Hit & Run

The war finally came to Addis Ababa last week. Early one morning a telephone clerk near Dessye called excitedly to say that a huge flight of Italian planes had passed overhead, evidently headed for the Ethiopian capital. Twenty minutes later a sharp-eyed outlook fired a warning gun from the hilltop by the royal palace. Soon ten planes came over the eastern horizon. Traders and warriors in the town rushed into their compounds, blazed away at the sky with ancient muskets, double-barreled elephant guns, Belgian trade rifles, all with no apparent effect. For 15 minutes the Italian planes circled at an altitude of 6,000 feet. Then two broke away, dived at the airport with machine guns spitting alternate bursts of hard and incendiary bullets.

Two planes were squatting before the hangar, a French Potez, and an ancient Farman. The Potez escaped with three bullet holes, but the Farman was riddled and burned impressively. When the Italians flew away a dog and a servant in the British Legation had been wounded.

The ominous fact was that the raid had taken place at all. It meant that the Italian force had won a crucial victory over Haile Selassie's own well-trained private guard, that Marshal Badoglio, hitherto scrupulously careful to avoid treading on French or British toes with an attack on Addis Ababa, was willing to risk everything again in a furious attempt to end the war before the Little Rains descended and bogged his armies in inaction.

Fortnight ago Italy's military position was about what it had been for a month. On the southern front Italian columns had made a spectacular dash to Wadara, then withdrew to Noghelli while food and munitions were catching up with them. Harar, overlooking Ethiopia's only railway and onetime headquarters of the Ethiopian forces opposing Italy's southern armies, had been bombed to ruins. In the north, after the great battle of Enderta and its smashing sequel at Amba Alaji (TIME, Feb. 24 et seq.), all Italy expected to see the Fascist troops sweep bravely on down the main caravan trail to Dessye and Addis Ababa. They did not realize that there were some 280 back-breaking miles between Italy's advance posts and Addis Ababa, that innumerable hordes of undefeated tribesmen still infested the route.

Marshal Badoglio. squinting at his staff maps, knew that no matter how it might pain the House of Lords (see col. 3), a forthright poison gas campaign was the quickest and cheapest way of breaking opposition in a country where every herdsman has a rifle. The gassing began.

Then the Italian commander sent a motorized column to fan out westward toward the British Sudan border and Lake Tana on his right. For them the going was fairly easy. No fool politically, Marshal Badoglio gave command of this column to the Farley of Fascismo, ebullient Achille Starace, secretary general of the Fascist

Party. Under him were 5,000 young Blackshirts in armored trucks. Along the Sudan border they rolled almost without opposition to the gates of Gondar, important caravan town near Lake Tana. Colonel Starace. who can do nothing without making a speech, saw to it last week that his speech on the eve of capturing Gondar reached every foreign correspondent.

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3. Tony Blair's Leap of Faith
4. Are Ahmadinejad's Days Numbered?
5. Kimbo Slice Gets His Prime-Time Shot
6. Team McCain: Ready for Prime Time?
7. Rejecting Obama's Radical Friends
8. In Carter's Shadow
9. Asian Relief: The Sharon Stone Effect
10. After Immigrant Raid, Iowans Ask Why

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