VALIANT IGNORANCE

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 249, 21 October 1935, Page 5

VALIANT IGNORANCE

ETHIOPIAN SPIRIT.

GRIM LESSONS TO LEARN. AND' THEN WABFABS. (By LAURENCE STALLINGS.) (By Air Mail.) HARRAR, September. No one in this war capital cares to predict anything as to the nature of the coming conflict; though all Ethiopian officials bend every agency to provisioning and arming troops, and there is a surprising amount of arms and equipment pouring through Djidjiga, to the south, for the Somaliland armies. The general attitude seems one of blind ] ignorance to such operations. It is the same to the west, where from Dire- : Dawa supplies begin the tortuous road , to the north. Representatives of foreign ; Governments all agree that October 5 13 the deadline—to fight or to quit—for • by that time terrain is suitable to campaigning in the north. The south j; was effective as early as September 20. j Only the rank and file of Ethiopians! j glare, it seems, at danger. They crowd • into the towns ready for a conflict which, from their notions, seems to be one with late eighteenth century weapons. Certainly the French inside Blenheim —in so far as the peasant goes —were hardly less well equipped to meet I Marlborough's lancers. Here tradition j among the Galas ie one of conflict. They i, are fighters, though not warlike in their j organisation. They are seldom marksmen, the ordinary European soldier I being as effective with a revolver as e they are with a rifle, their deficiency in i this reflect being the result of a scarcity of cartridges since time immemorial. Rearming Their Retainers. This, one can be sure, will not. be the case again. The nobjes and squiree of, this feudalism, who supply their re- 1

tainers with rifles, know from the obvious comments of correspondents how seriously this penury in the matter j of ammunition has affected the hitting' power of Ethiopia's peasant infantry, j the irregulars upon whose guerilla genius the fate of an attacked Ethiopia j must rest. . . "I have completely rearmed my people," one such noble told me yesterday. "The 200 who render me yeoman service—none pays a farthing tax for his land, the sole obligation being that of bearing arms —are now equipped i with new Mausers, and with 220 rounds of ammunition per man." > This was true. On examining the rifles one discovered that, such was the pride of the bearers, that they had made tampons of rags, "a practice which would earn a Western recruit eome unpleasant I extra duty and which will, if the tarn- ! pons are not removed, cause serious fragments in ranks at time of firing. For The Most Part Pell-mell. _ The specialists trained by foreigners are being restricted solely to defensive points, which the' authorities deem critical in event of evasion. The main body of troops, .while taught a semblance of squad routine, for the most part are pell-mell, hoping for nothing more than close grips with an enemy, j a natural psyche which the Western i nations, when tuning a people to conflict, spent many days and much fervour in inculcating. That the mob of soldiers can have little idea of the range and hitting power of automatic rifles and light iU'kl guns is attested by their attire; they invariably wear the white chamma, or throw-over, of the Ethiopian clans. They appear at embarkation points with whole families, and some of them make heroic efforts to carry their families along, doubtless hoping for another Adowa, when wives followed the wielders of quarter-staves into battle and both returned full armed with precious, caste-creating rifles. These Galla people are so keen that only one engagement will suffice to teach them, ati least to teach them the wholesome fear j of enfiladed machine-guns which every soldier learns. As to the force and effect of such < weapons upon fighting spirit—that is another matter. Opinion here among competent observers' is that the Italians, in their first push, will go very far. i There is not the slightest doubt, how-

ever, of the inability of Ethiopia commanders to hold their people in check once the advance is deep. It is certain— an official in- the War Office, becoming excited, boasted as much—that these people, with old and new rifles, lances and pistols, will hurl themselves en masse upon the invaders on some fell night. It seems to be their greatest 'belief that a night's work will precipitate a decision for ever favourable to them. That a camp can have Very flares and lights, or that artillery can ap_tly bracket a ravine, or that machine-guns of heavy design can curtain oil a position, seems to mean little to them. These people have the valour of ignorance, but they are valiant; make no mistake as to that.

Stories and Stern Facts. They too have some field artillery beyond these Galla ranges; they have, it is probable, more guns than_ they can properly serve with ammunition. They even have a goodly, number of those futilo instruments, the anti-aircraft gun of yesterday. Their gunners, one is informed, are men who will mask their weapons until the last moment, each one a dagger battery in a sacrificial point. These stories, it must tie admitted, can always be taken with a grain of salt, as a man rarely fights unless ha has one avenue of retirement; at lcfust few intelligent men, in coldness of preparation, voluntarily demand duties from which there can be no avenue of exit, but that one of death. It is the vogue nowadays to say that the Japanese begs to die for his Emperor, or that the Kussian welcomes an opportunity to push up daisies for Lenin's dream. Doubtless the soldiers of theee two nations can meet death as bravely as anyone, but the best soldier is he who wins a fight and survives it; and this is as true in Ethiopa as elsewhere. Watching the peasant infantry stream through Harrar, their wives pleading to go along, their commanders straightfaced and grim with the awareness taught them in the Swedish and Belgian schools at Addis Ababa, an observer knows, regardless of wild goose opinions, that these people will resort to guerilla fighting early, heedless of tactics, commanders and arms. - One should not like to be among the invaders, even though served with the best weapons which a ; civilisation devoted to such instruments can provide. —(X.A.XA.) „.