PRESIDENT KRUGER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5455, 6 January 1896, Page 2

PRESIDENT KRUGER.

A recent number of the Gentlewoman contains an interesting sketch of President Kruger, the sturdy Boer who has been brought into renewed prominence by the present trouble in the Transvaal. The sketch is headed by a portrait of the President and his wife, from which we judpe that the hero of Amajuba Hill is a most jmcouth and un-military-looking individual, whose clothes appear as if they had been designed somewhere back in the forties for a much taller and slighter man. His wife, it' may interest our lady readers to know, is a rotund little woman, who despises caps and wears her hair parted in the middle and flattened down to a forehead which surmounts a very homely face. The President's first introduction to public life was in 1872, when he was appointed Commandant— a post somewhat similar to an English Com-mander-in-Chicf — during the Presidency of the Eev Thomas Burgers. On two occasions he was a member of a deputation 6ent to England to enter what proved to be a fruitless protest against the annexation of his country, and by 1882, his rugged ability secured for him the Presidency of the Republic/ a post which he still holds, having been re-elected twice since he succeeded to the office. He is sixty-height years of age, and is described as a Boer of the Boers, shrewd, obstinate, combining the gaucheries of an English ., rustic with an amazing astuteness which would become many a skilled diplomat. He shines more at the Council than at the social board; in fact, he detests, or pretends to detest, social functions, and many amusing anecdotes are told of his solecisms and eccentricities. When visiting the neighbouring colony of Natal on one occasion, ho and Mrs Kruger firmly refused a sumptuous lunch prepared by a loyal township en route, and, to the consternation of the caterers], proceeded to discuss a largo piece of dried beef — "biltong"— and equally dry bread, which wore produced from the Presidential pocket. When at Government House in Natal he was asked to take a lady of title in to dinner. With rural simplicity and ' imperfect English— for the President is no English, scholar— he adjured the lady to "Come along with me!" and preceded her into dinner. But the Presidency, Pretoria, is not Mayfair, and even at Government House, Natal, Presidents may, and do, disdain forks, misuse serviettes, and fail to grasp the true import of a finger-bowL But notwithstanding all these superficial defects, ■" and many others that are not superficial, President Kruger has more than once shown himself to be a match for the most accomplished British and colonial diplomats.