THE SURRENDER OF GERMAN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA. T HE surrender of their
oldest, and in many ways their most prized, colony is a nasty leek for the German people to swallow. They have been kept in ignorance of the progress of the campaign, and it cannot be much consolation now to be informed officially that the generous treatment of the German troops by General Botha proves how bravely those troops must have fought. The sur- render was unconditional, and General Botha behaved with characteristic consideration in allowing even the German privates to retain their side-arms and rifles. The truth is that German " South-West," as the colony was popularly called in Germany, was regarded as a very important strategic offset against British South Africa. The preparations long made there for rendering South Africa untenable by the British were expressed in a symbol, as it were, by the enormous wireless station at the capital, Windhoek. This station, by way of the intervening German station in Togoland, was able to communicate regularly with Berlin. Nor did the Gorman Government regard " South-West " as of purely military value; they knew that they could not afford to keep a great army there, and they hoped to make military deficiencies good by elaborate intrigue. The German Emperor's telegram to President Kruger after the Jameson Raid, and the invitation of the Boer Generals to Berlin after the Boer War, were only the more visible and easily defensible acts of a regular campaign of intrigue against British power in South Africa. The German Government had no doubt that they had laid their plans well enough to procure a Dutch rebellion in the Union whenever the great day should arrive for them to make war in Europe. The story of how this peril was overcome, and how the tables were turned completely against Germany, is one creditable from beginning to end to General Botha as a man of extraordinary nerve, quickness of penetration, bold- ness, wisdom, and fidelity. The war will not produce any more romantic episode than the conquest of South-West Africa by Dutch leaders who had been courted by Germany, only to discover what the German spirit and method meant, and to determine that nothing of the kind should be allowed to have a permanent footing in South Africa.
General Botha, like the true soldier he is, recognized at once that the best defensive—the only complete defen- sive—is the offensive, and that the German pressure must be removed from the borders of the Union if it was not to be a source of perennial trouble and anxiety. He therefore agreed absolutely with the British Government that a campaign against German South-West Africa should be undertaken. On September 18th Liideritzbucht was occupied by the Union troops, advanced posts were pushed into the interior, and Walfish Bay was taken back from the Germans. Then the campaign was broken off owing to the Maritz-Kemp-De Wet rebellion. Neither the signifi- cance of that rebellion, nor a good deal of other opposition by timid and wavering persons who were by no means rebels, deterred General Botha from his resolution to go full steam ahead with the campaign at the first possible moment. In February he was ready to act again. He had collected an army which greatly outnumbered the enemy ; but the Germans, of course, held the railways, and could concentrate troops at various points much quicker than he could hope to do. The Union troops advanced in three columns : a northern force (of which General Botha himself took command in March), a central force under Sir Duncan Mackenzie, whose dashing movements in Natal are still a vivid memory of the Boer War, and a southern force under General Smuts, whose legal learning —he took a " double first " at Cambridge—seems to be not greater than his natural abilities in the field. All the columns marched through extremely difficult and arid country, and the problem of supplies was particularly hard to deal with. The Germans, it will be remembered, poisoned the fow wells with arsenic—an atrocious outrage against all the customs of war of which even half-civilized people are generally not guilty. The Germans asserted that they had placed notices at the poisoned wells, but these were not found by General Botha's men. General Botha occupied Windhoek on May 12th, and found the great wireless station uninjured. There were about three thousand German civilians in the town. The German troops had retreated along the railway to Otavi. The campaign now became nothing but a pursuit. The rapid swoops of the Union forces were extraordinary. As we have learned from 'the Times, the Free State Brigade marched on one occasion forty-five miles in sixteen hours. The Germans worn evidently bewildered and outmanoeuvred. Having reached the end of the railway, their supplies gave out, and the Governor, Dr. Seitz, surrendered the whole colony in answer to General Botha's ultimatum. Thus came to a speedy end the entire fabric of German dreams and intrigues. The traitor Maritz, who had promised the Germans the support of ten thousand Dutchmen, had brought them not many more than a thousand. The South African Union, instead of exploding from within, had shown itself acutely alive to the German menace, and had " found itself " in its trials. It had emerged strong, sane, and united. The Union troops who dashed through waterless tracts, which had not seen rain for years, and fell on their enemy at the end of fearfully trying forced marches, wore inspired by the knowledge of what German success would mean for their own country. They performed miracles. They traversed tracts of country which had been loft undefended for the simple reason that the German military experts considered them uncrossable.
German South-West Africa was the largest but one of the German colonies. It contains three hundred and twenty thousand square miles. There are fifteen thousand European inhabitants, of whom by far the greater number are Germans. The natives number about eighty thousand. The Hereros were enormously reduced by the cruel war of extermination waged against them by the Germans. The infamous decree of General von Troths warning the Hereros that they must leave the country, and that all who did not do so would be shot—even women and children, it was announced, would be fired on if they did not go— will always have an ugly place in history. Although large districts of the colony are barren, the north and the interior have a fair supply of water. There is probably much gold, copper, and load, and the working of the diamond-fields brought in very nearly a million pounds in 1912. Cotton, tobacco, and vines have also been grown, and a silk industry has been established. The story of German South-West Africa affords ample proof that the Germans have not the genius for colonization. Even when they sit in the sun they do not know how to profit by it. They never balanced their Budget in " South- West," not because the country was without natural wealth, but because they had no aptitude for the arts of individual pioneering, did not encourage the elastic expansion which takes place in countries where men are conscious of being free to follow their own ideals, and spent far too much on military measures. The latter wore mostly unnecessary for defence. Nobody dreamed of seizing South-West Africa. They were directed against British South Africa. One is tempted to picture the future of the whole of South Africa now that Walfish Bay is no longer an isolated British possession in hostile territory. Walfish Bay will be developed in security. It has for years been blighted by its position. Railways will run right through the larger Union, and ultimately passengers from London to Cape Town will land at Walfish Bay and reach Pretoria and Cape Town by train. But we must not look ahead too confidently. A warning is most necessary. We speak easily of the " conquest " of South-West Africa, but we should remember that it cannot really be regarded as conquered till we have won the war. At present German South-West Africa is only a counter in a great game. If the game goes against us, we shall have to hand all the counters which were temporarily in our possession back to Germany. The war will be won or lost at the centre, not at the fringes of the struggle. If after all Germany were to win, the plight of the Union of South Africa would be fearful to contemplate. Every kind of spite and venom would be visited on British and Dutch alike by Germany. We owe it to South Africa, therefore, that we should make every effort imaginable at the centre. South Africa has done nobly. We should behave ignobly if we allowed her to suffer for her great achievement.
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