conditions on European battlefields and elsewhere. But in July, 1915, the last German troops in S.W. Africa capitulated ... and the nucleus of the requisite force ... became available." British forces from the northeast and southwest and Belgian forces from the northwest steadily attacked and defeated German forces beginning in January 1916. In October 1916, General Smuts wrote, "With the exception of the Mahenge Plateau [the Germans] have lost every healthy or valuable part of their Colony". Cut-off from Germany, General Von Lettow by necessity conducted a guerilla campaign throughout 1917, living off the land and dispersing over a wide area. In December, the remaining German forces evacuated the colony by crossing the Ruvuma River into Portuguese Mozambique. Those forces were estimated at 320 German troops and 2,500 Askaris. 1,618 Germans and 5,482 Askaris were killed or captured during the last six months of 1917. In November 1918, his remaining force surrendered near present-day Mbala, Zambia consisting of 155 Europeans, 1,165 Askaris, 2,294 African porters etc., and 819 African women. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany relinquished all her overseas possessions, including German East Africa. Britain lost 3,443 men in battle plus 6,558 men to disease. The equivalent numbers for Belgium were 683 and 1,300. Germany lost 734 Europeans and 1,798 Africans. Von Lettow's scorched earth policy and the requisition of buildings meant a complete collapse of the Government's education system, though some mission schools managed to retain a semblance of instruction. Unlike the Belgian, British, French and Portuguese colonial masters in central Africa, Germany had developed an educational program for her Africans that involved elementary, secondary and vocational schools. "Instructor qualifications, curricula, textbooks, teaching materials, all met standards unmatched anywhere in tropical Africa." In 1924, ten years after the beginning of the First World War and six years into British rule, the visiting American Phelps-Stokes Commission reported: In regards to schools, the Germans have accomplished marvels. Some time must elapse before education attains the standard it had reached under the Germans. But by 1920, the Education Department consisted of 1 officer and 2 clerks with a budget equal to 1% of the country's revenue—less than the amount appropriated for the maintenance of Government House. British administration after World War I In 1919, the population was estimated at 3,500,000. The first British civilian administrator after the end of World War I was Sir Horace Archer Byatt CMG, appointed by Royal