Richard Harding Davis, With Both Armies: Chapter III.

Richard Harding Davis
WITH BOTH ARMIES

President Kruger

CHAPTER VI
President Kruger

THE most interesting man in the Boer capital is Paul Kruger, who is possibly also the man of the greatest interest in the world today; a man who, in spite of his present prominence in the world, lives in the capital of his republic as simply as a village lawyer. Every day, for the few brief moments during which he is driven from his cottage to the Government Buildings, surrounded by a mounted guard of honor, he rises to a degree of state to which our own President does not attain. But for the remainder of the day he sits on his front porch or in his little parlor and arranges the affairs of his government with as little display as that shown by the poorest of his burghers. On the stoop, separated from the sidewalk by only a bed of flowers, you may at almost any hour you pass see the President smoking his pipe and sipping his coffee. This simplicity and democracy and infinitely to the interest he holds for you as a man. It is, of course, much more effective than any show of state. The man is so much bigger than his surroundings that his gilded carriage and troop of helmeted police do not in any way increase his dignity, neither to the burgher who never before has seen a gilt carriage, nor to the High Commissioner of Her Majesty, who has ridden in a gilt carriage of his own. The first time I heard him speak was when he received the Irish-Americans who came from Chicago to join the Transvaal Army. They were drawn up along the front of the cottage in a double line, and while he waited for the arrival of the State Secretary, Mr. Reitz, who was to act as interpreter, the President sat on the porch and regarded them through his black spectacles. When Mr. Reitz came, the President walked out to the sidewalk, and Colonel Blake, the commander of the Irish Brigade, introduced Captain O'Connor of the Chicago contingent. The President said that it was to be expected that men should come from the country which had always stood for the liberty and for the independence of the individual; that the cause for which they had come to fight was one upon which the Lord had looked with favor; and that even though they died in this war they must feel that they were acting as His servants and had died in His service. He then instructed them, much as a father talking to a group of school-boys, that they must obey their commanders and that their commanders must obey the generals of the Transvaal. Then he spoke more rapidly and inarticulately, so that we guessed it was something of great moment that we were about to hear; but it proved on translation that he was enjoining them to be very careful of their ponies, not to ride them too hard, nor to lame them. Mr. Reitz translated this rather grudgingly, as though he wished the President would speak a few more words of welcome and of thanks for the sacrifice the men were about to make. But the President had the care of the State's ponies at heart and reiterated his injunctions concerning them. He then bowed and turned into his cottage. I think he left the Irish boys a little puzzled, as they had expected oratory of an unusual order; but nevertheless they cheered him very heartily, and then O'Shea, who is the tenor of the troop, cleared his throat and sang a hymn. Possibly had the President known the Irish boys better he would have been as much surprised by this act on their part as his own performance had puzzled them. “Jerusalem” was the hymn O'Shea sang, and the picture the men made as they stood under the trees joining in the chorus was a very curious one. They were all armed and with bandoliers crossed over their chests, and gathered around them were a few Boers and a crowd of school-children who had ridden up on their bicycles to see what was going forward. I do not know whether they sang “Jerusalem” in order to please the President or as a sort of battle-hymn, but whatever the motive, it was very effective. They said afterward that they thought President Kruger was a very fine gentleman, but that somehow he had “scared” them.

My first meeting with President Kruger was very brief, and I learned little from it of him then which has not been made familiar to everyone. Mr. Reitz brought me to his house and we sat on his porch, he loading and reloading his cavernous pipe the while and staring out into the street. The thing that impressed me first was that in spite of his many years his great bulk and height gave you an impression of strength and power which was increased by the force he was able to put into his abrupt gestures. He gesticulated awkwardly but with the vigor of a young man, throwing out his arm as though he were pitching a quoit, and opening his great fingers and clinching them again in a menacing fist, with which he struck upon his knee. When he spoke he looked neither at the State Secretary nor at me, but out into the street; and when he did look at one, his eyes held no expression, but were like those in a jade idol. His whole face, chiefly, I think, because of the eyes, was like a heavy waxen mask. In speaking, his lips moved and most violently, but every other feature of his face remained absolutely set. In his ears he wore little gold rings, and his eyes, which were red and seared with some disease, were protected from the light by great gold-rimmed spectacles of dark glass with wire screens.

So many men had come see him and to ask him to talk on a subject for which the day for talk was past, that he had grown properly weary of it all; and before I could ask him for the particular information I hoped to obtain, he said, “I say what I have said before, we are fighting for our independence.” He kept repeating this stubbornly several times, and then spoke more specifically, saying, “They are two hundred thousand, we are thirty thousand.” “They have turned the black men on the border against us.” “We have all their prisoners to feed.” “It is like a big bully fighting a boy.”

I asked him in what way he thought the United States could have assisted him.

“By intervention,” he answered. “It can intervene.”

