Under Der Union Jack

The strategic importance of the manning of Madagascar was highlighted last week by the following eye-opening account of the German grip on South-West Africa, which is to the sea lanes on Africa's west what Madagascar is on the east. This former German colony was made a League of Nations mandate under the Union of South Africa after World War I, but down the years British enlightenment relaxed into generosity, and generosity into lack of control. Here is what a TIME correspondent saw in three South-West African towns:

Windhoek. "The name of the street was Goering-strasse. Through Bismarck-strasse and Moltke-strasse, past red-roofed houses set among purple bougainvillaea, it brought me to Kaiser-strasse, a broad highway of shops and cafes.

"I walked into the Cafe Vaterland. Its menu was as ample and German as the Fraeulein who handled it. I ordered, in English, beer and Apfelstrudel, and asked for the local daily newspaper. I got the Deutscher Beobachter, with a curt 'Bitte.' Near by, three American karakul-pelt buyers were deep in wartime prices. They spoke English. Everyone else in the room spoke German. On the wall a German poster announced a UFA film, Wenn der Hahn kraeht. All around were pictures of Germany."

Swakopmund. "Its buildings might have been lifted bodily from any small north German seaside town: its hotels--the Hansa, Fuerst Bismarck, Thueringer Hof, Europaeischer Hof--its bungalows and cinema and charming baroque church. Its solid burghers who have been here over a generation are still wearing their blue German peaked caps, the schoolboys, their green or red caps with gold braid.

"Of eight shops I walked into, in four they knew no English, in three they under stood it but answered me in German. In only one, a bookshop on Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse, they answered in glutinous English. Of English books it had almost none. Most of its stock was German of pre-war origin. It had picture postcards of Swakop mund and Windhoek, and of Hamburg and Heidelberg."

Luederitzbucht. "There were probably a dozen people in the bar of Kapp's Hotel the night I was there. They talked of this and that, mainly of the local water problem, which was acute, and 'home,' which 'was Germany. Then a woman remarked, weren't they proud of the way their Fuehrer was holding back the vicious Russian onslaught; but soon her face lit up--the spring would come and then. . . . She stopped abruptly. Someone had motioned that a stranger was present. Strangers round here were rare.

"And it was here in Luederitz when the war broke that a teacher had told her class: 'From today, don't say Heil Hitler. Say Good morning and Good evening. I shall tell you when to resume Heil Hitler.' "

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