ARTILLERY SCHOOL

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 243, 14 October 1935, Page 12

ARTILLERY SCHOOL

ABYSSINIAN CADETS. SWEDES TEACH GUN LORE. SEED ON FERTILE GROUND. (By LAURENCE STALLING S.) (B.v Air Mail.) ADDIS ABABA, September 15. Thirty-five kilometres west of this capital, on the floor of a valley green with an immensity of pastureland, a group of rectangular, metal-roofed buildings is the only sight within long eyeshot which seems touched by the hand of Western man. These buildingt house the school for mountain artillery practice. The Ethiopian State for the first time in its long history pursues the lore of the Franks—the red-faced men of the Crusades. Ethiopia is unlike any other country, and unless one suddenly tumbled down upon another planet there could be no greater contrast. So lavish is the Abyssinian valley (10,000 feet altitude) that its thatched tukul huts stretched upon the plain seem a part of the vegetation blossomed by an incredibly prodigal nature for the myriad bees droning among rippling miles of lupin. For hero on this high plateau man lives with less effort than any other mountaineer might dream of. In 50 miles I saw only one sheep fold, in a valley teeming with broad-tail sheep and beeves knee-deep in grasses. The Arts of War and Peace.

The slopes of the high encircling mountains would be taken for pastun land in any other quarter of the globe for the valley itself is actually 'farm land, deej) alluvial soil da,rk with fer tility, the grasses so tenacious thai there are no ugly washes, the drainage canalised into deep,* narrow ditches paved by the encroaching turf. The suddpn appearance of three Swedish ofKcers around a turn in the road reminds one that Ethiopia now seeks Western lore. These Swedish gentlemen may be teaching the arts of war, but assuredly there will be arts of peace accompanying them. One climbs out of a car shaken from the road ruts to greet these Scandinavians all blue and white in King Gustave's service, and realises for the first time what has been missing in the mind's eye; it is in the hand of man upon the face of a farmland, those bures and folds, silos and cribs,

'• and all the scattered gear of husbandry. i Theso Swedish gentlemen have come to a teach the craft of indirect fire, but one 5 refuses to think of theme as soldiers. 0 Rather the}' are the red-faced men from s a far continent, breeders of cuttle as > well as inventors of dynamite, husband- . men no less than warriors. They may bo schooling the Emperor's best cadets in the fire of mountain artillery; teaching lads of Sheba's strain to know * ranges, parabolas, exterior ballistics. But assuredly, if they remain in this valley through the dry seasons they will • give their pupils lessons in other, more profitable exercises. , Aptitude For Learning. Their school itself is a marvel of tidy--1 ness in a valley where Nature's lush - carelessness is equalled by the indisposi- . tion of those who take her bounty with . thankless ease. The barracks are scru- ; pulously neat, bunks policed nieticul lously, blankets and kits for ever on inspection. The class itself is conducted ) on a balcony. At one of the class rooms a sand table is contoured to represent _ a mountain pass. At the other end of ( the \arandah 20 dark youths stand with alidades and rulers while a slender Scandinavian, patrolling the floor, calls j out ranges and fuses. Response is almost instantaneous, in a French which amazes our Paris ace, who has struggled with newsreel Flench for days. They have aptitude, these black mountaineers, for a learning long denied them. Whatever their elders—white-cloaked feudal barons followed by herds of motley fusiliers—may think of Western man and his lore, the seed has fallen upon fertile ground in this high vallev of incredible richness. It will not be long, one thinks, as the students erv sharply in French the ranges, bursts fields of fire, before these dark lads from the high Ethiopian kingdoms will put this trigonometry to a sweeter purpose, this rigid sanitation to a wider horizon than the school of the soldier. It is not to be thought that the valley is alien to the use of arms. This scene, for all its tranquil green, has known sling and arrow, lance and spear, (lintlock and high-powered cartridge before ever Hailo Silassio asked King Gustav? for instructors. The rille is ;it the crook of every shepherd's arms as lis watches the flocks of his fan.'ly. The child standing by tetharoj ponies, the youth following the cows, carries a lance in his right hand. Barefooted and togaed, with the grace of those who wear winding clothes, all male inhabitants of this valley sleep upon arms.

Seven Million Males. There are, as near as censor takers know, some seven million males in Ethiopia. One can discount children of less than four—the rest, whether bondsmen or masters, are warriors. Perhaps it is their ignorance, or again their isolation, which gives their fathers such arrogance and pride. At any rate, as the cadets stand barefoot in khaki and call the ranges and the loads, one realises that the Swedffs are really acquainting the.m practically against the ancient style of freehand attack. But they arc hardly heeding it. It is guns they think of, of themselves firing those guns.

Along a green ridge one catches the glint of their little vicious mountain guns in practice position, ahead of them the tripods of their lesser affiliates, the automatic rifles. Wandering from the verandah and through the green drill* field, one suddenly finds a little child in white sun helmet and red rubber boots making a posy of lupin and dandelion. The wind whips back her helmet. Her hair is the yellow hair of children comc to Ethiopian pastures with their fathers from the of steel. Beyond her guns were glinting in the hot African sun and behind her men of Teutonic stock speak in French to a race unchanged since Solomon's day. The West, having had Euclid from the East, was bringing it back with a vengeance, but tlie valley was green like any other, with children playing in the sun. —N.A.N.A. Copyright.