The Vaalkranz operations are particularly difficult to defend from the charge of having been needlessly slow and half-hearted.

This 'saturnine fighter,' as he had been called, proved to be exceedingly sensitive about the lives of his men--an admirable quality in itself, but there are occasions when to spare them to-day is to needlessly imperil them tomorrow.

The victory was his, and yet in the very moment of it he displayed the qualities which marred him.

With two cavalry brigades in hand he did not push the pursuit of the routed Boers with their guns and endless streams of wagons.

It is true that he might have lost heavily, but it is true also that a success might have ended the Boer invasion of Natal, and the lives of our troopers would be well spent in such a venture.