"The natives--the old natives, as I have said--were always on our side. What would have happened to us if they had not hated the German like the devil I cannot tell you. But they followed us through the bush, often for miles, brought us food and attached themselves to us as servants, who were quite ready to carry rifles upon occasion. This was very helpful, for sometimes at night, when the force was absolutely without provisions, we had to send men scouting in native villages, and they could easily have been betrayed. Nothing would have been easier for a treacherous native than to have sneaked out while two or three of our men were in his hut and to have warned the nearest camp of Askaris. It never happened. The loathing of the Blonde Beast was too universal. "All this sounds bad enough, but believe me, it gives you but a poor account of what it cost us to win 'German East.'" FOOTNOTES: [66] The Kob of Western Bahr-el-Ghazal has whitish ears and a white area round the eye, which is not found in the Uganda Kob. It has been named by Dr. Heller, Vaughan's Kob, from a single specimen. [67] As a matter of fact his proposition was a heavier one than the authorities imagined. It took a large army, working hard over a period of four years, before the Germans were driven out of British and German East Africa. [68] This was hardly the fault of the War Office, who had already organized their local intelligence officers in East Africa. [69] Note by Col. R. Meinertzhagen, Chief of Intelligence Department:-- "This landing was really a very fine piece of work for troops who had had no previous experience. The Germans themselves, which we learnt later, thought that a landing at that particular spot was an impossible operation, and therefore failed to guard against it. The rapidity with which the Fusiliers got ashore and up a steep bush-clad escarpment gave the enemy no time to meet it. This initial success, which was intended as a covering movement for the main landing, was largely responsible for the capture of Bukoba." [70] In two authenticated cases a .600 Rigby cordite rifle and a Holland .375 were used in each case with sporting ammunition. [71] 75 millimetres or 3 inch (R. Meinertzhagen). [72] "I slept under a rock near Selous that night. He was full of enthusiasm, and we discussed 'birds' till far into the night, getting drenched through with the dew and badly bitten by mosquitoes" (R. Meinertzhagen). [73] On the best authority the Germans had 2500 white troops and 4200 askaris at the beginning of the War. During the War they raised their black troops and police to from 12,000 to 18,000.