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If the Germans were indifferent to this one elementary rule of the white race in equatorial Africa the white man's law that no white man be degraded before a native then the Belgian would show the Hun how to play the game. "We must hack our way through," said Bethmann-Hollweg. And we, in Morogoro, were very curious to see what manner of vengeance the Belgians might wreak.
Even the ants have wings, and drop them in our soup as they resume their plantigrade existence once again. The worst biter that we have met in the many "fly-belts" that lie along the Northern Railway is the tsetse fly: especially was he to be found at a place called Same, and during the long trek from German Bridge on the Northern Railway to Morogoro in the south.
For this nursing sister had been behind prison bars for two years in German East Africa, and you may imagine how she had longed for the day when the English would come and set her free. This was Sister Mabel, the only nursing sister we had in Morogoro for the first four months of our occupation.
She had had her share of insult, indignity, shame and ill-treatment at the hands of her savage gaolers. But in that slender body lived a very gallant soul, and that gave her spirit to dare and courage to endure. So when we occupied Morogoro and Lettow fled with his troops to the mountains, this very splendid sister gave up her chance of leave well-earned to come to nurse for us in our hospital.
But he insisted, and she consented, and so the bearded troopers found this English emissary of Lettow's waiting for them upon the river bridge. Back came General Smuts's answer, "Tell the women of Morogoro that, if they stay in their houses, they have nothing to fear from British troops, nor will one house be entered, if only they stay indoors."
At first I woke to think there were rickshaw boys dragging rubber-tyred carriages along the avenues of the town, until I found that Morogoro boasted no rickshaws and no bells for native feet. Punctuated in all the music of fairy bands and the whirr of fairy machinery were the incessant voices of frogs.
These Germans had, of course, told our Provost Marshal that they were civilians, and never had or intended to take part in the war. So these two men on their word, the word of a Prussian, mark you well, were allowed all the privileges of freedom in Morogoro.
One feels that they long to pose as martyrs, and that our quixotic chivalry cuts them to the quick. There have been many bombardments of the forts of this town, and huge dugouts for the whole population have been constructed. Great underground towns, twenty feet below the surface, all roofed in with steel railway sleepers. No wonder that many of the inhabitants fled to Morogoro and Tabora.
On the big trek from Kilimanjaro to Morogoro the blackwater cases were almost entirely confined to Rhodesians and to the Kashmiris, who suffer in this way in their native mountains of Nepal. But once we struck the Central Railway and penetrated south towards the delta of the Rufigi the tale was different. British and South African troops began to arrive in the grip of this fell malady.
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.
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