er from
some German patrol might overtake him. To me the absence of criticism
and the loyal co-operation of all troops have been most wonderful. For
we are an incurably critical people, and here was a civilian, come to
wrest victory from a series of disasters.

First in interest, perhaps, as they were ever first in fight, are the
Rhodesians, those careless, graceful fellows that have been here a year
before the big advance began. Straight from the bush country and fever
of Northern Rhodesia, they were probably the best equipped of all white
troops to meet the vicissitudes of this warfare. They knew the dangers
of the native paths that wound their way through the thorn bush, and
gave such opportunities for ambush to the lurking patrol. None knew as
they how to avoid the inviting open space giving so good a field of fire
for the machine-gun, that took such toll of all our enterprises. With
them, too, they brought a liability to blackwater fever that laid them
low, a legacy from Lake Nyasa that marked them out as the victims of
this scourge in the first year of the big advance.

The Loyal North Lancashires, too, have borne the heat and burden of the
day from the first disastrous landing at Tanga. Always exceedingly well
disciplined, they yield to none in the amount of solid unrewarded work
done in this campaign.

Of the most romantic interest probably are the 25th Royal Fusiliers, the
Legion of Frontiersmen. Volumes might be written of the varied careers
and wild lives lived by these strange soldiers of fortune. They were led
by Colonel Driscoll, who, for all his sixty years, has found no work too
arduous and no climate too unhealthy for his brave spirit. I knew him in
the Boer War when he commanded Driscoll's Scouts, of happy, though
irregular memory; their badge in those days, the harp of Erin on the
side of their slouch hats, and known throughout the country wherever
there was fighting to be had. The 25th Fusiliers, too, were out here in
the early days, and participated in the capture of Bukoba on the Lake. A
hundred professions are represented in their ranks. Miners from
Australia and the Congo, prospectors after the precious mineral earths
of Siam and the Malay States, pearl-fishers and elephant poachers,
actors and opera singers, jugglers, professional strong men, big-game
hunters, sailors, all mingled with professions of peace, medicine, the
law and the clerk's varied trade. Here two Englishmen, soldiers of
fortu