Episode 18

It was high time for me to chip in. I was beginning to see the kind of fellow this Stumm was, and as he talked I thought of my mission, which had got overlaid by my Boer past. It looked as if he might be useful.

'Let me speak,' I said. 'My friend is a great hunter, but he fights better than he talks. He is no politician. You speak truth. South Africa is a closed door for the present, and the key to it is elsewhere.

Here in Europe, and in the east, and in other parts of Africa. We have come to help you to find the key.'

Stumm was listening. 'Go on, my little Boer. It will be a new thing to hear a _taakhaar on world-politics.'

'You are fighting,' I said, 'in East Africa; and soon you may fight in Egypt. All the east coast north of the Zambesi will be your battle-ground. The English run about the world with little expeditions.

I do not know where the places are, though I read of them in the papers. But I know my Africa. You want to beat them here in Europe and on the seas. Therefore, like wise generals, you try to divide them and have them scattered throughout the globe while you stick at home. That is your plan?'

'A second Falkenhayn,' said Stumm, laughing.

'Well, England will not let East Africa go. She fears for Egypt and she fears, too, for India. If you press her there she will send armies and more armies till she is so weak in Europe that a child can crush her. That is England's way. She cares more for her Empire than for what may happen to her allies. So I say press and still press there, destroy the railway to the Lakes, burn her capital, pen up every Englishman in Mombasa island. At this moment it is worth for you a thousand Damaralands.'

The man was really interested and the Under-Secretary, too, pricked up his ears.

'We can keep our territory,' said the former; 'but as for pressing, how the devil are we to press? The accursed English hold the sea.

We cannot ship men or guns there. South are the Portuguese and west the Belgians. You cannot move a mass without a lever.'

'The lever is there, ready for you,' I said.

'Then for God's sake show it me,' he cried.

I looked at the door to see that it was shut, as if what I had to say was very secret.

'You need men, and the men are waiting. They are black, but they are the stuff of warriors. All round your borders you have the remains of great fighting tribes, the Angoni, the Masai, the Manyumwezi, and above all the Somalis of the north, and the dwellers on the upper Nile. The British recruit their black regiments there, and so do you. But to get recruits is not enough. You must set whole nations moving, as the Zulu under Tchaka flowed over South Africa.'

'It cannot be done,' said the Under-Secretary.

'It can be done,' I said quietly. 'We two are here to do it.'

This kind of talk was jolly difficult for me, chiefly because of Stumm's asides in German to the official. I had, above all things, to get the credit of knowing no German, and, if you understand a language well, it is not very easy when you are interrupted not to show that you know it, either by a direct answer, or by referring to the interruption in what you say next. I had to be always on my guard, and yet it was up to me to be very persuasive and convince these fellows that I would be useful. Somehow or other I had to get into their confidence.