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{\*\generator Msftedit 5.41.15.1515;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 ETHIOPIA: March 1,

1896\par
TIME MAGAZINE:Monday, Aug. 19, 1935\par
On a dusty plain in the Northern Province of Wallo last week a round-eyed dark-
faced kinky-haired boy of 19 stood on a rug-draped platform of dried mud. To the
rattle of war drums Ethiopian chieftains with lion-mane headdresses and gold
embossed shields clustered protectively about the royal youngster. Across the field
rolled a white-rimmed dust cloud out of which moved a horde of 100,000 yelling
black warriors. Beyond the reviewing stand the troopers halted, faced to the north,
where 100 miles away lay the town of Adowa. Then to a man they let out the old war
cry of their country: "Ebalgume! Ebalgume! Cut them down! Cut them down!" The
breeze shifted, carrying the echo louder to the reviewing stand, and bringing with
it a great stench of sweat, steaming horseflesh, and rancid butter with which
Ethiopian warriors pomade their locks. Thus Crown Prince Asfa Wassan last week
reviewed the troops whose commander he had just been made, troops almost certain to
be the first to oppose the Italian advance next month, and to try to repeat the
great victory of Adowa 39 years ago when the cry of "Ebalgume! Ebalgume!" chilled
the heart of Italy.\par
"Military Paralysis." In 1896 Italy was, as she is today, attempting to wrest a
colonial empire from Ethiopia. Then as now, domestic difficulties lay behind the
military operations. After several years out of office, Francesco Crispi had staged
a strong comeback as Premier of Italy. The new Italian colonies of Eritrea and
Somaliland had just been established on the African coast. Though France and Russia
were secretly negotiating with Haile Selassie's granduncle, the potent Emperor
Menelik, many chiefs questioned his authority and seemed willing Italian allies.
Early in the summer of 1895 Premier Crispi had called the new Governor of Eritrea,
General Baratieri, back to Italy for a conference. Between them they decided that
the time was ripe for a major move. General Baratieri, an impulsive Latin, seemed
satisfied that the 15,000 native and Italian troops under his command were
sufficient. He did not know that during his absence in Italy Emperor Menelik had
made peace with the chieftains, bought from French munitions makers field guns that
out-ranged the Italians' and was sweeping north 'at the head of nearly 100,000
men.\par
Italian troops had already suffered several reverses. Early in 1896 General
Baratieri cabled for reinforcements. The Italian Parliament voted money and men and
appointed General Baldissera to succeed Baratieri. Furious, Premier Crispi saw his
grand gesture petering out. He sent an angry telegram to General Baratieri, flaying
the "military paralysis" that was seizing operations in Ethiopia.Oreste Baratieri
was a Garibaldi Redshirt and an old-school Italian with a family pride sensitive as
a rabbit's lip. Three days he brooded over the telegram from Premier Crispi, then
assembled the four Generals under his command for a conference. The Ethiopian army
was encamped 18 miles away in a brutal country of cliffs, gullies and thorn-covered
hills. It outnumbered the Italians six to one and was equipped with artillery. Even
so, all five Italian Generals voted to attack at once for the honour of their
commander. Adowa-The plan was simple. The Italian army would advance like a hand,
with the three parallel brigades of Dabormida, Albertone and Arimondi for fingers,
with Ellena's brigade for wrist and support. The advance started at 9 p. m. Feb.
29, 1896. By 2:30 a. m. it was hopelessly confused. The Albertone brigade lost its
way and in a narrow gorge cut across that of General Arimondi. Troops were tied up
for hours. The support could not advance. Trusting in a faulty map General
Albertone went too far ahead, engaged the Ethiopians alone. By the time the Italian
advance was straightened out three separate battles were going on at once without
coordination or contact. By 11 a. m. March 1st the Italians army was in full rout,
their dead piled high around their guns. Bugle calls for retreat were drowned amid
savage cries of "EbalgumeI Ebalgume!" Behind the fanatic black warriors came their
women brandishing long knives to mutilate the wounded. Killed were two of the five
Generals, 4,600 Italian officers and soldiers. Two thousand were wounded, 2,000
taken prisoner. General Baratieri was court-martialed, finally acquitted. Premier
Crispi resigned. The peace treaty returned a fine slice of Eritrea to Ethiopia, and
the whole business cost Italy some $90,000,000 and a dirty splotch on her military
escutcheon.One of the buglers who sounded the Adowa retreat that was never heard
was found in London last week in the person of Francis Pozzoli, then a young
corporal, now a prosperous wholesale grocer.\rdblquote It would do me good to have
another smack at the creeping devils," said he. "The worst of it came during the
retreat. Tired and thirsty, we were overtaken by mounted tribesmen who rode among
us, cutting down thousands. I escaped by crawling under a heap of dead bodies.
Hardly a wounded man on the battlefield escaped mutilation."Softly, Taitou, Leader
of the Ethiopian women on that bloody March 1, 1896, was the Empress Taitou, fourth
wife of Menelik II. A more polite version of her predecessor's part in the battle
of Adowa was given last fortnight by plump Empress Menen, only wife of Power-of-
Trinity, as she nibbled pink iced cake and drank jasmine tea at Addis
Ababa.\rdblquote The Italians laughed at Taitou at first," said the Empress Menen,
"but later they feared her more than any man. It was she who held up to our
warriors the thought of what they were defending. . . . After the Adowa victory,
Taitou rode between the lines of the conquered Italians, dispensing gifts, food and
money. They learned to look for her visits and softly called her 'Taitou.' "Red
Cross. To forestall propaganda stories of brutality and mutilation and to show that
Ethiopia intended to abide by the rules of civilized warfare, smart bearded Haile
Selassie last week established the Ethiopian National Red Cross Society, appointed
his Foreign Minister, Belaten Gheta Herroup, its first chairman. It was an
impressive ceremony. In a great canvas pavilion hung with wine red velvet the
chieftains gathered to hear their Emperor explain the purposes of the Red Cross.
Aides passed out little booklets stamped with a bright red cross, explaining the
whole thing in Amharic and French. Mountain chieftains greeted each phrase with
rhythmic handclapping, but more than a few were sorely puzzled. From time
immemorial a red cross on a white ground has been sign & symbol of an Ethiopian
brothel. Tolls-One group which viewed the coming Ethiopian war with less than
complete dismay last week was the international directors of the Suez Canal Co. At
Port Said, official figures indicated that the Italian Government has paid the
company $10,000,000 in canal tolls in the past three months and transported 240,000
soldiers and labourers through the canal. Not all the traffic was southbound to
East Africa. Within the last three weeks six Italian transports have gone north
through the canal carrying over 5,000 victims of malaria, dysentery and typhoid
from the great adventure before a shot has been fired.\par
\par
ABYSSINIA: Coronation Monday, Nov. 03, 1930.\par
With the cross of Jesus on his breast, Tafari Makonnen, already King of Kings,
Conquering Lion of Judah and the Elect of God, proceeded last week to his Second
Coronation, this time as Power of Trinity the First, Emperor of Ethiopia. The
complexion and features of Haile Selassie, or Power of Trinity, resemble those of a
Spanish Jew. But throughout the world last week Negro news organs hailed him as
their own, recalled the honours conferred by His Majesty on "The Black Eagle of
Harlem," Colonel Hubert Julian, "The Negro Lindbergh" (see cut).* Matter of fact
the people of Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, are of every colour from coal black through
tawny brown to olive, include many non-Afric races. Centuries ago scornful Arabs
nicknamed them Abyssinians ("mixed peoples"). Today members of the Royal House are
strongly Semitized, claim descent from Hebrew King Solomon's Queen of Sheba,
profess the religion of Coptic Christianity, acknowledge as their pope the Coptic
Patriarch of Alexandria. Twelve nations sent envoys to the Coronation. First to
arrive was Special Ambassador Herman Murray Jacoby. Born 38 years ago in Germany,
two years ago he sold out his Manhattan bond house, announced that he had retired
"to cultivate my hobbies," proceeded to explore Brazil's Amazon, turned up in
Abyssinia last week as President Hoover's representative. Landing at Djibouti on
the Gulf of Aden, Ambassador & Mrs. Jacoby and their suite entered a private train
for the 780-mi. journey to New Flower, the tin-roofed capital of the King of Kings.
New Flower, or Addis Ababa, is hidden among mighty mountains at an altitude of more
than 6,000 ft. To this barbaric stronghold the Jacobys carried officially an
autographed photograph of President Hoover, described as "handsomely framed."
Unofficial, privately-paid-for U. S. Coronation gifts include: One electric
refrigerator. One red typewriter emblazoned with the Ethiopian Royal Arms. One
radio set with phonograph attachment. One hundred records of "distinctly American
music.\rdblquote Five hundred rose bushes, including several dozen President
Hoovers. A new kind of amaryllis developed by the U. S. Department of Agriculture.
A bound set of National Geographic Society publications. A bound report of the
Chicago Field Museum's expedition to Abyssinia. Three moving picture films: Ben
Hur, The King of Kings, With Byrd at the South Pole. Off Plate of Gold. When the U.
S. special puffed into New Flower, a coal-black band with an olive-skinned
conductor blared "The Star Spangled Banner." Amid a 17-gun salute Abyssinia's Crown
Prince greeted the beaming U. S. Ambassador and his stern escort, Brig.-General
William W. Harts, U. S. A. Smartly escorted by native cavalry the U. S. party
clattered off to their hotel, dined there that night on the King of Kings' own gold
plate, loaned for the occasion as an especial mark of Royal favour. Bright and
early Ambassador Jacoby greeted the Conquering Lion of Judah in English, listened
to a reply which the Elect of God pronounced in Amharic, most official of
Abyssinia's many languages. "Proud and Free!" No. 1 Royal guest at the Coronation
was George V's third son the Duke of Gloucester. France sent Marshal Franchet
d'Esperey, Italy, Rear Admiral Prince Udine, cousin of King Vittorio Emanuele.\par
As everyone knows, the African colonies and "spheres" of Britain, France and Italy
completely surround Abyssinia, cutting her off from the sea. (Djibouti, where the
Jacobys landed, is in French Somaliland.) This state of affairs explains why the
King of Kings sent a personal envoy to Calvin Coolidge three years ago, begged the
President to re-establish a U. S. diplomatic mission in Abyssinia, where none had
existed for almost 20 years. The wish was granted, and J. G. White Engineering
Corp., Manhattan Engineers, got a $15,000,000 dam building contract in Abyssinia
for which British firms would have given their eye-teeth. In a circular letter to
member states of the League of Nations, protesting Anglo-French-Italian
encroachments, the King of Kings then wrote: "We Abyssinians have seldom met
foreigners who did not desire to possess themselves of Abyssinian territory. . . .
With God's help, and thanks to the courage of our soldiers, we have always, come
what might, stood proud and free upon our native mountains." Her Majesty the Queen
of Sheba presented to His Majesty King Solomon gifts worth more than $4,000,000
before they began the intimacy from which sprang Abyssinia's Royal House. Recently
their alleged descendant bought from European jewellers for $1,000,000 jewels and
gold for a set of crowns over which Coptic priests began some weeks ago 21 days of
prayer. Every lion killed in Abyssinia is the property of the Conquering Lion of
Judah (each loyal lion-killer being allowed to keep a small tuft of fur as a mark
of prowess), and months ago in London a bale of lion skins was delivered to a Bond
Street tailor with instructions to "fashion them into suitable garments for a
coronation." Along with the Bond Street lion clothes there arrived in Abyssinia
last week the Royal & Imperial coach of Kaiser Wilhelm II (picked up cheap in
Germany for $6,000), a team of the famed Habsburg white horses and an Austrian
coachman who used to drive the late, great Franz Josef. Compared to such costly
pomp even the expensive gifts of European governments seemed cheap. What if the
Duke of Gloucester brought an English coronation cake weighing one ton?* what if
President von Hindenburg sent 500 bottles of fine Rhine wine? What if the French
gift was an airplane which flew from Paris to New Flower in short hops? "Bad
Coffee." Abyssinians sip the Coffee of Peace instead of smoking the Peace Pipe.
When someone is poisoned the well-bred Abyssinian thing to murmur is "mm, bad
coffee." This was murmured after the death of the late Empress Zauditu. But it was
never proved that the present King of Kings really did bad-coffee his cousin. He
said she died "of shock" when one of his bombing planes blew up her Imperial
consort. Certainly the new Emperor is the greatest Abyssinian ruler of modern
times. Grandeur and a fine sensitiveness are blended in his person. He is educating
likely Abyssinian youths at schools and colleges throughout the world, but
particularly in the U. S. His way with the priestly and feudal classes, bitter foes
of modernization, can only be called masterly. Little by little, as he can, he is
introducing farm machinery, building roads, waking up a land which has slept for
5,000 years. For his Coronation on Nov. 2 he decreed this striking ceremony: the
people to stand all night in a vast multitude around the Coptic Cathedral of St.
George, each standee holding a lighted candle; the Emperor and Empress to pass an
all-night vigil inside St. George's, then to be crowned amid solemn chanting by the
Coptic Abuna (Our Father) Egyptian Archbishop of Abyssinia.\par
*Originally a parachute jumper famed for playing the saxophone during his jumps,
the Black Eagle said, on his return to Harlem from Ethiopia last July: "When I
arrived in Ethiopia the King was glad to see me. ... I took off with a French
pilot. . . . We climbed to 5,000 ft. as 50,000 people cheered, and then I jumped
out and tugged open my parachute. ... I floated down to within 40 ft. of the King,
who incidentally is the greatest of all modern rulers. . . . He rushed up and
pinned the highest medal given in that country on my breast, made me a colonel and
the leader of his air force\emdash and here I am!" Taking off from the Harlem River
in his seaplane Ethiopia I, the Black Eagle attempted a flight to Ethiopia in 1924,
landed on the mud flats of Flushing Bay, explained: "Pontoon trouble." *Abyssinians
considered as restitution rather than a gift several trunks full of ancient
Abyssinian documents brought back by the Duke of Gloucester last week, originally
carried off if not stolen by British troops.\par
AFRICA: Smooth Show. Monday, Jan. 21, 1935\par
Asked to name the first Emperor that pops to mind, readers of news organs are apt
to answer not with silky-bearded Emperor George I* of India but with kinky-haired
Emperor Haile Selassie I of Abyssinia, the last independent native monarchy in
Africa. Last week Negroes were pained and shocked by the callous indifference of
most whites to Abyssinia's present life-&-death crisis. Mourned Baltimore's Afro-
American, "Even enlightened Americans like Walter Lippmann approve the attempt of
Italy to steal Abyssinia's lands, on the theory that it is better to pacify
Mussolini in Africa than to have him stirring up trouble in Europe."\par
Meanwhile the precise text of the covenants secretly arrived at in Rome fortnight
ago by Premier Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval remained
secret last week, to the extreme vexation of the League of Nations. That M. Laval,
for a political quid pro quo in Europe, had sold Abyssinia down the river to
Mussolini few doubted. So far as Africa is concerned, it appeared from official
summaries of the secret pacts that Italy had got from France (see map) :\par
1) Some 3,000 shares in the strategic 486-mile railway connecting the capital of
land-locked Abyssinia with the sea in French Somaliland. Only over this railway is
it practicable for Haile Selassie (which means Power of Trinity) to import, from
the outside world, munitions with which to defend his empire.\par
2) Some 45,000 square miles of French Sahara (exactly the size of the State of
Pennsylvania) to round out the 40,000 square miles quietly obtained from Britain
last year by Benito Mussolini.\par
3) A minute but highly strategic triangle of French territory commanding the
Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, thus giving Italy a potential war base in this bottleneck
between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.\par
4) Virtual carte blanche from France, with Britain's implied approval, to go as far
as Il Duce likes in encroaching upon Abyssinia from Italian Eritrea and Italian
Somaliland.\par
In Geneva agitated agents of Dictator Mussolini hastily withdrew from circulation
last week an Italian map on which it appeared that Power of Trinity I was correct
when he protested to the League that the towns in which Italian and Abyssinian
troops recently clashed were on Abyssinian soil (TIME, Dec. 24 et seq.) Mussolini
now contends that the "Ualual Incident," a three-day pitched battle, in which 30
Italians and 110 Abyssinians died, occurred on Italian soil, the frontier line
never having been exactly drawn. With the telltale map whisked out of the way, the
League Council sat down to hear from Italian Delegate Baron Pompeo Aloisi more
about Abyssinian "aggression.'' There was, for example, the preliminary incident at
Gondar, when Abyssinians shot an Italian consulate guard, after which II Duce
magnanimously exacted nothing, more than a 1,000 lire ($85) indemnity. In Rome last
week the modern Caesar was acclaimed, as every leader is who brings home really big
bacon. I to III. Scratching his kinky poll in Addis Ababa (pronounced A-dis-A-wa-
wa, which means New Flower), the hard pressed Emperor of Abyssinia racked his
nimble brain. Amid terrific trumpet blasts, sizzling lamb on skewers was brought to
Haile Selassie by retainers who tremble at the nod of His Majesty, the King of
Kings, Conquering Lion of Judah, the Elect of God and, by his own account, a lineal
descendant of the Queen of Sheba. But last week these glories had gone sour. The
Conquering Lion of Judah was trapped by the diplomacy of Europe. Only a few months
ago Italy's African colonies were meticulously visited by conscientious Victor
Emanuel III, ''King by the Grace of God and the Will of the Nation," according to
Italy's Constitution. In 1924 the Little King was host to the Little Emperor in
Rome. Monarchs ought to stick together. Perhaps the King of all the Italians could
make some impression on their Dictator. In desperation Power of Trinity I dashed
off an appeal which last week reached Victor Emanuel III, via Abyssinia's legation
in Rome. Abyssinian Charg\'e9 d'Affaires Negradas Yassou (which means Jesus) had
just emerged beaming from an audience with Benito Mussolini. ''My audience was most
cordial!" boasted the flattered Abyssinian. ''Honourable Excellency Mussolini
assured me that he wants to maintain peaceful relations with Abyssinia and that
Italy has not the slightest idea of aggression." Next day the happy little diplomat
went around to Quirinal Palace. There Italy's businesslike King accepted Emperor
Power of Trinity's missive with the wise air of a Wall Street banker who sits
hedged as adroitly as possible amid the New Deal. Afterward a Palace spokesman
announced, "The King told the Emperor's emissary that Italy wants peace with her
African neighbour."\par
That was all Power of Trinity asked, and he perhaps felt happier when Victor
Emanuel's answer was received in Addis Ababa. Once again Romans noted the aptitude
of their King and Dictator for putting on a smooth show. Smoothly next day sources
close to Mussolini intimated that Italy's encroachments upon Abyssinia will be
"paternal," managed with an infinitely finer Italian hand than the brash Japanese
bashing in Manchukuo. Paradoxically it is Japan that Il Duce seeks to bash first in
Abyssinia, once a rich market for Italian goods. In last few years Japanese get-
rich-quicker have fairly scrambled into Power of Trinity's realm, with the result
that the cotton business is now almost entirely in their hands. A chocolate prince
of the blood imperial, fascinated by photographs of ten exalted maidens sent him
last year by a Japanese lawyer, picked the taffy-colored daughter of Viscount
Kuroda and prepared to marry her, sight unseen. With a firm, quick hand Benito
Mussolini intervened through the Abyssinian Legation in Rome, managed to squelch
that marriage. Should all else fail Power of Trinity, there is always his
resourceful consort and co ruler, Empress Waizeru Menen. Some years ago when
Italy's sporting Duke of the Abruzzi visited Abyssinia, leaving behind him a gift
war tank, he little realized what the present Empress would do with it. Her husband
had been imprisoned in Abyssinia's Royal Palace by the then Empress Zauditu.
