Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1896 — Abyssinians are Good Fighters. [ARTICLE]

Abyssinians are Good Fighters.

The Italians, of course, explain their defeat by the presence of French and Russian officers with Menelek, but it may be questioned if any Anglo-Indian General accustomed to mountain warfare would agree with them. Drill does not improve Oriental soldiers like the Abysslnians. They are Semites in blood, of exceptional courage, men who do not hesitate to charge into the centre of Italian regiments; they have been accustomed to defend their hills for a thousand years; and they have Generals accustomed to utilize masses of men who recently destroyed an army from Khartoum at Khssala. They had good rifles, they were on the higher ridges when they’ started, nnd the'*.’ king, Menelek, is obviously a soldier of the Hyder All type—that >s. a man who can induce his soldiery to die. To beat such men they must either be decoyed out of the hills or attacked from above, and the Italians were still mounting when a kind of ava lanche of riflemen swept down on them. The number of the dead suggests that the Italians fought well, but the fright ful proportion of officers killed, twothirds of the whole number, tells a dis ferent tale. The officers, we fear, ex posed themselves to arrest a pan'c. which may, however, have broken out at first only among the native troops Chicago is proposing to legislate all Its trolley wires underground.