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