ndered with all arms and four field guns, and
the Union prisoners of war were released. And great was their
rejoicing, too. Other columns marching north had now reached
Rietfontein and Grootfontein.

It so arose now that General Myburgh, having got for a brief space out
of touch with the Commander-in-Chief, was not aware that the Germans
had opened, on July 5, negotiations with General Botha. General Myburgh
was at once communicated with. As a fact, at the time he entered
Tsumeb, a conference was on hand farther south.

Why did the German forces in the Protectorate surrender without making
the big stand they threatened? If any proof be needed that they did
intend to make a stand it is necessary only to glance at the plan of
their final dispositions. And that is just where General Botha and his
forces had done their work. There is not the least doubt, not the very
least, that von Franke might have made a stand. It would have been
nothing more than a quixotically honourable waste of life ending in one
only possible way.

_He was surrounded before he knew it._

So neat and swift had been the scheme prepared by the
Commander-in-Chief that the German was incredulous--until his scouts kept
coming in and telling him what the real state of affairs was. For Brits,
after a two hundred mile detour through the wildest country had swept
right north to Namutoni on the Great Etoscha Pan, had released more
prisoners and was swerving further out. Myburgh was in Tsumeb. Both these
generals were behind the Germans, ready to strike out forthwith; and
von Franke was cut off from all his supplies. He had simply been
caught--caught by remorseless forced marches and strategy as neat as a
trivet--in a great fork with bent prongs. On the sketches in this
little book, to which I have sacrificed everything possible for
clearness, the general simple scheme of the campaign may be apparent.
The final position on July 5 was something like the diagram on page 61
[A].

Even guerilla warfare is an unattainable luxury when you are
surrounded.

[Illustration: [A] The Fork that Caught the Germans]

[Illustration: The Last Phase. Opposite the very spot where surrender
was made. A vast ant-hill at 500 Kilometres]

[Illustration: South-West Africa. Position of enemy before surrender]

At kilometre 500 on the line between Otavi and Korab, at 2 a.m. on the
9th of July 1915, von Franke, the German Commander, and Dr. Seitz, the
Imperial Governor of S