shes, patrol encounters; and the deadly machine-gun that
enfiladed or swept every open space. We cannot be surprised that the
mounted arm was robbed of much of its utility, that artillery work was
often blind for want of observation, that the trench dug in the green
heart of a forest escaped the watchful eyes of aeroplanes, that this war
became a fight of men and rifles, and, above all, the machine-gun.

In this campaign the Hun has been the least of the malignant influences.
More from fever and dysentery, from biting flies, from ticks and
crawling beasts have we suffered than from the bullets of the enemy.
Lions and hyaenas have been our camp followers, and not a little are we
grateful to these wonderful scavengers, the best of all possible allies
in settling the great question of sanitation in camps. For all our roads
were marked by the bodies of dead horses, mules and oxen, whose stench
filled the evening air. Much labour in the distasteful jobs of burying
these poor victims of war did the scavengers of the forest save us.

The transport suffered from three great scourges: the pest of
horse-sickness and fly and the calamity of rain. For after twelve hours'
rain in that black cotton soil never a wheel could move until a hot sun
had dried the surface of the roads again. Roads, too, were mere bush
tracks in the forest, knee-deep either in dust or in greasy clinging
mud.

Never has Napoleon's maxim that "an army fights on its stomach" been
better exemplified than here. All this campaign we have marched away
from our dinners, as the Hun has marched toward his. The line of
retreat, predetermined by the enemy, placed him in the fortunate
position that the further he marched the more food he got, the softer
bed, more ammunition, and the moral comfort of his big naval guns that
he fought to a standstill and then abandoned. Heavy artillery meant
hundreds of native porters or dove-coloured humped oxen of the country
to drag them; and heavy roads defied the most powerful machinery to move
the guns.

In order to appreciate the great difficulty with which our Supply
Department has had to contend, we must remember that our lines of
communication have been among the longest in any campaign. From the
point of view of the railway and the road haul of supplies, our lines of
communication have been longer than those in the Russo-Japanese War. For
every pound of bully beef or biscuit or box of ammunition has been
landed at Kilindini,