ITALY AT WAR

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 50, 27 January 1938, Page 17

ITALY AT WAR

PRICE OF EMPIRE. FIGHTING IN ABYSSINIA. There is a steadily growing volume of trustworthy evidence that tho war in Abyssinia still goes on, though the Negus fled, and Italy occupied the capital over 20 months ago. Italy has closed the doors of her new Empire to all except a few friendly observers, and reliable information about conditions in Abyssinia is difficult to get, writes a correspondent in the Sydney Morning Herald. The Djibouti correspondent of the London Times, writing in September, 6aid that, at that time, the roads leading out of Addis Ababa towards the province of Jimma and the town of Gore (the centre of the last organised resistance of the Abyssinians) had been cut within 50 miles of the capital, and all transport along those roads was being convoyed. Earlier in the year, Ernest Weiso, an adventurous travel-ler-journalist, who ma.naged to get permission to mako a motor cycle tour of Addis Ababa, found that ho had to travel along most of the main road under a guard of 60 soldiers mounted in trucks, and tho men of the bodyguard told him that things were far worse off the main road.

Tho Abyssinian Legation in London reported recently that, for a timo, Dessie, a. key town on the main road, had been captured by Abyssinians; and guerrilla warfare was continuous in Tigre province in the north and in the remote province of Wollega, in the south-west. There wa6 a rumour in September that all the Italians in Makalo, again on the main road, had been massacred. Generally, the Abyssinians seem to be fighting in small bands of 50 to 100 men, armed largely with rifles and ammunition captured from ambushed Italians.

These reports were strengthened by the radical changes in the administration, when Marshal Graziani was replaced as Viceroy by the Duke of Aosta, and the Italian Colonial Minister, Signor Lessonn, was compelled to retire. Signor Mussolini himself took over the portfolio of tho colonies. Gra.ziani was popular; he had had long experience as a soldier and administrator in Italian Africa, and it was he who commanded the Italian army which invaded Abyssinia from the south. Ho had helped notably to achieve the first part of Italy’s task, which was to defeat the Abyssinian armies; and he had begun to performthe second part, which isrto establish control over the country and its warlike people. It will be the Duke of Aosta’s task to complete' this control, and then to try to convert this backward territory into a prosperous colony. PROBLEM OF LABOUR.

Italy’s undertaking is unusual in two important respects, In most tropical areas that Europeans have colonised, the Europeans are administrators, managers and traders, but. the natives do the manual labour. In most areas where Europeans havo usurped the land of a primitive people the conquest lias been carried out gradually - generally, as in America and Australia, by generation after generation of pioneers thrusting a frontier farther and farther into native territory. In Abyssinia, however, the Italians are the .labourers. Six hundred thousand Italian workers have been recruited for a year’s service, chiefly on road-building, at a wage equivalent to about 12s a day. Some hundreds of thousands are still at work there. It is Signor Mussolini’s aim also to settle the country with Italian farmers and a few experimental settlements of former soldiers - arc already established. In addition, the colonisation is to be done not gradually by such adventures as clioose to move into the new land, but by the State. History’s lesson is that the best frontiersman is the nativeborn colonial, and the less Government control the better, in the early stages. But Italy is trying to make history. Already, perhaps, Italy has spent more on development in Abyssinia than the war itself cost. Along the road to Addis Ababa .are little townships, peopled by labourers, who live in transportable galvanised iron huts. Each settlement is surrounded by stockades and guarded by a detachment of regular soldiers. The aristocracy among the pioneers are the truck drivers, who e.arn tho equivalent of about £ls a week (the pay of a colonel in the Italian army, one observer has pointed out). It costs 13.000 lire (£160) to transport a truckload from Massawa, on the Red Sea, to Addis Ababa. The cost to Italy of the war in Abyssinia up to the time of rtie annexation has been estimated bv knowledgeable observers at between £125,000,000 and £150.000.000. The cost of the military and road-building campaign since the large-scale fighting ended can hardly have been less than tins, when- the number of labourers employed is taken into account. A writer in the Spectator in November said that the effect ot this huge expenditure had been hopelessly to unbalance _ Italy’s finances; vet there is convincing evidence that she is getting no return for her investment yet, and must spend much more before her new Empire begins to add to lier wealth.