The Caprivi strip, running into northern Rhodesia, and presented to Germany under the agreement of 1890—which the newspaper South Africa termed "a most iniquitous one"—was of great importance to Germany's aspirations in the interior, inasmuch as Germany aimed at the construction of a German line over German territory to connect with the Rhodesian Trans-African line near the Zambezi. The strip indeed abuts for about 100 miles on the Zambezi.
No effort has been made to develop it, and under a heavy penalty no one was allowed to enter the strip.
A line such as that under contemplation by the Germans is, however, now in course of construction from Lobito Bay (Benguella) in Portuguese territory.
The only real settlers in South West Africa are Boers who trekked from the Transvaal and Cape Colony. It has been said that where you find Boers you may be sure to find the pick of the farming land, and the Boer farms are widely scattered over Damaraland.
The German system, however, was not likely to appeal to such spirits of independence as the Boers, especially when the Germans meted out to those Boers whom they employed as transport-riders during the Herero campaign, the same treatment as to the natives, and in some cases had Boers tied up to wagon wheels and flogged for minor offences.
Taken in all, the Colony is one the development of which has been carried on on strategical rather than commercial lines; but it is a territory of vast possibilities as a pastoral land, and as there is at present all over the world a shortage of meat, likely to intensify, the holder of a vast extent of country suitable for raising cattle possesses a most valuable asset.
There cannot be the least doubt that in common with the rest of Germany, South West Africa had for some time been preparing for the anticipated inevitable war with Great Britain, and a much larger number of German troops were held in the Colony than any fear of a possible native disturbance warranted.
The German forces were estimated at no less than 15,000, with at least 30 batteries of guns.
A plan had, as events have subsequently revealed, been laid for the invasion of the South African Union, which was to be overrun with the assistance of the Boers—on whose co-operation the Germans were fatuous enough to imagine they could count.
Holding their own Colonies by terrorism, they held an utterly false conception of the relation of our Colonies to the mother country.