Mussolini's Abyssinian Adventure

From the Dark Valley
MUSSOLINI had long dreamed of setting the "Dark Continent" alight. As a youth he had been shocked by the Ethiopian victory over the Italians at Adowa in 1896, when the Emperor Menelik administered the most dev-astating rebuff ever suffered by a European power in Africa. The figures—"ten thousand dead and seventy-two cannon lost"—hammered in Mussolini's head for years afterwards.' Like D'Annunzio, he regarded this disaster as a "shameful scar,"2 a stigma on the Italian body politic that could only be washed away with blood. Revenge would be sweet, righting a cosmic wrong whereby black savages had defeated the forces of white civilisation. Revenge would also be compensation, in the shape of the last independent African country, for the meagre pickings Italy had obtained at Versailles. An empire would bring dignity to the State, virility to the regime and glory to the Duce. As it was, Italy had only a few tattered colonies, Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, Libya and the Dodecanese, which bore no comparison to the splendid possessions of Britain and France. Mussolini felt the hurt deeply. Only an imperial power could be great, Mussolini considered, and as early as 1932 he laid out four large relief maps in the Via del Impero showing how Rome had once embraced territory stretching from Hadrian's Wall to the first cataract of the Nile, from Parthia to the Pillars of Hercules. Aggression was the fulfilment of Fascism, in Mussolini's view, the proof that it had not become as decadent as the democracies, and Italian newspapers soon began to laud "the poetry of hatred and the beneficent hygiene of war."3 Finally African conquest would be a Roman triumph worthy of Augustus, a dazzling monument to Mussolini's personal prestige. These were the visceral motives inspiring him to embark on what King Victor Emmanuel was to call "the greatest colonial war in history."4 But Mussolini was also prompted by more immediate considerations. In 1932, when he secretly commissioned General Emilio De Bono to prepare for the Abyssinian adventure, the Duce was preoccupied by the Depression.
Faced with the example of Libya, Italy's largest colony, which repaid only a tithe of what it cost to have and to hold, he could hardly hope that a conquered Ethiopia would come to his rescue economically. Poor, remote and landlocked, Ethiopia could by no means fulfil the classic role of a colony—to be a source of raw materials and a market for manufactured goods. On the other hand, in an era of protectionism Italians could easily be persuaded of the advantages of having an exclusive economic domain in Ethiopia, just as the Japanese had been convinced about Manchuria. Mussolini, indeed, resented the flourishing Japanese trade with Ethiopia and scotched a royal dynastic marriage which would have strengthened this Afro-Asian axis. Furthermore he had every incentive to divert the attention of Italians from the parlous state of their own country by reviving their long-felt fas-cination for the "lure of Africa."' He appreciated the possibilities of channelling internal frustration into external violence. He saw the chance of mobilising patriots behind the regime and he reckoned that militant nationalism could invigorate moribund Fascism. In 1932 he declared that Fascism carried "the anti-pacifist attitude into the life of the individual. 'I don't give a damn'—the proud motto of the fighting squads . . . sums up a doctrine which is not merely political: it is evidence of a fighting spirit which accepts all risks." Mussolini visualised that Ethiopia would provide living-space for a population he was encouraging to expand and which could no longer find an outlet in the United States. He may also have hoped to relieve unemployment by his call to arms and men. At any rate many Italians saw an escape from the rigours of the Depression in the fer-tile cotton-growing regions of Gojjam and Jimma, among the rich coffee plantations of Kaffa and Sidamo, amid the gold and platinum of Yubdo and Birbir.
