The Berlin correspondent of the Times, writing apparently upon official
authority, sends a general statement of the losses incurred by Germany in her effort to subdue the Hereros and other revolted tribes in her South-West African colony. Since January, 1904, when the rising commenced, 665 officers, 196 officials, and 13,653 men have been sent out from Germany, from among whom 59 officers have perished in action or from disease, with 192 non-commissioned officers and 1,002 men, half of the latter, however, being only wounded. This is exclusive of 238 "permanently invalided" as a consequence of the operations. The pecuniary cost of the campaign has been on an even greater scale, the total outlay reaching 812,500,000, though the revolt is not yet put down. The German papers are greatly irritated by these returns, and would fain attribute the ill-success of their forces to the "open support" afforded by the British to the Hereros,—a pure caluniny. Apart from the fact that we do not play tricks of that kind on our neighbours, we should never be guilty in South Africa of the folly of helping natives to defeat white men. Our power rests too considerably upon white prestige for a policy which we avoided even during the Boer War, when we could without difficulty have enlisted thirty thousand native auxiliaries. There are Germans, it would seem, as irrational as the English who in the war with Napoleon were capable, as the satirist remarked, of believing that he was responsible for any increase in the swarms of bluebottles.
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