GEN. SMUTS' OPINIONS

Wholly consistent with the Pope's outlook is General Smuts' insistence that there can be no
easy or quick road to a new order. The problems have never been so complex, and cliches and false simplifications are no help. The task will be of such a nature that no peace conference could compass them. Reconstruction must take a long number of years, and will depend on a fundamental re-thinking of the whole moral and material situation. Equally consistent is the General's realistic acceptance of the fact that democracy is not enough. Leadership and discipline are just as necessary.
Nor is there necessarily any inconsistency in principle betwden the Pope and the General when the latter emphasises the importance of power or force in the modern world, and the plain fact that after the war the destiny of the world will be largely in the hands of Britain, America and Russia. No Pope fails to recognise facts and to build in terms of them. The question is: how arc the facts of the situation to be ordered and used?
The spirit of the Pope's lead is clearly that we should work towards transcending the fact of power by harnessing it to right and gradually weakening its own influence as a factor. Equally, everything depends on the way and purpose for which the three great Powers use their preponderant frece.
In this regard General Smuts' speech surely fails to underline suffickntly clearly the prior rights of small nations, and in its perhaps 100 vigorous realism if too easily and quickly dismisses the role which France, Germany, Italy, as well as other Powers may be called upon to play.
In particular one must view with some misgiving Genera! Smuts' picture of a Great Britain more closely linked apparently with smaller democracies " of the same political and spiritual substance as ourselves." while the rest of Europe is apparently abandoned to its fate at the hands of " the new Co/ossus that bestrides this Continent."
Which are the favoured democracies? The Scandinavian countries, Holland, possibly Belgium, possibly France. But where are Poland, the Central European countries, Germany itself, Italy, Spain and Portugal to come in? There is a vastly important gap here that must be covered by the Papal outlook in so far as it applies to Europe.
One cannot, of course, expect that everything should be dealt with in a single speech, but decisively hopeful as is General Smuts' speech in many ways. Catholics will be well advised to note the many respects in which even this falls short of the ideal which is theirs.