XII 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 grad- uating 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. It was in his capacity as State Attorney that he accompanied President Kruger, when the latter met Lord (then Sir Alfred) Milner at Bloemfontein, and took part in the negotiation with Mr. Conyngham Greene, the British Agent at Pretoria. The young advocate and statesman suddenly found his country confronted with war, and shortly after the Boer Commandos had taken the field he was attached to General Joubert as a legal adviser and administrative officer for the territory in Natal occupied by the Republican forces.
