NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ITALY is growing calmer. It is ascertained that the defeat before Adowa was due to the incompetence of the General in command, and that the soldiers and officers fought bravely and died hard. Therefore, although the defeat was even more severe than was reported, the total of loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners exceeding seven thousand men, and although the whole army employed, eighteen thousand men, is officially described as "demoralised," the sting of the disaster has been taken out of it. Rioting has therefore ceased, and the people permit the departure of the troops, who will soon raise the force under General Baldissera to thirty thousand men. With this army he can, he reports, hold the triangle to which Massowah is the entrance, and keep back the Abyssinians, who will be slow to quit the shelter of their hills. He waits, however, for more artillery, and will have great difficulties with his commissariat, as most of his food must be im- ported. Erythrea produces very little beyond what its people want, and the immense number of transport animals makes the collection of forage in a roadlese country very diffi- cult. Kassala is not yet abandoned, and General Baldissera, an old Piedmontese soldier of the regularly trained type, will give up nothing he can help, though he will not move forward a yard till he is ready.
