Fake Gore

Emperor Haile Selassie, now dwelling quietly in the English countryside near London but insisting that a most warlike Ethiopian Government is on the rampage in "Western Ethiopia" against the conquering Italians, has created a keen news market for dispatches about this invisible "Government." Last week U. S. newsorgans began to carry stories dated overnight from "Gore, Western Ethiopia." They appeared to have originated by radio from Gore, referred to "the provisional Government here," declared that quantities of ammunition captured from Italians have passed through Gore in recent weeks, and named as the Gore Government's military leader Ras Imru, first cousin of Emperor Haile Selassie.

Ras Imru was said to have raised an army of 60,000, to have spurred Ethiopian patriotism with tidings that the Italians had executed Ethiopian Coptic Bishop Petros. Just as "Gore, Western Ethiopia," was becoming an accepted date line, however, it was discovered to be a fake. Cunning correspondents in Egypt had rightly guessed that U. S. editors would prefer dispatches from the seat of the "Gore Government" to the mess of rumors about it which today is all they can genuinely get.

In Addis Ababa last week the Italian radio station passed correspondents' dispatches conveying the bad news that Ethiopian peasants are sowing practically no grain or coffee, "because they fear it will be confiscated by the Italians or brigands." Viceroy Graziani was reported to have appointed a commission to study ways & means of getting the peasants to plant again. "Rumors that a provisional Ethiopian Government has been formed in the West are ridiculed here," read an Addis Ababa dispatch from United Pressman James Rohrbaugh: "The natives in the unoccupied regions are not fighting against the Italians, but among themselves. The Ethiopians have been awed by Italy's formidable war machine and, despite foreign reports to the contrary, there is no organized resistance to the Italians."

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