The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1902-12-03
GEN. De VETS BOOK.
He Attributes the Conquest of the
Beers to the DisIoyaIty and
Desertion of a Large
Number of Burghers.

so many of our burghers proved false tc
their own colors, England, as the great
Bismarck foretold, would have found
her grave in South Africa
That is the keynote of the Beer Gen.
De Vets book entitled "Three Years
War;" published by Archibald Con-
stable & Co., in London, and dedicat-
ed by the Boer general to MY fellow
subjects of the British Empire. :"
It is perhaps the most remarkable
book by the most remarkable leader
that any recent war has produced. The
concise, simply toldEtale of the extra
ordinary campaign is marked through
out with the stamp of truth. The
badness of the narrative only serves
to bring into striking relief the fiery
passages, where a strong man literally
blurts out his soul in pathetic regret
or bitter denunciation.
In thus taking the public into his
confidence De Wet loses none of the
glamor with which his exploits in the
field surround him. In criticising he
spares no one; Boer and Briton come
equally under the lash. De Wet de-
clares that, whatever the English peo-
pie may have to say i'll discredit of
Gen. Butler, he had to operate
against stronger positions than any
other British general. Throughout the
work the Boer general has but slight
praise for Lord Roberts and little more
for Lord Kitchener.
Gen. Knox is almost the only British
general who seems to have struck De
Wet as a commander with real military
genius.
OF Tommy Atkins he has many
kindly words to say, and declares the
British were far from being bad shots. -
The comparative immunity of the Beers
from harm De Wet constantly and most
fervently attributes to the interposi-
tion of God.
So If any reader,'' he says, is eager
to know how it was kept out of the
enemy's hands I can only answer, al
though I may not be understood, that
I ascribe it to nothing else than this:
It was not Gods will that should
fail into their hands. Let those who
rejoice at my miraculous escapes give
all the praise to God
:, Nevertheless the book teens with &C
counts of military and other strategies
by which De Wet cutwitted his pur-
suers.
frequently he recounts cases of de-
sertion and panic among his own men
when his entreaties and "sjambook-
ing'' were all of no avail. De Wet
pays r;bute to Gen. Cronje for his
bravery, but declares he lost at
Paardeberg only on account of his fatal
obstinacy to leave the laager as he
was advised to do by Gen. Botha and
by the writer himself.
Regarding his own forces, De Wet
writes:
cit was far easier to fight against
the great English army than against
treachery among my own people, and
an iron will was required to fight
against both. Once, if only our orders
had been carried out a little more
strictly and if only the most elementary
rules of strategy had been observed in
our efforts to break the British lines
of communication Lord Roberts and
his thousands of troops would have
found themselves shut up in Pretoria
where they would have perished Of
hunger. It was the skill of their COM
mander-in-chief that saved them.''
On the block houses De Wet is
frankly contemptuous. "The block
house policy, !" he says, might equal
ly we'll have been called the policy of
the blockhead.
The writer emphatically defends the
right to blow up railroad lines and
trains as the usages of war, and he de-
clares he never missed an opportunity
to do so. The so-called war against
women and the misuse Of the white
flag by the British is denounced by the
Boer general, who says:
"That such direct and indirect mur-
der should have been committed
against defenceless women and chill
dren is thing would have staked my
head would never have happened in a
war waged by the civilized English
nation, and yet it happened
His last words is an injucntion to his
follow countrymen to be loyal to the
new Government.
Loyalty" he says, "pays best in
the end, loyalty alone is worthy of a
nation which has shed its blood for
freedom.