“On the way to the harbour I met about twenty Germans; our company increased from hour to hour.  Women were weeping who did not know the fate of their husbands, but this had not the faintest effect on the brutal hearts of the English.  At last night fell; we were tortured by hunger and burning thirst.  We were in anguish as to what would become of us.  Why were our enemies so inconceivably bitter?[220] Why did they tell us no word of truth?  They declared openly that everything German was to be destroyed, German thrones overthrown and the German devils driven out.

[Footnote 220:  Norden has had ample opportunities to learn the story of Belgium, but he and all other Germans writers, in apparently holy innocence, look upon all bitterness against their nation as a cruel injustice.—­Author.]

“Albion’s heroic sons were only able to capture the Cameroons with the aid of native treachery.  The blacks showed them the ways, betrayed the German positions, and murdered Germans in cold blood wherever opportunity occurred.  The English even paid a Judas reward of twenty to fifty shillings for every German, living or half-dead, who was brought in by the natives.

“Later I met various prisoners whose evidence corroborated the inhuman tortures which they had endured.  Herr Schlechtling related how he was attacked at Sanaga by natives with bush-knives, just as he was aiming at an English patrol.  Herr Nickolai was captured by blacks and his clothes torn from his body and numerous knife wounds inflicted on his body.  The natives took him to an English steamer whose captain paid them twenty shillings.

“Another German, Herr Student,[221] was compelled to look on while the natives drowned his comrade (Herr Nickstadt) in a river, while he himself was afterwards delivered up to the English.  Yet another, Herr Fischer, was surprised while taking a meal, bound hand and foot, beaten and then handed over to the English."[222]

[Footnote 221:  Four of these men are still in British captivity.  Another Teuton who has sent blood-curdling tales to Germany may be found in the person of Martin Trojans, prisoner on Rottnest Island.  It would be good to give these men an opportunity of making statements in London before a commission of neutral diplomatists.—­Author.]

[Footnote 222:  “In englischer Gefangenschaft,” pp. 1-30.]

After all, the picture does not seem so terrible as this good missionary would make out.  In any case he has failed to make out a case which will bear comparison with that already proved against the German army in Europe, or even so bad as the treatment dealt out by German civilians to their fellow-countrymen during August, 1914.  Furthermore it may be safely assumed that the bitterness of the natives is to be ascribed to German tyranny, which culminated, as Norden relates on p.16 of his book, in the strangling of a number of natives, including chiefs of tribes just before the advent of the British.