I cannot say there has never been a kick in our gallop. I was examined by him when I was a prisoner-of-war, and I escaped; but we made an honourable and generous peace on both sides, and for the last forty years we have been comrades working together.
1942, 31 October, Westminster Central Hall.
(End, 254.)
Jan Christian Smuts (1870-1950), was twice Prime Minister of South Africa (1919-24, 1939-48). One of Churchill’s closest friends from the time of the Boer War forward. The formalisation of total apartheid came in after Smuts left office.
Smuts and I are like two old love-birds moulting together on a perch, but still able to peck. Circa 1944-45. (Colville, Churchillians, 135.)
No one knew better than he how to “meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same.”
1951. WW2 IV, 386.
The quotation is from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If’, published 1895.
We believe that the people of Britain may wish to share in a memorial to Smuts by contributing to a fund to preserve Doornkloof in memory of this man who shone among his contemporaries, was a devoted friend of this country, and whose counsels and initiatives in war and peace were on a high plane of statesmanship and humanity.
1964, 18 January. (The Times.)
This was Churchill’s last letter to The Times. Smuts’.s home, Doornkloof, ten miles outside Pretoria, was preserved and is today a museum.
World History
