The campaign was a costly one for Germany, since it involved the loss of many hundreds of lives and an expenditure of some £30,000,000. At the height of the campaign there were 19,000 Germans in the field, with a large number of Dutch auxiliaries responsible for the transport arrangements. There is no doubt that the main causes of the native risings were the bureaucratic methods of the colonial administration and the behaviour of the white traders. “Germany has nothing to learn from England,” said the colonial party’s official organ in Africa at the beginning of the enterprise, “or any other colonising nation, having a method of handling social problems peculiar to the German spirit.” Beginning in this temper, it is hardly a matter for surprise that their policy in South-West Africa has been marked by all the defects of the “German spirit.” They failed utterly to appreciate the significance of the fact that England had achieved her success as a great colonising Power by adopting the twin principles of liberty and diversity in her dealings with subject or conquered races. With characteristic arrogance the Germans proceeded to apply the typical Prussian principles of compulsion and uniformity to all their methods of administration, and the “mailed fist” became the most appropriate symbol of German colonial rule. A ready-made system of Prussian bureaucracy was established; Berlin and Potsdam had their replicas on a small but exact scale in the little settlements where officialism flourished, and the cast-iron rules “made in Germany” were applied to the peculiarly flexible problems of colonial administration. The “system” was infallible! It had wrought miracles with home administration. It had only to be applied in Africa, and it would inevitably work the miracle of colonisation. Little regard was paid to native customs and traditions of life. Officialism rode roughshod over the ancient ways of life, tribal laws, and native susceptibilities in a manner that aroused the keenest resentment among the people. In a word the attempt was not to colonise but to Germanise. “We started with a wrong conception of colonial possibilities,” said Professor Bonn, of Munich University, in a striking address before the Royal Colonial Institute on “German Colonial Policy,” early in 1914. “We wanted to concentrate on Africa the emigrants we were losing at the beginning of the colonial enterprise. We wanted to build up on African soil a new Germany and create daughter states as you have done in Australia and in Canada. We carried this idea to its bitter end. We tried it in South-West Africa and produced a huge native rising, causing the loss of much treasure and many lives. We tried to assume to ourselves the functions of Providence, and we tried to exterminate a native race whom our lack of wisdom had goaded into rebellion. We succeeded in breaking up the native tribes, but we have not yet succeeded in creating a new Germany.”