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Sketches of the East Africa Campaign by Robert Valentine Dolbey
page 24 of 138 (17%)
made of, and surrender is so safe and easy. A prison camp in Bombay is
clearly preferable to this unending retreat. He has done enough for
honour, he argues, he has proved his worth after two and a half years of
resistance! This colony has put up the best fight of all, "and the
_Schwein Engländer_ holds the seas, so further resistance is hopeless."
"We are not barbarians, are we Fritz?" But Fritz has ceased to care.
"Ahmednagar for mine," says he, reverting to the language he learnt in
the brewery at Milwaukee, in days that now seem to belong to some
antenatal life. Soon he will look for some white face beneath the
strange sun helmet the English wear, up will go his hands, and
"Kamerad"--that magic word--will open the doors to sumptuous ease behind
the prison bars.

But Lettow is going "all out." His black Askaris are not discouraged,
and, in this war, the black man is keeping up the courage of the white.
Had the native soldiers got their tails down the game was up as far as
the Germans were concerned. But these faithful fellows see the "Bwona
Kuba," as they call Lettow, here encouraging, everywhere inspiring them
by his example, and they will stay with him until the end. Like many
great soldiers, Lettow is singularly careless in his dress; and the tale
is told at Moschi of a young German officer who stole a day's leave and
discussed with a stranger at a shop window the chances of the ubiquitous
Lettow arriving to spoil his afternoon. Nor did he know until he found
the reprimand awaiting him in camp that he had been discussing the
ethics of breaking out of camp with the "terror" himself.

A soldier of fortune is Lettow. His name is stained with the hideous
massacres of the Hereros in South-West Africa. His was the order,
transmitted through the German Governor's mouth, that thrust the Herero
women and children into the deserts of Damaraland to die. Before the war
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