Last Act

FOREIGN NEWS

It was announced early last week that plump and amiable Empress Menen of Ethiopia would speak to Britain and the U. S. over the short-wave radio. Italian spies were not caught napping. No sooner did Her Majesty begin in halting French, than on the same wave length blasts of Morse code gibberish drowned out her words. What she was saying in Addis Ababa:

"Emperor Haile Selassie may not win the war, but he is still undefeated and will struggle to the bitter end. But even if he loses, he deserves to win, for he has fought against every means modern science could devise."

Somewhere out in the field Haile Selas sie still controlled a sizable body of troops, but the end of his ancient kingdom was rapidly approaching. When no news from the front had reached Addis Ababa for days, Correspondent Steer of the New York Times hopped on a truck with a British Army major to deliver 1,850 home made gas masks to Crown Prince Asfa Wassan's troops at Dessye.

Nearing the city, the first thing they saw was Asfa Wassan's skirmishers, disappearing over the mountain top. Dessye was deserted. An exhausted runner had just arrived from Gerado with news of an advancing column of Italian cavalry followed by tanks, motor trucks. They could only be a mile or two behind him. Just at dusk the Crown Prince came down from his mountain hideaway on muleback to pack his personal belongings at the old palace. At the first bursts of rifle fire on the outskirts of town, he scuttled back to the hills. Correspondent Steer and the British major waited no longer. Loading four Seventh Day Adventist missionaries and a sick Belgian officer into the back of their truck, they lit out for Addis Ababa. Just as they left town the hillsides behind them flashed like a thousand fireflies with blazing rifles. Aeroplane-directed Galla warriors marched into deserted Dessye, followed by Fascist legions two days later.

It took four days of the hardest going for Correspondent Steer to get back to Addis Ababa. Yet Benito Mussolini expected Marshal Badoglio to cover the same distance with his cumbersome army in three days, so as to give the Italian people a spectacular victory on the anniversary of the founding of Rome (April 21, 753 B. C.). In this dilemma Marshal Badoglio yelled for his colleague in the south, General Graziani, to take the puck.

Lean, bemonocled Graziani had the only united army left in Ethiopia facing him, the troops of Ras Nassibu. The Italian General started bravely off for Harar, ran smack into trouble.

Scouting planes told him that Ethiopians were in force on the caravan route due north of Gabredarre. He tried a flank attack along the Giana Gobbo River to the left and hit a hornets' nest. Italians charged time & again up impossible gullies, always to fall back before a blistering fire.

For four days the Ethiopians held out against tanks, bombs, planes, heavy field guns. Then they broke and ran. But General Graziani was still some 225 miles from Harar. He admitted the loss of two planes, ten officers, some hundred casualties.

Meanwhile Marshal Badoglio was plunging ahead from the north toward Addis Ababa. His principal opponents were mud and distance, not Ethiopian troops. His supply lines were a hopeless mess, but he had plenty of bombing planes. Italian outposts, waiting for food, took towels and other white cloths, spelled out VIVERI on the ground. Then from the air would drift down dozens of little parachutes, loaded with spaghetti and soup. The ground crews punctiliously reformed their towels to say GRAZIE.

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