THE BOER GUERILLA CHIEF

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4262, 23 January 1901, Page 7

THE BOER GUERILLA CHIEF

CHARACTER SKETCH OF CHRISTIAAN DE WET. (By Douglas Story, in ‘‘Daily Mail. ) Of all the Boer loaders the personality of General Christiaan do Wet has seized most potently upon the British imagination. His daring coups, his sudden appearances and rapid disappearances, his übiquity, and his unfailing success have appealed to the British love of sport, so that to-day Do Wot occupies a. place in the popular rnind net far removed from that of Robin Hood and the more modern buccaneers.

What is sport to the foxhunting Bn- . tish is, however, deadly earnest to tne Free State Commandant-General. Do Wet from the outset has been a rabid anti-Britisher. In, the final days of negotiation, before tho ultimatum was sent, ho was omnipresent in Pretoria. Time after time the advocates of peace sought to waylay the President, seeking to prevail with him against _ war. Always, De Wet was present—silent, unbending, a stern opponent of conciliation. In the Executive Chamber, in the Presidency, Bo Wet was ever on guarn, stiffening Paul Kruger’s back, cpunselling young Smuts, appealing to Reitz’s patriotism, combating the arguments of the Peace party. Ho was clays as sleepless in his advocacy tjf war as ne has since been energetic in his prosecuticn of hostilities. BORN AND BRED ON A FARM.

The war came, and De Wet speedily attested the courage of his convictions. In the early Natal campaign he was the most dashing of Boer leaders, the most reliable in battle. In the great attack of January 6 upon Ladysmitn. lie and his burghers put up one of the most remarkable fights of the war. But it is in tne Free State that De Wet's most startling contributions to the history of the war have been waged. , The ideal Boer leader, De Wet was born on a farm and bred on a farm ; he was brought up on the vast distances i.i the veldt, learning every intricacy - cf veldt lore, reading the signs of the plain as a European would read a military textbook, and inscribing in his memory every fold of the ground he passed over. To-day the Free State is to him as an open book.® lie* knows cwery road, every drift, every watering-place. More than once he has led his men on the darkest night to within three hundred yards of the British encampment without one false step, and has posted them there in the position most suitable for an ambuscade when dawn should have delivered his enemy into his hands.

It is this unrivalled personal knowledge of the country which has made De Wet the power ha ’has been in the war. He has fought on his own and his brother’s farm, and wherever he has challenged an engagement he has had by hispid© the man on whose land the battle was about to be fought. No map, no survey, no scout’s,, report can possibly equal such first-hand intelligence.

DE WET’S PLYING FIVE HUNDRED. For the purposes of his warfare De Wet needs no heavy battalions. Me dislikes a force exceeding 500; and the men he has with him are picked men—men of the soil, hunters every one of them, Boers who possess in a lenser degree the qualities that have made their leader. In my experience of De Wet, his men invariably have been native-born and na-tive-bred. With the single exception of a German-American gunner, who accompanied him to Sauna’s Post and Dewetsdorp, and who in the retreat from Heilbron’called De Wet a coward because he abandoned a portion of his ammunition rather than hamper his retreat, I have not known him encourage any of the widely advertised Continental filibusters to join his commando. Ho speaks taal and nothing hub taal, and he dislikes obstacles that interfere with his personal converse with his men. The foreigners who have so grievously retarded) Louis Botha’s 1 movements have had no place in the flying columns of De Wet.' ' '. ' a man of middle age, middle height, and middle weight, De Wet is not a man either in bearing or in appearance to attract attention. He wears a scrubby, short beard and a thick moustache. His dress used to be a seedy black coat and a pair of striped trousers.. Nothing anywhere to denote the general, the man who for months has defied the cleverest generals, the swiftest troops of the British Army. Bub in his face is the stamp of invincible determination; the mouth, slightly drooped at the corners, is carried tightlv closed, and the strong, square jaw is firmly set beneath the straggly beard. The high, square forehead rises steeply from a pair of bushy eyebrows, beneath which the restless, all-seeing eyes gaze out to the distance. There is seldom a smilo in those eyes, but there • is, the gleam of a steady purpose, the cold resourcefulness ef a man hunted by his fel- ’ lows. . ,

THE COIL OF SMOKE.

It is out of those eves and others such as they that Dc Wet keeps touch with his opponent’s movements. De A\ ct from his kopje tep looks down at the wide rolling plain in one of the folds ot which the railway lies Ail of the farm folk there are his friends. Saudc-n! v from a Kaffir lint, whose uncertain om-iine can jast be discerned through tho heat- haze, a thin coiainn ot smoke rises. It is the. signal of game in tho neighbourhood, a train has failed to breast the steep incline benind the second row of knolls, an insufficiently guarded convoy is winding its way among tne kopjes, or a picket is pricking loosely across the plain. . Whatever it be, De Met and his men are ready, and three days later we read in England of another convoy captured or an outpost, waylaid. When graver matters are afoot, De Wet can always call to his aid one or two additional bauds of 500, and, with tho conjoined force, he lights a Saunas Jtcst or a Roodewaal.

