over the blue sea from Zanzibar. If one could
dream, one could picture the corsairs' red flag and the picturesque Arab
figure standing high in the stern beside the tiller, and fancy would
portray the freight of spices and cloves that they should bring from the
plantations of Pemba and Zanzibar. But there are no dusky beauties now
aboard these ships; and their freight is rations and other hum-drum
prosaic things for our troops. The red pirate's flag has become the red
ensign of our merchant marine.

All the caravan routes from Central Africa debouch upon this place and
Bagamoyo. Bismarck looks out from the big avenue that bears his name
across the harbour to where the D.O.A.L. ship _Tabora_ lies on her side;
further on he looks at the sunken dry dock and a stranded German
Imperial Yacht. It would seem as if a little "blood and iron" had come
home to roost; even as the sea birds do upon his forehead. The grim
mouth, that once told Thiers that he would leave the women of France
nothing but their eyes to weep with, is mud-splashed by our passing
motor lorries.

The more I see of this place the more I like it. Everything to admire
but the water supply, the sanitation, the Huns and Hunnesses and a few
other beastlinesses. One can admire even the statue of Wissmann, the
great explorer, that looks with fixed eyes to the Congo in the eye of
the setting sun. He is symbolical of everything that a boastful Germany
can pretend to. For at his feet is a native Askari looking upward, with
adoring eye, to the "Bwona Kuba" who has given him the priceless boon of
militarism, while with both hands the soldier lays a flag--the imperial
flag of Germany--across a prostrate lion at his feet. "Putting it acrost
the British lion," as I heard one of our soldiers remark.

"_Si monumentum requiris circumspice_" as the Latins say; or, as Tommy
would translate, "If you want to see a bit of orl-right, look at what
the Navy has done to this 'ere blinking town." The Governor's palace,
where is it? The bats now roost in the roofless timbers that the 12-inch
shells have left. What of the three big German liners that fled to this
harbour for protection and painted their upper works green to harmonise
with the tops of the palm trees and thus to escape observation of our
cruisers? Ask the statue of Bismarck. He'll know, for he has been
looking at them for a year now. The _Tabora_ lies on her side half
submerged in water; the _Koenig_ lies beached at the ha