The Ethiopian War had its own unchecked “facts’ that created a few great yarns, but it never gave birth to its own legend. And yet the ingredients were all there for the kind of romanticism that would attach itself to the Spanish Civil War: it had a cast of rogues, a reasonable supply of heroes and clowns, battles aplenty, and it even straddled two ages, modern and medieval. It had a genuine bard in Langston Hughes. All this wasn’t enough, and it comes down to a very simple reason. For the Spanish Civil War, the good guys could show up.