Commandeering the tank, faithful Waizeru Menen sent it crashing through the Palace
gates, rescued her husband. A woman of the world, Her Majesty journeyed with
maximum pomp to Jerusalem two years ago. Three hundred pounds of majesty beneath
her State umbrella, symbol of Abyssinian sovereignty, she lent glamour to the
consecration beside the River Jordan of a new Coptic Church and Convent\emdash
Abyssinians being Coptic Christians. "The Empress is not interested in public
affairs," fibbed Her Majesty's suave Grand Chamberlain. "She is interested only in
her home and children." Especially confidential letters from His Majesty are
typewritten by Her Majesty and together they edit an Abyssinian newspaper, once
commended by the London Times for a "powerful article against gay night life."\par
\par
ABYSSINIA: 6,000,000 Rounds. Monday, Apr. 15, 1935\par
In perhaps the most public purchase of munitions on record, Emperor Haile Selassie
last week gave Premier Benito Mussolini something to think about by going down to
the terminus of Abyssinia's French-owned railway* and taking delivery of what His
Majesty referred to as 400 machine guns, 20,000 rifles and 6,000,000 rounds of
ammunition made in Czechoslovakia and Belgium. II Duce's air-tight censorship
continued to obscure what, if anything, the 75,000 troops he has sent to Africa are
doing. Last week 100,000 Abyssinian troops were supposed to have been sent slogging
down through the mud toward Italian Somaliland. In Addis Ababa the wart, smart
Emperor of Abyssinia received guests while fondling three cocker spaniels given him
in happier times by Italy's Little King, announced that this week Abyssinia will
arraign Italy before the League Council.\par
*Of which Italy received a 3,000-share interest by the Laval-Mussolini pact (TIME,
Jan. 21).\par
Religion: Black Monophysites. Monday, Sep. 02, 1935\par
In Addis Ababa two Sundays ago the Abuna, "Father of Peace" to the Coptic
Christians of Ethiopia, donned a black cassock, long cape and purple cap. As
nominal head of the Church, Emperor Haile Selassie arose early, stepped into his
automobile which took him up a hill to the octagonal, ornate Cathedral of St.
Ghiorghis. He took off his wing-tipped sport shoes, padded into the gold-veiled
sanctuary. Empress Waizeru Menen, who dearly loves the Christian solace of
confession and 70 plump brown Ethiopian ladies, entered the Cathedral by another
door. In concentric circles according to rank squatted court functionaries,
deacons, laymen, foreign missionaries and U. S. Charg\'e9 d'Affaires Cornelius
Engert. With rain beating monotonously outside, there arose the sound of bells and,
from the sanctuary, the clash of cymbals and the jingle of sistra. Then began a
two-hour mass, chanted in a long-dead patois of Greek and Arabic which many a
worshipper mouthed without knowing what it meant. Finally Haile Selassie moved to
the west side of the Cathedral, his wife to the south, the bearded Abuna to the
east, the Etchagu\'e9 (assistant) to the north. Before four icons they prayed aloud
for world peace. Then the Abuna prayed God in Arabic to "break arms and quench the
fire of war," to know that Ethiopia is thankful for the sympathy extended by other
peace-loving nations. Haile Selassie approached the Abuna, kissed the prelate's
silver cross draped in silk. The bearded Emperor put on his shoes, walked out among
his subjects, drove back to his palace and breakfast. Last Sunday Haile Selassie
was back in Church, praying harder than ever for peace. He also announced that he
would swear off meat for a month as a means of winning Divine help. Meanwhile
throughout the U. S., at the behest of the Committee for Ethiopia which claimed to
represent 5,000 ministers, 4,000,000 communicants in a dozen or more faiths, many a
Sunday worshipper also prayed for Ethiopia's peace and put money in the collection
box for the new Ethiopian Red Cross. Last week the Federal Council of Churches came
out officially against an Italo-Ethiopian War, as did a number of bishops and
clergy of all sects in a petition signed by the Washington Clergy Committee against
War and Political Corruption. In many a Christian heart there persisted a belief
that the rape of Ethiopia would be particularly reprehensible because she is "the
oldest Christian nation in the world." Actually she is nothing of the sort. Though
according to legend Ethiopia was evangelized by St. Matthew, and Egypt, her
spiritual mother, by St. Mark, the earliest fact of any authenticity is that
Ethiopia's first bishop, St. Frumentius, was consecrated in 340 A. D. by the
Patriarch of Alexandria. Ethiopia early took from the Coptic Church a vast number
of "errors," lamentable not only according to Roman Catholic but also Eastern
Orthodox theology. Ethiopia also nurtured some non-Coptic customs, among them being
the circumcision of children of both sexes by their mothers at two weeks. Dietary
laws are kept, the Sabbath is observed, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Esther are
honoured with feasts. Ethiopian Christians practice Baptism; take the Eucharist in
both forms (wine and bread) but reject Extreme Unction, Confirmation,
Transubstantiation and the veneration of images. Their most notable heresy is that
they are Monophysites, believing that Christ had one nature, the human and divine
being fused instead of coexistent. The Abuna, scholarly head of 5,000,000 Ethiopian
Coptic Christians, has for hundreds of years been a monk chosen by the Egyptian
Patriarch from the monastery of St. Anthony in Cairo. Once installed in the walled
city of Harrar he is practically independent, holding the right to anoint the
Emperor, consecrate bishops, settle matters of faith and morals, wield the dread
power of excommunication. The priesthood he heads is vast\emdash 100,000 persons,
many of whom are deplorably dirty and ignorant. There are numerous monasteries,
some of them scandalously paired with convents. Last week the Abuna made ready, if
war breaks, to send to the front 50 priests with vestments and a historic portable
altar. In the 17th Century, Jesuits penetrated Ethiopia and for a time that land
was actually reconciled to the Church of Rome. But the Jesuits were soon banished
and today there are but 11,843 Ethiopian Catholics, shepherded by Capuchins,
Lazarists and the Missionary Institute of the Consolata. A valiant handful of U. S.
Protestants labour there\emdash United Presbyterians, Seventh Day Adventists and
members of the interdenominational Sudan Interior Mission. Two months ago the U. S.
State Department warned U. S. nationals to leave Ethiopia. Most of the missionaries
declined to depart, declaring that they put their trust in God, not the U. S.
consul.\par
ETHIOPIA: Blood for the Guard. Monday, Sep. 30, 1935\par
Eager to make his savage people seem as civilized as possible, Ethiopia's shrewd,
sharp-nosed Emperor Haile Selassie has done his best to discourage the traditional
royal Guebbeur or Raw Meat Feast since this gory spectacle revolted European
diplomats who attended His Majesty's Coronation (TIME, Nov. 10, 1930). Last week,
however, the menace of Fascist Italy seemed so imminent that the Emperor dared not
deprive his crack Imperial Guard of the raw meat for which these tribesmen have
been slavering. Though they have put off their flowing robes, donned khaki and
drilled under Belgian instructors, the Imperial Guardsmen remain thoroughgoing
savages. With high appetites and eager eyes more than 8,000 responded to Haile
Selassie's invitation for a Guebbeur last week. The Emperor merely filled his
palace courtyard with freshly slaughtered cattle and opened the gate. Screaming
with gusto, each trooper made parallel cuts with his knife in an animal's flanks,
seized the end of the strip of flesh between his teeth, pulled with a blood-gushing
rip, chewed hard. As usual, the climax of the Guebbeur came a little later when the
Imperial Guard grew drunk on the hot blood and cups of potent native mead. Though
obliged to attend the Guebbeur, the King of Kings consumed a minimum of savage
viands, took no part in the hours of tipsy and obscene boasting about what
Ethiopian soldiers are going to do to Italians. All this was painfully embarrassing
to the Emperor. Four days later, to show the sort of party of which he really
approves, the 100-odd war correspondents in Addis Ababa were invited to the royal
palace for a European-style dinner. Newshawks ate civilized roast chicken from the
royal gold plates, drank urbane champagne from the royal crystal glasses. It was
scarcely His Majesty's fault that this exhibition of good taste was spoiled by the
palace's electric lights going out several times in the course of the meal.\par
Ethiopia's only woman general, Waizeru Asegedetch, granddaughter and heir of the
late Ras Tassama, climbed on her sumpter mule last week to lead her warriors toward
Ogaden, a key point in the expected Italian advance from the south. Correspondents
noted that General Waizeru's men, though ununiformed, were better equipped with
modern rifles and machine guns than most Ethiopian levies. Her father, bearded
smiling General Dedjazmatch Haptemikael, is in the field at the head of a body of
troops which has already been named "The Doomed Battalion" by newshawks. All are
sworn to die for their country. General Haptemikael himself is a veteran of Adowa.
Already in Ogaden province was one of Ethiopia's most effective generals, the
former Turkish Commander Wahib Pasha. Long exiled by Turkey's Dictator Kemal, "Old
Eagle Beak," as he is known\emdash to U. S. correspondents, still clings to his
Ottoman fez and grey-green World War uniform. In his charge was one of Ethiopia's
prides, a fleet of 20 U. S. motor trucks used to transport black troopers across
the desert to rivers and water holes that they must soon de fend. Neither mud nor
water could stop them. At a river bank 100 blacks lifted each truck to their sturdy
shoulders and waded across. "This convoy," said General Wahib "is an example of the
tactics of the guerrillas in bush terrain where the effectiveness of poison gas and
airplanes is minimized. We concede the menace of enemy star shells but the
Ethiopians are masters of bayonet and sabre tactics. They are born artists with
those weapons."\par
Back in Addis Ababa citizens forgot the war for a moment when troops with muffled
drums and arms reversed gave full military honors to the body of the Rev. Robert
Ford. Originally a witch doctor from Barbados, this personage arrived in Addis
Ababa many years ago with an impressive manner and a suitcase full of goofer dust,
rabbits' feet, crocodile bones and other potent nostrums, soon worked himself up to
a post of great respectability and became "the Reverend." When not exorcising
spirits, the Rev. Robert Ford played first saxophone in Emperor Haile Selassie's
imperial band. He also gave banjo lessons and read horoscopes. Fearing air raids on
the exposed royal palace, plump Empress Menen, her 14-year-old daughter Princess
Tsahai and Prince Makonnen, 11, climbed into a special train and disappeared in the
direction of French Somaliland. All that could be learned in Addis Ababa was that
they were bound for a secret hideaway near the Danakil Desert. Wherever the hideout
is, it is a rude spot. At the last minute it was decided not to take 4-year-old
Prince Sahle Selassie there, but to keep him in the royal palace with the Emperor.
Crown Prince Asfa Wassan, 19, is already with the troops. The ladies of Addis Ababa
started a fund last week to purchase foodstuffs for the troops in the field. Among
the viands considered essential was a pint and a half of harsh native pepper per
man.\par
The War: Water Will Win. Monday, Oct. 14, 1935\par
"Glad to see you here in Harar. If you visit me later at advance headquarters,
bring plenty of medicine for yourself. You will have fever." Thus the New York
Time\rquote s Laurence Stallings was greeted by His Excellency Wehib Pasha ("Old
Eagle Beak"), the big-boned Turkish General (retired) whom small-boned Emperor
Haile Selassie has hired as Chief-of-Staff on Ethiopia's south-eastern front.\par
Old Eagle Beak, styling himself "the Hero of Gallipoli," though his role in that
British shambles was hardly stellar, pointed out over Harar Province and said
portentously, "Out there will be the grave of Italian Fascism. When the Italian
native troops hear of ME they will desert." Definitely Ethiopia cannot be conquered
without Italian thrusts up from the south through Harar and in from the east,
complementing the thrust down from the north which last week won Aduwa (see p. 19).
With 150,000 Ethiopian troops under his command, Old Eagle Beak must try to defend
Ethiopia's only railway. To Correspondent Stallings, after boasting through an old
soldier's repertoire of battles, Wehib Pasha finally worked up to 1935 and boomed:
"The English might conquer Ethiopia or even the French, never the
Italians!\rdblquote It is an axiom that even water will follow the English. They
move slowly, never outrunning their communications. They bring water for their
troops, as well as victuals. At Gallipoli they suffered horribly at first for
water; when they withdrew I myself saw that they had installed running pipes, with
hydrants, in their trenches. Yes, with 250,000 men the English could conquer
Ethiopia slowly but absolutely. "With 500,000 men Italy could walk into Addis
Ababa, into Harar, even into Jimma [Province]. But these men would walk there to
starve. Even now they bring water from Italy to the men of Eritrea, and this after
a year's preparation. I can assure you that the English would have had condensers
in Eritrea after the first underofficer reported a great thirst. "Yes, the men from
the battleships would all have been there with condensers. A great staff would have
been formed, with new badges and regimentals-'His Majesty's Royal Condenser Corps.'
And they would have boasted that there was more water, better water, than in
London. "Why do you ask me such things as details of Ethiopian defence? Water will
defeat the Italians for me. I have to do nothing." Meanwhile Italy's engineer corps
worked their well-digging gear furiously last week on all fronts, had exactly 96
new wells supplying water at latest reports.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: Mobilization. Monday, Oct. 14, 1935\par
The news that three Italian army columns had crossed Ethiopia's far northern border
reached Addis Ababa last week in a crashing thunderstorm. That night little Emperor
Haile Selassie talked long with his white advisers, prayed longer to his dusky
Coptic God. At dawn the lean Semitic Negroes began moving down out of the
eucalyptus forests toward the palace. The guards let 5,000 into the palace grounds.
While the Emperor watched the mob from a window, his Chancellor Haile Wolde-Roufe
read out in the Amharic tongue Ethiopia's first effort at a modern mobilization
order:\par
"Defend your country against the inferior Italian invader. . . . God will be with
us. All up! For the Emperor! For the country!" At the south entrance of the palace,
a huge young Galla lifted his open hand and struck the great dull-brown Negarit
(Emperor's) war drum. OMMMM . . . OMMMMM . . . Forty smaller kettledrums from the
palace answered, rommo-mmommommommomm. The booming throbbed, swelled, seemed to
shake the air. On each of the mountain tops that hang over Addis Ababa other
drummers smacked their drumheads. The monotonous, terrible call to war spread out
from the capital, from mountain top to mountain top, across the wild gorges,
jungles and plateaus of Ethiopia, until it rolled into the capitals of the six
great rases (princes), whose war drums took it up, passed it on to the great chiefs
and the little chiefs. To the farthest nomadic tribes, foraging no one knew where,
couriers rode out by mule and camel. "Kitet!" was the word the criers and couriers
gave, ''Close ranks, unite!" The congested rage of six long months of restraint
boiled up out of one of the world's most naturally savage peoples. Mobilization
means nothing in Ethiopia. When the drums sound, the men go to their chiefs, the
chief\rquote s start for the enemy and the war is on. In Addis Ababa the 5,000 in
the Emperor's courtyard heard the order out, solemnly applauded three times, and
then went into a fit. They brandished their swords, accidentally slicing off some
of each other's ears and noses, spotted a nearby huddle of white news hawks and had
almost mobbed the white men before the Emperor's guards ran in between. Seriously
wounded, several of the slashed were hospitalized.\par
The Emperor came out on a balcony and spoke: "Soldiers, I give you this advice. Be
cunning, be savage. Face the enemy one by one, two by two, in the fields and
mountains. Do not take white clothes. Do not mass as now; hide and strike suddenly.
Steal up, snipe and murder singly."*In every village compound, among the squalid
mud huts, savage priests shouted the liturgy in the obscure language of Geez, slew
sheep and cattle for a sacrifice and the warriors drank the hot blood. The old men
shouted tall tales of past Ethiopian glories. The chiefs put on their lion-mane
collars. The warriors took up their fighting arms, their wives, their pots and the
village set out for the capital of the superior chief, leaving behind only the old,
infirm and infantile. Out of this half-insane killing rage of a people, observers
last week asked, how much of a fighting force would meet the factory-made modern
Italian army? The ruling Amharas of the Emperor's own tribe made it 2,000,000 out
of an estimated population of 10,000,000. Actually, even if Haile Selassie could
possibly pro vide an off-the-land commissary for so huge an army, he probably could
not mobilize much more than half that. As a modern nation Ethiopia is only 46 years
old, nearly as young as modern Italy. Ethiopia's Garibaldi was the late great
Emperor Menelik who pulled together something like a nation after trouncing the
Italians at Aduwa 39 years ago. Haile Selassie, a proud, disdainful poseur of an
Emperor, has carried on Menelik's nation-making work by adroit intrigue both inside
Ethiopia and out. He is a usurper and keeps his cousin, the rightful heir to
Ethiopia's throne, luxuriously jailed in a remote fortress. His active sovereignty
covers an area running north & south from Addis Ababa along Ethiopia's line of
lakes, with a spur running eastward along the railway toward the coast. At the
moment of mobilization, Haile Selassie's months of frantic preparation for war
seemed fantastically inadequate. More or less mobilized for display and newsreel
purposes were the 100,000 men of the capital district, the so-called Imperial Army.
