Cronje, by all accounts, has about 4000 men with him.  He has dug himself into the river banks, which are steep and afford good cover.  You would never guess, sweeping the scene with your glasses, that an army could be hiding there.  The river curves and winds, its course marked by the tops of the willows that grow along its banks.  The land on both sides stretches bare and almost level, but there are a few rises and knolls from which our artillery smashes down its fire on the Boer laager.  At one point you can make out a ragged congregation of waggons, broken and shattered, some of them burning or smouldering.  That is where the laager is, but not a soul can one see move.  The place looks an utter solitude, bare and lifeless in the glare of the sun.  There is no reply to our busy guns.  The little shrapnel clouds, stabbed with fire, burst now here now there, sometimes three or four together, over the spot, and the blue haze floats away, mingling with the darker, thicker vapour from the less frequent lyddite.  “What are they shooting at?” a stranger would say; “there is nobody there.”  Isn’t there?  Only 4000 crafty, vigilant Boers, crowding in their holes and cuddling their Mausers.  Ask the Highlanders.

You will have heard all about that by this time.  The desperate attempt last Sunday to take the position by storm.  It was another of those fiendish “frontal attacks.”  Have we been through Belmont and Graspan and Modder River and Magersfontein for nothing?  Or must we teach every general in turn who comes to take charge of us what the army has learnt long ago, that a frontal attack against Mausers is leading up to your enemy’s strong suit.  For Methuen there were reasons.  Methuen could not outflank, could not go round, was not strong enough to leave his lines of communication, and had practically no cavalry.  He had to go straight on.  Belmont, Graspan, and Modder were turnpike gates.  The toll was heavy, but there was no choice but to pay.  But what was the reason of this latest?  We had them here safely bottled up.  We have them still.  It is only a question of days.  The attack could have gained nothing by success; has lost little by its failure.  The casualties were 1500.  I know all about eggs and omelettes, but these were simply thrown in the gutter.

Never tell me these Boers aren’t brave.  What manner of life, think you, is in yonder ditch?  Our artillery rains down its cross fire of shells perpetually.  The great ox-waggons are almost totally destroyed or burnt.  The ammunition in the carts keeps blowing up as the fire reaches it.  The beasts, horses and oxen, are strewn about, dead and putrid, and deserters say that the stench from their rotting carcasses is unbearable.  Night and day they have to be prepared for infantry attacks, and yet, to the amazement of all of us, they still hold out.

Old Cronje’s apparent object is to try and save Bloemfontein by delaying us till reinforcements come up from the south and east.  This is really what we want, because the more of the enemy we get in front of this great army of ours, the harder we shall be able to hit them.  But evidently Cronje is ignorant of our strength.