LIEUT.-GEN. H. E. WATTS
General Watts has a fighting reputation second to no one in the Army. The Campaign for him has been one long Malplaquet—a hard-fought soldiers' battle, and no man has known better how to elicit the inherent steadfastness of British troops. To have led first a Brigade and then a Division through some of the fiercest fights of all history is no small record for a man on the verge of sixty years.
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LIEUT.-GENERAL THE RT. HON. JAN CHRISTIAAN SMUTS, P.C., K.C., M.L.A.
COMPANION OF HONOUR
GENERAL SMUTS was born on May 24th, 1870, at Bovenplaats in the Malmesbury district of the Cape Colony, the residence of his father, Jacobus Abraham Smuts, who was for some time a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Cape. He was educated at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, and graduating with high honours in arts and science, passed as Ebden Scholar to Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1891.
He secured a double first in the Law Tripos, was called to the Bar and, returning to South Africa in 1895, was duly admitted to the Supreme Court at Cape Town, where he began to practice his profession. He was admitted to the Transvaal Bar in the following year, soon after the Jameson Raid. About this time he married Miss Sibylla Krige, of Stellenbosch, and settled in Johannesburg. He had already been mentioned as Dr. Leyds' successor to the post of State Secretary, when in 1898 he was offered and accepted the post of State Attorney. President Kruger's choice of so young a man was amply and speedily justified, and his reforming zeal exercised a formidable influence in the State.