16 AUGUST 1902, Page 2

General Lucas Meyer, the Boer commander and politician, who reluctantly

declined an invitation to attend the Coronation on the score of his health, died suddenly in Brussels yesterday week. A Free Stater by birth, Lucas Meyer attained considerable prominence as a progressive politician in the Transvaal, and was Chairman of the First Volksraad when the war broke out. Entrusted with high command in the earliest phase of the war, he was superseded after two failures, and only re-emerged into notice at the time of the final peace negotiations, in which he took an active part. During his recent visit to England he displayed not only an entire freedom from animosity, but a readiness to meet and con- fer with members of the Government, and a general desire to make the best of the inevitable, which, in view of the valuable services he had rendered and was ready to render as a recon-

ciliator, make his premature death—he was only fifty-six— doubly to be regretted.