the Germans in blood, and that lay so
pitifully prostrate beneath the feet of England?" Nor would he be
appeased until I assured him that the Boers were far away.

Another, whose reputation was that of "a hard case, and addicted to
drink," I found also in hospital in Korogwe, recovered from an operation
for abscess of the liver, and living in hospital with his wife. Spruce
and rather jumpy he insisted on exhibiting his operation wound to me,
paying heavy compliments to English skill in surgery; not, mark you,
that he had any but the greatest contempt that all German doctors, too,
profess for British medicine and surgery. But he hoped, by specious
praise, to be sent to Wilhelmstal and not to join the other prisoners in
Ahmednagar. Bottles of soda-water ostentatiously displayed upon his
table might have suggested what his bleary eye and shaky hands belied.
So I contented myself with removing the pass key to the wine cellar,
that lay upon the sideboard, and duly marked him down on the list for
transfer to Wilhelmstal.

That the spirit of Baron Munchausen still lives in German East Africa is
attested to by Intelligence reports. It says a great deal for Lettow's
belief in the accuracy of our information that he very promptly put a
stop to the notoriety and reputation for valour that two German officers
enjoyed. One had made an unsuccessful attempt to bomb the Uganda Railway
on two occasions; but neither time did he do any damage, though, on each
occasion, he claimed to have cut the line. The other, possessed of
greater imagination, reported to his German commander that he had
attacked one of our posts along the railway, completely destroying it
and all in it. The painful truth he learnt afterwards from German
headquarters was that the English suffered no casualties, and the post
was comparatively undamaged.

The sad fate of one enterprising German officer who set out to make an
attack upon one of our posts was, at the time, the cause, of endless
jesting at the expense of the Survey and Topographical Department of
British East Africa. He was relying upon an old English map of the
country, but owing to its extreme inaccuracy, he lost his way, ran out
of water, and made an inglorious surrender. This, of course, was
attributed by the Germans to the low cunning employed by our
Intelligence Department that allowed the German authorities to get
possession of a misleading map.

That retribution follows in the wake of an unpopula