Lettow-Vorbeck the German army has one of the most able and resourceful
leaders that it has produced in this war.




THIS ARMY OF OURS


Since Alexander of Macedon descended upon the plains of India, there can
never have been so strange and heterogeneous an army as this, and a
doctor must speak with the tongues of men and angels to arrive at an
even approximate understanding of their varied ailments. The first
division that came with Jan Smuts from the snows of Kilimanjaro to the
torrid delta of the Rufigi contained them all.

The real history of the war begins with Smuts; for, prior to his coming,
we were merely at war; but when he came we began to fight. A brief
twenty-four hours in Nairobi, during which he avoided the public
receptions and the dinners that a more social chief would have graced;
then he was off into the bush. Wherever that rather short, but well-knit
figure appeared, with his red beard, well streaked with grey, beneath
the red Staff cap, confidence reigned in all our troops. And to the end
this trust has remained unabated. Many disappointments have come his
way, more from his own mounted troops than from any others; but we have
felt that his tactics and strategy were never wrong. Thus it was that
from this heterogeneous army, Imperial, East African, Indian and South
African, he has had a loyalty most splendid all the time. He may have
pushed us forward so that we marched far in advance of food or supplies,
thrust us into advanced positions that to our military sense seemed very