On to Makale

Dear to venerable generals destined to die in bed are the largest and showiest Zeiss field telescopes. Squinting through his on Ethiopia's Northern front last week, goat-bearded Italian Commander Emilio de Bono was trying to see what the Dictator's war machine was doing 40 miles away. In the foreground Old de Bono could see distinctly part of a grimy Italian labor battalion slaving to make roads, a spate of lumbering trucks and tanks, many a picturesque sight full of local Ethiopian color.

General de Bono, inevitably, could not help wondering what sort of report on himself and the war is now being made to Il Duce and Il Re by the King's great military crony, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who last week sailed home across the Mediterranean from his recent inspection trip.

Long-heralded Italian drives got under way fortnight ago on the Northern Front and Southern Front, but orders which considerably mystified correspondents last week stopped both in their tracks. At the headquarters of Old de Bono rumors were thicker than gnats. Some correspondents cabled that a camel corps of 20,000 men was being organized in the southwestern corner of Eritrea for a dash, not at any of the main Ethiopian positions but at Britain's "sphere of influence" in the general direction of Lake Tana.

At Rome solemn-faced denials were made that Dictator Mussolini was deliberately easing up on the Ethiopians and getting ready to smash toward Tana if on Nov. 18 the British at Geneva succeed in having League Sanctions applied on schedule. It was queer, dispatches from Addis Ababa observed, that Italian bombing planes, now well within operating range, not only had not bombed Ethiopia's Capital up to last week but had not even bombed Harar, where the local Ethiopian satrap was having suspected traitors flogged to death. Repeatedly second-string correspondents jumped the gun with rumors which produced last week such headlines as "350,000 ETHIOPIANS DEFEATED IN BATTLE."

Gugsa into Honey? A terrified, bug-eyed, berobed young man was Emperor Haile Selassie's son-in-law Ras Haile Selassie Gugsa when he went over to the Italians (TIME, Oct. 21). Swaggering about last week in a swank Italian uniform, puttees and sun helmet, Ras Gugsa was ready to be set up as a puppet ruler by Il Duce should occasion offer.

Word came through to the Italian lines that not only had all Gugsa's lands and property within the Emperor's reach been seized, but a large number of his kinsmen had been put to death in Ethiopian revenge. Announcing to his 1,500 warriors that not only his but all their relatives had been slaughtered, Ras Gugsa exhorted his numerous personal followers to avenge themselves. General de Bono took a chance and gave them rifles, and away they streaked far in advance of the Italian columns which this week were driving toward Makale, whose inhabitants hoisted white flags when bombing planes piloted by Count Galeazzo Ciano and Bruno and Vittorio Mussolini flew low over the town.

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