When hostilities ceased he played a key role in the Treaty of Vereeniging. His command of English, his education in England, his love of American poetry and his knowledge of European philosophy all made Smuts – in the eyes of his erstwhile enemies – an exception. An English friend wrote to him that ‘you are the only Afrikander … who has the power of expressing on paper the sentiments, moral and political, of your people.’ Smuts stood out, as ‘for the most part the Afrikander people are still dumb, only able to express themselves in deeds.’19
