Toward the Capital

Benito Mussolini's official biographer, Margherita Sarfatti, writes that one day, as Il Duce was pacing his great room in the Chigi Palace, she asked him what his ambition was.

He said: "I am obsessed by this wild desire--it consumes my whole being: I want to make a mark on my era with my will, like a lion with its claw! A mark like this. ..." And with his fingernail he scratched a chair back from end to end.

The lion's paw drew its thin line across Libya, across Ethiopia, across Albania. But when Benito Mussolini tried to make his mark in Greece, the paw began picking up thorns--until by last week Il Duce was badly in need of his Androcles, Adolf Hitler. The biggest thorn, the one which hurt even more than Libya, was being pressed home by the British in Ethiopia (see map). The seizure of Ethiopia in 1936 was what made Italy an "Empire."

By last week the many British drives in East Africa had resolved themselves into one campaign--an encirclement of Addis Ababa. When he took Ethiopia, Benito Mussolini's strategy was to send his main attack (Marshals De Bono and Badoglio) southward from Eritrea, and to meet it with a smaller containing attack (General Graziani) northward from Italian Somaliland. This time the British strategy was to bottle as many troops as possible in Eritrea and then converge on Addis Ababa from the northwest and south. The main British attack came from the south.

In Eritrea a six-week-old deadlock was last week still unresolved. The Italians were ensconced around Cheren on magnificent natural forts. The British were last week busily probing in all directions around the Italian-held heights, to see where the enemy might be vulnerable. They themselves claimed capture of some new heights.

From Italian Somaliland, up across the savannas, a British force last week advanced to near Giggiga, from which a road leads 50 miles to Harar, thence to the railway from the sea to Addis Ababa.

From other quarters, other spurs drove in for the encirclement. This week the British announced that a naval force had made a landing and captured Berbera, capital of British Somaliland. While this did not mean that all British Somaliland was again in British hands, it did mean that the column advancing on Harar was comparatively free to go ahead without fear of being hit on the flank. The Italians were expected to resist at Harar. If the British could break that resistance, they could probably go on to Addis Ababa without taking Cheren. But now they will have to hurry, for in about a month the dreadful Ethiopian rains are due.

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