Foreign News: The Unforgiving Lion

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Until Rodolfo Graziani made it a terrifying reality for thousands of conquered Africans, the Graziani family motto — "An enemy forgiven is more dangerous than a thousand foes" — was no more sinister than scores of other Italian family mottoes handed down from the age of feuding dynasties. Soldier Graziani was 32 years old and a loud-voiced, hulking 6 ft. 4 in. when World War I broke out. But though twice wounded and twice decorated, he found himself among Italy's millions of jobless at war's end. When the government called for volunteers to "pacify" Libya, Graziani rejoined the army. A year later Benito Mussolini, the new Fascist leader, took over, and Graziani was on his way to becoming a hero again.

He brought a new trick to desert fighting. Between lines of trucks he strung electrified wires, then drove the sword-swinging Senussi horsemen into the electric net. He rounded up 80,000 noncombatant men, women and children, and put them in concentration camps. In pursuit of the Senussi he sent "flying tribunals," which tortured their captives, hung them in bags from tall trees and dropped them out of airplanes. When Senussi Chief Omar El Muktar surrendered and asked for the status of a forgiven enemy, Graziani had him shot as a bandit.

The Viceroy. Graziani was a natural for the campaign in Ethiopia. Laughingly he asked Mussolini whether he wanted Ethiopia with or without Ethiopians, and Mussolini replied that the task was to carry "Roman civilization" to East Africa. From Italian Somaliland he rode into Ethiopia at the head of an army of 60,000 men, a strapping figure in his desert uniform, wearing a monocle. His "Hell on Wheels" offensive bogged down. Finally, by liberal use of poison gas and bombs, he scattered Ras Desta's barefooted Ethiopians, and on horseback at the head of his troops he entered the village of Neghelli, which he described in flamboyant dispatches as "the Southern capital."

Mussolini created him a Marshal of Italy, later made him Viceroy of Ethiopia. Summoning the populace to the viceregal palace in Addis Ababa, Graziani stood up to address them when a couple of hand grenades bounced in. Graziani fell, crying, "They've killed me." Every Italian who had a weapon began firing into the crowd. In a few minutes there were a thousand dead in the palace grounds. Promiscuous killing, arson and pillaging went on for days. Total dead: 1,600. Even Mussolini protested, but Graziani, whose wounds were superficial, replied: "Mild measures never retained conquered soil." A few months later he was withdrawn from Ethiopia, created hereditary Marquis of Neghelli by King Victor Emmanuel III.