2. Jan Smuts and the World Counter‑Revolution 1917-1923

At 7.20 p.m. on Tuesday 1 April 1919, a train steamed out of Paris’s Gare de l’Est. On board was a delegation dispatched from the Supreme Council of the victorious powers of World War I. The mission was led by Jan Christiaan Smuts, Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa and a member, since June 1917, of the Imperial War Cabinet. Smuts's task was to negotiate with the revolutionary government of Béla Kun, which had seized power in Hungary in the aftermath of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the subsequent failure of the liberal government of Count Mihály Károlyi. The Council was considering how to handle the military confrontation that had been shaping up between the Romanian and Hungarian forces over disputed border territories. It had been toying with sending a Romanian army, under the command of France’s General Charles Mangin, to crush the revolutionaries. But the Council would first allow the South African to exercise the powers of intellect and persuasion with which he was credited by his admirers (Nicolson, 1933: Hancock & van der Poel, 1966b:105-118).