I pointed out that the President had already offered to intervene and had been snubbed for so doing, and that it was not at all probable that he would do so again, but that there was much sympathy in America; that there were many people anxious to help the Transvaal, and I asked him to suggest how they might put their sympathy to account.

“They have sent us a great deal of money for the Red Cross,” he said, “and many of them have come to fight; but we cannot pay the passage money for others to come here, and we cannot ask for help. If they give us sympathy, or money, or men, that is good and it is welcome. We thank them. But we will not ask for help.” He struck his knee and pointed out into the street, talking so rapidly and violently that the words seemed as though they must be unintelligible to everyone. But Mr. Reitz said that the President had returned again to the simile of the big bully and the little boy.

“Suppose a man walking in the street sees the big bully beating the boy and passes on without helping him,” was what the President had said when he spoke so excitedly. “It is no excuse for him to say after the boy is dead, ‘The boy did not call to me for help.’ We shall not ask for help. They can see for themselves. They need not wait for us to ask.” He talked on other subjects: of Villebois-Mareuil, the French colonel, of whom he said, “When I heard he had been killed, I felt as though I had heard of the death of my own brother;" and of George W. Steevens, whose letters, which had been captured from Kaffir runners from Ladysmith, I wanted him to return to Alfred Harmsworth, the proprietor of the Daily Mail. The President said he had not known that the Government was in possession of any of Steevens's letters, and Secretary Reitz said he was also ignorant of the fact. But he assured me that he would at once make search for them and return them to Mrs. Steevens.

But the greater part of what the President said was a repetition of what I have written the injustice of the English, the fact that his people fought only to protect their liberty, and the unfairness of the odds against them. In many ways he reminded me greatly of one of our own presidents, Mr. Cleveland. Both men have a strangely similar energy in speaking, a manner of stating a fact as aggressively and stubbornly as though they were being contradicted. There is also something similar in the impressiveness of their build and size which seems fitting with a big mind and strong will; something similar even in the little trick each has of shaking his head when an idea is presented to him. which annoys him, as though he could brush away its truth with a gesture, and in the way neither of them looks at the person to whom he speaks. Resolution, enormous will-power, and a supreme courage of conviction are the qualities in both which after you have left them are still uppermost in your memory.

I called at President Kruger's house a few hours before he left Pretoria for Machadodorp. I was glad I had seen him then. It seemed to me that no man at the moment when he is going into exile from his home, and the home also of the Government of which he is the chief, could have borne himself more calmly, with greater dignity, or with a better spirit. The Secretary of War had asked me to come to the President's cottage to witness the presentation of a message of sympathy signed by twenty-nine hundred Philadelphia school-boys.

It had been brought to Pretoria that morning by a boy sixteen years old named Jimmy Smith, belonging to the messenger service of New York City. If ever the President needed sympathy he needed it then, three hours before he was to leave his capital and seek refuge in the mountains, and although he was in the confusion of departure and giving last orders to his cabinet officers and generals, he found time to receive the address and to be civil to the boy who presented it.

In one way the arrival of any message of sympathy at just that moment was most opportune; from another point of view it was almost too opportune. The message had been sent by the boys to express sympathy with a man who, at the time it was written, was fighting victoriously for a cause with which they were in sympathy. But it arrived when the cause was a lost one, and so it seemed as though their sympathy was meant for the man himself, because he had lost. It was perhaps not the happiest moment the school-boys could have chosen for saying that they were sorry for a man old enough to be their great-grandfather.

Apart from that, which, after all, was no fault of the sympathizers, the picture made by the Boer President, and the New York messenger boy staggering under his great roll of signatures, was a pathetic and curious one.

If it had not been pathetic it would have been absurd. At one end of the dark, low-ceilinged room stood the man who, as a boy of ten in the great trek of 1836, had fled before the British, and who since then had been twice driven to seek a new home in the wilderness. He was now, at the age of seventy years, once more going forth, again evicted by the English, to hide like a wounded lion among the rocks of his mountains. Opposite him was the frightened, red-haired messenger boy from Broadway, squeezing his cap under his elbow, and holding out the roll of signatures in a leather box before him.

“Your Excellency,” stammered Jimmy Smith.

It was the beginning of the oration he had rehearsed in dark corners of the deck to the waves of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Kruger stooped and peered down at Jimmy Smith like a giant ogre. One almost expected to see him pinch Jimmy Smith to find out if he were properly fattened for eating. But instead he took Jimmy's hand and shook it gravely. Then he turned, and, according to the Boer custom, shook hands with everyone else in the room, leaving Jimmy's speech suspended and helpless in midair. It was a terrible moment.

Each of us was as nervously anxious to have that speech delivered as though Jimmy were his only son.

It reminded me of a little girl I once saw who was to christen a battleship, and who vainly tried to hit it with the champagne bottle as it slipped steadily out of her reach. But Jimmy was not going to allow the President to slip away from him.

“Your Excellency,” he began again, in an excited, boyish treble.

