Victories in East Africa
The pressure upon the enemy in East Africa is being directed from all points of the compass along lines which tend to con- verge on Addis Ababa, the Abyssinian capital. The distances to be traversed are enormous, the starting-points of the attack in the north and the south being distant one from the other by about 1,300 miles. The forces which began their victorious march against Italian Somaliland have conquered that territory and are far into Abyssinia towards Diredawa on the Addis Ababa-Jibuti railway, having advanced some 700 miles. Farther west South African forces are at Negelli, more than a hundred miles from Kenya inside Abyssinia. An Allied force is advancing from the extreme east near Asosa, and a patriot army is fighting a stubbornly-contested battle near Debra Marcos, and is closer to the capital than any (Aber of the attackers. In this difficult mountainous region, where our main force is advancing with such remarkable speed, there is a race against time, for the rainy season, disastrous to wheeled traffic, is approaching. It is only at Keren in Eritrea that our advance is held up by a prolonged and courageous resistance. Here a well equipped Italian force is strongly fortified in a mountainous position which under other conditions of warfare would be regarded as impregnable. Fierce attacks and counter-attacks have taken place among the precipices, and the R.A.F. have been subjecting the Italians to continuous bombardment. Keen is clearly a hard nut to crack, but its fall can be only a matter of time,—probably of very short time.
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