in our blindness,
we have failed to realise how great the task was to blockade 400 miles
of this coast and to keep a watchful eye on Mozambique. For before the
Portuguese made common cause with us, there was a great deal of
gun-running along the southern border of German East Africa, which our
present Allies found impossible to watch. Two factors materially aided
the Germans in making the fight they have. First, there was the lucky
"coincidence" of the Dar-es-Salaam Exhibition. This exhibition, which
was to bring the whole world to German East Africa in August, 1914,
provided the military authorities with great supplies of machinery,
stores and exhibits from all the big industrial centres; and these were
swiftly adapted to the making of rifles and munitions of war. To this
must be added the most important factor of all, the _Koenigsberg_, lying
on the mud flats far up the Rufigi, destroyed by us, it is true, but not
before the ship's company of 700, officers and men, and most of the guns
had been transported ashore, the latter mounted on gun carriages and
dragged by weary oxen or thousands of black porters to dispute our
advance. In due course, however, these were abandoned, one by one, as we
pressed the enemy back from the Northern Railway south to the Rufigi.
Last, but by no means least, was the moral support their wireless
stations gave them. These, though unable, since the destruction of the
main stations, to transmit messages, continued for some time to receive
the news from Nauen in Germany. By the air from Germany the officers
received the Iron Cross, promotion, and the Emperor's grateful thanks.

But if you would see what work the Navy has done, you must first begin
at Lindi in the south. There you will see the _Praesident_ of the D.O.A.
line lying on her side with her propellers blown off and waiting for our
tugs to drag her to Durban for repair. And in the Rufigi lying on the
mudbanks, fourteen miles from the mouth, you will see the _Koenigsberg_,
once the pride of German cruisers, half sunk and completely dismantled.
The hippopotami scratch their tick-infested flanks upon her rusted
sides, crocodiles crawl across her decks, fish swim through the open
ports. In Dar-es-Salaam you will see the _Koenig_ stranded at the harbour
mouth, the _Tabora_ lying on her side behind the ineffectual shelter of
the land; the side uppermost innocent of the Red Cross and green line
that adorned her seaward side. For she was a mys