Positives

Of the three Italian armies fronting Ethiopia on the North, South and East the first two have been well-publicized but Il Duce masked his Eastern Army in such reticence that last week even the name of its General was still unknown to the world.

Reason: the Eastern Army, striving to bite its way in from Assab on the Red Sea to cut Ethiopia's only railway near Dire Dawa, (see p. 17), faces obstacles of terrain all but insurmountable. It must skirt the blazing, uninhabitable Danakil Desert, worm its way up jagged mountain gorges, cross fever-ridden swamps. Only chance for quick success depended on bribing the local Ethiopian satrap, Ras Yayou, who styles himself "Sultan of Aussa."

Emphatically last week the Sultan had yet to be bought. With dusky guile his tribesmen pretended to welcome the Italian advance until the unknown General's column was well past Mount Mussa Ali. Then from all sides they struck. Two Italian mule caravans freighted with food and munitions were captured, according to bug-eyed native runners who reached Dessye. They said that the main Italian column, fighting in the classic hollow square formation Queen Victoria's troops used in the Sudan, managed to stand off the tribesmen with a loss of 200 native and white Italian troops. Dejected, bedraggled and burning with thirst, they made their way back to Italian Eritrea.

The Dictator, having resolved that his Eastern forces shall remain the Army Nobody Knows until they are victorious, permitted no confirmation or denial of its tribulations. Meanwhile, the Southern Army of properly-publicized General Rodolfo Graziani slogged up the banks of the Webbe Shibeli River in an unseasonable downpour until they came on a fortified Ethiopian post on a little mountain at Dagneri, 60 mi. into Ethiopia. Italian native troops delivered an old-fashioned charge, 14 of them to the death, took the hill, and back in Italy, newspapers blossomed with VITTORIA headlines.

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