PAUL KRUGER-A CHARACTER SKETCH.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 116, 13 November 1900, Page 2

PAUL KRUGER-A CHARACTER SKETCH.

, Discussing. -the personality of the exPresident of the Transvaal, the Spectator says: — Mr. Kruger is, as a matter of fact, neither the sinister monster his enemies depict him, nor, again, the highsouled patriot of the Hofer or the George Washington tvn e . He is a hard-fisted, not over-scrupulous man of great determniation, great craftiness, and great tenacity, but also very limited in his ideas. To speak of him as a great statesman is an exaggeration, for he has again and again thrown away his country's best chances by his narrowness of view an 4by his inability to understand fiis opponents. For example, ho has most foolishly made a bogey of Mr. Chamberlain, and listened to every idle tale told about the Colonial. Secretary, till his judgment has become entirely warped. The fact is, President Kruger's personality is an epitome of that of his people. He began as a. simple hard-headed farmer ■but the power to ride rough-shod over thousands of men without any possibility of his will being effectively challenged, and the possession of vast wealth, iiot merely in the way of investment, but iv hoarded gold, have produced in his character those disagreeable features Svhich are always to be found in members of an oligarchy at once arrogant and illiterate, proud and coarse, rich and illiberal. Compare Mr. Krugei in 1880 with what he is now, and you may read the whole history of the Boers and discover why it became impossible to live side by side with them, -and why, though most reluctantly, the British Empire was forced to abate the nuisance at Pretoria. History will not class Kruger with its bad men, but it certainly will not put him among the Hampdens, the Washington^, and the Hofers. The most he can hope for in the Temple of Fame is a niche beside Jefferson Dttvis. Strangely enough, in both cases the figure will have its foot on the neck of a black man.