GENERAL SMUTS' STRATEGY.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1916, Page 5

GENERAL SMUTS' STRATEGY.

SOUTH AFRICAN LOSSES. Nairobi, March 30. It is now permissible to describe the opening gambits of General Smuts' campaign in East Africa. The Commander-in-Chief arrived shortly after a reeon-. naissance in force directed against the Saalita Hill, which revealed the enemy in great strength upon the south-east-em slopes of Kilimanjaro. Making Nairobi the base of his operations, General Smuts established a Hying base at Mbuynni, oji the new branch line from Voi, pushing the" railway forward towards the German border. The General then directed a mounted brigade, with its base north of Kilimanjaro, to sweep along the western foothills of the mountain and concentrated his forces for a thrust at Moslii, the terminus of the Tanga-Kilimanjaro railway. The enveloping movement was particularly successful, but the enemy contested every foot of the direct thrust from the east upon Moshi. The 7th Regiment lost one-third, of its men in casualties, and the Pretoria, Johannesburg and Durban troops suffered very beavily in responding gallantly to the order to push forward.

Apart from the exigencies of the military situation, it was desirable that the German native soldiers should be taught that the European soldier is quite their equal. Consequently, the South African troops were flung at them, and used bayonet and butt in a manner that astonished the German-drilled native.

Tlie fighting took place chiefly in the shadows of the primeval forests that clothe the slopes of Kilimanjaro, and as the advance progressed those forests revealed bodies of thousands of the enemy. From the military point of view the advantage gained was well worth the price paid. Slipping between the enveloping movement and the thrust, the enemy fell back along his railway, consolidating his position on interior lines, and the railhead at Moshi was occupied after strenuous fighting. General Smuts then determined upon a further thrust into the heart of the enemy's position, and while detaching a force to his left rear along the Tanga railway, made a dash dead west upon a native town (Arusha) 30 to 40 miles distant, a junction commanding the caravan roads to Moshi, Dar-es-Salaam and Ngara and Nairobi. The fighting on the line of the Tanga Railway was again heavy, and the resistance offered by the enemy gallant and determined. Eventually, however, they broke, leaving one of the guns of the ill-fated Konigsborg in our hands. The greatest gallantry was displayed by the. curious mixture of troops under General Smuts' command—South African Boers, native, troops, King's African Rifles, East African Mounted Rifles, Nai? robi Defence Force, a Rhodesian regiment, Colonists, and a sprinkling of Australians and Canadians. Indeed, tho whole Empire was represented. The success of the operations" was facilitated by'the accuracy of the information obtained by tho Intelligence Department, the reconnaissance work of the airmen, and the skill of General Smuts in spreading his screen before him—a skill which he displayed a decade and a-half ago when he led a cavalry raid through the Cape Province until his burghers laved their horses' feet in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

The fighting has be»n especially characterised by aimed rifle fire, since neither guns nor bombs were of very much help in close quarters in the forests. The Commander-in-Chief has employed tho traditional strategy of South Africa which was first used by the. Zulu King Cha'ka, who bawd his idea on the horns of a bull, and enveloped the flanks of his enemy before driving his centre home.