The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-02-27
GEN SHUTS, ONE OF MOST NOTABLE MEN THAT SOUTH
 AFRICA HAS PRODUCED
By HAYDEN CHURCH

London, February 14.-(Special Cor respondence.) lowing to i'll health, the war office has just announced, General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien has relin- quished the command in east Africa, which has been taken over by General J. c. tSmuts. Last November t ap- pears, when the union contingents for east Africa were being formed, the command was offered to General Jan. c. Shuts. who. for various reasons, was unable to undertake it. He has now been given the rank of temporary lieutenant general.
 General Shuts was one of the ablest of the Boer leaders in the south Af- rican war and demonstrated his qual- ities as a strategist once more in the operations of little over a year ago. which resulted in the rout of the rebels against the union government, the capture of De Wet, the death of Bey- CTS, and the flight of Maritz. Short of Botha himself, probably no British commander living is better fitted to command the east African operations than Shuts, who is equally renowned as soldier, administrator, parliament tarian, orator, lawyer and classical student
 When he was only 2s he was made attorney general by Kruger. and it has often been said that if Kruger had listened to his often repeated advice, the South African war might have been avoided. It came, however. and Shuts went to the front as simple burgher but, like most of the Boer leaders. displayed such instinctive military ability that he rose rapidly in rank anu was general before the struggle closed. The brilliant British comman- der, General Ian Hamilton, refers to him in his Staff Officers Scrap Book" as that extraordinarily clever young man, General Shuts" and in- deed Smuts made both his bravery and his strategy respected. A successful raid into the western district of Cane Colony made him famous, but perhaps ms most brilliant action was fought in November, 1901 when surrounded by the British columns at Elands' river port, he rushed a squadron of the Seventeenth Lancers and fought his way through them. Later, with Botha, he was largely instrumental in preventing the destruction of the mines, and by the end of the cam poA5h ne udu dlIdlneQ to the supreme command in Cape Colony
 This warrior parliamentarian. who, at 45, is minister of finance and de- fence of the union of South Africa. today is tall, well set up and uncom- monly handsome. He has fair hair, a high forehead and steel blue eyes that mark the enthusiast, and he wears a well tended mustache and short beard of the Vandyke order Though his will is of iron, he is diplomatic and adroit in argument.
 His father, a typical Boer and a member of the state assembly, was a farmer in the Malmsbury district of Cape Colony, and the boy got his first education at the South African college, at Ste1lanbosch, the home of the Young Afrikander party.
 Industrious as well as clever, young Shuts took one scholarship after an- other and by so doing attracted the attention of the man of the hour, Cecil Rhodes. Eventually Shuts won the Porter scholarship which would have brought him to England but almost immediately after he did so, the bank in which it's funds were invested failed. Then Rhodes stepped In. The empire builders declared that a lad of such remarkable promise ought not to suffer on this account, and promptly