Dernberg

In practice, what mattered was not the Colonial Secretary's public statements with regard to settlement, but his administrative decisions on the problems which it presented. The first of these was the northern railway. When Dernburg conceded the building of the line from the River Pangani to Moshi, he insisted that this must be the terminus.

Right- wing opinion disagreed. In February 1911 the Colonial Society petitioned the Reichstag for extension to Arusha, and in July it revived the old idea of a line to Lake Victoria. Rechenberg had long opposed these views, but Lindequist accepted the Arusha line in principle, a decision which was to bind his reluctant successor.