“Brothers, sisters, burghers, and friends,” he began,—“Only a few words can I say to you to-day, for the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. We have lost our brother, our friend, our Commandant-General. I have lost my right hand, not of yesterday, but my right hand since we were boys together, many long years ago. To-night I alone seem to have been spared of the old people of our cherished land, of the men who lived and struggled together for our country. He has gone to heaven whilst fighting for liberty, which God has told us to defend; for the freedom for which he and I have struggled together for so many years, and so often, to maintain. Brothers, what shall I say to you in this our greatest day of sorrow, in this hour of national gloom? The struggle we are engaged in is for the principles of justice and righteousness, which our Lord Has taught us is the broad road to heaven and blessedness. It is our sacred duty to keep on that path, if we desire a happy ending. Our dear dead brother has gone on that road to his eternal life. What can I say of his personality? It is only a few short weeks ago that I saw him at the fighting front, humbly and modestly taking his share of the privations and the rough work of the campaign like the poorest burgher, a true general, a true Christian—an example to his people. And he spoke to me then and even more recently; and, let me tell you, that the days are dark. We are suffering reverses on account of wickedness rampant in our land. No success will come, no blessings be given to our great cause unless you remove the bad elements from among us; and then you may look forward to attaining the crowning point, the reward of righteousness and noble demeanour. We have in our distinguished departed brother an example. Chosen, as he was, by the nation, time after time, to his honourable position, he had their trust to such an extent that everything was left in his hands; and he did his work well. He died, as he has lived, in the path of duty and honour. Let the world rage around us, let the enemy decry us, I say, Follow his example. The Lord will stand by you against the ruthless hand of the foe, and at the moment when He deems it right for interference peace will come once more. Why is the sympathy of the whole world with us in this struggle for freedom? Why are the strangers pouring in from Europe to assist to the maintenance of our beloved flag, to aid us in the just defence of our independence? Is it not God’s hand? I feel it in my heart. I declare to you again, the end of our struggle will be satisfactory. Our small nation exists by the aid of the Almighty, and will continue to do so. The prophets say the closed books shall be opened, the dead shall arise, darkness be turned into light; nothing be concealed. Every one will face God’s judgment throne. You will listen to His voice, and your eyes shall be open for the truth of everything. Think of the costly lives given by us for our cause, and you will rally to the fight for justice to the end. Brothers, to the deeply bereaved widow of our Commandant-General, to his family, to you all, I say trust more than ever in the Almighty; go to Him for condolence; think and be trustful in the thought that our brother’s body has gone from amongst us to rise again in a beautiful and eternal home. Let us follow his example. Weep not, the Lord will support you; the hour of all our relief is near; and let us pray that we may enter heaven, and be guided to eternity in the same way as he whom we mourn so deeply. Amen.”
Early in his life Kruger formed an idea that the Boers were under the direct control of Providence, and it displeased him greatly to learn that many petty thefts were committed by some of the burghers at the front. In many of the speeches to the burghers he referred to the shortcomings of some of them, and tried to impress on their minds, that they could never expect the Lord to took with favour on their cause if they did not mend their ways. He made a strong reference to those sins in the oration he delivered over Joubert’s body, and never neglected to tell the foreign volunteers that they had come into the country for fighting and not for looting. When an American corps of about fifty volunteers arrived in Pretoria in April he requested that they should call at his residence before leaving for the front, and the men were greatly pleased to receive and accept the invitation. The President walked to the sidewalk in front of his house to receive the Americans, and then addressed them in this characteristically blunt speech: “I am very glad you have come here to assist us. I want you to look after your horses and rifles. Do not allow any one to steal them from you. Do not steal anybody else’s gun or horse. Trust in God, and fight as hard as you can.”
Undoubtedly one of the most pathetic incidents in Kruger’s life was his departure from Pretoria when the British army was only a short distance south of that city. It was bitter enough to him to witness the conquest of the veld district, the farms and the plantations, but when the conquerors were about to possess the capital of the country which he himself had seen growing out of the barren veld into a beautiful city of brick and stone, it was indeed a grave epoch for an old man to pass through. It hurt him little to see Johannesburg fall to the enemy, for that city was ever in his enemy’s hands, but when Pretoria, distinctly the Boer city, was about to become British, perhaps for ever, the old man might have been expected to display signs of the great sorrow which he undoubtedly felt in his heart. At the threshold of such a great calamity to his cause it might have been anticipated that he would acknowledge defeat and ask for mercy from a magnanimous foe. It was not dreamt of that a man of almost four score years would desert his home and family, his farms and flocks, the result of a lifetime’s labour, and endure the discomforts of the field merely because he believed in a cause which, it seemed, was about to be extinguished by force of arms. But adversity caused no changes in the President’s demeanour. When he bade farewell to his good old wife—perhaps it was a final farewell—he cheered and comforted her, and when the weeping citizens and friends of many years gathered at his little cottage to bid him goodbye he chided them for their lack of faith in the cause, and encouraged them to believe that victory would crown the Boers’ efforts. Seven months before, Kruger stood on the verandah of his residence, and, doffing his hat to the first British prisoners that arrived in the city, asked his burghers not to rejoice unseemingly; in May the old man, about to flee before the enemy, inspired his people to take new courage, and ridiculed their ideas that all was lost.
Whether the Boers were in the first flush of victory or in the depths of despair Paul Kruger was ever the same to them—patriot, adviser, encourager, leader, and friend.