The President stopped and looked about him as though someone had tugged at his sleeve, and Jimmy rushed on impetuously, running the words together. “I have been chosen to convey to you this message of sympathy, signed by twenty-nine hundred schoolboys of Philadelphia, which I now have the honor to present.”

He stopped with a sigh of content, and we all breathed again. Jimmy dropped his hat and held out the box with its roll of signatures. The President fingered it, turning the roll over as he asked the Secretary of State to explain.

Secretary Reitz took out the message, which was written in English and in Dutch, and, as he did not see the Dutch version, translated the one in English.

The message set forth that it was fitting that the children of the city which had first declared for independence against Great Britain should send a greeting of sympathy to the leader of the people who were in their turn fighting for their independence against the same nation.

President Kruger nodded solemnly, muttering his approval, and was about to make a speech of thanks in return when Mr. Sutherland, who had accompanied Jimmy Smith as guide, philosopher, and friend, whispered to Mr. Reitz that he also had something to present.

Mr. Sutherland's gift was a large and richly decorated album, containing a history of the Boer war made up from newspaper clippings, caricatures, and pictures and photographs. It was incased in a huge leather trunk like box, with a lid fastened by a lock and two clasps.

Mr. Sutherland lowered the box to the floor at the feet of the President, and without the ceremony of another speech attempted to open the lid. The box looked like a large dress suit case, and as no one had been told what it contained, the interest of all was deeply engaged. The President stepped back gingerly and surveyed it with an expression of some misgiving. He looked as though he were in doubt as to whether it might be a service of silver-plate or an infernal machine.

In the meanwhile we had all become painfully conscious of the fact that Sutherland was having trouble with the lid. There was not enough time in which to have trouble with the lid, for, as it was, Jimmy Smith's audience had been snatched from the momentous minutes of a war council, and the President's horses, which were to carry him from his home, were standing already “inspanned” in his stable.

A full knowledge of this made Mr. Sutherland blush crimson in embarrassment. He breathed quickly, and as he struggled with the lock the perspiration flowed from his forehead. There was an eager and excited chorus of whispered suggestions and advice. Moved with sympathy, Secretary Reitz and Mr. Gobler, the Secretary of War, sank to their knees beside Mr. Sutherland and all three pulled and pried violently at the obdurate lid.

Mr. James Archibald, the war correspondent, who is never at a loss, felt hurriedly in his pocket for a knife, and finding none, produced a half-crown, with which he endeavored to pick the lock. But the half-crown proved inadequate when used as a burglar's jimmy, and the lock remained intact and immovable. The Secretary of War had been holding his hat, but finding that in his efforts he needed both his hands he mechanically placed it on the back of his head. Mr. Reitz saw this, and under cover of the general perturbation whispered to him anxiously to take it off.

In the meantime President Kruger's interest in the mysterious box had increased greatly, and he came forward and bent over his two secretaries with his hands on his knees, peering down at the lock with absolute lack of self-consciousness.

It was another happy thought of Archibald, who is ever calm and collected, even when the bullets fly, that relieved a situation which was rapidly becoming tragic.

“Sutherland,” Archibald whispered, hoarsely, “haven't you got a key?”

“A what?” gasped Sutherland, looking up. "A key? Yes.”

“Then use it!” commanded the war correspondent, sternly.

Sutherland produced the key, turned the lock, and opened the lid. For the second time everyone in the room breathed freely. President Kruger pushed forward and peered down at the great gold and vellum album in its leather case. He straightened himself with a pleased sigh and smiled at Sutherland, nodding at him approvingly.

“It is a Bible,” he said.

The mistake was so in character that as we grasped it and heard the simple note of real pleasure in his voice I believe every man in the room would have given half a month's wages to have changed that album into what Kruger believed it to be.

“No; a history of the war,” Reitz exclaimed, hastily, turning over the pages and showing the President pictures of himself, of Boer laagers, and of his generals. But the President shook his head and closed the big volume. He beckoned to General Meyer, who had been impatiently waiting.

“Tell them I thank them,” he said to Reitz. “Tell them I am much obliged for the message and for the history. They must go now.”

He held out his hand again to Jimmy Smith and Sutherland, the last Americans to shake it before he went out into the mountains.

That was my last sight of President Kruger.

South African War Links


		Richard Harding Davis, *With Both Armies in South Africa*, 1900 Chapter VII: "The English Prisoners"
		Richard Harding Davis, *With Both Armies in South Africa*, 1900 Table of Contents
		Biography of Richard Harding Davis. "U.S. author of romantic novels and short stories and the best known reporter of his generation."

		Perspectives on the South African War. A collection of links to materials on the South African War.
		The South African War Virtual Library contains a wide selection of research data related to the South African War. This site presents an archive of easily accessible and concise material concerning the War. It is not intended to be a new historical 'front', but instead an organised amalgamation of a wide variety of available material.

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