which steal nesting materials from their neighbours, just like bees robbing from neighbouring hives, with no Security Council to call them to account, so I was fascinated with the thought of studying the customs of Social Weavers. They build small haystacks in thorn trees to keep out the snakes and other predators. Unfortunately we were not staying near enough to one of these marvels of cooperation for me to form any idea of how it was achieved. Like flats in a tower block each pair had its own hole in the big nest. Not having much of a common language

hey might be compared to the United Nations building in New York, and yet they cooperated successfully.
Lastly the Trek Duikers, which belong to the same family as cormorants, worked very well together. We watched them fishing at Saldanha Bay in their hundreds. Instead of working individually each formed a part of a military front advancing on an invisible shoal of fish beneath them. Significantly the two wings of their diving mob were well in advance to prevent the shoal of fishes escaping to one side. It was a great sight and was repeated the following day. A rugby team could hardly do better.
In 1939 at the outbreak of war Smuts wrote to his friend Tom Lamont , 'Shall we never learn the lesson? There is no solution through war. This war, whatever the ultimate issue, will be followed by another peace which may be no peace, for after a devastating conflict there is no mood for a real and wise peace, as you and I found at Paris in 1919. Meanwhile civilisation is falling back and the light of the Spirit is being dimmed . . . And so the caravan (of humanity) passes on into the night.'
As Joan Baez said, 'They tell me non-violence does not work. The only thing, which works even worse is violence.' No wonder Smuts never attempted to convert me to his view that the war must be fought regardless of his sympathies with the pacifist position. He understood all too well that, when leading a group of four British representatives to the treaty-making at Versailles in order to reduce the vindictive demands of the French, he had failed completely to persuade them that a sound lasting peace has to be built on justice. In 1919 the French became the victims of their own war propaganda and thus ‘let slip the dogs of [another] war.
It seemed very strange to me to leave my very different world at Whalley Farm in World War II to visit Smuts in his hotel in London. I arrived in his hotel during a shower of rain with David aged two or three under my cape. When I dropped him down in the middle of the foyer, he gazed in amazement and the attendant, without a word from me, informed us of Mrs. Gillett's room number. It seemed as though all of my mother's visitors looked so eccentric that they could be recognised at a glance, with

ther investigation! At lunch Oom Jannie said to David, 'Will you marry me and live with me always?' How he loved to tease young and old.
Accepting the wartime principle that 'careless talk costs lives' I left Smuts to tell me whatever he thought fit to say. He had to return home soon because this time the war was a matter of dispute. The extreme Afrikaners who had lost the vote about entry of South Africa into the war by such a small margin that Smuts, as the Prime Minister was needed at home. He had, in fact, come mainly for consultations with Churchill, and to inspire parliament and people with his own optimism. It was a pleasure to hear his voice on the BBC. By the following day I easily slipped back into ordinary life, though stirred by what I had heard. The Search for Peace demands action among the Establishment. I doubted whether there was anything that I could do. I was too shy and too Quakerly perhaps to feel at ease among those who wield power. No doubt my father and mother felt the same, but if they did, they contrived to hide it. My father being neither a teetotaller nor a pacifist had little to conceal. His bonhomie brought him many friends. My father did not use the new word ‘Establishment’, but both my parents liked talking with people with interesting jobs or experiences while recognising that if democracy was to be effective, the media, and the people in the street must be involved.