Waugh In Abyssinia – Evelyn Waugh, 1936 ★★

Hooray for Fascism

Evelyn Waugh’s most famous travel book is celebrated more than it is actually read, a good thing for the writer’s reputation as actually reading Waugh In Abyssinia exposes his worst traits: indifference to human suffering, a tendency to boredom, and a badly blinkered mindset.

It’s not only that he comes out strongly in favor of the Italian occupation of the land known today as Ethiopia, but the bland, superficial way he makes his points. As fascist apologia, it’s rather wan.

Reading it today does sting, as he justifies Mussolini’s broadly condemned 1935 invasion as the natural result of Abyssinian truculence and lassitude. Waugh exposes here a disdain for non-European people he did better to conceal in other writings, even if his main target is the European liberal elite who condemned the invasion after their own countries enriched themselves the same way decades before.

Abyssinian independence, he claims, is not worthy of respect because the backwards nation subjects its people to ignorance and disease:

Abyssinia could not claim recognition on equal terms by the civilised nations and at the same time maintain her barbarous isolation; she must put her natural resources at the disposal of the world; since she was obviously unable to develop them herself, it must be done for her, to their mutual benefit, by a more advanced Power. 

Abyssinian leader Haile Selassie. Waugh describes him as "Oriental rather than African, formal, circumspect, inscrutable; he moved like a vested statue carried in a religious procession." As commander of Abyssinia's defense against Italy, Waugh found him to be equally immobile.
Image from https://www.e-n.org.uk/features/2015-03-haile-selassie-the-christian/

All that said, Waugh In Abyssinia is not a bad read. Unlike Waugh’s better travel writings, it has a clear thesis and focus. The moment in history it records, the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, marked the rise of fascism on the world stage while Hitler only contemplated Sudetenland.

Whatever his rooting interests, Waugh was a fantastic recorder of the things he saw and heard. Waugh In Abyssinia shows him at the height of his powers, especially when tracking the things on the margins which often drew his closest attention.

He observes a civilian evacuation: In the first class were a large party of Levantine women and children, plump and pallid as though modelled in lard. After a noisy and emotional leave-taking they subsided into their places and sobbed quietly for an hour, then began to cheer up and expand, opened their cases and produced thermos flasks and bags of sweetmeats until they gradually spread over the whole coach an atmosphere of sticky domesticity.

In Addis Ababa, Abyssinia’s capital, civilians await Italian bombers: Timidity was infectious. A passing motor bicycle would have us all at the window staring skywards. A few hardened topers remained sober that evening for fear of sleeping too heavily. But the night passed undisturbed by any except the normal sounds – the contending loudspeakers of the two cinemas, the hyenas howling in the cemetery. Few of us slept well.

Waugh's book crosses much of Abyssinia, but focuses on two locations: Addis Ababa, the capital; and Harar, where Waugh went off in search of news about an oil concession, only to discover he missed the story back at the capital. Waugh was often caught short like this.
Image from https://www.evelynwaugh.org.uk/styled-134/index.html

Mostly people remember Waugh In Abyssinia not for these moments but rather the author’s waggish criticisms of his fellow journalists. They came to cover a war and made themselves more of a spectacle than any battle, at least in Waugh’s telling.

No sooner had Waugh himself arrived than he found himself besieged by his newspaper editor in London to confirm various wild rumors being reported in other papers. This back-and-forth only sharpened Waugh’s natural cynicism. So did the way journalists fed readers’s insatiable appetites with whatever folderol they could pick up from mercenary informants.

Waugh writes: “We could retail their lies, even when we found them most palpable, with the qualification, ‘It is stated in some quarters’ or ‘I was unofficially informed.’

His digs at the Fourth Estate become more delicious as the book goes on. They represent the most enjoyable parts of Waugh In Abyssinia: “No one knew quite what to expect, and even the most daring of journalists had decided to wait and see what happened before composing their reports.”

Ras Nasibu, a leader of an Abyssinian tribe, with his troops. Waugh records one tribal leader's preference for blades over bullets, claiming "when [Italians] smelled blood they were afraid; when an Abyssinian smelled blood he became doubly brave; that was why the sword was better than the gun."
Image from https://www.thecollector.com/second-italo-ethiopian-war/

Waugh had been in Abyssinia years before to report on the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie, an event he details in Remote People. This time Waugh’s contempt for the people and culture of Abyssinia comes across much stronger. He also notes how Western journalists ran cover for Selassie’s multiple failings as a leader and general.

While the journalists wait in Abyssinia for the Italian attack, they happily retail predictions of an inert Selassie making a brave stand while getting ready to flee themselves once the Italians move in. They uncritically cover Abyssinia propaganda about everything from animal welfare programs to its enlightened prison system.

