Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/265

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
GERMANY
231


moved in the centre under the personal direction of the commander-in-chief, while strong mounted forces operated to the E. and W. commanded by Gens. Myburgh and Brits respectively. The enemy, constantly outflanked, retired rapidly, and on June 27 Brits was detached to make a wide and rapid detour through unknown country to the N.W. with orders to reach Namutoni before the enemy and head the latter off. Myburgh was instructed to press the enemy in towards the main advance and to swing in towards Tsumeb.

Each of these movements, though communication ceased from the time of separation from the main advance, was carried out almost to the moment, and the enemy, defeated on July 1at Otavifontein by the leading mounted brigade of the centre, forestalled at Namutoni by Gen. Brits, and having lost Tsumeb to Gen. Myburgh, surrendered to Gen. Botha on July 9 1915.

The campaign had been won with little loss of life—127 Union soldiers were killed in the rebellion and in German South-West Africa—but it will repay study as an instance of the overcoming of difficulties in climate and terrain, and for the experience which it afforded of the value of fertility of resource and power of adaptation.

Some of the difficulties which were surmounted seemed almost impossible to deal with, and the methods adopted in connexion with water supply are worthy of the closest attention. Some magnificent marching was a striking feature of all the operations. Brits's force on the final advance marched 340 m. in 20 days; McKenzie's mounted troops covered 200 m. in 12 days; while the infantry brigade in the centre on the final northern advance in 16 days marched 230 miles.

Finally, the operations indicate clearly the extraordinary mobility of mounted riflemen, who are good horsemen and horsemasters, and whose frugal habits tend enormously to simplify the difficult problem of supply in a barren country, when they are directed by a master hand. (J. J. C.)

GERMANY (see 11.804).—The bounds of the pre-war German Empire, as constituted, since its foundation on Jan. 18 1871, out of the states of the earlier North-German Confederation and the S. German states, together with Alsace-Lorraine (annexed to Germany by virtue of the Treaty of Frankfort), were materially changed in the reconstitution of the new German Reich after the World War of 1914-8. By the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 (ratified on Jan. 10 1920) Alsace and Lorraine were restored to France; in the E. the Poles, who had been made independent, had large stretches of German territory assigned to them; in the N., after a plebiscite, parts of the Prussian province of Schleswig- Holstein went to Denmark; moreover, the town of Danzig with its outlying districts and the district round Memel were separated from Germany. In the S. a small strip of territory, the little district of Hultschin, was assigned to Czechoslovakia. In the W., Germany lost the territories of Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium. By the territory ceded to Poland, Germany was now split into two parts one W. of the Polish frontier, and the other E. of the so-called old Poland, with the Polish corridors to the Baltic, and consisting mainly of the province of E. Prussia. By the