Politicians (July 28,1919)
Smuts says that it is only the new truths of the people that “can be the solvent for
the problems which statesmen have found too hard at the peace conference.” How is
it that the truths of the people and the opinions of the politicians 89 are so different?
Why does it seem so hard for the politicians, but not for the people? Is there another
level of explanation somewhere in all this? I have always been suspicious of so-called
“politicians,” afraid that this was not a good kind of thing to be. Today, I’ve truly
been given proof of it. After the signing of the peace treaty in Paris, Lloyd George
returned to England, where he delivered the following speech: “The many successes of
this England of ours show what can be achieved by a great people united and inspired
by a common purpose. Let us rejoice over the victory, but let us rejoice as men who
are not under the delusion that all our troubles are over, but rather like men who feel
that the first and the worst of our troubles are past, and that the spirit, courage, and
resolution which enabled us to overcome these will also enable us cheerfully to face
what is to come. Let us not waste our strength prematurely in fighting each other.” 90
Such is the great talent of a politician. Such is the great magic of a politician. Don’t
waste our strength fighting each other means, in fact, that you the people should not
trouble the government with your boring problems concerning the suffering of your
daily lives or the true wishes of the citizens. These are all little problems not worth
worrying about. In the future, following the natural development of things, we will still
have to go to war with other countries. Patriotism, inspiration, uniting, foreign affairs,
these are what is most important of all. I hereby formally announce to politicians
such as Lloyd George that we reject all your big speeches as nothing but “lies” and
“nonsense.” We have already awakened. We are not as we used to be. You can just pack
up and go now, and don’t ever come back again.


89 The previous passages in quotation marks have been reproduced from the English text of Smuts’
statement of June 29, 1919 (H.W.V. Temperley, A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, Volume
III [London: Henry Frowde and Hodder and Stoughton, 1920], pp. 74–76), to which Mao’s Chinese
translation almost exactly corresponds. The immediately preceding sentence has been left as Mao recast
it; the original reads: “ … the abolition of militarism — in this Treaty, unfortunately, confined to the
enemy — may soon come as a blessing and relief to the Allied peoples as well.”
90 The term used by Mao, zhengzhijia, can mean either “statesmen” or “politicians.” In the previous
sentence, we have rendered it as “statesmen,” because that was Smuts’ own word, but hereafter it
is translated as “politicians,” since Mao manifestly has in mind that concept, with all its negative
connotations.