Also, four chiefs nearest the Italian advance had about 50,000 men in the field. In
the hands of these men and in various mildewed warehouses were perhaps 200,000
modern rifles of miscellaneous makes, countless muskets, shotguns, blunderbusses,
spears, swords and small knives. Haile Selassie had the Emperor Menelik's treasure
hoard. For a modern mechanized war, he had seven non-combatant planes, two dozen or
so anti- aircraft guns, some trucks and at least one tank that the Duke of the
Abruzzi, cousin to Italy's King Vittorio Emanuele, had given him on a visit of
Italian friendship in 1927. But, far beyond all these, he had Ethiopia's eternal
defence, one of the most tortured and inhospitable terrains on the face of the
earth. On that his throne last week rested. *Endorsing this advice, famed British
Tactics Expert Captain Liddell Hart, writing for the New York Times, last week
described recent formal drilling of Ethiopian troops as an ominous error. "That
type of training," warned he, "runs the risk of paralysing their natural fighting
instincts and leaving them a paralysed target . . . with 'tactical
arthritis.\rquote\par
ETHIOPIA: Diplomatic Diversion Monday, Oct. 21, 1935\par
The week's entertainment in dull, dusty Addis Ababa was supplied by the amazing
spectacle of Italy's Minister to Ethiopia, volatile Count Luigi Orazio Vinci-
Gigliucci, refusing to go home. Emperor Haile Selassie sent the envoy his passport
on the ground that the Legation had violated its pledge not to use its wireless
station and had become "a centre of espionage and a hotbed of intrigues." The Count
had exactly 48 hours to catch the train. Forthwith, Vinci-Gigliucci spun around
Addis Ababa, asking Haile Selassie for a stay, his fellow diplomats for advice and
support. His story was that he must wait for the tardy Italian Consuls slogging in
from distant posts. Haile Selassie refused stay and audience. The diplomatic corps
advised the Count to get out. At the end of the grace period the Legation's motor
cavalcade rolled to the railway station, loaded its files and staff on the train.
The Italians' special train pulled out. The second secretary was later found hiding
in the station. The Minister and his military attach\'e9 were found hiding in the
cellar of the Legation. At length perspiring Tas Faye, the Emperor's Political
Director, got from Count Vinci-Gigliucci word that he would come out. if he might
stay in Addis Ababa as a private citizen. Ethiopian soldiers marched in, marched
out again escorting the Minister to the fortified palace of Haile Selassie's son-
in-law. Ras Desta Demtu. There, dining off a tray sent in from the Imperial Hotel.
Vinci-Gigliucci threw off all diplomatic discretion, exulted, "Nothing will stop
Mussolini in his aim of subjugating Ethiopia. . . . Thanks to our magnificent army,
we already occupy 3,000 square miles of Ethiopia. We will never give it up. We fear
nobody."\par
THE FRONT: Between Rounds. Monday, Oct. 21, 1935\par
The Declaration Not yet declared up to this week by either Italy or Ethiopia was
their War in Africa. THE FRONT between Rounds\par
The armies of both Italy and Ethiopia rested on their arms last week, sparring
warily. In the North, the 110,000 Italians under General Emilio de Bono did no
fighting but worked like demons to consolidate their position. This is an
engineers' war, and the sappers' greatest feat last week was completing emergency
landing fields at Adigrat and Aduwa and finishing the motor road from Aduwa back to
Italy's main base at Asmara. No sooner was the road finished than white-whiskered
old General de Bono drove over it to Aduwa, covering in three hours the distance
that had taken his men three days to capture. After its capture Aduwa showed little
evidence of fighting, none of bombing. The muddy streets were swept clean,
festooned with flags and triumphal arches of branches. Just outside the town
General de Bono changed from his automobile to the back of a skittish little Arab
charger, rode through the streets and to the parade ground beyond the town. There
he reviewed 11,000 of his men, dedicated the monument whose erection was the first
move of the invading Italians. Only 17 miles from Aduwa lay the holy city of Aksum,
whose capture was the next step in the Italian advance. For days Italian forces had
this Mecca of the Coptic Christians practically surrounded. Scouting planes made
hourly flights over it, could see no trace of Ethiopian troops. Still no attack was
made, for in the centre of small Aksum stands a little crenelated stone church,
holiest in the empire. There Ethiopia's earliest kings are buried. In it was
supposed to lie the true Ark of the Covenant. Before such a Christian shrine Italy
dared risk no accident that could be used to breed atrocity stories throughout the
Christian world. Day after the official annexation of Aduwa, holy Aksum surrendered
without a shot being fired. Seyoum's Retreat. Meanwhile with splitting headaches
and aching limbs members of the Italian tank corps were scouring the mountain sides
and valleys searching for outposts and possible enemy ambuscades. The smallest
tanks, ''fleas" to the troops, were scarcely shoulder-high. Last week "fleas"
scrabbled through gullies, over boulders and along trails that would have stalled a
goat. But always ahead of them was chunky, wily Ras Seyoum, onetime Governor of
Aduwa, commander of the Ethiopian forces in the North. It was Seyoum's snipers,
hiding in thorn bushes and behind the mud walls of shepherds' huts that had held up
the Italian advance on Aduwa 24 hours. Early last week he had assembled a great
army to defend Makale, more than 100 miles to the South, and was preparing for a
fight. At week's end, scouting planes found Ras Seyoum's followers streaming still
farther back into the mountains, always keeping at least two days ahead of the
Italians.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: Railway Bargain. Monday, Oct. 28, 1935\par
At Awash last week, at the edge of the spidery railroad bridge crossing the Awash
River (see cut), a Swiss machine gun expert named Whittley was working like mad to
protect the only railway in Ethiopia at its most vulnerable point. For this purpose
he had at his disposal a carload of Swiss anti-aircraft machine guns of the latest
model, all the ammunition he required, and a thousand black soldiers who were the
worst shots Expert Whittley had ever seen. Finally he figured out a system to
offset his gun crews' miserable marksmanship. Because of the steep slopes on either
side of the railway line any Italian plane attempting to bomb the bridge must fly
low directly overhead. Whittley arranged his guns in star-shaped formation with
sights screwed tight and set for an imaginary point just above the centre of the
bridge. Providing the Ethiopian soldiers remembered where the triggers were at the
right moment, they were sure to pink any plane that entered the field of fire. The
official name of the only railway in Ethiopia is Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Franco-
Ethiopien de Djibouti \'e0 Addis Ababa. Between magnificent modern stations at
either end of the line stretch 494 miles of rough, single-track narrow-gauge
roadbed over which a collection of ramshackle second-hand French rolling stock
normally makes bi-weekly trips. One of the few pieces of equipment which can
compare in splendour with the two terminals is Emperor Haile Selassie's white
private car. Because natives along the barren right-of-way are in the habit of
prying up steel rails to beat into swords and spearheads, ordinary trains travel
only about 10 M.P.H., take three full days to make the trip. Pride of the line is
the Addis Ababa flyer, a weekly express that in the dry season covers the 494 miles
in 36 hours. Nothing moves at night. In 1894 France persuaded suspicious Emperor
Menelik to let her build an Ethiopian railroad. Not till 1917 was the last spike
driven. Since then the road has carried 75% of Ethiopia's foreign trade, and in
1933 returned a profit of 200 francs per transported ton to its French investors,
who then owned 20,000 out of 34,000 shares. Part of Pierre Laval's deal with Benito
Mussolini last January was the sale of 2.500 French shares of railroad stock to the
Italian Government. Early this month France quietly did her best to make sure that
there would be no bombing of her road by moving 200 white and colonial troops into
Dire Dawa, biggest town along the line, as a railway guard. Britain, which already
had a heavily armed force at the British legation at Addis Ababa, warned Rome that
because of the number of foreigners at Dire Dawa and Addis Ababa, any attempt to
cut the railroad to Djibouti and the outside world would be considered an
unfriendly act. Heeding all this, Italy last week was reported to have offered to
spare the railroad if Emperor Haile Selassie would remove all troops and munitions
from Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa. The King of Kings was supposed to have turned down
this proposal on the ground that he needed his troops in those two towns to protect
foreigners from his civilian subjects. Next offer was to spare the road if Ethiopia
promised to transport no munitions on it. Haile Selassie appeared to leap at this
idea. Since the League lifted its arms embargo against Ethiopia, guns and
ammunition have been coming into the black empire, not by way of the railroad from
Djibouti but by motor truck to Harar, 125 miles from the British Somaliland
border.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: Child in Chains. Monday, Nov. 04, 1935.\par
Almost unnoticed in the crowds of bearded, bedizened chieftains hurrying through
Addis Ababa with their yelling followers fortnight ago was one Fitaurari Shimels,
trusted adviser of Haile Selassie. Up from Harar, he stayed two days in the capital
closeted with the Emperor, then departed. His powwows with the King of Kings,
however, were enough to turn the world spotlight briefly on one of the strangest
figures in all Ethiopia, Lij Yasu (literally "Child of Jesus"), Emperor of Ethiopia
from 1913-16, and for the past 14 years a jealously-guarded prisoner in chains.\par
On the death of his grandfather, the late great Menelik II, Lij Yasu seized the
throne of Ethiopia, won a grudging allegiance from the most important Rases. Almost
immediately he got into difficulties. None too ardent a Christian, he attempted to
bolster his reign by organizing a federation of tributary Mohammedan States. He
promptly found himself excommunicated by the Coptic Church, and shortly thereafter
pushed from the throne by his aunt, Zauditu (Judith) with the aid of his cousin,
wily Ras Tafari, the present Haile Selassie. In 1921 the ex-Emperor was imprisoned
in a fortress on Gara Mulata. There he was allowed luxurious furniture, rich foods
and the run of his prison\emdash but night & day he remained chained to the wrist
of a guard. Even so he managed to escape in 1932 disguised as a woman. Since then
Fitaurari Shimels, who fortnight ago was in Addis Ababa for orders, has been Yasu's
special keeper. Right in the path of the Italian advance lays the fortress of Gara
Mulata. Therefore Emperor and jailer took good care last week that Italy should
have no chance to rescue Child of Jesus, set him up on Haile Selassie's throne.
Secretly their prisoner was moved hundreds of miles to the southwest, to Bako where
he could contemplate life and his chains near the craggy shores of Lake Rudolf.\par
In the South, Mussolini's Somaliland army, creeping north under command of Italy's
ablest colonial fighter, lean General Graziani, was fighting harder and making more
progress. Roads meant nothing in this rolling desert country where the advance was
from water hole to water hole. Each hole was held by a little group of fanatical
natives ready to charge and die at the first bang of a gun. It was slow and bloody
business. General Graziani finally called out his bombing planes. Soon it was
reported that the Italians were using a new, yellowish gas on the terrified
Ethiopians. This put the Ethiopian commander facing General Graziani, Dedjazmatch
Nassibu, in a towering rage. His lion's mane headdress trembling with emotion, that
chieftain roared: "The League of Nations! We fight and die while the League
talks. ... If only we could fight men in the manner of men! But we are facing an
invader who uses the most fiendish methods known to warfare all because he is
angered that we protect our homes and land. Our lands are being laid barren by gas;
our mules, sheep, and cattle are dying in the fields." Naked and sweating,
Dedjazmatch Nassibu's men were digging like terriers in the foothills near Jijiga,
preparing for a pitched battle to protect the country's only railway. Sinking huge
anti-tank pits, their bottoms filled with spiked stakes, many big enough to hold an
entire platoon, the Ethiopians sang a new song as they worked: "Shanko ingiillar
leba! The white men are the thieves of the ages." Good Son-In-Law. A valued ally to
enraged Dedjazmatch Nassibu last week appeared in the person of Emperor Haile
Selassie's favourite son-in-law, swart, smart, bearded little Ras Desta Demtu. Two
years ago he travelled to the U. S., paid an official call on President Roosevelt,
presented him with two lion pelts. Last week found him at the head of an irregular
army estimated at 200,000 preparing to join forces with a disgruntled white settler
from Italian Somaliland, a onetime Boer Colonel named Siwiank, to try a surprise
attack on General Graziani's flank from the difficult waterless lands of Ogaden
Province.\par
Bad Son-In-Law. Quite different from Ras Desta Demtu was Haile Selassie's other
son-in-law, bug-eyed little Haile Selassie Gugsa. Ruler of the eastern part of
Tigre Province, he is a direct descendant of that King John of Ethiopia still
venerated as a saint by the Coptic Church. His great-uncle, John IV, was a sworn
enemy of fierce-whiskered old Emperor Menelik who later defeated the Italians at
Aduwa. Ras Gugsa's father kept up the family feud against Menelik and his
grandnephew, Ethiopia's present Emperor, was on the best of terms with the Italian
administration in Eritrea. When he died three years ago it was in the arms of an
Italian doctor. With his last breath he made his son Gugsa swear eternal friendship
to Italy. Well aware of all this has been Emperor Haile Selassie. Some years ago to
keep Ras Gugsa and his 15,000 warriors in line, the Emperor married the Tigre
Chieftain to his second daughter, but she unfortunately died in childbirth. Last
week Ras Gugsa found the time ripe to remember his father's promises. Perfidy and
Perfume. Just outside Adigrat, first town captured in the Italian advance, a
Fascist machine gun post last week saw a white flag waving in the thorn bushes.
Soon an Ethiopian messenger went forward with important news. Gabbling excitedly,
Italian officers hurried up, summoned an Army car. Into it stepped Ras Gugsa and a
subordinate chief, Kassa Araia. They were hustled to the headquarters of General
Ruggiero Santini, commander at Adigrat. Hours of conference followed while the word
spread that the Emperor's Bad-Son-In-Law was surrendering. At Asmara, Ras Gugsa
made formal obeisance to Commander De Bono. Enjoying the advantages of civilization
to the full in a swank staff car, he rolled through the streets looking amiable but
dazed. His first move was to pop into Asmara's leading barber shop. There he made a
bee line, sniffing ecstatically, for the perfume counter, loaded his pockets with
odorous presents for his numerous female friends in the back country. Should Il
Duce decide to imitate the Japanese in Manchuria and set up a puppet kingdom in the
part of Ethiopia already captured, he has a perfect Henry Pu Yi in Ras Gugsa,
sainted King John's descendant.\par
THE FRONT: Gugsa Makes Good. Monday, Nov. 18, 1935\par
Mounted on a prancing ass and with an embroidered velvet chieftain's robe worn like
a chasuble over his Italian army uniform, bug-eyed Haile Selassie Gugsa, traitorous
son-in-law of Emperor Haile Selassie, rode in triumph last week into his old
capital of Makale. Behind him an Italian officer held high the Italian flag that
had been hauled down from the same Ethiopian village in 1896. Behind them both
marched a carefully chosen column of Ras Gugsa's own tribesmen, tall fezzed Askaris
from Eritrea, and a regiment of Italian Bersaglieri, cock feathers fluttering from
their helmets. A thumping band blared Giovinezza while overhead buzzed 21 Caproni
bombers led by Il Duce's ace son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano. Ras Gugsa, whose
tribesmen had led the unopposed Italian advance all the way from Aduwa, 60 miles to
the north last week, moved into his palace. By order of white bearded General
Emilio de Bono he had been appointed the puppet Governor of Tigre Province for
Italy. Italian regulars moved out to level camping ground on the outskirts of
Makale. Strategically that camping ground was of more value to Italy than the just-
captured muddy little town behind it, for it was a practical airplane landing
field, one of the few in Ethiopia, and a priceless advance base for Italian bombers
and scouting planes. Even the oversized telescope of General de Bono could find no
massing of Ethiopians near Makale. Scouts reported many a party of them moving
toward Amba Alaji, a natural mountain fortress overlooking the trail to Dessye and
Addis Ababa. As if to keep up interest in their dreary little war, Italians talked
darkly of a pitched battle to come. Dessye, Ethiopia's main headquarters for its
northern defence forces is 150 miles from Makale and half way to Addis Ababa. There
until last week stayed thin-faced big-eyed Crown Prince Asfa Wassan at the head of
10,000 well equipped warriors. Suddenly he stepped from an airplane at Addis Ababa,
to be warmly greeted by his father the Emperor and hustled off to the palace. There
he would rule, courtiers said, on behalf of Haile Selassie when and if the Emperor
goes to the front. "Certain Negro." Rushing to the Palace went "the Black Eagle of
Harlem." Colonel Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, to answer personally a canard, emanating
from Rome that a "certain American Negro" was plotting to kill the Emperor. After a
tense scene Colonel Julian fainted, then recovered, emerged smiling and cried:
"Millions of American Negroes have too much confidence in me to believe such
reports. . . . The Emperor has granted me permission to accompany any one of three
major generals to the front." In the South. From the beginning Italy's bloodless
advance in the north has been an elaborate exercise in transport, communication and
road building. Real war broke with a rush over the southern front last week, left
the Ethiopian forces dazed and partly demoralized, swept Italian troops under
General Rudolfo Graziani forward 145 miles in four days, bringing them almost
within direct striking distance of Jijiga, Harar and Ethiopia's only railway. At
strategic Gorrahei and Sassa Baneh on the Fafan River the wild Ethiopian troops had
no thought of a strategic retreat. They fought until they fell, but could not stop
the Italian advance. Commander at Gorrahei was Azaye Afework, European-trained and
with some of the best troops in all Ethiopia. To his Emperor he swore never to
retreat while life was in him. Trying to bring down an Italian bombing plane with
his own hands, he found his abdomen suddenly ripped open by a bomb splinter. He
died enroute to Jijiga where a frightened people were just beginning to realize how
little effect brave hearts and bare hands have against modern arms.\par
\par
The War: The Deal. Monday, Nov. 18, 1935\par
In trying to consummate a deal on Ethiopia shrewd French Premier Pierre ("Honest
Broker") Laval began with sub rosa dickering which the British Government would not
acknowledge, progressed by getting the League to give Britain and France a mandate
to make the deal respectable and last week was having pressure exerted at Addis
Ababa. For the first time Ethiopian statesmen close to the Emperor discussed openly
with correspondents this hypothesis: Suppose Emperor Haile Selassie should keep his
rich native Province of Harrar but give up the Province of Ogaden in which the
original Ualual Incident occurred, the fruitful Webbe Shibeli Valley and of course
Aduwa, "if by this enlightened sacrifice His Majesty could bring a quick conclusion
of bloodshed.\rdblquote Even a few days before, mention of any such deal had
provoked the Ethiopian Foreign Office to blasts of scorn. Last week the feudal
Rases of Ethiopia were being sounded by Emperor Haile Selassie's confidential
agents. Some of them reacted by demanding that His Majesty at once take the field
and fight, as Ethiopian sovereigns always did in days of old. Instead, the Emperor
sent Arks of the Covenant to encourage his troops (see p. 16) and talked of making
only brief dashes to & from the front. Joseph Israels 2d, one of the Addis Ababa
correspondents who stressed the deal most heavily in dispatches last week, was so
far from angering Haile Selassie thereby that the Emperor asked him two days later
to read off for His Majesty in English a radio broadcast to U. S. listeners in
which the wily Ethiopian cried: "You people of the United States can help . . .
inflict ... the international form of punishment, known as sanctions, upon the
Italian people." But the King of Kings concluded, "I ask no one to take the sword
against Italy."\par
THE FRONT: Needlework. Monday, Dec. 02, 1935\par
Having publicly taken up knitting in Addis Ababa, as a strong hint that they feel
themselves barred from all real news sources, correspondents clicked needles last
week while the Ethiopian Government made by far the tallest claims they have
jabbered since war broke. Breathless, popeyed, footsore runners from the Northern
Front brought Emperor Haile Selassie news that 4,700 Italians have been killed by
Ethiopians in savage skirmishes bordering the area nominally conquered by Il Duce's
forces. Runners from the Southern Front told of the capture from Italians of 1,000
precious rifles and 20 priceless machine guns, of Italian tanks stranded and
abandoned, Italian native troops mutinying. None of this could correspondent\rquote
s check, as they have been able to check Italian victories by advancing with the
troops. Last week Mussolini's flying son-in-law Count Ciano led the "Desperate
Squadron" on a strafing expedition possibly meant to avenge Italian reverses which,
as nominal Minister for Press-Information, he could not admit. After hurling an
avalanche of bombs into the Ethiopian gorges of Buia, Amba Alaji, Lake Ashanghi and
Mai Mescic, chubby Count Ciano guessed the squadron had killed 2,000 Ethiopians,
counted in his plane holes made by three antiaircraft shells and 36 Ethiopian
bullets, some of which struck his oil tank. From Port Said correspondents cabled
that the Italian transport Toscana had just passed homeward-bound "with 76 cases
containing the bodies of embalmed Italian officers" and 1,000 sick and wounded. In
an exceedingly fleet "strategic retreat" last week, Ethiopian forces under
redoubtable Kassa Sebat executed the "manoeuvre of luring" Italian General Ruggiero
Santini into ordering a whole Army corps to separate from the main Italian advance
on the Northern Front and chase Ethiopians headlong, risky in Ethiopia's wilds.
