General Smuts' speeches always read better than they sound. His
striking address at the Royal Institute of International Affairs dinner (delivered to what Lord Derby, in the chair, described with some pardonable hyperbole as " the most representative gathering any of us have ever attended ") fell impressively on the ears of the audience, but the speaker was a little hampered by his manuscript, and the verbatim report which The Times, with sound journalistic instinct, published the next morning did him more justice. What is important is to know whether in his definition of a foreign policy General Smuts was echoing the Foreign Office or telling it. I have very good reasons for saying that he was telling it. He is quite clear about what ought to be done, and by no means as clear that it will be done. But his own speech has made that much more likely.
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