D'ye Ken Jan Smuts?

DESCRIPTION: "D'ye ken Jan Smuts when he's out with his gun? D'ye ken Jan Smuts with his foes on the run?" The singer will "follow Jan Smuts wherever I am" and "strafe old Bill" (=Kaiser Wilhelm) who started the war. Three cheers to Smuts
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1917 (Nettleingham-TommysTunes)
KEYWORDS: soldier Africa royalty drink
FOUND IN: Britain
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Nettleingham-TommysTunes, #35, "D'ye Ken Jan Smuts?" (1 text, tune referenced)
Roud #10796
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "D'ye Ken John Peel?" (tune) and references there
NOTES [239 words]: Jan Smuts (1879-1950) was the most noteworthy South African general of World War I. He was white, naturally. According to Stephen Pope and Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, Dictionary of the First World War, 1995 (I use the 2003 Pen & Sword paperback), o. 438, his first important command came in 1915, when the British and South African forces invaded German Southwest Africa (modern Namibia). As second in command to Louis Botha, he led one of the two main columns into the German territory.
Once Southwest Africa was conquered, he was given command of the Entente forces in East Africa, who were trying to catch the small German force led by General Paul von Lettow-Thorbeck. In this Smuts failed -- Lettow-Thorbeck was still in the field at the time of the armistice, and his campaign was effective enough to be used as a textbook example of an isolated mobile force surviving in enemy territory -- but at least Smuts held his army together, gained territory, and didn't suffer terrible losses, which by the standards of British officers of this period perhaps qualifies as genius.
After the war, and after this song was collected, Smuts served as South Africa's prime minister 1919-1924 and 1939-1948. He was generally pro-British and Internationalist, and even served as one of Lloyd George's cabinet ministers, but he favored racial segregation in South Africa, though apparently not as strongly as many of his fellow Afrikaaners. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: NeTT035

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