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East Africa: Kilimanjaro-Meru

From a strategic point of view, the northern frontier was the most difficult of all. It passed north of Kilimanjaro, to the west of which is a desert belt. East of this desert belt and Kilimanjaro the enemy colony was protected by an almost impassable mountain system, with a very narrow, swampy, dangerous gap between the Usambara and Pare Mountains, and another gap of about four or five miles between the Pare Mountains and Kilimanjaro. It was impossible to move an army through the first gap; the second gap at the foot of Kilimanjaro was the place where the enemy had located himself early in the war on British territory, and with patience and skill had dug himself in, with very extensive fortifications, surrounded by dense forests and impassable swamps. Here he lay waiting for eighteen months, threatening British East Africa. From here he was driven in March, 1916, and by the end of that month our forces had conquered the whole Kilimanjaro-Meru areas. It was at this stage, and after our initial success, that the rainy season set in; and that is another great feature of German East Africa. I had read much about it, and I had heard more; but the reality far surpassed the worst I had read or heard. For weeks the rain came down ceaselessly, pitilessly, sometimes three inches in twenty-four hours, until all the hollows became rivers, all the low-lying valleys became lakes, the bridges disappeared, and all roads dissolved in mud. All communications came to an end, and even Moses himself in the desert had not such a commissariat situation as faced me.

The enemy's line of retreat.

When in the latter part of May the rains subsided, the advance against the enemy was once more resumed. In order to create the maximum difficulties for our advance, the enemy chose as his line of retreat the great block of mountains which I have referred to as forming the eastern buttress of the great central plateau. For the next three and a half months our forward movement continued with only one short pause until by the middle of September we had reached the great valleys of the Rufiji and the Great Rwaha in the far south, and across the Rwaha we could link up with General Northey at Iringa in the southwest.

Difficulties of transport and supply in advance.

Poisonous insects and tropical diseases.

The campaign a story of human endurance.

It is impossible for those unacquainted with German East Africa to realize the physical, transport, and supply difficulties of an advance over this magnificent, but mountainous, country, with a great rainfall and wide, unbridged rivers in the regions of the mountains, and insufficient surface water on the plains for the needs of an army; with magnificent primeval forest everywhere, pathless, trackless, except for the spoor of the elephant or the narrow footpaths of the natives. The malaria mosquito is everywhere except on the higher plateaus; everywhere the belts are infested with the deadly tsetse fly, which makes an end of all animal transport; and almost everywhere the ground is rich black or red cotton soil, which any transport converts into mud in the rain or dust in the drought. Everywhere the fierce heat of equatorial Africa, accompanied by a wild luxuriance of parasitic life, breed tropical diseases in the unacclimatized whites. These conditions make life for the white man in that country sufficiently trying. If in addition he has to perform hard work and make long marches on short rations, the trial becomes very severe; if, above all, huge masses of men and material have to be moved over hundreds of miles in a great military expedition against a mobile and alert foe, then the strain becomes almost unendurable. And the chapter of accidents in this region of the unknown! Unseasonable rains cut off expeditions for weeks from their supply bases. Animals died by the thousand--after passing through an unknown fly-belt. Mechanical transport got bogged in the marshes, held up by bridges washed away, or mountain passes obstructed by sudden floods. And the gallant boys, marching far ahead under the pitiless African sun, with the fever raging in their blood, pressed ever on after the retreating enemy, often on reduced rations, and without any of the small comforts which in this climate are real necessities. In the story of human endurance this campaign deserves a very special place, and the heroes who went through it uncomplainingly, doggedly, are entitled to all recognition and reverence. Their commander-in-chief will remain eternally proud of them. When in January, 1917, I relinquished the command to my successor, General Hoskins, we were across the Rufiji River in the south-east, and in the great valley formed by the principal tributaries, the Ulanga and Ruhuje rivers in the west; but the rainy season which set in shortly afterward stopped all advance until the following June.

Enemy's forces evacuate German East Africa.

Five months later our advance was resumed, and by the beginning of December, 1917, the last remnants of the enemy's forces had evacuated German East Africa across the Rovuma, while our forces were operating against the enemy bands far south in Portuguese territory, as I have already stated. Development of tropical Africa retarded by diseases. In economic value this region ranks very high among the tropical countries of the African continent, and probably no part of all Africa has a climate or soil more suitable for the production on an immense scale of copra, cocoanuts, coffee, sugar, sisal, rubber, cotton, and other tropical products, or of such semi-tropical products as maize and millet. In common with the rest of tropical Africa, its full development is still retarded by the undefeated animal and human diseases, especially malaria. But the time is not far distant when science will have overcome these drawbacks, and when Central and East Africa will have become one of the most productive and valuable parts of the tropics. But until science solves the problems of tropical disease, East and Central Africa must not be looked upon as an area for white colonization. Perhaps they will never be a white man's country in any real sense. In those huge territories the white man's task will probably be largely confined to that of administrator, teacher, expert, manager, or overseer of the large negro populations, whose progressive civilization will be more suitably promoted in connection with the industrial development of the land. The Germans discouraged white settlement.

Natives compelled to work for planters.

German system more profitable one.

It is clear from their practice in East Africa that the Germans had decided to develop the country not as an ordinary colony, but as a tropical possession for the cultivation of tropical raw materials. They systematically discouraged white settlement; the white colonists, with their small farms, gradually building up a European system on a small scale, who are a marked feature of British colonies, were conspicuously absent. Instead, tracts of country were granted to companies, syndicates, or men with large capital, on conditions that plantations of tropical products would be cultivated. The planters were supplied with native labor under a government system which compelled the natives to work for the planters for a certain very small wage during part of every year; and as labor was very plentiful, with seven and a half millions of natives, the future for the capitalist syndicates seemed rosy enough. No wonder that under this corvee system East Africa and the Kamerun were rapidly developing into very valuable tropical assets, from which in time the German Empire would have derived much of the tropical raw material for its industries. The Germans realized better than most people that the value of tropical Africa lay not in any openings for white colonization, such as are being developed next door to their colonies in British East Africa, but in the plantation system, where white capital and black labor collaborate to establish an entirely different order of things. Harsh as the German system undoubtedly is, I am not prepared to deny that it is perhaps the more scientific one, and that in the long run it is the more profitable form of exploiting the tremendous natural resources of the tropics. With regard to tropical Africa, so vast in area, so great in resources, the first desideratum for its development is the opening up of communication. The lakes, the Nile, and the Congo form the principal natural links in any chains of communication with the seaboard; and the question is, how far railways have come in or will come in to complete these chains.