If no other commando be available, he can count on most, of the ‘•surrendered'’ farmers of the district for assistance on

a big da>‘. Now, if ever, Great Britain is realising the full meaning of fighting with long lines of communications a determined enemy cm his own ground. De Wet has taught us the lesson the Russians taught Napoleon and the Spaniards impressed on Marshal Ney. In a smaller way the Filipinos are to-day educating tho Americans in the extra-ordinary power a puny race may wield in its own territory against a strong and valiant eueUl 'De Wet, ns is new fairly well understood in this country, is an uneducated man, a peasant, » talker of taal, and a Boer in the true sense of the term. Intho days when ho had still a President and a War Office, his despatches were of the .scantiest find of the most elucidatory value-

AS A WRITER OF DESPATCHES. I have beside me the telegram General de Wet sent to President Steyn cm the occasion of bin victory over Genetnl Broadwoocl at Sauna’s Post. As tais was the first success tho Boers had recorded since the loss of Ladysmith and Bloemfontein and the surrender of Cronjc at Paardeberg, ho might have been excused some self-laudation.

Commandant Christiaan Do M et, Klin Kraal, Doornspruit, via Brandfort. To State President, O.V.S. March 31, 1900. —We proceeded last night to the farm Vrede, belonging to Mr Marais, at Aospruit, and there broke up our commando into two divisions. I went with Commandants Net and Fcnrie to the said farm, ’having with us 400 men. Hoofd Commandant Piet Ds Wet, with Generals Andries Gron.je, Weysels, and Froueraan, Commandants Theron, of Bethlehem, and Van der Menvc—who has been nominated 1 in place of Commandant Viloncl as Commandant for the Win burg district—with eleven hundred men, six cannon, one Nordenfeldt, and one small Maxim, took up position 300 or dOO yards from the enemy, who bad' camped near tho waterworks on the ridge between Modeler River and Koorn Spruit. . Tho whole British force was there which had retreated from Laulybrand, ThabaWchu, Sauna’s Post, and Newberry by night, and of -whose movements we were ignorant, except that w© knew their waggons had advanced to this position yesterday. ■ We took up our positions this morning! at 4 a.mi, having ridden three horn's overnight. 1 took up position in the bed of the spruit and along the bank nearest the British, where the big road passes from Bloemfontein to Koorn Spruit. At daybreak we saw tho big camp of the British just in front, of us, this side of Sauna’s Post. As I had no guns I resolved to wait until the cannon from the other side under Commandant Piet del Wot commenced firing, as I was now convinced we had tho enemy which had occupied Thaban-chu and Nowherry oetwefcn us.

Our guaiai opened fire from the east, and the enemy at once began to retire towards the drift where, we lay in position. It was fortunate) for me that the burgliers withheld their fire, neither showed rinemselves above the banks of the spruit till the enemy was at hand. Wa let them come quite close to the bank, also their cannon, as , they were entirely ignorant of our whereabouts. As al, so that the gunners had to flee wiui great speed back to about 1,500 yards from us, bub we managed to kill of the six or seven cannon fouir or five horses at once, -which prevented their withdrawal, so- that the gunners had to uee with only two cannon to the 'distance mentioned —namely, to near the station buildings on the over side of Koorn Spruit, from where they carried on a heavt r fire—-small arms as well as cannon —for hours, when they left also these cannon behind them.

All then fled with great speed to the south, pursued principally by the Commandants of Winburg and Bethlehem, who. had crossed towards me from their positions. Tha dams of the waterworks in the Modder River prevented these commandants co-ouerating with me more quickly. . . We took about 200 prisoners. During the engagement the enemy removed their dead and wounded; but between me and the place where the cannon stood over 100 dead and wounded still lie. We took also over 100 loaded mule waggons. It seems incredible, but on our side were only two dead, five wounded. Among the wounded we nave to mourn the brave Acting-Oommanaant Gert; Van der Merwe and Lieutenant Nix, Military Attache of the Dutch. Indian Army.

Exact number of prisoners, cannons, waggons, mules and oxen wall be communicated latetr, also the names of our dead and wounded. , ~ , t Such is Christiaan de Wet’s account of the most debated engagement of the war. It contains many inaccuracies— notably, with respect to the guns; but from his position in the sprint he could nob viewthe whole field, and the telegraphed despatch displays the coolness in victor- 1 ., the energy in the field, of the most notable guerilla chief of our time.