Color, Courts & Costs

A problem still bothering confused British newspaper readers last week was the color of the horse Marshal Badoglio rode into Addis Ababa. Wrote E. V. Knox in Punch:

I may be mad as a hatter,

I probably am so indeed

But I do want to clear up this matter Of Marshal Badoglio's steed. Was it bright as the daylight or duller? Some dangerous doubts have been thrown On this animal's actual color, And the truth should be known. . . . There is growing unrest in the nation, The facts should at once be released: I demand a precise explanation Of the tint of Badoglio's beast: Was it mustard perhaps--out of pity For the traces of poisonous gas? Or did he ride into the city On a mule--or an ass? Marshal Badoglio rode into the Ethiopian capital on a small dapple-grey. Last week, 15 days after his triumphant entry, Italy's new Viceroy of Ethiopia rode out again in an airplane piloted by his son, who has acted as an aerial chauffeur for his father ever since the beginning of the campaign. Officially the Marshal was returning to Italy, to rest briefly and take his annual cure at the radioactive springs of Fiuggi. Actually things were growing too tense in Europe for Benito Mussolini to have his best soldier 2,000 miles away. At 10 o'clock on the morning of his departure Marshal Badoglio welcomed to Addis Ababa his old friend and colleague Marshal Rudolfo Graziani, handed over to him the authority to rule Ethiopia as "Regent." Fascist wiseacres wagered last week that Marshal Badoglio will not return to Ethiopia for months, that Marshal Graziani will soon succeed him as Viceroy.

Before leaving Africa, Marshal Badoglio had time to sit down in Addis Ababa, send off to Il Duce a long report containing an outline of a new system of justice for Ethiopia. The Viceroy suggested courts based on the extraterritorial courts of China, one for black Coptic Christians, another for white colonists and foreigners, a third for Moslems and a fourth for disputes between whites and natives.

Because George Lewis Steer, who served the London Times and the New York Times as their Addis Ababa correspondent, had ridden with a truckload of gas masks to the Ethiopian front and because he had sent out many a dispatch that grated on Italian ears, he was ignominiously booted out of Ethiopia fortnight ago. Because the reports of New York Times Correspondent Herbert L. Matthews, who was attached to Badoglio's army, sounded sweet to Italian censors and because he had exhibited great bravery at the battle of Azbi last November, Marshal Badoglio last week pinned to his breast the Italian Medal for Valor. Wrote bemedaled Timesman Matthews from Diredawa last week before returning to the U. S.:

"Both here and in Harar, to which this correspondent has just paid a two days' visit, tension between the British and Italians is high. For the writer this ill feeling represents the most disturbing thought he is taking away with him.

"We have been out of touch with Europe here, but there is no doubt that every one in East Africa talks as if the war just ended were merely the first of a series. Italians here say openly that they would like nothing better than to receive orders to march upon the Sudan, Kenya. British Somaliland and even Egypt. The hounds of War have been unleashed and it is obviously going to be a difficult task to hold them in check now that they have had this first juicy morsel."

Meanwhile in Rome last week other foreign correspondents listened intently to a report from Finance Minister Count Paolo Thaon di Revel on the state of the Italian budget and tried to figure out what the conquest of Ethiopia had cost. Very little could be gathered from his careful words but after much supplementary figuring, most of them agreed on the sum of 12,080,500,000 lire or roughly a billion dollars in gold, spent and appropriated so far. This will increase Italy's internal debt about 10%, is less of a burden than Britons had hoped. Optimistically cried Count Thaon:

"Much of these billions of lire have been spent on roads, harbors, buildings that will remain part of the Nation's wealth. . . . Italian finances emerge safe and solid."

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