attempt to cloak their atrocities. For they perpetuate them by
photographs, many of which have fallen into our hands; and from these
one sees a tendency to gloat over the ghastly exhibits. The pictures
portray gallows with a large number of natives hanging side by side. In
some, soldiers are drawn up in hollow square, one side of it open to the
civil population, and there is little doubt that these are punitive and
impressive official executions, carried out under "proper judicial
conditions" as conceived by Germans. But what offends one's taste so
much are the photographs of German officers and men standing with
self-conscious and self-satisfied expressions beside the grim gallows on
which their victims hang. From the great number of these pictures we
have found, it is quite clear that not only are such executions very
common, but that they are also not unpleasing to the sense of the German
population; otherwise they would not bequeath to posterity their own
smiling faces alongside the unhappy dead. With us it is so different.
When we have to administer the capital penalty we do it, of course,
openly, and after full judicial inquiry in open court. Nor do we rob it
of its impressive character by excluding the native population. But such
sentences in war are usually carried out by shooting, and photographs
are not desired by any of the spectators. It is a vile business and
absolutely revolting to us, nor do we hesitate to hurry away as soon as
the official character of the parade is over. I well remember one such
execution, in Morogoro, of a German Askari who assaulted a little German
girl with a "kiboko" during the two days' interregnum that elapsed
between Lettow's departure and our occupation of the town. To British
troops the most unwelcome duty of all is to form a part of a firing
party on such occasions. The firing party are handed their rifles,
alternate weapons only loaded with ball cartridge, that their sense of
decency may not be offended by the distasteful recollection of killing a
man in cold blood. For this assures that no man knows whether his was