When in January, 1917, I relinquished the command to my successor, General Hoskins, we were across the Rufiji River in the southeast, and in the great valley formed by the principal tributaries, the Ulanga and Ruhuje rivers in the west; but the rainy season which set in shortly afterward stopped all advance until the following June.

[Sidenote:  Enemy’s forces evacuate German East Africa.]

Five months later our advance was resumed, and by the beginning of December, 1917, the last remnants of the enemy’s forces had evacuated German East Africa across the Rovuma, while our forces were operating against the enemy bands far south in Portuguese territory, as I have already stated.

[Sidenote:  Development of tropical Africa retarded by diseases.]

In economic value this region ranks very high among the tropical countries of the African continent, and probably no part of all Africa has a climate or soil more suitable for the production on an immense scale of copra, cocoanuts, coffee, sugar, sisal, rubber, cotton, and other tropical products, or of such semi-tropical products as maize and millet.  In common with the rest of tropical Africa, its full development is still retarded by the undefeated animal and human diseases, especially malaria.  But the time is not far distant when science will have overcome these drawbacks, and when Central and East Africa will have become one of the most productive and valuable parts of the tropics.  But until science solves the problems of tropical disease, East and Central Africa must not be looked upon as an area for white colonization.  Perhaps they will never be a white man’s country in any real sense.  In those huge territories the white man’s task will probably be largely confined to that of administrator, teacher, expert, manager, or overseer of the large negro populations, whose progressive civilization will be more suitably promoted in connection with the industrial development of the land.

[Sidenote:  The Germans discouraged white settlement.]

[Sidenote:  Natives compelled to work for planters.]

[Sidenote:  German system more profitable one.]

It is clear from their practice in East Africa that the Germans had decided to develop the country not as an ordinary colony, but as a tropical possession for the cultivation of tropical raw materials.  They systematically discouraged white settlement; the white colonists, with their small farms, gradually building up a European system on a small scale, who are a marked feature of British colonies, were conspicuously absent.  Instead, tracts of country were granted to companies, syndicates, or men with large capital, on conditions that plantations of tropical products would be cultivated.  The planters were supplied with native labor under a government system which compelled the natives to work for the planters for a certain very small wage during part of every year; and as labor was very plentiful, with seven and a half