It was an easy matter to see the President when he was at his residence at Pretoria, and he appeared to be deeply interested in learning the opinions of the many foreigners who arrived in his country. The little verandah of the Executive Mansion—a pompous name for the small, one-storey cottage—was the President’s favourite resting and working place during the day. Just as in the days of peace he sat there in a big armchair, discussing politics with groups of his countrymen, so while the war was in progress he was seated there pondering the grave subjects of the time. The countrymen who could always be observed with him at almost any time of the day were missing. They were at the front. Occasionally two or three old Boers could be seen chatting with him behind Barnato’s marble lions, but invariably they had bandoliers around their bodies and rifles across their knees. Few of the old Boers who knew the President intimately returned from the front on leaves-of-absence unless they called on him to explain to him the tide and progress of the war.
According to his own declaration his health was as good as it ever was, although the war added many burdens to his life. Although he was seventy-five years old he declared he was as sprightly as he was twenty years before, and he seemed to have the energy and vitality of a man of forty. The reports that his mind was affected were cruel hoaxes which had not the slightest foundation of fact. The only matter concerning which he worried was his eyesight, which had been growing weaker steadily for five years. That misfortune alone prevented him from accompanying his burghers to the front and sharing their burdens with them, and he frequently expressed his disappointment that he was unable to engage more actively in the defence of his country. When Pretoria fell into British hands Kruger again sacrificed his own interests for the welfare of his Government and moved the capital into the fever-districts, the low-veld of the eastern part of the Transvaal. The deadly fever which permeates the atmosphere of that territory seemed to have no more terrors for him than did the British bullets at Poplar Grove, and he chose to remain in that dangerous locality in order that he might be in constant communication with his burghers and the outside world rather than to go farther into the isolated interior where he would have assumed no such great risks to his health.
Mr. Kruger was not a bitter enemy of the British nation, as might have been supposed. He was always an admirer of Britons and British institutions, and the war did not cause him to alter his convictions. He despised only the men whom he charged with being responsible for the war, and he never thought to hide the identity of those men. He blamed Mr. Rhodes, primarily, for instigating the war, and held Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Alfred Milner equally responsible for bringing it about. Against these three men he was extremely bitter, and he took advantage of every opportunity for expressing his opinions of them and their work. In February he stated that the real reason of the war between the Boers and the British was Rhodes’s desire for glory. “He wants to be known as the maker of the South African empire,” he said, “and the empire is not complete so long as there are two Republics in the centre of the country.”
Whatever were the causes of the war, it is certain that President Kruger did not make it in order to gain political supremacy in the country. The Dutch of Cape Colony, President Steyn of the Free State, and Secretary Reitz of the Transvaal, may have had visions of Dutch supremacy, but President Kruger had no such hopes. He invariably and strenuously denied that he had any aspirations other than the independence of his country, and all his words and works emphasised his statement to that effect. Several days before Commandant-General Joubert died, that intimate friend of the President declared solemnly that Kruger had never dreamt of expelling the British Government from South Africa and much less had made any agreement with the Dutch in other parts of the country with a view to such a result. It was a difficult matter to find a Transvaal Boer or a Boer from the northern part of the Free State who cared whether the British or the Dutch were paramount in South Africa so long as the Republics were left unharmed, but it was less difficult to meet Cape Colonists and Boers from the southern part of the Free State who desired that Great Britain’s power in the country should be broken. If there was any real spirit against Great Britain it was born on British soil in Cape Colony and blown northward to where courage to fight was more abundant. Its source certainly was not in the north, and more certainly not with Paul Kruger, the man of peace.
President Steyn, of the Orange Free State, occupied even a more responsible position than his friend President Kruger, of the Transvaal. At the beginning of hostilities, Steyn found that hundreds of the British-born citizens of his State refused to fight with his army, and consequently he was obliged to join the Transvaal with a much smaller force than he had reckoned upon. He was handicapped by the lack of generals of any experience, and he did not have a sufficient number of burghers to guard the borders of his own State. His Government had made but few preparations for war, and there was a lack of guns, ammunition, and equipment. The mobilisation of his burghers was extremely difficult and required much more time than was anticipated, and everything seemed to be awry at a time when every detail should have been carefully planned and executed. As the responsible head of the Government and the veritable head of the army Steyn passed a crisis with a remarkable display of energy, ingenuity, and ability. After the army was in the field he gave his personal attention to the work of the departments whose heads were at the front and attended to many of the details of the commissariat work in Bloemfontein. He frequently visited the burghers in the field and gave to them such encouragement as only the presence and praise of the leader of a nation can give to a people. In February he went to the Republican lines at Ladysmith and made an address in which he stated that Sir Alfred Milner’s declaration that the power of Afrikanderism must be broken had caused the war. Several days later he was with his burghers at Kimberley, praising their valour and infusing them with renewed courage. A day or two afterward he was again in Bloemfontein, arranging for the comfort of his men and caring for the wives and children who were left behind. His duties were increased a hundred-fold as the campaign progressed, and when the first reverses came he alone of the Free Staters was able to imbue the men with new zeal. After Bloemfontein was captured by the British he transferred the capital to Kroonstad, and there, with the assistance of President Kruger, re-established the fighting spirit of the burgher army. He induced the skulking burghers to return to their compatriots at the front, and formed the plans for future resistance against the invading army. When Lord Roberts’s hosts advanced from Bloemfontein, President Steyn again moved the capital and established it at Heilbron. Thereafter the capital was constantly transferred from one place to another, but through all those vicissitudes the President clung nobly to his people and country.