The Tree of Gernika: a Field Study of Modern War was published in 1938. It is G. L. Steer's masterpiece. Martha Gellhorn famously wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt:

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""'You must read a book by a man names Steer: it is called The Tree of Gernika. It is about the fight of the Basques - he's the London Times man - and no better book has come out of the war and he says well all the things I have tried to say to you the times I saw you, after Spain. It is beautifully written and true, and few books are like that, and fewer still deal with war. Pleas get it.'

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""As Paul Preston says in his "We Saw Spain Die," 'Martha Gellhorn's judgement has more than stood the test of time.'

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""In his introduction, Nick Rankin writes.' "The Tree of Gernika" tells how Euzkadi, the democratic republic that the Basques created in their green homeland by the Bay of Biscay, fought for freedom and decency in an atrocious civil war. After a year of struggle, blockaded by sea, bombed from the air, fighting against overwhelming odds in their own hill, the Basques in the end lost to Franco's forces - but they lost honourably, without resorting to murder, torture and treachery.'

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""It was Steer who alerted the world to the destruction of Gernika (Basque spelling), Guernica (Spanish spelling). It was the most important dispatch of his life, run by both "The Times "and "The New York Times."

Nick Rankin rightly describes "The Tree of Gernika" as 'a masterpiece of narrative history and eyewitness reporting by someone close to the key events . . .'

Caesar in Abyssinia, published in 1936, was the first of G. L. Steer's three books about Italy's invasion, occupation of, and final removal from Ethiopia. Steer wrote the official history The "Abyssinian Campaigns" (1942) as well as "Sealed and Delivered" (1942) which is also being reissued in Faber Finds.

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""Nick Rankin, in his introduction, describes Caesar in Abyssinia as Steer's 'remarkable - and partisan - account of the last great episode of armed colonial conquest in Africa, the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935-36.' Italy had first tried to meld an "Africa Orientale Italina" in 1895. It failed with the humiliating defeat at the battle of Adowa in 1896. Mussolini was keen on revenge and creating a new Roman Empire abroad.

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""In literary terms the war is best known through Evelyn Waugh's "Waugh in Abyssinia" and "Scoop. "Steer and Waugh were rivals and could hardly be more different in outlook. Nick Rankin says of their first meeting, 'their trains went in opposite directions, and so did their dispatches and politics.'

Waugh championed the Italian cause, Steer the Ethiopian. Steer now seems not only more admirable but more right, too.

Sealed and Delivered was first published in 1942. In a way, it is a sequel to "Caesar in Abyssinia" (also reissued in Faber Finds) which covered the Italian invasion of Ethiopia up to May 1936 when the capital, Addis Ababa was occupied. Sealed and Delivered continues the story until the expulsion of the Italians in 1941 and beyond. Richard Pankhurst, in his introduction, writes, 'Ethiopia's history, as Steer saw it, did not however end there, with victory over Italy. When the fighting died down, the first country to e freed in WW2 still faced major problems. Those resulting from the erstwhile invasion included, he said, a still partially operative colour-bar, the complex question of ex-enemy property - and the country's status vis-a-vis Great Britain, its liberator and ally, whose forces ended up occupying the country. Steer believed that Ethiopia itself would solve these problems, and that its independence, soon to be "sealed" by international treaty, was "delivered" to its rightful rulers: the Ethiopian people: "Sealed and Delivered."'

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""Both "Caesar in Abyssinia "and "Sealed and Delivered "are quite largely autobiographical. That gives them their strength. For Steer writing about Ethiopia was much more than a journalistic assignment, he was a friend of the Emperor's and a partisan for his country. As Nick Rankin has observed, 'the mild Christianity that he inherited from them (his parents) seems to have given him sympathy for the underdog as well as inoculation against totalitarianism.'

CAESAR IN ABYSSINIA BY G. L. STEER INTRODUCTION THIS BOOK, which casts a narrow sidelight on an unimportant series of massacres known as the ItaloEthiopian War, bears, I am sorry to say, a title which will disappoint many, Caesar in Abyssinia conjures up a picture of cohorts, horse haircrests and Commentaries, all centring round the great Julius himself ungasmasked in the field. But look where I might in Abyssinia, with the assistance of Holmes, Collins, Harrison, Lowenthal and the British Red Cross, I could never find the fellow. Afterwards the Military Correspon dent of The Times explained to me that he was playing the part of a dynamo in Rome. He compares ill with his rival, who handled an anti aircraft gun and a machinegun against Europeans fitted with far superior weapons. I have no desire, however, to belittle the military achieve ment of Italy in Ethiopia. I believe that an absurd excess of force was ustfd that considering the condition of the Italian Treasury the war might have been waged more cheaply, and that the war provides no index whatsoever of the behaviour of an Italian Army, even of the organisation of an Italian Army, fighting against an equal enemy. The Italians, nevertheless, did reach their objective, Addis Ababa, within seven months of the outbreak of aggression, My task is rather in this book to show what was the strength and spirit of the Ethiopian armies sent against a European Great Power. My conclusions are that they had no artillery, no aviation, a pathetic proportion of auto matic weapons andmodern rifles, and ammunition sufficient for two days modern battle. I have seen a child nation, ruled by a man who was both noble and intelligent, done brutally todeath almost before it had begun to breathe. CONTENTS: 1. THE OGADEN DESERT 2. ADDIS ABABA 3. DESSYE 4. GENERAL MAP OF ABYSSINIA

CAESAR IN ABYSSINIA BY G. L. STEER INTRODUCTION THIS BOOK, which casts a narrow sidelight on an unimportant series of massacres known as the ItaloEthiopian War, bears, I am sorry to say, a title which will disappoint many, Caesar in Abyssinia conjures up a picture of cohorts, horse haircrests and Commentaries, all centring round the great Julius himself ungasmasked in the field. But look where I might in Abyssinia, with the assistance of Holmes, Collins, Harrison, Lowenthal and the British Red Cross, I could never find the fellow. Afterwards the Military Correspon dent of The Times explained to me that he was playing the part of a dynamo in Rome. He compares ill with his rival, who handled an anti aircraft gun and a machinegun against Europeans fitted with far superior weapons. I have no desire, however, to belittle the military achieve ment of Italy in Ethiopia. I believe that an absurd excess of force was ustfd that considering the condition of the Italian Treasury the war might have been waged more cheaply, and that the war provides no index whatsoever of the behaviour of an Italian Army, even of the organisation of an Italian Army, fighting against an equal enemy. The Italians, nevertheless, did reach their objective, Addis Ababa, within seven months of the outbreak of aggression, My task is rather in this book to show what was the strength and spirit of the Ethiopian armies sent against a European Great Power. My conclusions are that they had no artillery, no aviation, a pathetic proportion of auto matic weapons andmodern rifles, and ammunition sufficient for two days modern battle. I have seen a child nation, ruled by a man who was both noble and intelligent, done brutally to death almost before it had begun to breathe. CONTENTS: 1. THE OGADEN DESERT 2. ADDIS ABABA 3. DESSYE 4. GENERAL MAP OF ABYSSINIA