violent pains in the stomach. Then there are
days when the winds blow from the desert--an indescribable experience.
They bring moths and flies with them, and great clouds of sand; it is a
genuine labour to breathe, and at noon and for two hours after the
temperature in the sun runs up into the "hundred-and-sixties."
Swakopmund is not a health resort; or perhaps we dwelt there in the
wrong season. But it is a monument to Teutonic determination. The
Germans willed this town there, planted it on the edge of the
wilderness; fitted it out, from bioscope theatre to church with organ
and electric organola; and they lived in it, with the climate of
perdition and all the accessories of a suburb of Berlin, and called it
a seaport. It is not a seaport; in a fair gale you can't land a barrel
of corks at the pier. But given time and they would have built in the
face of nature a two million pounds breakwater and everything complete.
Yes, they are a thorough people; they are human ants as regards work.
Nevertheless, it is not colonising. The Germans are not colonists.

Army Headquarters were fixed at the Damaraland Building close to the
shore--a splendidly equipped edifice, with a tower commanding a
fifteen-mile-radius view of the desert and the sea. General Botha made
the private quarters of the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief at the
Woermann Line House close by.

When we arrived at the northern seaport it had been in our possession
many weeks, but our troops were occupying the trenches just outside the
town, and from the Damaralands Building Tower our look-out and
signallers could see through the heat-haze the enemy's patrols moving
to and fro in the glistening sands beyond.

Whilst awaiting orders for an advance, life at Swakopmund was in some
ways quite good. There were two attractions: regimental concerts, when
sanctioned, and the shore. South Africa at war differs in great degree
from other parts of the world. The country has the germ in its blood.
Men who have campaigned before felt the stirring in them when the
South-West campaign started. The call for volunteers acted like a
magnet. All sorts and conditions of men were found with the Forces in
the South-West. Patriotism called them; but there called them also that
deep-seated spirit of unrest which prompts so powerfully when war drums
sound once again. I used to think Kipling exaggerated a trifle; now I
know the truth. At the concerts on the South-West front the most
a