WINNERS OF AFRICA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1771, 3 January 1918, Page 2

WINNERS OF AFRICA.

MAJOR-GENERAL L. L. Van Deventer has just been knighted for his work in what was until a few weeks ago German East Africa. Since last May he had been com-mander-in-chief of the British East African forces. General Smith-' Dorrien, the first commander of the invading British forces, was succeeded by Botha, and Botha hy Smuts. Smuts was in his turn succeeded in January last by Lieuten-ant-General A. R, Hoskins, and at that time Van Deventer was merely the commander of one of the columns under him. Under Smits, Hoskins commanded the first of three columns, Deventer the second. Deventer’s consisted purely of Union troops, and did not take the field until June, 191(1. But when it got going it did magnificent work, although more than once the troops which formed it were half starved through running out of supplies in Die jungle. It was this column which, ■ “conducted (as General Smuts wrote afterwards, in his October. despatch) by Van Deventer with his usual dash and resource--1 illness, look Kondoa Irangi, and thereby won the high and fertile plateau which runs north from the central railway.” This was after an advance of 200 miles in four weeks, an advance in which the men wore worn out with ceaseless inarching and fighting, and hundreds of horses died from sickness. But when the rainy season came, and Deventer and his men were cut off, they were at once attacked by a strong force under the German commander-in-chief, von LetlowVorbock, himself. Deventer beat (his off, with the result that, as Smuts said, “the enemy’s last hope of successful resistance to any large portion of our force was extinguished,” Hoskins and Deventer headed the list of officers to whom Smuts described himself as “particularly indebted”; after those came Brits, the leader of Smut’s (bird column. But it must be remembered that the Belgian and Rhodesian columns, which also did splendid work, did not come under Smut’s command. Hoskins is n British officer who entered the army in 1891, served under Kitchener in the Soudan and South Africa, and was, when the great war broke out, Inspector-General of the King’s African Rifles.