Well satisfied on the whole with Ethiopia's brightest war week thus far, Emperor
Haile Selassie, whom the knitting and poker-playing correspondents now call "Little
Charlie" among themselves, flew to Harar on the Southern Front.\par
\par
THE LEAGUE: Wallop. Monday, Dec. 23, 1935\par
Rivers of ink spurted from Geneva last week as into action sprang charming Mme
Genevi\'e8ve Tabouis, brightest spirit among that sector of correspondents who feel
that they can mould a better world by twisting every story to the advantage of the
League of Nations. They felt with an honest, ap\par
\par
ITALY: Again, Rickett. Monday, Apr. 06, 1936.\par
The Italo-Ethiopian War still has the benefit of a large, roving x quantity in
bluff, pushing Francis William Rickett, the British promoter who wangled a huge
concession from Haile Selassie for Standard Vacuum Oil and then, to an
international chorus of "Shame! Shame!" was paid off and repudiated by the U. S.
concern. Dressy Mr. Rickett's importance survived last autumn's misadventure
because his safe continued to be the repository for the concession for the subsoil
rights to precisely the two-thirds of Ethiopia that Benito Mussolini wants. The
contract gives Rickett five years in which to implement the deal with capital. Last
week Hearstman Karl von Wiegand, Universal Service's roving correspondent,
resoundingly "scooped"' his colleagues with the astonishing assertion that Rickett
had sold, subject to Haile Selassie's agreement, his Ethiopian concession to its
most logical purchaser: Benito Mussolini. If this were true, Haile Selassie had a
face-saving opportunity to reject Italy's military demands while selling the
invaders two-thirds of Ethiopia on a business basis and thus ending the war. Wrote
Correspondent von Wiegand: "Before he left for Addis Ababa [fortnight ago], Rickett
held three conferences with Mussolini. . Rickett, according to his friends,
considered himself badly let down by Socony-Vacuum. . . [From Mussolini] Rickett,
it is asserted, demanded $5,000,000 for his share. . Rickett, it is claimed here,
then made a provisional deal under which he is to get 20,000,000 lire ($1,600,000),
partly in stock, if he delivers to Italy this $50,000,000 concession with its
virtually unlimited scope of oil, minerals and other exploitation rights for 75
years. . The message Rickett claimed to have sent II Duce read: \ldblquote Why use
a sword on what you can get with a stroke of a pen?' \ldblquote However true any of
this was, it was by no means out of line with the ambiguous and profitable fortunes
of Mr. Rickett. Keeping his wife and three children immured in a Welsh castle at
Amroth. he gives stag parties for the great at his farm at East Garston in
Berkshire, in rebuilding which he hired only local people, becoming the village's
chief support and eventually Master of Foxhounds of its swank Craven Hunt and
president of the Hungerford Fat Stock Show. In neither of these squirely retreats
did he discuss his third life as a concession-wangler among Eastern potentates
whose Oriental courage and vanity genuinely attract him and whom he, like the late
great T. E. Lawrence, genuinely impresses.\par
War hit and run Monday, Apr. 13, 1936\par
The war finally came to Addis Ababa last week. Early one morning a telephone clerk
near Dessye called excitedly to say that a huge flight of Italian planes had passed
overhead, evidently headed for the Ethiopian capital. Twenty minutes later a sharp-
eyed outlook fired a warning gun from the hilltop by the royal palace. Soon ten
planes came over the eastern horizon. Traders and warriors in the town rushed into
their compounds, blazed away at the sky with ancient muskets, double-barrelled
elephant guns, Belgian trade rifles, all with no apparent effect. For 15 minutes
the Italian planes circled at an altitude of 6,000 feet. Then two broke away, dived
at the airport with machine guns spitting alternate bursts of hard and incendiary
bullets. Two planes were squatting before the hangar, a French Potez, and an
ancient Farman. The Potez escaped with three bullet holes, but the Farman was
riddled and burned impressively. When the Italians flew away a dog and a servant in
the British Legation had been wounded. The ominous fact was that the raid had taken
place at all. It meant that the Italian force had won a crucial victory over Haile
Selassie's own well-trained private guard, that Marshal Badoglio, hitherto
scrupulously careful to avoid treading on French or British toes with an attack on
Addis Ababa, was willing to risk everything again in a furious attempt to end the
war before the Little Rains descended and bogged his armies in inaction. Fortnight
ago Italy's military position was about what it had been for a month. On the
southern front Italian columns had made a spectacular dash to Wadara, and then
withdrew to Noghelli while food and munitions were catching up with them. Harar,
overlooking Ethiopia's only railway and onetime headquarters of the Ethiopian
forces opposing Italy's southern armies had been bombed to ruins. In the north,
after the great battle of Enderta and its smashing sequel at Amba Alaji all Italy
expected to see the Fascist troops sweep bravely on down the main caravan trail to
Dessye and Addis Ababa. They did not realize that there were some 280 back-breaking
miles between Italy's advance posts and Addis Ababa, that innumerable hordes of
undefeated tribesmen still infested the route. Marshal Badoglio, squinting at his
staff maps, knew that no matter how it might pain the House of Lords (see col. 3),
a forthright poison gas campaign was the quickest and cheapest way of breaking
opposition in a country where every herdsman has a rifle. The gassing began. Then
the Italian commander sent a motorized column to fan out westward toward the
British Sudan border and Lake Tana on his right. For them the going was fairly
easy. No fool politically, Marshal Badoglio gave command of this column to the
Farley of Fascismo, ebullient Achille Starace, secretary general of the Fascist
Party. Under him were 5,000 young Black shirts in armoured trucks. Along the Sudan
border they rolled almost without opposition to the gates of Gondar, important
caravan town near Lake Tana. Colonel Starace, who can do nothing without making a
speech, saw to it last week that his speech on the eve of capturing Gondar reached
every foreign correspondent \ldblquote Soldiers," cried Italy's panther-man, "this
is the most risky, most difficult and most important venture of the campaign. Don't
waste a shot. We are carrying all the ammunition we are going to have on this trip.
This column must be like an electric live wire. Death to the touch! Truck drivers
must learn to keep to the right of the road under pain of severe penalties. ..
''Britain is a rich country, Italy is a poor country, but the people of poor
countries have hard muscles. The only way to explain the action of the English is
that they thought they had only to mass a war fleet in the Mediterranean and
Premier Mussolini would take off his hat and bow in submission. "Instead he reared
up like a thorough bred horse and sent his soldiers into Africa. Viva Il Duce!"
Next morning Achille Starace's men captured Gondar, and within three days the first
Italian troops reached the shores of Lake Tana. In Rome the Rearing Horse was
tractable enough to fill the Fas cist Press with soothing statements that Italy had
had every intention of maintaining Britain's rights to the waters of the lake.
"After all," announced a Foreign Office attach\'e9, "Britain's interests in
Ethiopia are hydraulic, ours are territorial!" Marshal Badoglio, smiling over the
pins in his staff map, was now eager to tackle Haile Selassie himself. Pencil in
hand, the Marshal explained: "The Emperor has three choices. To attack, and be
defeated; to wait for our attack, and we will win anyway; or to retreat, which is
disastrous for an army that lacks means of transport and proper organization for
food and munitions." Haile Selassie and an Ethiopian Army of nearly 45,000 men were
at Quoram, on the route south from Aduwa. Ethiopia's Emperor stroked his silky
black beard and picked Choice No. 1. Attacking with his European-trained bodyguard
of 20,000 men, he headed straight for the Italian position on formidable Mai Cio.
Twelve hours later his men were beaten back with heavy losses. Next day was spent
in wary shadow-boxing on both sides. Haile Selassie formed his Imperial Guard on
Chessad Ezba, a mountain eight miles from Lake Ashangi, spread his support on
surrounding peaks. Marshal Badoglio had assembled 200 bombing and pursuit planes.
He had Alpini and Sabauda Divisions facing the Ethiopian Guard and was able, after
an amazing forced march, to whip another division of leather-footed Eritrean native
troops along Haile Selassie's right flank. There could be only one result. For
hours the Ethiopian Guard fought off the Alpini advance, firing from rock to rock,
sword against bayonet. When the Ethiopian position became completely untenable,
Italian officers saw for the first time an orderly planned retreat. But Italy had
heavy artillery and plenty of bombs and pounded Ethiopia's second position just as
hard. Finally the Imperial Guard broke and ran for its collective lives. Haile
Selassie with only a fistful of followers streaked off toward Dessye, while the
Roman Press burgeoned with reports that the Conquering Lion of Judah was about
ready to sue for peace.\par
WAR: Hour of Need. Monday, Apr. 20, 1936\par
Anxiously, hour after hour, Benito Mussolini waited for word from Ethiopia last
week. He needed a good thumping victory as never before. The smashing of the
Imperial Guard in the Lake Ashangi region fortnight ago was glory enough to keep
Italians contented for another month, but something more was needed to halt Anthony
Eden's drive toward sterner League sanctions at Geneva.Quoram, just occupied by
Marshal Badoglio, is only 100 miles from Dessye, for months the headquarters of
Haile Selassie. The Imperial Highway is supposed to connect the two towns. Could
Italian troops make the distance in a week? Three fortresses stood in the way: the
hill town of Kobbo, Amaba Sel, and the natural fortress of Magdala.First reports to
Rome were promising. Haile Selassie was fleeing from his men on muleback. He had
shaved off his beard to avoid recognition.* His death was expected hourly.
Revolting Galla tribesmen, Mohammedans long subject to the Christian Amharas, were
slaughtering the remnants of the Imperial Guard. Italian pickets had been seen on
the outskirts of Kobbo.Then a long and painful silence ensued. Finally the truth
trickled through. Marshal Badoglio was twice as willing to take risks as his
cautious Fascist predecessor De Bono, but not useless risks. The rapid advance of
the past three weeks and increasing rains had raised hob with Italian
communications and supplies. Just when II Duce was in dire need of African action,
Badoglio had halted to mend his lines.Promptly Addis Ababa began sending out
optimistic reports. The Emperor was not fleeing. Three hundred thousand tribesmen
were assembling to harass the Italian advance. Ended the report:\rdblquote The
internal situation of the country is excellent with an abundant food supply and
living costs cheaper than before the War."\par
* This legend persisted for days despite the fact that any clean shaven Ethiopian
chief would be as conspicuous as a Chinese with side whiskers.\par
WAR: Empire's End Mon May 11, 1936\par
Back to his capital last week went Haile Selassie, no Conquering Lion of Judah.
Along the dusty streets the tin-roofed shops of Armenian, Greek and East Indian
traders were boarded up, almost all the houses of any pretension deserted. A
watchful Italian plane circled lazily above Addis Ababa. No troops were in sight,
the remnants of the Imperial Guard being encamped outside the open town. The little
Emperor still had his famed beard, but now it was heavily streaked with grey. His
arm, horribly burned by Italian mustard gas, was in bandages. Only a few days
earlier a miracle had saved his life. Dropping back mile after mile before the
relentless Italian advance, Haile Selassie took refuge for a day or two at Magdala,
burned by the British in 1868, scene of the suicide of the Emperor's predecessor,
Theodore. Magdala's peasants were heartily sick of the war. Many a glum-faced,
kinky-polled native spat in the dust as the little imperial party passed. Some
crept up to the imperial quarters. A volley of shots crashed through the windows.
The Emperor's valet and his chamberlain, both of whom were standing talking to
their master, dropped dead. The little Emperor was not scratched. Back in Addis
Ababa last week, with his Empire on its last legs, Haile Selassie drove quietly to
the French Legation beyond the race track. There he explained to French Minister
Paul Bodard that he was morally bound to keep on fighting, but that with Italy's
legions sweeping down unchecked from the north further defence of Addis Ababa was
now impossible. It was best for the Empress and their two sons, Crown Prince Asfa-
Wassan and round-eyed Prince Makonnen, 13, to leave the country. The Coptic
monastery in British-protected Palestine was the first refuge that came to the
Emperor's mind. But would the royal family be temporarily safe in French Djibouti,
at the other end of the 494-mile Ethiopian railroad to the coast? Minister Bodard
assured him that they would. Back to his Palace went Haile Selassie, and within a
few minutes the war drums were throbbing through the hills. Crowds streamed up to
the Palace steps. "Ethiopia," shrilled Haile Selassie, "will fight until the last
soldier and the last inch! Let every man who is not wounded or sick take arms and
enough food to last five days and march north to fight the invader!" The crowd
roared back: "We will go!" Five thousand men, bravest remnant of the old Imperial
Guard, shouldered their rifles again and marched away. Tired little Haile Selassie,
forgetting the raw burns on his arm, retired into his Palace for a final conference
with his chieftains. The Government, it was plain, would have to move. Should it go
southwest to Gore, near British Sudan? The bearded chiefs at first said nothing at
all. Finally they explained. There was only one effective army left in Ethiopia,
that of Ras Nassibu, now fighting for its life against General Graziani's
relentless advance on Harar. Tribes to the west were in as ugly a mood as those
around Magdala. One after another the chiefs rose to tell how hopeless the
situation was. There was nothing for the King of Kings to do but run for his life.
Scuttle. Haile Selassie got into his car, drove around to see his friend Sir Sidney
Barton at the British Legation outside of town. Behind a cobweb of barbed wire, 250
Sikhs patrolled the grounds. Huddled in tents and temporary shelters was almost the
entire white population of Addis Ababa, which had put itself under the protection
of the British Crown and British machine guns. To Sir Sidney Haile Selassie spoke
softly but to the point. Britain had encouraged him with fine words, many promises
and a few guns for which he had paid cash. For the League, for Ethiopia he had
risked his own life. Would Britain now come to his aid in this hour of direst need?
With all his heart Sir Sidney wished that Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Foreign
Secretary Anthony Eden, and possibly Winston Churchill were in that room. Shortly
afterwards Haile Selassie drove away, his mouth grim with disappointment. That
midnight Haile Selassie furtively boarded his imperial train at Addis Ababa,
scuttled for the coast. With him, besides the royal family, were some 30 friends
and retainers and great quantities of personal baggage. When, hatless and travel-
stained, he reached Djibouti, French Somaliland, two days later, the little man was
still treated like a monarch by Britain and France. French troops gave him a royal
salute and the British cruiser Enterprise awaited him in the harbour. Two hours
before Enterprise upped anchor, she was boarded by Ras Nassibu, commander of the
southern armies, and his aide, Wehib Pasha. Behind her 6-in. guns the king without
a country sailed away to sanctuary in Palestine. With the Emperor in flight, all
hell broke loose in Addis Ababa. Only the dregs of Ethiopia's soldiery were left
behind in the doomed capital. They promptly went completely wild, looting shops,
screaming curses at all whites, firing rifles into the air. The new palace, pride
of Haile Selassie, was thrown open to the mob. Most foreigners were already safely
within the British compound, but United Pressman Ben Ames was severely slashed
while trying to fight his way through the native crowd. In 24 hours the Ethiopian
Empire went completely to pieces and all semblances of native law & order
disappeared. Rioting in Addis Ababa grew worse by the hour. Most important attack
was made on the Treasury's "gold house." A few loyal employees tried to save the
remnant of Haile Selassie's gold with machine guns but sword-swinging looters
rushed them, cut off their hands as they clung to their guns. A brave man was
spectacled U. S. Minister Cornelius Van H. Engert, who with his wife, four naval
radio operators and half a dozen others decided to hold out at the U. S. Legation
as long as possible. "Among us," he radioed Washington, "we have nine rifles, two
shotguns, ten revolvers and a fair amount of ammunition." To communicate with
British Minister Barton about four miles away U. S. Minister Engert had to call
Arlington, Va., which in turn telephoned U. S. Ambassador Robert W. Bingham in
London, who called the British Foreign Office, who finally relayed the message back
to Addis Ababa. Situation is getting worse," radioed Minister Engert. "Two native
women in our servant\rquote s quarters have been seriously wounded. . . . With the
assistance of a few Sikhs and one Lewis gun we could hold this legation, if
Italians arrive within a few days. . . . Should the situation become worse, which I
do not anticipate, the Department may depend on my withdrawing before it is too
late." The British, however, could spare no Sikhs except to convoy the U. S. party
to the British compound. Secretary Hull feeling that Minister Engert and his aides
had amply demonstrated their courage, radioed instructions to evacuate. With a
convoy of Sikhs the Engert party safely traversed the ugly four miles through the
ruined city to the British compound. Meanwhile General Badoglio's motorized column,
pushing on as fast as possible, drew closer & closer. Italian aeroplanes
reconnoitred over the city. At four o'clock Tuesday afternoon the Italians rumbled
down the imperial highway into Addis Ababa. Natives fled south or tried to take
refuge in the foreign compounds which they had been attacking. In Rome, which was a
little late getting the news because Sir Sidney Barton radioed it first to London,
delirious crowds poured into the streets to the din of bells, whistles, sirens, and
Benito Mussolini trumpeted: "The war with Ethiopia is over. Ethiopia is Italian-
territory!" Why. Foreign observers, particularly British, had been reminding each
other for months of India's Northwest Frontier, of France's campaigns in Morocco,
of the U. S. intervention in Nicaragua where small rapidly-moving bands of
guerrilla fighters were able to fight off mechanized modern armies for years. As
Haile Selassie and his Belgian and Swedish military advisers well knew, Ethiopian
troops could have done the same, but Ethiopians do not fight that way. Far braver
but much simpler than most tribal warriors, their idea of warfare is the massed
attack, the wild headlong charge. Once Marshal Badoglio had lured Ethiopian
chieftains into attacking, the war was won. The subservient tribes of Ethiopia were
loyal to the ruling Amharas only as long as the gods of battle smiled on them. The
gods stopped smiling long ago.\par
King of Kings, in 1935 there was just one man who rose out of murky obscurity and
carried his country with him up & up into brilliant focus before a pop-eyed world.