Abyssinian reality is something else entirely:

Slavery and slave-raiding were universal; justice, when executed at all, was accompanied by torture and mutilation in a degree known nowhere else in the world; the central government was precarious and only rendered effective by repeated resort to armed force; disease was rampant.

Italian forces advance on Addis Ababa, 1936. The major offensive was some time in coming, and when it finally did Waugh was already making his departure. Waugh In Abyssinia presents a deceptive picture of a war being anticipated but not actually waged.
Image from https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/tag/Second+Italo-Ethiopian+War

One can see, then and now, a truth in Waugh’s point of view, even if one also gets pummeled by its blatant casuistry. But this veil of objectivity falls whenever he tries to argue, as he often does, for the Italian side of the conflict.

He is enormously impressed by both Italy’s ambassador to Abyssinia and the commander of the invading army. One expects that if Mussolini had granted him an audience, Waugh would have loved him, too. The only violence he records is a massacre of Italian civilians.

Meanwhile, Italian atrocities are put down as baseless Abyssinian propaganda. Yes, mustard gas is being used on some military targets, Waugh admits, but in the outdoors the poison dissipates so rapidly it is more humane and less lethal to its victims than machine gunning. Of course, Waugh himself kept a safe distance from any of this.

Waugh suggests the Italians were more successful bribing tribes to switch sides, as Selassie was widely unpopular. “Signor Mussolini had no intention of making war upon a national scale or of attempting the military conquest of the whole Ethiopian Empire,” he writes months after that war was well underway.

In the Italian attack at Tembien in early 1936, aerial attack was effectively coordinated with ground assault for a decisive victory. When facing forces equally as well armed in North Africa four years, Italy would not fare so well.
Image from https://www.thesecondworldwar.org/interbellum-1918-1936/1935/second-italo-ethiopian-war/first-battle-of-tembien 

When Waugh shows the Italian troops in action, they behave with far better military decorum than we see from the ragged Abyssinians. One scene he lingers on depicts them playing with young civilians: “The Italians, as everyone knows, love children.”

Around 200,000 Abyssinian soldiers and civilians were killed in a 17-month conflict that saw the Italian army lose less than a twentieth of that number. The entire war was a case of massive overkill designed to convince the world of Italian military supremacy. Yet Waugh plays the entire conflict off as a kind of phony war, built up into something much bigger by the reports of unscrupulous reporters.

Waugh is most open about his contempt about efforts of British liberals and socialists to whip up national sympathy for Abyssinian’s plight. He writes: “It is by no means the first time in English history that the world has been almost fatally confused by mistaking the peevish whinny of the nonconformist conscience for the voice of the nation. It often happens. Someone is always the loser for it.”

Here I found Waugh closer to solid ground. Europeans (and Americans) historically talk a big game about human rights but aren’t as motivated when it comes to honoring them, especially when they get trumped by other concerns. Reminding readers of this even when the aggressors are fascists is not always a bad thing.

Evelyn Waugh as he appeared at the time of his Abyssinian visit, looking grim. Much of his book is spent looking for a war that seems perpetually out of view. "It was probable, as in fact occurred, that news of the beginning of hostilities would be published in Europe before we learned of it in Addis Ababa," he wrote.
Image from https://www.evelynwaugh.org.uk/styled-134/index.html

One noticeable gaffe of the book is that Waugh departs Abyssinia with the war still underway, to spend Christmas 1935 in Bethlehem. He claims his newspaper editor pulled him from the assignment as the war became stalemated, though from the few examples given of his reporting it is more likely Waugh was seen as not all that capable a correspondent, prone to wandering off and missing big stories where he had been.

Waugh In Abyssinia would be published the next year. Meanwhile, the war itself went on, bitterly, through February 1937. Basically, Waugh gives you the first four months of the conflict, leaving just before it was fully joined.

Waugh does return to Abyssinia after the fall of Selassie to pronounce himself satisfied with the new state of affairs under Il Duce, taking stock of “the inestimable gifts of fine workmanship and clear judgement” being brought by Italian leadership, comparing it the how Roman legions brought civilization to ancient Britain.

He admires a new road network the Italians are laying down:

A main road in England is a foul and destructive thing, carrying the ravages of barbarism into a civilised land – noise, smell, abominable architecture and inglorious dangers. Here in Africa it brings order and fertility.

Waugh changed his views on fascism in time, fighting bravely at Crete as an overaged British officer in 1940. But Waugh In Abyssinia catches him dangerously entranced by the promise of what only can be called aggressive anti-liberalism in action. He ignores widespread carnage to score petty points at the more relativistic aspects of Western civilization. If only he had stuck to straight reporting and forewent commentating, Waugh In Abyssinia might have been a decent read.