The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-12-26
PERSONALITY OF
GENERAL DEWeT

OF all the Boer leaders the PERSONAL
lty of General Christian Dewet has
seized most potently upon the British
imagination, writes Douglas Story in
the London Mail
His daring coups, his sudden appear
ances and rapid disappearance, his
ubiquity, and his unfailing success
have appealed to the British love of
sport, so that today Dewet occupies a
place in the popular mind not far re-
moved from that of Robin Hood and
the more modern buccaneers.
What is sport to the fox-hunting
British Is, however, deadly earnest to
the Free State commandment general.
DeWet from the outset has been a
rabid anti-Britisher. In the final days
of negotiation, before the ultimatum
was sent he was omnipresent in Pre-
tOTia.
Time after time the advocates Of
peace sought to waylay the president
seeking to prevail with him against
war. Always Dewet was present-si-
lent. Unbending, a stern opponent of
Cancellation.
In the executive chamber in the
presidency, DeWet was ever on guard
stinening Paul kTugeT'S back, counsel
ing young SHUTS, appealing to Reitz's
patriotism, combating the arguments
OF the peace party. He was in these
days as sleepless in his advocacy of
war as he has since been energetic in
The war came, and Dewet speedily
attested the courage of his convictions
In the early Natal campaign he was
the most dashing of the BOer leaders,
the most reliable in battle. In the great
attack of Jan. upon Ladysmith he and
his burghers put up one of the most
remarkable fights of the war. But it
is in the Free State that DeWet'S most
startling contributions to the history
Of the war have been wdged.
born on a farm and bred on a farm: he
was brought up on the vast distances
of the Veldt, learning every intricacy
of Neldt lore, reading the signs of the
plain as European would read mill
taTy text book, and inscribing in his
memory every foot Of the ground he
passed over.
Today the Free State to him is an
open book. He knows every road,
every drift, every watering place. More
than once he has led his men on the
darkest night to within 300 yards of the
step, and has posted them there in the
position most suitable for an ambus-
cade when dawn should have delivered
his enemy into his hands
For the purpose of his warfare De
wet needs no heavy battalions, He
dislikes a force exceeding 500; and the
men he has with him are picked men
men of the soil, hunters every one of
them; Beers who possess in a lesser
degree the qualities that have made
their leader.
He speaks taaI. and nothing but taaI,
and he dislikes all obstacles that inter
feTe with his personal converse with
his men. The foreigners who have so
seriously retarded Louis Botha's move
ments have had no place in the flying
columns of Dewet.
A man of middle age. middle height
and middle weight. Dewet is not
man, either in bearing or aspect. to at
tract attention. He wears a scrubby.
short beard and thick mustache. His
dress used to be a seedy black coat ard
a pair of striped trousers. Nothing
anywhere TO denote the general. the
man VINO for months has defied the
cleverest generals, the swiftest troops
of the British army.
But in his face is the stamp of in
vincibIe determination; the mouth,
slightly dropped at the corners, is car
ried tightly closed. and the strong,
square jaw is firmly set beneath the
straggly beard The high, square fore
head rises steeply from a pair of bushy
eyebrows, beneath which the restless.
aIl-seeing eyes gaze out to the distance.
There is seldom a smile in those eyes,
but there is the CLEAN of steady pur-
pose, the cold resOurcefulnesS of man
hunted bv his fellows.
It is out of those eyes and others
SuCn as LIeE LndL LEW Ct kept LOuCn
with his opponents movements. De-
wet from his kopje top looks down at
the wide rolling plain in the folds of
which the railway lies. All of the
farm folk there are his friends.
Suddenly from a Kaffir hut, whose
uncertain outline can just be discerneds
through the heat haze. a thin column
of smoke rises. 1t is the signal of game
in the neighbOrhOod, a train has failed
TO breast the steep incline behind the
second row of knobs, an insufiiciently
guarded convoy is winding it way
among the kOpjes. or a picket is prick
ing loosely across the plain.
Whatever it be, Dewet and his men
are ready. and three days later we read
in England of another convoy captured
or an outpost waylaid.
When the grayer matters are afoot
Dewet can always call to his aid one
or two additional bands of 500, and,
with the cOnjOined force, he fights
S&nna's post or a ROOdewaal.
If no other commando be available
he can count on most of the 'surren-
dered" farmers of the district for as
sistance on a big day. Now, If ever,
Great Britain is realizing the full
meaning of fighting with long lines of
a determined enemy
on his own ground. Dewet has taught
US the lesson the Russians taught Ma
poleon and the Spaniards impressed
upon Marshal Ney. In a similar way
the Filipin0s are today educating the
in the extraordinary power
a puny race may WELD in its Cyn ter
ritory against a strong and valiant en-
envy.
Dewet, as is now fairly we'll under
stood in this country, is an unedu-
Gated nan. a peasant, a talker Of taal,
and a Roer in the true sense of the
term In the days when he had still
a president and a war Office his dis
patches were of the scantiest and of
the least eIucidatory value.
Short-Lived Congeniality.
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