Jumbo on the Juba

Jubaland is the name of a real place: a 36,000-square-mile patch of African wilderness inhabited by some 130,000 black Somalis who raise scraggly cattle and camels. Until 1925, Jubaland was a province of Britain's Kenya Colony, but in that year most of it was transferred to Italy. Last week Britain very nearly had it back again--and was set to take a little more. By last week, British and South Africans had chased the Italians as far as the Juba River, which before the transfer marked the boundary between Italian and British colonies. If the British could establish bridgeheads beyond the Juba, their toughest job in the invasion of Italian Somaliland would be done. Gradually, through the week, the British loosed the Italians' hold on defense positions in front of the Juba. They forced two crossings a few miles upriver from the coast. At week's end the British jubilantly announced the capture of Jumbo, a port at the river's mouth which, they said, assured their crossings, sewed up southern Jubaland, and made their advance on the province's capital, Mogadiscio, a far easier job.

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