But for the hidden astuteness of this man, there would not now be the possibility
of another world war arising out of idealism generated around the League of Nations
in behalf of Ethiopia. But for His Majesty Haile Selassie the year 1935 would have
been a distinctly different year. If by some unhappy chance the Italo-Ethiopian war
should now spread into a world conflagration. Power of Trinity I, the King of
Kings, the Conquering Lion of Judah, will have a place in history as secure as
Woodrow Wilson's. If it ends in the fall of Mussolini and the collapse of Fascism,
His Majesty can plume himself on one of the greatest feats ever credited to
blackamoors. Above all, Haile Selassie has created a general, warm and blind
sympathy for uncivilized Ethiopia throughout civilized Christendom. In the wake of
the world's grandiose Depression, with millions of white men uncertain as to the
benefits of civilization, 1935 produced a peculiar Spirit of the Year in which it
was felt to be a crying shame that the Machine Age seemed about to intrude upon
Africa's last free, unscathed and simple people. They were ipso facto Noble
Savages, and the noblest Ethiopian of them all naturally emerged as Man of the
Year. Outside Italy, the Emperor was clapped and cheered during 1935 in almost
every cinema house in the world. His name entered the U. S. vocabulary in such
homely exclamations as, "Well! If that's so, then I'm Haile Selassie!" In the last
week of 1935, Haile Selassie reached Broadway as a character in the new George
White's Scandals. Cries he: "Boys, our country am menaced! What is we gwine do?"
From then until the curtain falls amid applause which almost stops the show, His
Majesty and guardsmen execute a hilarious tap dance (see cut). Goodness & Wisdom,
without quibble or qualification the best and wisest ruler ancient Ethiopia has
ever had is the present Man of the Year. Ethiopia, contrary to popular
misconception, is not a Christian country. It is not even Coptic Christian. Unroll
an authoritative religious map of the Empire, such as that in the current January
issue of Foreign Affairs, and the facts are evident. In trifling quantity a few
Christians are to be found near Addis Ababa, and the Coptic Christians, to which
faith the Imperial Family appertains, form an island in the Mohammedan and pagan
sea of peoples which is Ethiopia. Until 1935 the country was known mainly to
foreign savants as a "museum of peoples" that remarkably preserve the habits and
customs of their various antiquities. It was known, incorrectly, to hasty readers
of a popular book, as the Hell-Hole of Creation. Actually the high plateau on which
Addis Ababa stands and which comprises about half the Empire is suited in climate
to the taste of an ordinary U. S. citizen although the altitude is trying. Rushing
rivers criss-cross the plateau with deep gorges. Transportation of fantastic
difficulty is enhanced by unimaginable mud in the rainy season, but the obstacles
of Nature on the plateau are in every sense susceptible of being overcome. In the
desert regions, blazing and scorching some 8,000 ft. below the plateau toward the
sea, are the Hell-Holes of Creation, inhabited by tribes of extraordinary hardihood
and savagery. Explorers report that "some of these peoples have never heard of
Haile Selassie." It is they, who today with complete impartiality harry, snipe at
and loot any small detachment of soldiers, be they Ethiopian or Italian. The
peoples of Ethiopia are very old but the Empire is very young. When Chief
(Continued on p. 16) Justice Charles Evans Hughes was a youth of 18 there was
properly speaking no Ethiopian Empire and the future Emperor Menelik ruled, as King
of Shoa, the vicinity of Lake Tana, Aduwa, Aksum and Dessye. Three-quarters of the
present Empire, including Harar and Ualual, he did not rule. Haile Selassie was
born 44 years ago at Harar and in 1930 succeeded his cousin Menelik's daughter,
Empress Zauditu, on the Throne. The legend that Ethiopia's Imperial Family is
descended from the seduction by King Solomon of Sheba's Virgin Queen is pure myth.
Last month Oxford's University Press exploded it anew with A History of Abyssinia
($2.25) in which the adoption of this legend by Coptic priests to give Ethiopia's
present dynasty a savour of ancient lineage and of Biblical if not Divine authority
is traced with British scholarship. Intimate Glimpse\emdash although good and
wise, Haile Selassie, as recently pointed out by Dr. Sassard, his French physician
of many years, has never been popular among his turbulent subjects. Every
conversation the physician has had with his Imperial patient, writes Dr. Sassard,
"gave me further reason to admire and respect this Sovereign, who is so different
from those who surround him and from his own people, and who is so superior to
them. ... In his motionless face only his eyes seem alive\emdash brilliant,
elongated, extremely expressive eyes. They bespeak boredom as well as polite
indifference, cold irony, or even anger. The courtiers know these different
expressions well and retire suddenly when the monarch's glance becomes indifferent,
then hard. On the other hand, especially when he is dealing with Europeans, his
eyes know how to be soft, caressing, affable\emdash and even sincere." Referring to
his royal patient's frequent and serious illnesses, Dr. Sassard observes: "I have
always been surprised by the reserves of energy and courage that exist in so frail
a body. . . . The attention of the public and of Europe is directed at the two sons
of the Sovereign. The first, the Heir Apparent, is now 19 years old. He generally
lives far removed from the capital, surrounded by spies, restricted in any
independent action he may take, frequently and harshly rebuked by his father. . . .
Prince Makonnen, who is 12 years old, is his father's great favourite. . . .
Whereas a teacher was not accorded the Heir Apparent, a whole retinue of French
educators has been designated to take care of the last-born son. . . . He has good
sense, but he is perhaps a little too aware of his exalted birth and the destiny
that he believes to be awaiting him. In any case it is unquestionably in Prince
Makonnen that all his father's hopes are centred. "We must give the Emperor credit
for having lent prestige to moral values in his country and for having made
courage, work and persistence respected in a land where only physical force had any
value. . . . The numerous Ministers are generally more or less related to the
Emperor and the Emperor considers the granting of a Cabinet post a simple method of
calming a noisy cousin or a belligerent vassal. . . . Disorder and
misadministration make each Ethiopian Ministry a bottomless barrel into which money
flows. . . . Emperor Haile Selassie inherited a savage country. . . . He will never
be a leader of men, the chief of the wild hordes that his predecessors were. The
Emperor knows this and the knowledge saddens him." After so intimate a glimpse
through the eyes of Man of the Year's long-time physician, His Majesty's
achievements in 1935 are all the more staggering. They are the ripened fruit of a
physically frail Semite's lifetime of goodness and wisdom. It was good to cast into
golden chains the Ethiopian who would otherwise have been Emperor instead of Haile
Selassie, for this individual had strayed into the Mohammedan faith. Had the late
Lij Yasu been on the Throne today the League of Nations might not have displayed
such anxiety for the country of an infidel. His greatest wisdom is the result of
meditating on the fact that in 1914 his beloved Ethiopia was saved from being
dismembered by the Great Powers by the assassination of the Archduke Franz
Ferdinand. After the establishment of the League of Nations, the Emperor, or Prince
Tafari as he then was, figured out wisely that if Ethiopia could possibly win
membership in the League, she might never need an-other World War to distract the
Great Powers from dismembering her. To get into the League, though, was most
difficult. Egypt was then and is still barred, for the reason that Britain
suspected then and now knows for certain that Egypt, once inside the League, would
scream bloody murder for the British to evacuate Egypt. Ethiopia was at first
barred. Then Ethiopian statesmen, largely inspired by Prince Tafari, began yielding
deceptively to French and Italian efforts to obtain more important concessions in
the empire than had ever been granted before. In 1923 the French and Italians
congratulated themselves that a most profitable and pleasant era of Latin-Ethiopian
co-operation and economic exploitation was about to open with mutual goodwill. To
top off the deal with pink icing. Ethiopia at Latin insistence was admitted to full
membership in the League. Only three years afterward Tafari, who had become Regent,
complained of Britain and Italy to the League, having caught them exchanging notes
with a view to recognizing the possession of "spheres of influence" by each other
in Ethiopia. With the same technique that the Man of the Year used in 1935, but
without causing an explosion of world interest, Regent Tafari in 1926 shamed and
reproved white men thus: "We should never have suspected that the British
Government would come to an agreement with another government regarding our Lake
Tana!" Ethiopia quietly won the first League round then & there, causing Italy and
Britain to drop the matter, much as the Hoare-Laval Deal was to be dropped nearly a
decade later with a crash heard around the world .Many white men personally
familiar with events in Ethiopia since then say that the Emperor for years played
Italian and other foreign concessionaires for suckers until Benito Mussolini
gradually
evolved his theory that the White Race is being aggressively menaced and must
recover the dynamic attitude of Victorian England or ultimately suffer eclipse.
Japan, during Depression, secured virtually the whole of Ethiopia's import business
in cotton piece goods, while Italians were supplying Haile Selassie with a powerful
radio station at cut rates. As soon as it was in working order, His Majesty turned
around and fired the whole Italian staff of technicians, made a sucker out of the
great Italian electrical firm of Ansaldo Lorenz. Fatefully in December 1934 the
issue between Italy and Ethiopia was joined. Each shrieked to heaven that a
collection of mud huts called Ualual, located variously on various maps, had been
subjected to aggression by the other. Months afterward a League of Nations
commission decided that for neither the Ualual Incident neither Italians nor
Ethiopians nor anyone else was to blame (TIME, Dec. 24, 1934). By that time,
though, the Man of the Year was fully in the making. He flashed off cables smoking
hot with pathos, righteousness, defiance and more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger which
made front pages throughout Christendom. It was sheer genius for Haile Selassie to
deny that Italians used dumdum bullets instead of charging them with that military
offence. It was again genius for him to cable out that in Ethiopia the local press
had been ordered by the Emperor never to apply discourteous epithets to Benito
Mussolini. Finally only genius could enable the Emperor to put himself\emdash a
frail, exquisite Semite who speaks French\emdash on terms of friendly respect with
robust Anglo-Saxon correspondents when they arrived in Addis Ababa and promptly
nicknamed him "Little Charlie." If the Covenant of the League of Nations be law,
then in law Ethiopia and Haile Selassie are right and Italy and Benito Mussolini
are wrong. The only trouble is that that portion of the white race represented by
44,000,000 Italians has opened hostilities and in the sphere of law Italy contends\
emdash much too late for popular acceptance\emdash that under the League Covenant,
membership in the League of Nations is barred to states in which slavery still
nourishes, as it unquestionably does in Ethiopia. Therefore, argues Italy, the
original mistake of admitting Ethiopia to the League should be corrected by ousting
Ethiopia, after which Italy would have exactly as good a right there as Britain has
in Egypt. In successfully brushing aside these contentions of a Great Power; in
dextrously pitching the issue of war on such grounds that the white race in general
feels the future of the League of Nations to be at stake in the future of a Museum
of Peoples in Africa; and in impressing even his own French doctor with his
courage, his elevated moral stature and his peculiar genius for browbeating
Ethiopians while he charms foreigners. Emperor Haile Selassie emerged in 1935 not
only as Man of the Year but as the world's own inimitable "Little Charlie" for as
many years to come as health sustains him. So What? In the actual zones of
Ethiopian war, the number of square miles overrun by Italian forces as the year
ended was about 30,000 \emdash a mapmaker's fact of doubtful significance. Neutral
military experts in Washington, Berlin. Paris and London consider that Premier
Mussolini's deepest purposes have not yet been revealed, but that unquestionably he
has hamstrung his soldier's war in East Africa by political and diplomatic back-
seat driving from Rome. Darting raids by Italian bombers, unaccompanied by troop
operations on the ground, have resulted in little more than the enemy's terror and
disorganization. After major advances there have been sudden, desultory lulls.
Because concurrent manoeuvres on the Diplomatic Front have been secret and
clandestine, II Duce is perhaps as good a judge as any of whether bombs and calms
judiciously sprinkled in the world press have much affected the game on Europe's
green tables. In soldiers' eyes the Italians have made a wretched showing in
Ethiopia, and to soldiers Italy's diplomatic showing looks even worse, with Anthony
Eden up. The first and drier half of Ethiopia's "dry" season, in which alone
military operations are possible, is now over. Bombs sprinkled around the Man of
the Year have failed to get him. If Calvin Coolidge and the U. S. Marines,
unhampered by Sanctions, never did succeed in bringing General Sandino to reason in
Nicaragua, all the more reason for Haile Selassie to feel that his goose hangs
high. On the other hand, should Mussolini decide that the diplomatic game is up.
Italy's forces should be able to give a better account of them than they have thus
far. Few months ago Dr. Sassard wrote of his patient: "The Emperor will undoubtedly
fight at the head of his troops." In ringing proclamations His Majesty has more
than once promised to do so. Simple Ethiopians expect any ruler worth his salt to
remain for the duration of the war physically in the thick of the fight. Instead,
both before hostilities began and since. Haile Selassie has kept Europe's diplomats
well supplied with offers to make peace by selling or bartering parts of the
empire, emitting at the same time declarations to the world press that he will part
with "not an inch" of Ethiopian soil. If these Imperial activities resemble a
Semitic tradesman's strident, righteous protestations and simultaneous readiness to
compromise, they are not the Man of the Year's fault but aspects of his God-given
character. In Addis Ababa warrior chiefs of the Noble Savage type bitterly and
contemptuously complain, "Our Emperor is a businessman!" They should thank
Ethiopia's stars. The astounding marvel is that Africa's unique Museum of Peoples
has produced a businessman\emdash with high-pressure publicity, compelling sales
talk, the morals of a patent medicine advertisement, a grasp of both savage and
diplomatic mentality, and finally with plenty of what Hollywood calls IT. The
Emperor was "too smart" only once in 1935, when he tried by granting the Rickett
Concession to Standard Oil to embroil the U. S. directly in Ethiopia's defence. In
His Majesty's favourite phrase the entire situation is still "subject to
negotiation." Fortnight ago the Imperial Businessman had instructed Al Smith's
publicity director, Josef Israels II. To tell the world that His Majesty was
willing to settle on terms only slightly more generous to Ethiopia than those
offered by The Deal of Hoare & Laval. He was willing to yield a great chunk of his
empire in exchange for peace and a corridor to the Red Sea. The resignation of Sir
Samuel Hoare and the tribulations of Premier Laval last week caused the Imperial
Businessman to propose a completely New Deal. Ethiopia's new "basis for
discussion," with which the Man of the Year masterfully closed 1935, are that: 1)
Mussolini's forces are to withdraw; 2) Italy is to pay an indemnity to Ethiopia,
and 3) the Great Powers excluding Italy are to be invited to a new game of giving
economic, administrative and financial "assistance and advice" to Ethiopia, with
Haile Selassie holding all the trumps and calling it Civilization.\par
Foreign News: Pastel Hideout. Monday, Jun. 01, 1936\par
Three weeks ago Ethiopia's deposed little Emperor Haile Selassie walked down the
gangplank of the British cruiser Enterprise at Haifa. Behind him trotted his
beloved white & tan papillon. Last week at Haifa the Conquered Lion of Judah walked
up the gangplank of another British cruiser, the Cape town, which was to take him
to Gibraltar. Thence he was expected to make his own way to London. Again the fuzzy
little papillon pattered at his heels. Farther behind followed Crown Prince Asfa
Wassan and his 12-year-old brother, the Duke of Harar, both tricked out in European
sack suits and derbies. The roly-poly Empress Menen remained in Jerusalem. The
Emperor's party significantly travelled, not on League of Nations passports or
British laissez-passer cards, but on Haile Selassie's own Ethiopian Government
passports. The Emperor's London destination was No. 5 Princes Gate, which he will
share with the Ethiopian legation. Facing Hyde Park, this 27-room house is hard by
the Persian and Afghanistan legations. Down the street, in case of trouble, is the
Hyde Park Barracks of the Royal Horse Guards. Last week Ethiopian Princess Asfa
Yilma redecorated the Emperor's London hide out, the drawing room in pastel pink,
the dining room in grey, the offices in primrose.\par
\par
INTERNATIONAL: Lion Incognito. Monday, Jun. 08, 1936\par
So far as Benito Mussolini was concerned last week, his colonies of Eritrea,
Italian Somaliland and newly-conquered Ethiopia ceased to exist separately. With
swift strokes he divided his East African domain into five autonomous provinces
under the supervision of Viceroy Pietro Badoglio in the new capital, Addis Ababa.
The new provinces and their capitals: Eritrea (Asmara); Amhara (Gondar); Harar
(Harar), Somaliland (Mogadiscio); Galla & Sidamo (Gimma). Il Duce also promised
religious freedom to Moslems of his domain, returned the Ethiopian Coptic Christian
Church to its old Egyptian affiliation. Meanwhile in Gibraltar last week sad little
Haile Selassie disembarked from the cruiser Cape town, waited quietly in the Rock
Hotel for the liner Orford to take him to England. The British Government avoided
unnecessary trouble with Italy by announcing that the bearded Lion of Judah would
travel to England incognito, would receive no royal honors. For Saturday breakfast
Haile Selassie looked with disfavour at a plate of kippered herring, called instead
for bacon & eggs, U. S. style. Later in cutaway coat and striped trousers he
wandered sadly down the hotel corridor. Before him a buxom Spanish charwoman was on
her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. For three full minutes he stared solemnly
at her healthy Andalusian contours, then a slow smile spread over the little
Emperor's face. He fished in his pocket, produced a crisp \'a35 note. "I was
delightfully entertained," said Haile Selassie, and drove down the hill to take
cocktails on the battle cruiser Hood.\par
Foreign News: War Waif Monday, Jun. 15, 1936\par
A tiny, forgotten participant in the Italo-Ethiopian War was the British freighter
Santa Maria whose job it was to carry from Finland to French Somaliland two tons of
TNT, 200 incendiary bombs, three airplanes and four machine guns for Emperor Haile
Selassie's armies. The Santa Maria had got as far as Gibraltar when Haile Selassie
fled his empire and the war was over. Captain P. P. Allen was told by the cargo's
Finnish shippers, who had presumably already been paid for it, to land it somewhere
and await further orders. He landed it at Tangier in Morocco's International Zone.
