BLISTERING HEAT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 167, 19 July 1935, Page 7

BLISTERING HEAT

WHAT ITALIANS FACE SIX DEATHS DAILY Italian .-oldiers and workers sleeping stark naked in the streets tu escape the heat; others toiling in a blistering sun without cork helmets, and still others begging money from Arab sailors Io buy food, which they are unable to buy with their meagre pay. Everywhere confusion and disorder; everywhere haste, and everywhere determination to occupy the rich lands of the Ethiopian plateau—without lighting if possible, but with war to the death if the Ethiopians resist. Hospitals are full and the tituation haphazard. The Italians are said to admit an average of six deaths from sunstroke a day, and for two days, it is said, there has not been water in the city. That is Massaua. port city xn the Italian colony of Eritrea, as described by one of the first men to reach Djibouti from there in several weeks. He is a citizen of a great nation historically friendly and disposed to favour Italian aspirations, telegraphs Will .Barber from Djibouti lo the Chicago Tribune. This correspondent has do means of checking the informant’s statements, but has no reason, after inquiry, to doubt his honesty. For obvious reasons. his name cannot be used. What he told this correspondent, the informant saw as an eyewitness—all but the story about the Italians begging from Arab sailors. That came from the Arabs themselves. Mussolini’s Blunders. From what was told, Premier Mussolini seems to have plunged into his Ethiopian adventure without proper preparation, and perhaps with lack of knowledge of true conditions in East Africa. Italian soldiers and workers have been sent down to a steaming, sunbaked port where is hardly a tree and water is lacking, and many of them canHT down without gun-helmets and still dressed in thei.* heavy European uniforms. AH night long these soldiers and workers toil at discharging vessels that jam the harbour. The Italians have learned at last to avoid such a task as unloading ships in the daytime. Thousands of other soldiers and workers are obliged to work all day in the scorching desert country, mending roads that trucks, tanks, and tractors break down a few hours later as they road through the night to the plateau at the capital of Asmara, where conditions are much better, though it is overcrowded. It is impossible to sleep in houses in this climate, let alone under canvas tents or in low wooden barracks like

our wartime camps, without ventilation. Down here Europeans keep electric fans going all night and pyjamas are all the tribute paid to decency. In day and night walks through Massaua, the informant said, he saw many Italians lying naked in the streets trying to get enough air so they would be able to sleep. They did not even have a rag to cover them. He saw one Italian drop dead of sunstroke in. the main street. An officer on a big Italian steamer also fell dead. The Italians are ready to admit six deaths a day, so .the toll may be higher. Food Prices Rise. 'Then, in daytime, motor drives he was able to take, informant saw thousands of Italians working on roads and “looking damned miserable” for all the swank displayed by gold-braided, blue-shirted officers, who are aching for a chance to fight the Ethiopians. The pay of the soldiers and workers is very low, and the price of food has gone up to such an extent that Italian civilians resident in Massaua have opened a subscription to aid them. Prices have skyrocketed, and water, instead of being a necessity, has become a luxury of luxuries. The only people getting rich out of this affair arc the British, who selling water; Arab sailors, who have brought their dhows (Arabian boats) from all other Red Sea ports for use in unloading Italian vessels, and, ironically, the Ethiopians themselves, who ■keep on selling coffee to the Italians. Confusion? The whole town of Massaua is choked with cargoes, which are piled up in the streets. Huge rolls of barbed wire adorn the front of the Bank of Italy awaiting removal. Cases of ammunition, shovels, and other tools and cases of food fill the single public square to the height of trees. On the mainland south of the town ammunition is unloaded, while to the north 1,000,000 square feet of limber lies in the sun wailing to be turned into barracks. Fall Into Ravine. Cranes mounted on tractors swoop around corners, grab piles of cargo and load them on trucks, which then move on with such speed and haste that pedestrians arc endangered. A causeway joins the island to the mainland, but it is very narrow and the trucks are forced to go single file. One truck, with 10 soldiers aboard fell into a ravine 3000 feet deep. The bodies could not be recovered. My informant said:— I “It is war without being war. Among the war materials arc 400 acro- ! planes. There are plenty of tanks, too, I but they will be no good in these mouni tains and these deserts —how arc the Italians going to get the gasoline and water necessary to run them? They can’t do it. ‘‘lie Italians also have brought two of those fast-engined, streamlined trains like the one which set an American record recently. They make the run to Asmara, about 70 miles away, in throe hours and a-l.all. with a climb from the sea levo! Io 6600 feel. They keep going all day.”