The State of Abyssinia A series of four articles which
the Manchester Guardian has just published on Abyssinia cast an important light on conditions in that unhappy country. The articles are dated from Jibuti in French Somaliland, the terminus of the railway from Addis Ababa to the coast, and consist of extremely detailed and explicit statements. Their general effect is to show that the country has by no means been subjugated by the Italians, though the old government of Haile Selassie has been destroyed ; it is said, for example, that a single band of to,000 men armed with Belgian Mausers is raiding, and even settling temporarily, within forty miles of Addis Ababa. The Army of Occupation is put at 203,000 men, 300 aeroplanes (from which mustard-gas is still sprayed) and tom() lorries, the cost of which" would be immeasurably beyond the power of any sane Italian Government, and would be intolerable even to a country as rich as Britain." Roads are being built, and houses for administrative officials, but practically nothing else, and there is no colonisation or sign of any. It would obviously solve many of Italy's problems if she could persuade Jews to settle in Abyssinia. Apart from them it is hard to see where the men or the money to develop the country are to come from—and equally hard to see how Italy could retain it if she were ever engaged in a European war.
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