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In the South, Mussolini's Somaliland army, creeping north under command of Italy's ablest colonial fighter, lean General Graziani, was fighting harder and making more progress. Roads meant nothing in this rolling desert country where the advance was from water hole to water hole. Each hole was held by a little group of fanatical natives ready to charge and die at the first bang of a gun. It was slow and bloody business. General Graziani finally called out his bombing planes. Soon it was reported that the Italians were using a new, yellowish gas on the terrified Ethiopians.
This put the Ethiopian commander facing General Graziani, Dedjazmatch Nassibu, in a towering rage. His lion's mane headdress trembling with emotion, that chieftain roared:
"The League of Nations! We fight and die while the League talks. ... If only we could fight men in the manner of men! But we are facing an invader who uses the most fiendish methods known to warfare all because he is angered that we protect our homes and land. Our lands are being laid barren by gas; our mules, sheep, and cattle are dying in the fields."
Naked and sweating, Dedjazmatch Nassibu's men were digging like terriers in the foothills near Jijiga, preparing for a pitched battle to protect the country's only railway. Sinking huge anti-tank pits, their bottoms filled with spiked stakes, many big enough to hold an entire platoon, the Ethiopians sang a new song as they worked: "Shanko ingiillar leba! The white men are the thieves of the ages."
Good Son-In-Law. A valued ally to enraged Dedjazmatch Nassibu last week appeared in the person of Emperor Haile Selassie's favorite son-in-law, swart, smart, bearded little Ras Desta Demtu. Two years ago he traveled to the U. S., paid an official call on President Roosevelt, presented him with two lion pelts (TIME, July 31, 1933). Last week found him at the head of an irregular army estimated at 200,000 preparing to join forces with a disgruntled white settler from Italian Somaliland, a onetime Boer Colonel named Siwiank, to try a surprise attack on General Graziani's flank from the difficult waterless lands of Ogaden Province.
Bad Son-In-Law. Quite different from Ras Desta Demtu was Haile Selassie's other son-in-law, bug-eyed little Haile Selassie Gugsa. Ruler of the eastern part of Tigre Province, he is a direct descendant of that King John of Ethiopia still venerated as a saint by the Coptic Church. His great-uncle, John IV, was a sworn enemy of fierce-whiskered old Emperor Menelik who later defeated the Italians at Aduwa. Ras Gugsa's father kept up the family feud against Menelik and his grandnephew, Ethiopia's present Emperor, was on the best of terms with the Italian administration in Eritrea. When he died three years ago it was in the arms of an Italian doctor. With his last breath he made his son Gugsa swear eternal friendship to Italy. Well aware of all this has been Emperor Haile Selassie. Some years ago to keep Ras Gugsa and his 15,000 warriors in line, the Emperor married the Tigre Chieftain to his second daughter, but she unfortunately died in childbirth. Last week Ras Gugsa found the time ripe to remember his father's promises.