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Show PRIDE OF GALLANT NATION Three Boer Leaders, as Famous In Statesmanship. as They Were In War. Gen. Jacobus Hendrik de la Rey, who was accidentally shot and killed by Johannesburg police, will be mourned by many a British officer now serving at the front. Knightly was a term worthily applied to Gen. de la Rey in the Boer war. A braver, gentler, more magnanimous soldier never faced an enemy. His countrymen called him the lion of the western Transvaal. Englishmen said that he was one of the three military geniuses among the heroic burghers whose defense of their country coun-try compelled England to put 400.000 men in the field. The other great soldiers who won fame in the Boer war by their brilliant tactics were Louis Botha, now premier of the Union of South Africa, and Christian Rudolf de Wet, who is minister of agriculture ag-riculture of the Orange River colony. Louis Botha, the youngest of the three, born in 1862, commanded the Boers at the battles of Colenso and Splon Kop. and upon the death of Petrus Joubert ("a soldier and a gentleman gen-tleman and a brave and honorable opponent" op-ponent" in the words of Ladysmith's defender. Sir George White) succeeded succeed-ed to the command of the Transvaal Trans-vaal forces. De Wet and De la Rey. the latter the older, were fighting men of the same type, and it would be hard to say which showed the greater skill in surprising and capturing cap-turing British detachments and afterward after-ward eluding pursuit. De la Rey had more solid achievements to his credit, among them Klerksdorp, where Lord Methuen, sorely wounded, fell into his hands and was released so that he could obtain medical treatment. All three of these able soldiers aided the British in the reconstruction reconstruc-tion of South Africa. ' De la Rey visited vis-ited India in 1903 to persuade the Boer prisoners detained at Ahmed-nagar Ahmed-nagar to take the oath of allegiance. He was returned unopposed to the first Transvaal parliament of the union. Of the Boer leaders none had a more atractive personality. It was a fine race of people that could produce pro-duce such soldiers and statesmen, and never was there stronger proof of the excellence of British administration In our times than the winning of Botha, De la Rey and De Wet to the new order in South Africa. The empire has known no more loyal citizens. New York Sun. I |