The Front

Bright as the sun at noon gleamed the monocle in the eye of strapping six-foot General Rudolfo Graziani, commander-in-chief of the Italian forces in Somaliland, last week. At last things were coming his way.

The reserves for which he had been frantically wiring ever since the Ethiopian War started were finally sent him month ago. His immediate superior was no longer the goat-bearded Fascist Politician Marshal de Bono, but a personal friend and fellow regular, stocky Marshal Pietro Badoglio. Best of all, he had just won the first definite complete victory of the entire Ethiopian campaign, and with regular army troops.

Following his pitched battle three weeks ago with honest but inept Ras Desta Demtu, son-in-law of Haile Selassie, Graziani took a long chance, cut a whole brigade of motorized cavalry loose from their base, sent them dashing north on half rations through some of the richest country in Ethiopia. Tactfully to stem the flood of personal publicity about Benito Mussolini's aviator sons, one of the first orders of Marshal Badoglio on taking command last November stated that henceforth neither the names of officers nor the movement of troops would be mentioned in dispatches. For his friend, Marshal Badoglio broke that rule last week. The world quickly learned that leading the advance from the south were those swankest of regiments, the Genoa Dragoons and Aosta Lancers. In eight days they had covered 250 miles from Dolo to the mountain slopes beyond Noghelli. Snipers fought them every mile, but failed to stay the advance. As willing to risk his own life as those of his men, monocled Graziani went with them.

Back to Rome went an enthusiastic report:

"On the Somaliland front at Wadara the reconnaissance has found and taken the entire Swedish field hospital encampment . . . mounted on five trucks with Red Cross flags and insignia. The cars also contained 27 cases of munitions."

Knowing that discouraged Ras Desta Demtu was preparing another stand in the narrow Sidamo gorges, feeling that the time had come for prudence, General Graziani at week's end halted his advance, pulled his advance posts back 60 miles to Noghelli.

News was bad for Italy in the North, but there again no stigma was attached to regular army troops. Insistently from Addis Ababa went out a report that in a nine-day battle northwest of Makale, spearhead of Italy's northern advance, Ethiopian warriors had captured three mud villages, 18 tanks, 33 field guns, 175 machine guns, 2.605 rifles, had wiped out an entire brigade of the Fascist Oct. 28 Division, a loss of at least 3,000 men.

Loudly Rome branded all this a lie.

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