Hot Spot

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With or without malice aforethought Dictator Benito Mussolini picked October, one of the hottest months of the whole Eritrean year, to send short-legged, barrel-chested King Vittorio Emmanuele III on his first visit to Eritrea.

Eritrea, as Italians are proud to recall, is the first colony of any consequence which their young kingdom wrested from Abyssinia (in 1889 when the Kingdom of Italy was only 28 years old). Last week with all her pennants flying the royal yacht Savoia steamed into Massawa, a hot spot on the Red Sea even hotter than famed Aden.

In tight-fitting khaki and an officer's hard cap. His Majesty faced for a few brave hours the homage of mongrel natives in Massawa (where 112DEG F is not uncommon in October). Finally, with beads of perspiration standing out on his mustache, Italy's King repaired with relief to the special train that was to carry him up to Eritrea's high, cool plateau.

Belching clouds of smoke and cinders, His Majesty's locomotive tugged the royal train up and up, raised it a mile and one-half above sea level on the 75-mi. run to Asmara, Eritrea's capital, where natives of pure Abyssinian stock speak a language derived from ancient Geez.

In Asmara, which means "Good Pasture Place," King Vittorio Emmanuele enquired minutely as to doings on the whole plateau, the "Plain of 1,000 Villages." Unfortunately Eritrea is again costing Italy dear. It was run at a loss for the first 30 years, began to break even in 1920, but has again become an expensive luxury for Italy and her ambitious, damn-the-expense Duce. Greatest achievement of Italians in Eritrea is to have introduced cotton culture in valleys previously thought incapable of growing cotton, then to have built capacious cotton gins at Asmara and Massawa. With cotton sunk like other world commodities, this achievement must remain a debit until world prices rise again.

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