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Moreover, when the Crown Prince and future Emperor of Ethiopia, Ras Tafari Makonnen (otherwise known by his bap-tismal name, Haile Selassie, which means "Power of the Trinity"), visited Europe a couple of years later he had been greeted more cordially in Italy than anywhere else. A tiny figure, only five feet four inches tall, Ras Tafari made up in dignity what he lacked in stature. As one of his American advisers put it, "he invariably looked out upon the world as from an inner eminence."n Aloof, arrogant, austere, he modelled his public behaviour on that of the Emperor Hirohito. Even abroad he acted like a deity receiving homage, preserving an Olympian calm not least in the face of racist slights. Most foreigners were struck, however, by the refinement of Ras Tafari's appearance: close-cropped curly hair, high brown forehead, trim crisp beard, long hawkish nose and large black eyes which alone betrayed his moods, sparkling with humour, glittering with disdain, suffused with melancholy. Though he spoke jerkily in a low, grating voice and his minute, exquisitely-shaped hands sometimes toyed with a jewelled ring or a gold fountain pen, Ras Tafari possessed the imperial gift of immobility. In the words of the journalist George Steer, he appeared "at all times, even in the middle of war, completely detached and poised above the melee, pursuing his quiet, rather delicate and well-dressed life without noting overmuch the noise which surrounded him."" What went on behind this impassive exterior was a mystery. Ras Tafari had learned French from his tutor and imbibed more than a smattering of Western culture at mission school. But his most formative experiences had been in securing the succession to an empire where the norm was intrigue, murder and civil strife. He understood something of the modern world, favoured progressive schemes including the building of model prisons and was the first Ethiopian to fly. But he stemmed from the legendary world of Prester John, dispensed medieval punishments such as mutilation and identified himself with a people who believed that war-planes could be made to crash by spells. He encouraged the introduction of modern medi-cine but took precautions to protect his family from witchcraft. Dressed in a black, gold-embroidered silk cloak, white suit and solar topi, and carry-ing an elegant ebony walking-stick, he went to church in his red Rolls-Royce, but also presided over feats at which squatting warriors hacked from bleeding oxen carcasses carried in on a pole.
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The war which we have begun on African soil is a war of civilisation and liberation. It is a war of the people. The Italian people feels it as its own. It is the war of the poor, of the disinherited, of the proletariat. Against us are ranged the forces of conservatism, of selfishness, and of hypocrisy. We have taken on a hard fight against these forces. We shall continue this fight to the end.55 The rhetoric may have been catchpenny but Italians backed it with gold. On the same day they participated in one of the most successful ceremo-nies ever dreamed up by the Fascists—the donation of wedding rings to the war effort.
Mussolini's Abyssinian Adventure
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The statuesque Queen Elena, unkindly said to be twice the size of the pocket monarch she had married, initiated this "Day of Faith." Shortly before 9:oo A.M. she entered the crowded Piazza Venezia, where she was greeted by Party Secretary Starace, supreme architect of pageants. Hud-dled against the rain squalls in a trilby-style hat, fox-fur wrap and long black velvet coat, she mounted the broad white steps of the massive Victor Emmanuel monument, which was guarded by young Fascists. She threw her own ring and her husband's into one of three smoking bronze urns—the suggestion being that the metal was melted down for instant use. Then she was given two dark steel bands, each inscribed with the motto "Gold to the Fatherland," which were blessed by Monsignor Bartolomasi. The Queen next laid a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and, hold-ing a lighted taper, delivered a short speech which was broadcast to the nation. In a low, clear voice, which at times trembled with emotion, she said:
In ascending to the Sacrarium of the Altar of the Fatherland, together with the proud mothers and wives of our dear Italy, to lay on the Altar of the Unknown Warrior the wedding ring, symbol of our first joys, and of the greatest renunciations, as the purest offering of devotion to the Fatherland, bowing ourselves down to the earth as if to commune in spirit with our glorious sons who fell in the Great War [here she gave a Fascist salute which was imitated by all present], we invoke together with them before God, "Victory" Young sons of Italy, who are defending her sacred rights and are opening new paths for the brilliant march of the Fatherland, we wish that you may bring about the triumph of Roman civilization in the Africa which you have redeemed.
The crowd cheered ecstatically: "Long live the Queen," "Long live the House of Savoy."56 Led by Rachele Mussolini, 250,000 Romans followed the royal example. Mostly women, all wearing black, some in fur coats but many in tattered clothes and hatless, they queued for hours to pay their solemn tribute. In Milan, in Naples, in Trieste, all over the country the same patriotic scene was acted out. Correctly interpreting the Pope's Del-phic utterances as tacit support for the Catholic "colonisers of Africa,"57 clergy gave their gold crosses and chains. Jews surrendered their own holy artifacts, including the' gold key of the ark of the law from their synagogue in Rome. Pirandello handed over his Nobel Prize gold medal. Old opponents of Fascism were reconciled and even Benedetto Croce contributed his senatorial emblem. When Prince Doria's Scottish wife refused to give up her ring, she was assaulted; it became difficult to wear anything but a band of steel. Some of those were doubtless acquired in exchange for cheap rings... jewelers were stripped of their stock.