Before he could get his ship away, the port authorities ordered him to reload his
perilous consignment and get it out of Tangier in a hurry. Thereupon Captain Allen
made for London, but news of the two tons of TNT had preceded him, and at Gravesend
he was told that the Santa Maria was not wanted. Desperate now, he put in at
Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, was shooed off, Iried Sark and alarmed the
Channel Islands' Royal Court into passing a special ordinance against him. The
Santa Maria lolloped around Land's End to autonomous Lundy Island in the Bristol
Channel, but the British Home Office bestirred itself to forbid Captain Allen to
unload. Last week Belgium was added to the countries that considered the Santa
Maria's load a hot potato. The freighter headed south, supposedly bound for Arabia
and China. But the shippers had been busy. The Santa Maria turned about, met a
Belgian barge on the high seas, unloaded TNT and incendiary bombs and then, with
only a few innocent planes and machine guns, once more sailed up the Thames and put
in at East London's Silvertown. Once more Captain Allen pleaded his case in vain
before London port authorities, left for Spain with a cargo of sugar........more
soon!!!!!!!!\par
\par
Selassie & Fiuggi Monday, Jun. 15, 1936.\par
With 41 crates reportedly containing gold bars and Ethiopia's well-worn old green
Imperial treasure chest among his luggage, His Majesty Haile Selassie reached
London last week bravely smiling and heavily perfumed. En route from Palestine he
had been transferred from a British warship to a British liner, and the British
Government insisted that his status was "strictly incognito." In London screaming
red placards reading "WELCOME EMPEROR!" had been pasted on delivery vans by Labour
and Liberal news organs but, taking their cue from their Government, Conservative
London papers did their best to ignore Haile Selassie, tucked news that he was
coming into obscure squibs. Nevertheless, 5,000 unofficial welcomers rushed to
Waterloo Station. Among them were Chinese, Hindus, Arabs and Negroes, cheek by jowl
with English of every class, including pink-cheeked gentlemen in high silk hats and
ladies, some of whom waved simultaneously the British and Ethiopian flags as the
private Pullman car of Haile Selassie drew in. Seated at a flower-decked table was
His Majesty in blue-serge trousers, silk blouse and flowing black cape with his
children in well-tailored, tweedy sports clothes and flannels. Roared hearty
British voices: "Welcome to the land of the free! Hurrah for the one and only
Emperor of Ethiopia! Down with Mussolini!" Great efforts by the British League of
Nations Union to coax down to the station the British Foreign Secretary, well-
dressed Captain Anthony Eden, were rewarded to the extent that he sent his tactful
private secretary, Mr. Oliver C. Harvey, who is always careful to dress somewhat
badly. Rumpled Mr. Harvey slipped into the Pullan; spoke for a few minutes to Haile
Selassie, then presented His Majesty to many an eminent, top-hatted friend of the
League of Nations and of Ethiopia, including Economist Sir Walter Thomas Layton and
Lord Allen of Hurtwood. They pressed upon His Majesty an engraved, though quite
unofficial, scroll declaring: "We lament that Ethiopia has suffered invasion. We,
with thousands of people of Great Britain, express the hope that the day will soon
dawn when Ethiopia will regain her ancient independence and her rightful Emperor
will return and, trusting in God, will continue to lead his people toward light and
peace." Taking this scroll His Majesty cried: "God grant that it may be so! ... I
come to England confident that I will obtain justice here. . . . May the British
Crown and the British people live forever" After that, cheering never stopped as
Haile Selassie, his children and his crates were whisked by limousine under guard
of Scotland Yard detectives to a sumptuous, cream-yellow house facing Hyde Park at
No. 5 Princes Gate, the home of the U. S. Ambassador being nearby at No. 14.
Alighting, His Majesty was met with shouts of "Say any old thing, Haile Selassie!
Hurrah for the Emperor! Good Old Haile Selassie!" When the King of Kings and
Conquering Lion of Judah refused to speak into a microphone provided for his use,
an excited fair-skinned dowager seized it herself, uttered sounds which British
radio listeners may well have thought were words spoken by His Majesty in his
native Amharic\emdash until an announcer cleared up the mistake. As Good Old Haile
Selassie withdrew into the house, 1,000 admirers out front snapped up popular
dailies, one of which cried under a banner headline: ''Haile Selassie is a welcome
visitor, for he belongs to that band of men with the courage to stand up against
tyranny and stand by what is right at the risk of death in order that justice might
live.\rdblquote Imperial Garden Party, Bright & early next morning a round hundred
admirers of Haile Selassie gathered in Whitehall to see him lay a wreath on the
Cenotaph honouring Britain's War dead. With dogged British grit they waited all
morning and all afternoon until finally dispersed by a thunderstorm. All through
the day Haile Selassie had been demanding that the Foreign Office accord him
"official permission" to lay the wreath which meanwhile drooped and withered in his
hallway. Captain Anthony Eden's subordinates had kept insisting all day that His
Majesty should merely apply to Scotland Yard for whatever protection he might think
he needed in laying a wreath on the Cenotaph. Second round of the Emperor's
struggle to be officially noticed came as a request to be received by King Edward
VIII. To this the Foreign Office replied that Emperor Haile Selassie, since he was
travelling incognito, was no more likely to be received by the King Emperor than
any other distinguished but unofficial visitor. Third round was the issuing by
Haile Selassie, as Emperor of Ethiopia and apparently no longer incognito so far as
he himself was concerned, of official invitations to an "Imperial garden party."
Swift to snub Haile Selassie by sending diplomatic regrets were the U. S., Russia,
France, Germany, Japan, the Little Entente, all the Scandinavian and Balkan States,
and five of the 20 Latin American republics, plus all the British Dominions, vice-
regal India and His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. Captain Eden
excused himself by saying that he had to make a political speech elsewhere. His
swank Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Viscount Cranbourne, explained: "My
presence is possible only because I can meet the Emperor in a private, non-
political capacity." In their official capacities came the Argentine, Turkish,
Brazilian and Chinese Ambassadors and the Ministers of Cuba, Finland, Iraq, Nepal,
Iran, Saudi Arabia and Uruguay, and Paraguay's charge d'affaires. Also the Deans of
Westminster and St. Paul's, Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George and Salvation Army General
Evangeline Booth. Even as Haile Selassie chatted in French with his guests, his
doom as an Emperor seemed in course of being sealed by Orator Anthony Eden, who
told his constituents that "The League finds its authority weakened" and that
Geneva must now act "in the spirit of candid realism." Far from suggesting any
anti-Italian or pro-Ethiopian action of a virile nature. Orator Eden announced for
the British Government this unpretentious objective: "We must at this time maintain
the League of Nations in existence." In quarters close to Haile Selassie it was
said that he was being pressed to quit Great Britain, probably would go to live in
a villa he owns in Switzerland, if Italian pressure is not exerted on the Swiss.
Meanwhile in Italy every news organ which reported the doings in London spoke, of
Haile Selassie by his family name, "Signor Tafari." However, nobody much bothered
to read the papers. All Italy was rapturously celebrating the return from Ethiopia
of its Conqueror. His skin seemed suntanned to the toughness of leather. Moist upon
it were the kisses of Benito Mussolini as II Duce embraced and smacked on both
cheeks grizzled, tough, triumphant Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Viceroy of Ethiopia.
After the smacks Corporal Mussolini, who has never had him promoted above his
actual War grade, patted Marshal Badoglio affectionately on the back, presented a
bouquet to the Marshal's wife, and affably greeted their daughter. Later Emperor
Vittorio Emanuele and Marshal Badoglio reviewed troops amid deafening plaudits near
the Triumphal Arch of Constantine. Once home, the Viceroy of Ethiopia confided with
an old soldier's simple candour the main reason why he did in fact return to Rome
last week. This reason Italians clearly understood when the Marshal said he was
going to take the cure at Fiuggi, drinking its famed waters. Popes with gallstones
gave the springs of Fiuggi their fame and today its bottled waters may be had in
almost any city of the world. Last week learned Italians, sympathizing with their
great Marshal, turned to the Italian encyclopaedia, scanned the famous letter in
which great Artist Michelangelo described how he was cured at Fiuggi in the year
1549 as Marshal Badoglio may well be cured. Wrote Michelangelo: "I am immensely
better. For about two months I have been drinking morning and evening water from a
spring about forty miles from Rome, which breaks the stone. It has broken mine and
enabled me to pass a good deal of it in my urine. I must lie in a store of it and
use it exclusively in drinking and cooking and change my way of living.'' After
taking the cure at Fiuggi, the Viceroy of Ethiopia was slated to return to take up
residence at Addis Ababa. In England the position of frail little Haile Selassie
grew so painful last week that His Majesty abruptly departed with his children for
Scotland, unable to endure in London what was about to be done in the House of
Commons. Before Haile Selassie left, 400 sorrowful and sympathetic British mothers
called upon and curtsied low to the Ethiopian Emperor, many offering him bouquets
of blossoms from their gardens. Feminist Sylvia Pankhurst even started a new London
newspaper devoted to Haile Selassie's cause, called The New Times & Ethiopian News.
Meanwhile South Africa and Australia, as soon as His Majesty's Governments in these
dominions were privately advised of what His Majesty's Government in the United
Kingdom were about to do last week, promptly disassociated them from the impending
move. At Cape Town forthright General James Barry Munnik Hertzog, South African
Premier, boomed: "If other nations like the United Kingdom and France are not
prepared to face the possible outcome of continuing League Sanctions against Italy
that does not affect South Africa, which intends to support the League to the last!
If the League now collapses, South Africa at least will have the satisfaction that
the world knows South Africa was not among those countries which ran away from
their duty to the League of Nations."\par
No Apologies, No Regrets. Every member of the House of Commons knew that the United
Kingdom was about to climb down before the Italian Kingdom when handsome young
British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden rose to speak. In the gallery sat Italian
Ambassador Dino Grandi, whose spade beard turned from black to grey during the
weeks and months of British-Italian threats and bickering over Ethiopia. Suavely
Captain Eden, with the complete aplomb which he gained at Eton, Oxford and in the
trenches, told the House that the pro-Ethiopian, pro-League and anti-Italian policy
upon which his whole career and promotion to Foreign Secretary was based, is now no
more. Said the Foreign Secretary sonorously: "His Majesty's Government, after
mature consideration on advice which I, as Foreign Secretary, thought it my duty to
give them, have come to the conclusion that there is no longer any utility in
continuing these measures [Sanctions] against Italy."\par
At once the Commons rang with cries of "Shame!" "Sabotage!" and "Why don't you
resign?" "The fact has got to be faced," said Captain Eden, "that Sanction did not
realize the purpose for which they were imposed. The Italian military campaign
succeeded. . . . If this means admitting failure, this is one instance in which it
has got to be faced." The Foreign Secretary concluded that so far as he knew there
was no stomach among the Great Powers to go to war to "enforce in Ethiopia a peace
of which the League could rightly approve," so they simply would not try. Captain
Eden said that there was nothing to apologize for and nothing to retract. "This is
your swan song!" cried some Labourites but others jeered: "You're holding your
job!" His face beet-red, Old Etonian Eden snapped: "Honourable members are making
cheap gibes not appropriate here!" Cowards, Poltroons, Jellyfish! Next, with Prime
Minister Stanley Baldwin and the whole of His Majesty's Government looking flushed
and uncomfortable\emdash excepting Sir Samuel Hoare \emdash the Rt. Hon. David
Lloyd George bounded to his feet, shook his fist deliberately at Eden, then at
Baldwin and led members of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition in calling the British
Cabinet "cowards . . . poltroons . . . jellyfish . . . skulkers . . . flying
fleas!" Thundered the hoary little Welshman who in his day spunkily steered the
Empire to its greatest victory: "The Foreign Secretary is going to Geneva to smash
the League of Nations. There is nothing but international anarchy as an
alternative. For nearly half a century I have sat in Parliament and never before
have had I heard a British Foreign Secretary confess that Britain had been
defeated. This is British surrender to Italy without the firing of a shot!
Surrender in fear of the Italian air force." Finally Britain's Wartime Prime
Minister beat his chest with doubled fist and roared: "A few months ago 50 nations
trusted Britain. The nations now will never trust this crowd! [Gesturing at the
Cabinet]. Tonight we have listened to a cowardly surrender and there on the British
Government front bench are the cowards!. During this scathing arraignment, the Rt.
Hon. Stanley Baldwin had turned as red as Captain Eden, but when he rose to reply
the Prime Minister was white with controlled fury. "People may say we are acting
from cowardice," he growled. "We, as trustees of the people, ought to remember that
if there be war in this country\emdash I mean nearer than the Mediterranean\emdash
they will pay for it on the first night with their lives! . . . The first blow may
come on the day that Sanctions are applied against an aggressor." Having thus made
a clean breast of the fact that caution was indeed the mainspring of wisdom last
week for Great Britain, the Prime Minister added with further candour that so far
as he could see the people of Italy and the people of Germany are now just about
the only ones in Europe who do have stomach to fight. "I feel convinced," added Mr.
Baldwin, "that in many countries, including our own and France, there is such
loathing of war . . . that I sometimes wonder if they would march [i.e., fight] on
any other occasion than if they believed their own frontiers were in danger. I do
not know the answer to the question, but I often ask myself the question, and I
wonder\emdash and when you begin to wonder on these points your wonderings may
travel a long way." The wonderings of the House of Commons did not travel last week
far beyond the point at which Stanley Baldwin had stopped with intuitive wisdom.
Mourned disgusted Arthur Greenwood for the Labour Party: "During the whole of this
debate there has been not a single word of sympathy for a broken nation [Ethiopia],
no word of condemnation for the Power [Italy] which deliberately organized the use
of poison gas!" Hottest liberal blast of the week came from Dr. Ramsay Muir,
president of the National Liberal Federation. "The Baldwin Cabinet has betrayed our
national honour," cried he. "The judgment of the world on Britain now is
'Beast\emdash mean, cowardly beast!'" De Valera and King with Baldwin, Although His
Majesty's obstreperous Irish Free State Government usually like to bait His
Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, last week lean President Eamon de
Valera played an obliging Don Quixote to rotund Stanley Baldwin's earthy Sancho
Panza. "May the fate of Ethiopia be a warning to the small States of Europe,"
President de Valera told Free State Deputies. "Sanctions have failed and at Geneva
our Free State will support the lifting of Sanctions from Italy." So flustered in
Paris was new French Premier Leon Blum last week that Sir George Russell Clerk, the
British Ambassador, was called to the Quai d'Orsay and quavering told by new French
Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos that, although France will "support" Captain Eden when
he proposes abolition of Sanctions at Geneva late this month, this will be "a move
in which France can neither take nor share the leadership." In other words, Premier
Blum's Communist and Socialist supporters are willing to agree to an historic
League capitulation before Fascism, but demand that as much of the odium as
possible be borne by Britain. Headlined contented Rome news organs last week:
'BRITAIN CAPITULATES.\rdblquote . This week devotees of the League of Nations could
find comfort only in such crumbs as the following, dropped by Canadian Premier
William Lyon Mackenzie King, a kindly optimist: "The League of Nations has failed,
but the League is not a failure. Its machinery for conferences and conciliation is
always available. We must not despair of the League!"Haile Selassie, whom the
British now call Highly Satisfactory, pushed on into Ethiopia last week with a new
weapon \emdash propaganda. Even in the Ethiopian bush this proved to be a potent
factor, for the area into which the Negus was pressing was Gojjam Province, long a
hotbed of native revolt against the Italians. Haile Selassie's organ of propaganda
was a newspaper written in Amharic, called Bandarchen ("Our Flag"), bordered with
the Ethiopian Imperial colours, mastheaded with the monogram of the Lion of Judah,
and bristling with nationalistic slogans. Sixty camels, with armed escort under a
British officer, carried this peripatetic newspaper's printing plant as its
editorial offices moved from jungle to jungle. While this strange propaganda
rallied more & more blacks to the cause, Haile Selassie and his forces took
Danghila, south of Lake Tana and only 200 miles from Addis Ababa. Djibouti, the
capital's port on the Gulf of Aden, was reported crowded with Italian refugees, and
British military spokesmen began to predict a hasty Italian withdrawal to Addis
Ababa for a strong last stand. From Ethiopia, almost forgotten since the British
freed it from the Italians and restored Emperor Haile Selassie to his ancient
throne, came a firsthand account last "week of life as the Lion of Judah and his
people find it under British protection.Haile Selassie is the nominal sovereign of
liberated Ethiopia. The actual chores of governing are handled (through agreement)
by British civilian and military commissions.\par
British judges and assessors sit on the Ethiopian bench. Britons operate the
railroad from Addis Ababa to Dire Dawa near the French Somaliland border. British
officers control the Ethiopian police force, train Ethiopian soldiers. A British
commission controls the Addis Ababa wireless. A British air commission rules the
air over Ethiopia. Britain uses, rent free, an estimated $320 to $360 million worth
of property left behind by the Italians. A British financial commission helped set
up a new Ethiopian state bank. The United Kingdom Commercial Corp. expedites what
trade there is.Haile Selassie also carries on. He retains his great personal sense
of dignity, his enormous palace, and a measure of authority over the once
rambunctious tribal chieftains of the interior. Brutal in conquest, the Italians
were energetic imperialists. Their engineers, with sweating soldier-workmen and
native labour, blasted, graded, bridged and finally smoothed 4,340 miles of asphalt
and macadam highway over Ethiopia's desert areas, muddy lowlands, rolling valleys,
deep ravines and high, broad plateaus. Some 10,000 miles of lesser roads were
opened. Italian architects, stonemasons and carpenters built office buildings,
theatres and homes in Addis Ababa. Electrical engineers installed power plants. But
Ethiopia is far from modernized. It lacks tractors, ploughs, harrows to till the
rich valleys and lowlands. It lacks trucks to haul wheat, coffee, rubber, cotton
into Addis Ababa, to be shipped thence by rail to Djibouti harbour on the Gulf of
Aden.Haile Selassie is looking forward to the arrival of a U.S. Lend-Lease
observer, whose job will be to stimulate trade with Ethiopia, and to find out what
Ethiopia can contribute to the Allied war effort. The U.S. representative will find
the Emperor adamant on one point: he is determined not to allow foreign economic
penetration or ownership that might further cloud Ethiopia's sovereignty. The old
Ethiopia goes its way. Along the new mountain highways, old-fashioned Ethiopian
brigands lie in wait for British truck convoys instead of camel caravans, use hand
grenades and rifles instead of spears and poisoned arrows. Ethiopians still farm
with wooden, wife-drawn ploughs, still live in filth and squalor. Addis Ababa is a
mixture of the old and the new. British officialdom marches jauntily about the
Italian-built offices. Masses of unemployed move aimlessly about the streets. Flea-
bitten donkeys mourn past, laden with Ethiopian ladies under umbrellas.
