“If I were five years younger, or if my eyesight were better,” he growled at the recalcitrants, “I would take a rifle and bandolier and show you what we old Boers were accustomed to do.  We had courage; you seem to have none.”

After the President had encouraged the officers, and had secured their promises to continue the resistance against their enemy he wandered about in the laagers, shaking hands with and infusing new spirit into the burghers who had flocked together to see their revered leader.  When several thousand of the Boers had gathered around him and were trying to have a word with him the President bared his head and asked his friends to join him in prayer.  Instantly every head was bared, and Kruger’s voice spread out over the vast concourse in a grand appeal to the God of Battles to grant His blessing to the burgher army.  The grey-haired old man was conspicuous in a small circle which was formed by the burghers withdrawing several paces when he began the prayer.  On all sides there spread out a mass of black-garbed, battle-begrimed Boers with eyes turned to the ground.  Here and there a white tent raised its head above the assemblage; at other points men stood on waggons and cannon.  Farther on, burghers dismounted from their horses and joined the crowd.  In the distance were Talana Hill, where the first battle of the campaign was fought; the lofty Drakensberg where more than fifty years before the early Boer Voortrekkers had their first glimpses of fair Natal, while to the south were the hills of Ladysmith of sombre history.  There in the midst of bloody battlefields, and among several thousand men who sought the blood of the enemy, Kruger, the man of peace, implored Almighty God to give strength to his burghers.  It was a magnificent spectacle.

He had been at Glencoe only a short time when the news reached him that the burghers in the Free State had lost their courage, and were retreating rapidly towards Bloemfontein.  He abbreviated his visit, hastened to the Free State, and met the fleeing Boers at Poplar Grove.  He exhorted them to make a stand against the enemy, and, by his magnetic power over them, succeeded in inducing the majority to remain and oppose the British advance.  His own fearlessness encouraged them, and when they saw their old leader standing in the midst of shell fire as immobile as if he were watching a holiday parade, they had not the heart to run.  While he was watching the battle a shell fell within a short distance of where he stood, and all his companions fled from the spot.  He walked slowly away, and when the men returned to him he chided them, and made a witty remark concerning the shell, naming it one of “the Queen’s pills.”  While the battle continued, Kruger followed one of the commandos and urged the men to fight.  At one stage of the battle the commando which he was following was in imminent danger of being cut off and captured by the British forces, but the burghers fought valiantly before their President, and finally conveyed him to a place of safety, although the path was shell and bullet swept.