At Wilhelmstal I found a detachment of native police under an efficient sergeant-major, who came from Ditmarschen. Whereas the Protective Force proper was under the Commandant, the various police detachments were under the civil authorities, and so each District Commissioner had under his orders a detachment of one hundred to two hundred men, for the purpose of collecting taxes and supporting his authority. There prevailed a constant tendency to increase this police force more and more, to the detriment of the Protective Force. In this manner, alongside of the latter, a second force of the same strength had come into being which was in its very nature a travesty of a military organization, and could hardly be anything better. The District Commissioner, a civil official, often understood little of military matters, and handed over the training and command of his Police-Askari to a sergeant-major of police. The latter often worked zealously, with the old non-commissioned officer’s usual devotion to duty; but he seldom received any guidance from a military superior, since the police inspector, an officer, could only visit each district from time to time. So the Police-Askari often became slack, and lacked the strict discipline necessary to keep them fit for their duties, which demanded reliability. To this was added a further defect which ought to have been avoided. The police were partly recruited from the native N.C.O.’s of the Protective Force. The latter was thereby deprived of its best elements, who, after joining the police, lost their good military qualities. This, of course, did not obtain in all cases. But, generally speaking, it was the case that, in order to obtain a police force of inferior military value which in the circumstances could never be of any real use, the quality of the Protective Force was steadily impaired. From New Moshi, the terminus of the Usambara Railway, I proceeded via Marangu, where an English planter lived and where I met the English Consul King, of Dar-es-Salaam, to the Kilima Njaro country, and thence to Arusha. Several German planters, some of them former officers, whom I visited at their estates during the march, assured me that the German settlers in those parts formed a valuable source of military power. At that time I made the acquaintance of the charming estate of Commander Niemeyer (retired), whose wife entertained us with excellent home-grown coffee. Later on she rather hindered us on one occasion: when, during the war, her husband was in Engara-Nairobi Camp, north-west of Kilima Njaro, we had temporarily lent her a telephone, so that she could call up her husband. Immediately afterwards the whole telephone service stopped, and after a long, long search, we at last discovered that our kind former hostess had not switched off her instrument and displayed no intention of doing so.