or splendid calculation they were heading straight for the one drift which was still open to Cronje.  It was a close thing.  At midday on Saturday the Boer advance guard was already near to the kopjes which command it.  But French’s men, still full of fight after their march of thirty miles, threw themselves in front and seized the position before their very eyes.  The last of the drifts was closed.  If Cronje was to get across now, he must crawl out of his trench and fight under Roberts’s conditions, or he might remain under his own conditions until Roberts’s forces closed round him.  With him lay the alternative.  In the meantime, still ignorant of the forces about him, but finding himself headed off by French, he made his way down to the river and occupied a long stretch of it between Paardeberg Drift and Wolveskraal Drift, hoping to force his way across.  This was the situation on the night of Saturday, February 17th.

In the course of that night the British brigades, staggering with fatigue but indomitably resolute to crush their evasive enemy, were converging upon Paardeberg.  The Highland Brigade, exhausted by a heavy march over soft sand from Jacobsdal to Klip Drift, were nerved to fresh exertions by the word ‘Magersfontein,’ which flew from lip to lip along the ranks, and pushed on for another twelve miles to Paardeberg.  Close at their heels came Smith-Dorrien’s 19th Brigade, comprising the Shropshires, the Cornwalls, the Gordons, and the Canadians, probably the very finest brigade in the whole army.  They pushed across the river and took up their position upon the north bank.  The old wolf was now fairly surrounded.  On the west the Highlanders were south of the river, and Smith-Dorrien on the north.  On the east Kelly-Kenny’s Division was to the south of the river, and French with his cavalry and mounted infantry were to the north of it.  Never was a general in a more hopeless plight.  Do what he would, there was no possible loophole for escape.

There was only one thing which apparently should not have been done, and that was to attack him.  His position was a formidable one.  Not only were the banks of the river fringed with his riflemen under excellent cover, but from these banks there extended on each side a number of dongas, which made admirable natural trenches.  The only possible attack from either side must be across a level plain at least a thousand or fifteen hundred yards in width, where our numbers would only swell our losses.  It must be a bold soldier and a far bolder civilian, who would venture to question an operation carried out under the immediate personal direction of Lord Kitchener; but the general consensus of opinion among critics may justify that which might be temerity in the individual.  Had Cronje not been tightly surrounded, the action with its heavy losses might have been justified as an attempt to hold him until his investment should be complete.  There seems, however, to be no doubt that he was already entirely surrounded, and that, as experience proved, we had only to sit round him to insure his surrender.  It is not given to the greatest man to have every soldierly gift equally developed, and it may be said without offence that Lord Kitchener’s cool judgment upon the actual field of battle has not yet been proved as conclusively as his longheaded power of organisation and his iron determination.