Ernst: "Militarily try not to interfere with the province of Matabele, the railway department must prepare in advance, especially for the two Portuguese colonies, and if war breaks out, Mozambique and Angola will be completely erased from the map, and the land passage between the two oceans of East Africa and the east and west will be completely opened." ”

In the final analysis, for East Africa, the importance of Portugal's two colonies is higher than that of the current Cape Town, and by winning these two colonies, East Africa's national defense and security problems will be solved by more than half, and at the same time, the economy, transportation, and industry will also be better deployed nationwide.

"No matter when the enemy starts a war, we must set a time node, and when this time node comes, we must completely solve the Portuguese problem, and then take the initiative to attack just like when we attacked the Transvaal Republic." Ernst continued.

"And when is this time node?" Felix asked.

After thinking for a moment, Ernst said: "At present, we are developing the economy of East Africa, so the war must not have much impact on the production of the whole country, especially at this time, in the context of the foundation of East African industry and infrastructure. ”

Now East Africa's economic development has transitioned from chaotic to rational and orderly, because East Africa is a new country, and unlike most countries in the world, it has no goals to follow.

Coupled with the fact that East Africa's own talent training started relatively late, the bureaucracy in East Africa is not as experienced in governing the country as in other parts of the world, and it can even be said that it has no experience in governance.

So the early industrialization process in East Africa was very chaotic, and these things needed to be run-in, which actually caused great damage to the economic development of East Africa throughout the seventies, but this is also the stage of social development that East Africa will inevitably go through.

At present, the East African government has been able to catch up with the world average in terms of economic development after more than 10 years of running-in, and it is precisely because of this that East Africa has not been rashly radical.

For example, in the 70s, if East Africa had a good foundation, Ernst could have embarked on a whole bunch of projects to completely industrialize East Africa.

Because during the economic crisis of 1873, technology, industry, machinery, and other elements for the development of industry could be obtained from Europe.

The reality was that East Africa was not able to do this at all, and the reason was the lack of talent and sound systems.

This is the same as the industrialization of the Far Eastern Empire in the previous life, Soviet experts taught it by hand, and the illiteracy rate of the Far Eastern Empire at that time, Ernst could think of how tired the Soviet people were, even highly educated intellectuals need to learn Russian alone, and how many misunderstandings will be caused by translation problems?

The situation in East Africa is slightly better, that is, the popularization of compulsory education in Germany is relatively good, so German immigrants to East Africa basically have primary school literacy, plus the implementation of German education in East Africa, and the reason for literacy by the way, at present, even if the older Far East immigrants or Slavic immigrants will write a few German words, as for speaking and listening, there is naturally no problem at all, after all, it is basically difficult to move an inch in East Africa, which is a survival skill that must be mastered.

Moreover, it does not matter whether you can speak German and your level of culture, it is closely related to the linguistic environment, and after staying in East Africa for a long time, you will naturally lean towards German, and eventually be assimilated.

The achievements of compulsory education in Germany spilled over to East Africa, so that East Africa and the German region could communicate unimpeded, which was also an important reason why East Africa was able to connect some German industries in the 70s.

Of course, this also had a lot to do with the fact that East Africa was hosting many mature industrial workers from Germany, Austria-Hungary and the United States, especially in the steel and railroad industries.

However, the upper limit of East Africa was there at that time, and now East Africa is making up for these shortcomings, especially the development of education, although the level of compulsory education in East Africa is low, but the amount is large, and there are many people studying abroad every year, and in recent years, they have returned to China for several sessions, which provides the foundation for the development of automobiles and power industries in East Africa.

In addition to these, the most important is the construction of infrastructure in East Africa, railways, roads, bridges, and national water conservancy projects are steadily advancing.

In other words, East Africa is now in an important period of economic transition, transforming from an agricultural country to an industrial country, and is laying a solid foundation for industrial development.

Ernst said: "Now the big projects in East Africa, one is the Hesse Provincial Railway, the other is the national water conservancy project, the progress of the national water conservancy project is okay, but the amount of work is large, the construction period is slow, and it will take four or five years, the Hessian railway project is not small, but the most important thing is that the project is difficult." ”

The Hesse Railway is a tropical railway, but many of the areas it passes through are tropical rainforests, and the difficulty of building railways in tropical rainforests has been seen in East Africa, mainly due to natural disasters caused by rain, and even more than a dozen tons of steel can be directly washed away by floods.

Therefore, the first priority of the construction of the Hessian railway is to "control the water", for which the Hessian railway to build railway bridges, culverts, drainage canals than all the previous railways in East Africa combined, plus the Mitumba mountain range, some sections of the tunnel to be built, so the construction of the Hessian railway is unique in the history of East Africa.

Of course, compared with the difficulty of the Hessian Railway and the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Siberian Railway is superior, because there is only one Trans-Siberian Railway, and there are many railways built in the rainforest, but the Hesse Railway in East Africa is the longest, but it is only less than one-fifth of the Siberian Railway.

"These two projects, the end time should be about the same, and when they are completed, we will be able to liberate most of the manpower, force and financial resources, so it is best to start a war at that time, and it is now 1884, and the completion of the national water conservancy project should be completed before 1890, and the completion of the Hessian railway should be earlier, so we set the time at 1890."

Ernst continued: "There are at least five years to go, and Mozambique and Angola cannot remain the same, as far as I know, the reconstruction of the port of Maputo should have been completed, and the Portuguese should have other defensive works in the future, and given their shortage of manpower, they should focus on the city-centric defense." ”

"Therefore, you must find out the military deployment and fortification system of the Portuguese in their two colonies in a few years."

"And we also need time to complete the military adjustment, this time will also take at least two or three years, and the Portuguese should not act alone, if they want to take the initiative, at least they must be consistent with the British, so judging the time of the Portuguese's troops, the main thing is to beware of the military changes of the British in South Africa."

"Now the British are in South Africa, there are only more than 20,000 troops, and the rest are mainly Transvaals, and the Transvaal Restoration Army has absorbed a lot of Orange troops, and these troops must also be integrated, so the British also need time to prepare."

"Our main concern is whether the British will bring troops into Cape Town from outside the territory, and if there is a large number of troops entering Cape Town, it means that the British will not be able to bear it."

(End of chapter)