Blood and Ink

In the history books, the Italo-Ethiopian War will doubtless be entered as one of the strangest wars ever waged. History will record the spectacle of a primitive people—haphazardly armed and lacking in modern military technique—seeking to resist Mussolini’s modern war machine by tribal cunning on the battlefield and up-to-date intrigue in the diplomatic councils of Europe.

But what the history books will not record, W.W. (“Bill”) Chaplin tells in this fascinating volume. It is behind the scenes of politics and bloodshed in this curious conflict that Mr. Chaplin takes the reader in a vivid diary of his day-by-day experiences and observations at the Italo-Ethiopian War front.

Written with the dramatic simplicity of a newspaperman trained in the art of brevity, Mr. Chaplin’s account of the thousand and one quixotic incidents in a war correspondent’s life in Ethiopia sparkles with interest and amusement. From the beginning when he describes his departure on an Italian troop-ship at Naples to the very end when he returns to the same port as the approaching rainy season slows down the pace of the war, Mr. Chaplin records an odyssey as strange as the war itself.

The reader is led through picturesque by-ways into the heart of the Ethiopian war zone and shown not only what war has wrought on the battlefield but what it has wrought in the hearts of fighting men. This and much more that is of human texture, Mr. Chaplin tells in a diary that reflects undiluted curiosity and a subtle sense of the dramatic.