Occasionally a slicked-up Ethiopian sport in an appropriated, yellow Alfa-Romeo
roadster splits the crowds. The smart Olympia Cabaret overflows with society. In
Addis Ababa British of-fleers and visiting Americans drink and dance with lush
Ethiopian beauties, who bridle when they are called "Natives," consider themselves
white. For the service of foreigners, an old Ethiopian institution remains intact:
the practicing thief who can, on order and for recompense, procure anything from a
gas-tank cap to a Tommy gun. Usual time required for delivery: about half an hour.\
par
\par
Foreign News: Ducks & Sanctions. Monday, Jun. 22, 1936\par
Frosty Mr. Neville Chamberlain, hawk-nosed Chancellor of the Exchequer, arrived at
the Treasury one morning last week with his striped trousers soaked to the hips,
the tail of his morning coat dripping, water squelching from his shoes. Nobody
asked any questions, discretion being a hallmark of British civil servants, and
Chancellor Chamberlain volunteered no explanation, sat down wet, merely telling his
secretary to have his chauffeur bring a change of clothes. Meanwhile Fleet Street
editors scoffed at the cock & bull yarn some reporters had telephoned in. They said
they had talked to an Irishman who said he had talked to a woman who said her
little boy had been rescued from drowning in the duck pond of St. James's Park by a
tall man in top hat and impeccable morning clothes who looked exactly like the
Chancellor of the Exchequer. This Irish yarn seemed all the more unlikely because
several men were said to have been standing nearby when the child fell in, while
the top-hatted rescuer had sprinted from the gravel walking path, vaulted over a
low railing, waded rapidly into the duck pond and grasped the floundering child.
Ordinarily Chancellor Chamberlain is so standoffish that for reporters to get
anything of a personal nature out of the Treasury is all but impossible. Last week,
however, they found Neville Chamberlain willing to confirm the Irishman's tale in
all details. Jubilant were the Chancellor's friends, now busy grooming him to
succeed Stanley Baldwin before long as Prime Minister, but fearful that frosty Mr.
Chamberlain lacks the human appeal necessary to hold the highest office in Great
Britain with success. After his spontaneous duck-pond heroism they all felt
immensely more hopeful, and London newspapers blazed out with the first human
interest story of all time about Rt. Hon. Arthur Neville Chamberlain, Privy
Councillor to His Majesty and M. P. for Ladywood. Earlier in the week potent
Chancellor Chamberlain delivered to London's Conservative 1900 Club a speech which
was generally considered so pro-Italian, so anti-Ethiopian that it watered down
almost completely the British National Government's formerly firm resolve to buck
up the League of Nations and enforce its decisions. "If we have retained any
vestige of common sense," rasped Chancellor Chamberlain, "we must admit that we
have tried to impose on the League a task beyond its powers. The circumstances in
which the Italo-Ethiopian dispute began offered a most favourable opportunity to
exercise the League of Nation's policy of 'collective security,' but that policy,
based on Sanctions, has been tried out and has failed." Mr. Chamberlain then
crushingly referred to efforts by Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, president of the
British League of Nations Union, to rally British public opinion in support of
Sanctions and against Italy. Lord Cecil had just issued "the most serious, most
urgent communication" he had ever made to the British public, declaring: "Since our
honour and the future of our civilization are involved, we have the right to demand
that our Government should openly declare its conviction that the Covenant of the
League of Nations must be carried out. . . . Sanctions should be maintained and if
necessary increased!" Referring directly to Lord Cecil's appeal, Chancellor
Chamberlain declared, "That is very midsummer madness!" He advocated instead the
most rapid possible British rearmament, "for we have but a short time to prepare
ourselves for eventualities" and the signing of regional pacts to guarantee the
peace of specific, limited areas after consulting the British Dominions. Next day
the anti-Fascist Daily Herald, chief news organ of British Labour, bitterly
declared, "Sanctions are over for Britain," and reported that British trade agents
were leaving for Italy by every train to sign contracts for the import of Italian
products into Britain the moment Sanctions were lifted. After several days of
evasiveness on the part of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, the Foreign Affairs
Committee of the Cabinet held a solemn meeting, definitely decided to abandon
Sanctions. In this decision concurred even fervent Sanctionist Anthony Eden, on
whom fell the unwelcome task of announcing it to the House of Commons. Ousted
Emperor Haile Selassie, kinky-poked cause of all this Sanctions talk, continued
last week to have no success in his efforts to be received by King Edward VIII in
London, but one member of the Royal Family did call at Haile Selassie's cream-
yellow sanctuary in Princes Gate. To represent King George V six years ago at the
Coronation of Haile Selassie as Power of Trinity I, Emperor of Ethiopia, the Duke
of Gloucester went to Addis Ababa with a resplendent suite, stayed a fortnight as
Haile Selassie's guest (TIME, Nov. 10, 1930). Last week the Duke of Gloucester made
what his aides called "an unofficial although formal call" upon Haile Selassie,
stayed five minutes.\par
ETHIOPIA: Fake Gore. Monday, Aug. 17, 1936\par
Emperor Haile Selassie, now dwelling quietly in the English countryside near London
but insisting that a most warlike Ethiopian Government is on the rampage in
"Western Ethiopia" against the conquering Italians, has created a keen news market
for dispatches about this invisible "Government." Last week U. S. news organs began
to carry stories dated overnight from "Gore, Western Ethiopia." They appeared to
have originated by radio from Gore, referred to "the provisional Government here,"
declared that quantities of ammunition captured from Italians have passed through
Gore in recent weeks, and named as the Gore Government's military leader Ras Imru,
first cousin of Emperor Haile Selassie.\par
Ras Imru was said to have raised an army of 60,000, to have spurred Ethiopian
patriotism with tidings that the Italians had executed Ethiopian Coptic Bishop
Petros. Just as "Gore, Western Ethiopia," was becoming an accepted date line,
however, it was discovered to be a fake. Cunning correspondents in Egypt had
rightly guessed that U. S. editors would prefer dispatches from the seat of the
"Gore Government" to the mess of rumours about it which today is all they can
genuinely get. In Addis Ababa last week the Italian radio station passed
correspondents' dispatches conveying the bad news that Ethiopian peasants are
sowing practically no grain or coffee, "because they fear it will be confiscated by
the Italians or brigands." Viceroy Graziani was reported to have appointed a
commission to study ways & means of getting the peasants to plant again. "Rumours
that a provisional Ethiopian Government has been formed in the West are ridiculed
here," read an Addis Ababa dispatch from United Pressman James Rohrbaugh: "The
natives in the unoccupied regions are not fighting against the Italians, but among
themselves. The Ethiopians have been awed by Italy's formidable war machine and,
despite foreign reports to the contrary, there is no organized resistance to the
Italians."\par
THE LEAGUE: A Bit of Jugglery Monday, Oct. 05, 1936.\par
To the rage of victorious Benito Mussolini, defeated Haile Selassie won at Geneva
last week the right to retain his delegation's seat in the Assembly of the League
of Nations during its present session. British efforts to bar the Ethiopians, half
heartedly seconded by the French, were called by veteran New York Herald Tribune
Correspondent John Elliott "a bit of jugglery so contemptible that even a Tammany
politician might have blushed to be connected with it."Divorce the Covenant? In a
speech to the Assembly which many delegates called "amazing," the repeated demands
of Adolf Hitler that the Covenant of the League of Nations be "divorced" from the
Treaty of Versailles of which it is an integral part were seconded by British
Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. He appeared to feel that only by rewriting the
Treaty to suit Germany could that country be induced to rejoin the League. "Human
life is not static," argued Captain Eden, "but is rather a changing thing." The
Assembly last week did nothing about this Eden proposal. Success with Spain. The
same "Tammany" forces which failed to exclude Ethiopia last week had been
simultaneously applying pressure to prevent the Madrid Cabinet from formally
demanding that the League Assembly take action about the munitions now reaching
Spain's White Armies contrary to the declared embargo of the Great Powers (TIME,
Sept. 7 et ante). Possibly because Madrid is now also beginning to get such
munitions, Geneva success was achieved by those putting the pinch on Spanish
Foreign Minister Julio Alvarez Del Vayo. While he could not be persuaded to keep
quiet, his empurpled and high-flown Latin oration about Democracy being at the
crossroads in Madrid was completely stultified by Orator Alvarez del Vayo himself
when he announced that last week the Madrid Cabinet was not going to ask any action
of the League Assembly. "The era of national wars is fast disappearing!" cried the
Spaniard in his best passage. "Just as in the 16th Century in Europe men took sides
and fought in the name of two religious ideals, Catholicism and Protestantism, so
today, it would appear, and men are divided by two political ideals, democracy and
oppression. . . . The blood-stained soil of Spain is already, in fact, the
battlefield of a world war!"\par
Foreign News: Arrest Everybody! Monday, Mar. 01, 1937\par
To Benito Mussolini in Rome last week flashed a report from Addis Ababa. Italy's
active Viceroy of Ethiopia, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, reported he had just made a
swing around recently-conquered Southern Ethiopia with a guard of 50, received
without incident the homage of thousands of lowland Ethiopians who traditionally
hate the highlanders of whom Haile Selassie is No. 1. Few days later in 8,000-ft.
high Addis Ababa, the birth of a son to Italy's Crown Prince (TIME, Feb. 22)
brought out the Viceroy and his glittering entourage, accompanied by Ethiopia's
native Archbishop or Abuna who long ago turned from Haile Selassie to Vittorio
Emanuele III. Just as gifts were being handed to the populace, up from the milling,
shouting, scrambling mob flew a flock of hand grenades left over from the War.
Ethiopia's Archbishop in his flowing robes shared in the worst of the blast
received ghastly wounds. General Aurelio Liotta, Chief of Italy's East African Air
Force, went down with great lacerations in his leg. The Viceroy, although wounded,
was able to stand, shouted orders to his troops to arrest the whole mob of
2,000\emdash an old Ethiopian custom.*\par
In Rome, IL Duce instantly gave orders for Surgeon-Professor Cesar Antonucci to
take off from Rome with his assistant, Dr. Giovanni Barbara. Day later they
alighted at Addis Ababa, amputated the shattered leg of Air General Liotta. By this
time Viceroy Graziani had mobilized 30,000 troops on a war basis, issued a
communiqu\'e9: "The outrage represents an episode of common delinquency." According
to Addis news folk the Ethiopian grenade-throwers set up a shout of "Ras Desta is
coming!" but in fact this onetime ras (chief) of Haile Selassie was hundreds of
miles away making good his escape into British Kenya.\par
*In Haile Selassie's day the practice, when somebody of importance had been killed
or something of great value had been stolen, was to round up the entire
neighbouring population and keep them in an improvised concentration camp, if
necessary for months, until they finally arrived among themselves at a decision of
who was to blame and produced the miscreants to the Imperial Government.\par
\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: Distressed Negus. Monday, Nov. 15, 1937\par
Families are disrupted for many reasons, but rarely do man and wife separate
because of a father-in-law's politics. Ethiopians, however, are different, and last
week from his self-exile in Jerusalem the thin-faced, kinky-haired son of Haile
Selassie, Crown Prince Asfa Wassan, wrote to Patriarch Amba Yoannes XIX of the
Coptic Church, in Cairo, petitioning this venerable prelate for a divorce from
Princess Holata-Israel, daughter of his father's most powerful chieftain, Ras
Seyoum, who capitulated to the Italian invaders during their campaign.\par
"As an Ethiopian patriot I do not wish to surrender myself to those who have robbed
and colonized Ethiopia, nor have any associations with those who have submitted
themselves to them," said Asfa Wassan. But the domestic difficulties of his son
were the least of cadaverous-faced Haile Selassie's troubles last week. In an
effort to replenish his diminishing funds, the Negus was juggling several lawsuits
in the air at once. Pleading that his client, the Emperor of Ethiopia was in a
"distressing position," a Paris attorney attempted to convince the French High
Court that Haile Selassie was the legal owner of 8,650 shares of Djibouti-Addis
Ababa railroad stock worth some $1,500,000. Backing away from a decision that
Premier Mussolini would consider hostile, the court decided it was incompetent to
rule on the international law involved. In London, a Chancery Justice heard the
Negus' counsel stoutly assert: "I hope to satisfy your Lordship that the plaintiff
is still the Emperor of Ethiopia. . . . He is so recognized by the British
Government." But the court postponed decision on the case in which British Cable &
Wireless Ltd. denies it owes the Emperor $50,000 for the maintenance in Ethiopia of
a radio station for duplex radiotelegraphic service between Britain, Ethiopia,
instead claims that the money now reverts to the King of Italy. Faced with the loss
of his remaining holdings, the Negus again appealed for public subscriptions. In
London, the Abyssinia Association is collecting an "Emperor's Fund." Months ago he
issued a call for a $10,000,000 "war chest," first purpose of which apparently was
to provide for him. When his request went unheeded, he wailed: "My appeal to the
world for my distressed country has failed to bring in a response sufficient even
for my personal needs." However, little "personal need" is in evidence at the
Ethiopian royal family's seven-acre estate, Fairfield, outside Bath, England. The
14-room Georgian house is jammed with furniture, expensive rugs hurriedly crated
out of Ethiopia when the Negus and entourage fled. Behind the high walls the
Emperor strides along beside his elderly cousin, Ras Kassa, on their morning walks.
His favourite reading is, ironically, "diplomatic history," but most of his serious
hours are occupied with the 90,000-word story of his life which he is laboriously
turning out in Amharic. The 14-year-old Duke of Harrar has been enrolled at King's
College, Taunton, and shy, reticent, 17-year-old Princess Sehai, who professes a
liking for Shakespeare and "cool English poetry," has deserted Bath for a nurses'
training course at London's Children's Hospital. Last week indications were that
the Crown Prince, who never got along with his father, would stay on in Jerusalem.
But the hangers-on, wives and children of princes and widows of rases killed in the
war, evidently saw their best meal ticket in Haile Selassie, prepared to dump them
selves in the Negus' lap in England.\par
\par
Foreign News: Gifts & Wars. Monday, Dec. 06, 1937\par
Reclining at Bath, famed English spa, His Majesty Haile Selassie complained
bitterly last week to Miss Steedman, a Secretary of the Abyssinia Association,
about the results thus far of announcements that the onetime King of Kings and Lion
of Judah is in a "distressed condition" . Kind-hearted Britons at once began,
sending him bagfuls of coal, jugs of home-made wine, baskets of greens and even
unused postage stamps with which to keep His Majesty's correspondence going. "I am
a poor man, yes!" Haile Selassie told Miss Steedman to tell the world, "but I am
not an object of charity. Such undignified gifts as these should be sent to the
Abyssinia Association for the relief of refugees!" Meanwhile, Satevepost readers
were advised last week by famed News booker John Gunther to regard Manchukuo as
"Contemporary Political Fiction No. i" and Ethiopia as C. P. F. No. 2. "Ethiopia
has about as much political reality today as Carthage\emdash which the Italians
also destroyed," wrote Mr. Gunther. "The 'Emperor' Haile Selassie is about as
concrete a living political force today as Beowulf or General Grant. Yet the
Ethiopians still send delegations to Geneva, the 'country' is considered a member
of the League of Nations, and the great powers\emdash except Italy, which seized
it\emdash appear still to recognize it as an independent state. Pure
fiction. . . . "There are plenty of other fictions. . . . The fiction of the
'National' Government in England, which is in reality a Conservative Government
slightly, salted with right-wing Labourites and Liberals. The fiction of Soviet
democracy. . . .\par
"The quintessence of fiction in politics these days is the Undeclared War. . . . No
war in Europe or Asia has been declared since the Kellogg Pact was signed in 1928.
The inference is that no power quite dares to ignore it. They wage only undeclared
wars\emdash and at least the piece of parchment is inviolate. . . . No more
withdrawal of ambassadors, no more neat little ultimatums expiring at midnight.
Instead, calculated or swift attack. Instead, wars that aren't called wars, and
peace that isn't peace. . . . There have been three undeclared wars since the year
1935 [Ethiopia, Spain, and China]."\par
SOUTHERN THEATRE: Revolt in the Desert. Monday, Jul. 22, 1940\par
The House of Commons was informed last week by Under Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs Richard Austen Butler that Great Britain formally recognized the Government
of Emperor Haile Selassie as "the lawful Government of Ethiopia" and an ally of
Britain, thus cancelling the recognition given to Italian sovereignty in 1938.
Though the little brown Emperor was in England and his followers were scattered
through the mountains and gulches of faraway Italian East Africa, this solemn
decision was less farcical than it seemed. It amounted to formal adoption of the
same kind of plan with which Britain beat Turkey in the last war: another Revolt in
the Desert. News of Selassie's warriors afield was scant last week, nor was it
known what Briton would play among them the role that the late T. E. Lawrence so
ably played among Turkey's Arabs, that of stirrer-upper, conniver, adroit leader in
guerrilla warfare on the flank of the Italian Army and its communications. In
Britain's Kenya colony there are supposed to be 200,000 Ethiopians raring to go
under Fituvari Birru. Selassie's onetime Secretary of War. Italians last week
launched the Southern Theatre's heaviest land attack to date at Moyale, a fortress
on Kenya's north border. For several days they poured artillery fire into the
place, beleaguering a garrison of the King's African Rifles, who anxiously awaited
reinforcements. After five days, the garrison withdrew, covered by an R. A. F.
bombing attack. This capture of Moyale appeared to presage an Italian drive to
carve into Britain's large East African holdings. Another Italian drive was taking
shape on the Sudanese border at Kassala and Gallabat. Here the Italian objective
would be to penetrate northward into Egypt, in conjunction with a drive east from
Libya by fierce Marshal Graziani. Along the Libyan border, where a barbed-wire
barricade runs 120 miles into the desert from the sea, Britain thus far retained
the initiative. Mechanized British forces (light tanks, armoured cars) captured and
reduced several forts and cut the water pipeline from Bardia down to Fort
Capuzzo.While the bombers of both sides continued to raid the enemy's bases, large-
scale warfare in the Southern Theatre appeared to wait upon the outcome of the
tussle for naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. The one place Italy has to
fight\emdash and to prove its right to spoils if the Nazis win\emdash is on the
Southern Front, from Gibraltar to Aden and Kenya. To fight successfully in East
Africa, indeed to retain her possessions there, Italy must take the Suez Canal, and
to do that she must knock out or drive away the British squadron based at
Alexandria. Her air attacks and hopeful claims last week were all toward this end.
