CAESAR IN ABYSSINIA 179

an anti-aircraft gun, three machine-gun posts, and dis-
connected strands of barbed wire entanglements. Three
hundred men under a Swiss and his wife. Captain and Mrs.
Wittlin, defended the most strategic point on the Franco-
Ethiopian railway. Mrs. Wittlin had sores on the legs.
Some of the men were down with fever exhaled from the
featureless Hawash gorge. Others were out shooting the
prolific game. The Greeks were snoozing in the bar under
the purple bougainvillea.

Along the railway line the dirt-track under mimosa,
meant to replace the railway if that were bombed, had only
been half-finished. The alternative telephone had been
half erected. Any Italian flight of planes could have
landed troops and taken the place in a single morning,
wiped out the garrison and gone home in the afternoon.
The moral effect would have been enormous. But as I
have said, the Italians in this war did not take a single
risk. Theirs was the progress of a machine, sometimes out
of gear, but always avoiding a reverse. Their Caesar was
a mechanical Caesar, innovating only to improve a military
method, not to make a daring coup which would strike
alarm in the heart of the enemy.

Signor Mussolini believed in white prestige; nothing
more. By that he meant white military invincibility, not
the spread of Roman culture. He found white prestige
such a delicate thing that a single small defeat could wipe it
away. So he took no risks. He ran his Juggernaut very
carefully and efficiently, on benzine.

At Diredawa, all quiet. Continual friction between the
French garrison, Senegalese who were there to guard
French interests in the railway works, and the Ethiopian
governor of the town. The French had tried physically
to stake out claims to an area round the station. The
governor would not have it. Altogether a lot of bad
temper, diluted with a lot of whisky.

A third element in the strife were the new Diredawa
police, uniformed in blue, and tough customers.

Before leaving Addis Margarita had taken the precaution
of asking for permission to travel to Harrar. Permits to go
from point to point are usual in Ethiopia at any time : in
war they are often potent weapons of delay. But