Meantime Britain set herself to hold all lines and overthrow Italy-in-Africa by
boring from within.\par
\par
SOUTHERN THEATRE: Bush Battles Monday, Aug. 12, 1940\par
Italy's object in the far-flung bush battles of the war in East Africa is to bite
off pieces of France's colonies in the north, gain control of Egypt and the Suez,
and bite into Great Britain's holdings in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, British
Somaliland, Kenya Colony. Last week the strength of Italian forces massed under
Marshal Rodolfo Graziani in Libya for a drive eastward at Alexandria were estimated
at two divisions (30,000 men). British authorities prepared the public for a
"strategic retreat" of their forces from El Sollum, near the Libyan border, to the
stronger and better-watered fortress of Mersa Matruh, where Cleopatra used to
bathe. Meantime British aircraft, mobile artillery and mechanized patrols sorely
harassed the Italians' preparations and out posts in Libya. This week Rome claimed
ten British planes downed while bombing an Italian column in eastern Libya. R. A.
F. counter-score: three Italian planes, one British plane missing. Italy's plan to
join her eastern and north central holdings in Africa at Britain's expense rests
secondarily on her efforts to enlarge the borders of her most recently acquired and
indigestible piece of African pie: Ethiopia. Viceroy there and Governor General of
Italian East Africa is the ablest member of the Royal Family, Prince Amedeo di
Savoia, Duke of Aosta, first cousin of King Vittorio Emanuele. Into his 42 years
this dynamic Duke has packed a great deal of colonial service and fighting in
Tripoli, the Sahara, Ethiopia, incognito in the Belgian Congo. Lean and tall, he is
a veteran of artillery, camel cavalry, a general of the Italian Air Fleet. Against
the strong but supply-vulnerable Italian forces in the Duke's domain, Britain
planned not a campaign of forcible dislodgment but one of attrition from without
and harassment from within. Britain's recognition of ex-Emperor Haile Selassie of
Ethiopia as an ally was the signal for all good Ethiopians to come to the aid of a
wrecking party, some elements of which were made clearer last week by a
correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor lately returned from the mountainous
tableland whose capital, is Addis Ababa (see map). Haile Selassie's field general
outside his; captive country, charged with rousing and arming Ethiopian exiles in
Kenya, the Sudan and the border hills, is Ras Birru, a, fierce, black-wooled little
general who fought the Italians under Haile Selassie's late War Minister Ras
Mulugheta and refused to surrender even when urged by Haile Selassie's turncoat
son-in-law, Ras, Gugsa, who still governs the Tigrai region in the north. Another
element in the native Ethiopian. Revolt against Italy was to have been the
Mohammedans, who comprise one-fifth of all Ethiopians. Stronghold of the black.
Moslems is Harar, near French and British. Somaliland. A son of the late Islamic
Leader Lij Yasu, who took refuge from the Italians in Djibouti, was to have led
this; uprising, but France's surrender damped! the project. Last fortnight an
armistice, commission ended Djibouti's state of siege,, opened to Italy its
terminal of the strategic: railroad to Addis Ababa. But even without above-ground
leadership, the Islamic followers of the late Lij Yasu can cause plenty of trouble,
and somewhere in the northeast hills is Haile Selassie's ablest old time; general
of all: Abebe Arragia, who learned! Soldiering at France's strict Academy of; St.
Cyr, who speaks Italian as well as French, prefers European clothes and weapons,
but knows also bitter, native-style fighting. After the Italian conquest, Abebe
Arragia thought rebellion was useless, persuaded the two sons of his old friend,
Ras Kassa, to stop agitating and perform the: ceremony of submission. When the
Italians executed Ras Kassa's sons, Abebe Arragia was furious. He slipped out of
Addis Ababa disguised as a Coptic priest. Gathering a few thousand rebel warriors
who can move through the mountains like shadows, he preyed on Italian supply
trains, and isolated outposts so savagely that the Italians put a price of 100,000
talers ($50,000) on his head, sent an expedition, of 6,000 men with 24 cannon to
track him down. Once they surrounded him in the Auasc River valley about 70 miles
from. Addis Ababa, but he slithered away by-night. A good guess is that Abebe
Arragia has been of no small help to Britain's Royal Camel Corps (now mechanized)
air raids over the Somaliland border toward Italy's supply lines through Giggiga,
Harar, Dire Dawa.Despite the rainy season and heavy British air raids on their
bases, the Italians attacked at four places along their 2,000-mile fount from the
Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. On July 5, with artillery, bombing; planes, tanks and
3,000 Askari troops they assailed and took Kassala. Railhead for the line to Port
Sudan, Kassala is the eastern gateway (Khartoum the western) for the Sudan's rich
cotton plantations. It commands the valley of the Atbara River, a Nile tributary
down which an army would move to strike at Egypt and Suez from the south. Last week
the Italians struck deeper into the Sudan from Kassala, bombing a station near
Khartoum, and British equipment assembled for a counter attack. Same day they took
Kassala, the Italians moved in force on Gallabat, a Sudanese post important for its
nearness to Gondar and the roads around Lake Tana to Addis Ababa. Last fortnight
they also took Kurmuk, another border post, south of where the Blue Nile flows out
of Ethiopia. Italy's biggest territorial bite so far has chewed off the northeast
corner of Kenya Colony, extending toward Dolo on the Juba River. This part of the
world is level and dry, good only for sheep and camel pasture, but it could
probably be irrigated to grow cotton. Deeper down in Kenya, besides all manner of
big game and some of the world's finest scenery, are large areas producing valuable
crops of coffee, maize, sisal. After driving a British garrison (King's African
Rifles) out of their red mud huts in Moyale in June, the Italians last week pushed
on down toward the Nyire River. Last week the light British force was still
retiring, delaying the Italian drive through waterless country by bombing attacks
from bases at Buna and Wajir. North of Lake Rudolf a British force took the
offensive, crossed the border and captured an Italian outpost. Meantime, a strong
South African Brigade Force, complete with its own mechanized infantry, artillery,
air force, ambulances, engineers, signal corps and cavalry, reached Kenya from Cape
town. Volunteers, enrolled to fight "anywhere in Africa.\rdblquote they were
welcomed quietly but warmly at Nairobi by Governor Sir Henry Monck-Mason Moore,
whose bailiwick of 225,000 square miles contains only 20,894 Europeans. On their
railroad cars the South Africans chalked: "Look out, Musso, the Springboks-are
here!" Italy sneered that this contingent had little support in the Union of South
Africa, where a peace party, mostly of Boer farmers led by onetime Prime Minister
James Barry Munnik Hertzog, continued despite the rape of The Netherlands to heckle
the war effort of Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts. Britain's alertness to
defend all its African possessions was further evidenced lately when the R. N.
cruiser Dragon and a destroyer visited the Cameroon\rquote s, former German colony
on Africa's west coast mandated to France. Last week the French Cabinet at Vichy
pondered this visit and similar British interest shown at Dakar, Senegal, and at
France's east-coast island colony, Madagascar. No matter how the Battle of Britain
goes, far-flung Africa is likely to see splashes of the war all around its pie-
shaped perimeter.\par
*Named after a leaping gazelle, the Springboks are a famed South African rugby
team, many of whose members joined the S.A.B.F. Other volunteers: Boxer Ben Foord,
Cricketer Bruce Mitchell.\par
World War: Receive Kindly and Protect. Monday, Apr. 07, 1941\par
Last week Haile Selassie, who began to think he might soon again be Negus (Emperor
of Ethiopia) in fact as well as name, set up field headquarters at Burie, 150 miles
from Addis Ababa. Next day he issued a proclamation to his native troops which were
a bald-faced misrepresentation even if issued for laudable ends.\rdblquote I
charge you solemnly to receive kindly and protect those Italians who may surrender
to you without arms and not to retaliate with the cruelty that they inflicted upon
our people, but to show yourselves to be honourable, humane soldiers.\rdblquote Do
not forget that when the valiant Ethiopians made the Italians prisoners in the
Battle of Aduwa [1896] they handed them over to the Emperor without doing them any
harm, thus earning for Ethiopia honour and a good name."\par
The "harm" to which the Negus referred was castration. For centuries the Ethiops
have taken unmanning for granted: 1) to supply eunuchs for the harem trade; 2) as
punishment for criminals; 3) as an expression of triumph over a slain enemy. After
emasculation, the natives often made trophies of the virilities. Contrary to the
Negus' claim, there were numerous castrations at Aduwa. Says one authority: "In an
attempt to minimize the savagery of the victorious army, it is claimed that only 30
white prisoners were castrated. The truth is that only 30 survived and returned to
Rome; innumerable others were reckoned among those killed in action; a few . . .
lived but to have preferred, in shame, to remain in Africa.\rdblquote The Italians
also showed the League of Nations gruesome photographs to prove that castration was
practiced by Haile Selassie's troops in the Ethiopian war five years ago. On the
other hand, the Italians themselves were not simon-pure: the cruelties of the
troops of Rodolfo Graziani, whose colonial career last week ended in military
unmanning, are famous. Best guess: the British had heard that atavistic instincts
had again got the best of many an Ethiop patriot. So Haile Selassie was asked to
try to stop it. For if the conquest of Ethiopia were accompanied by numerous
atrocities, victory would turn into a moral defeat................and there is
more....\par
Ethiopia: Troubled Lion. Friday, Jun. 01, 1962\par
\par
Along Addis Ababa's "Mattress Street," brothels used to be marked with red crosses
until the International Red Cross complained that too many Ethiopians were
wandering into first-aid stations looking for a treat instead of a treatment. By
government edict, red lights replaced the crosses. In the past two years, the
electricity bill for Addis' red-light districts has risen as the number of cribs
increased from 5,000 to 8,000. The boom is a significant symptom of change. Its
cause: the influx of foreigners into the city for an endless series of conferences,
all part of a determined attempt by His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I,
Conquering Lion of Judah, Elect of God, King of Kings, and Emperor of Ethiopia, to
put his land in the vanguard of African nationalism.\par
For centuries, Ethiopia's proud Amharas\emdash who claim descent from a night's
roistering between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba\emdash shunned black
Africans as barya (slaves). But when the emerging black African states began
getting voice in world affairs, the Emperor started to fire off letters to
nationalist politicians all over the continent, condemning imperialism and hailing
the once despised barya as "our beloved black brothers." This week at Addis Ababa's
new $3,000,000 Africa Hall, he plays host to the U.N.'s travelling special
committee on colonialism. The Emperor hopes that such hospitality will further his
campaign for African leadership. Says one Cabinet minister: "We've been free the
longest. It's our heritage and duty to lead our recently enlightened brethren into
the modern age." Poverty & Corruption. But, as TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs
reports, Ethiopia is not a likely candidate to lead any country into the modern
age. Despite Haile Selassie's tentative efforts at reform, Ethiopia is still one of
the most backward nations in Africa. Parliament rubber-stamps the Emperor's
absolute rule. The press is rigidly controlled, and informers and secret police
agents are everywhere. Hangings are held in public, and public flogging was
recently authorized in lieu of jail sentences, both to cut down the jail population
and to keep dissenters in line. Government corruption is so widespread that one-
third of the taxes levied never reach the national treasury. So large is the
bureaucracy that two-thirds of the annual budget goes for government salaries.
Annual per capita income for the country's 20 million people is only $30 ($5 if
Addis Ababa is excluded), and 98% of the population are illiterate. Some 80% of the
population have parasitic diseases ranging from hookworm to elephantiasis; venereal
disease infects at least half the adult population, and infant mortality is nearly
40%. Malaria kills 30,000 people annually, and 40% of the country's cattle are
tubercular.Most of Addis Ababa's 450,000 people live in primitive mud huts with no
sanitation. Said one visiting Senegalese: "If this is the heritage of freedom, I
say 'Bring back the colonialists.' "\par
At Gunpoint. Realizing the impression that Ethiopia makes on visiting Africans,
Haile Selassie has embarked on an industrial development program, is shrewdly using
foreign investment from both East and West to build dams, refineries, port
facilities, factories. But the Emperor has ignored advice on civil service and
parliamentary reforms that might curtail his absolute power, has made only token
attempts to redistribute his own vast land holdings among the poverty-stricken
peasants. As a result, Ethiopia's intellectuals, who sparked the unsuccessful
revolt against the Emperor's regime 17 months ago, are again growing restive\emdash
despite the government's attempts to buy them off with civil service appointments
or simply offering them, in lieu of a job, up to $180 a month to keep quiet. Though
plots against the government proliferate, they are mostly talk, for no one can
agree what to do and when to do it. Much popular affection remains for the Emperor,
who at 69 still seems as vigorous as the man who 26 years ago protested before the
world against the conquest of his country by the Italians. But with his wife and
four of his six children dead, he is an increasingly isolated figure. Heir apparent
Asfa Wossen, 45, is more liberal than his father, but mild and retiring. On his
succession, he will probably become a figurehead for the reform-minded officers and
intellectuals whose revolution he fronted\emdash "at the point of a gun,'' as he
put it\emdash in 1960. But if the succession is too long delayed, the gun aimed at
the old order may well go off.\par
\par
\par
Africa: A Small Taste of Unity. Friday, May. 31, 1963\par
\par
In the cavernous, thatch-roofed banquet hall of Addis Ababa's Menelik Palace, 30
colourfully garbed African heads of state and 2,000 other guests, all back-slapping
and jovial, were feasting at the board of their medalled host, Ethiopian Emperor
Haile Selassie. As waiters in green-and-gold livery moved among food-laden tables,
the throng fell to on caviar, roast chicken, spiced lamb and watt (spongy Ethiopian
bread), washed down with hundreds of gallons of French wine, Ethiopian honey wine,
and vintage champagne. Then, as the clock ticked past midnight, everybody sat back
to watch the Emperor's select group of flimsily clad dancing girls writhe to the
tootles of the Imperial Bodyguard Band. Nkrumah for President. For all their
camaraderie at Haile Selassie's party, not all the delegates to Africa's first
"summit conference" last week were pals. Tunisia's Habib Bourguiba loathes Ghana's
power-seeking Kwame Nkrumah who is jealous of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser who
despises the Ivory Coast's Felix Houphouet-Boigny who in turn is contemptuous of
Senegal's Poet-President Leopold Senghor. The antagonisms became amply evident
during the long oratory that flowed out of the conference work site, Haile
Selassie's proud, new "Africa Hall." Eyes glittering, Nkrumah took the floor to
demand "Unity Now!" in the form of a vast United States of Africa, ruled by a
bicameral Congress and a strong presidency (which, no one doubted, Nkrumah feels
himself eminently qualified to occupy). Nkrumah likened the Addis Ababa meeting to
the 1787 Constitutional Congress in Philadelphia, whose delegates, he said, thought
of themselves not as "Virginians or Pennsylvanians, but simply Americans." Cried
Ghana's self-styled Redeemer: "We meet here today not as Ghanaians, Guineans,
Egyptians. Algerians, Moroccans, Malians, Liberians, Congolese, or Nigerians, but
as Africans." Slap for Kwame. There was polite applause, but much of the audience
was lukewarm to the ambitious scheme. Malagasy's President Philibert Tsiranana
replied candidly: "You cannot decree a text for African unity. Many of our states
are not mature enough." Urging a slower, step-by-step approach, Sir Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa, the able Prime Minister of Nigeria, Africa's most populous state (42
million, six times Ghana's population), took the opportunity to spank Nkrumah for
his notorious meddling in his African neighbours' affairs. "Unity cannot be
achieved as long as African countries continue subversion against others." Balewa
declared. He drew a storm of cheers, and even Nkrumah's old friend. Modibo Keita of
Mali joined in to denounce "black imperialism." With the conference obviously in no
mood for grandstanding, Egypt's ubiquitous Gamal Abdel Nasser prudently confined
himself to generalities. Africa's summiteers did manage to put together an
agreement of sorts in their four days of talks. In a marathon final session, the
delegates solemnly and unanimously adopted a draft charter for a loose
"Organization of African Unity." To go into effect when ratified by two-thirds of
Africa's nations, the scheme calls for a heads-of-state gathering every year, a
permanent council of ministers (with no real powers), and a permanent secretariat.
Pending ratification, a provisional secretariat will be set up in Addis Ababa, to
the delight of Haile Selassie, who dreams of making his ramshackle capital Africa's
capital as well. Under the plan, committees would be formed to mediate intra-
African disputes, promote economic and social progress, joint defence, and mount a
common front against Africa's remaining vestiges of colonialism and white
supremacy.\par
\par
\par
Nation: A Display of Affection. Friday, Oct. 11, 1963\par
\par
When Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie pleaded gallantly but in vain for League of
Nations help against the invading troops of Benito Mussolini in 1936, the wiry
little Lion of Judah won the affection of the U.S. That continuing affection was
displayed throughout the Emperor's official state visit to the U.S. last week. He
was applauded and pursued by an unusually spirited noontime crowd of parade
watchers in Washington, by delegates to the U.N. in New York, by autograph seekers
along lower Broadway. In Philadelphia, even union pickets on strike at a hotel
cheered when he strode across their lines to reach his suite. Since there are no
weighty differences between the U.S. and Ethiopia, the glittering round of gold-
plate lunches, dinners and receptions thrown by official Washington were full of
sentiment. Said President Kennedy in a dinner toast: "There is really no comparable
figure in the world who occupied and held the attention and the imagination of
almost all free countries in the mid-'30s and still could in the summer of 1963 in
his own capital dominate the affairs of his continent." Responded the Emperor: "I
recall with most poignant emotion the moral support that Ethiopia received from the
U.S. in the dark hour when my country was ravished by fascism 27 years ago."
Leopard in the Garden. Such an occasion clearly called for an exchange of gifts,
and they were lavish. The President gave the 71-year-old monarch a steel-and-silver
replica of the sword General George Washington carried throughout most of the
Revolutionary War, a Tiffany silver desk set, a 16-mm. movie projector with films
of Selassie's red-carpet arrival at Washington's Union Station and an autographed
photograph of himself in a silver frame. The Emperor presented the President with
an Ethiopian Bible copied by hand on parchment bound in silver and overlaid with a
gold crucifix, a 200-year-old Coptic church book, a silver fruit bowl inlaid with
gold, a silver miniature of the Lion of Judah statue in Addis Ababa, and an
autographed photo of himself in a silver frame. For Caroline and John Jr., the
Emperor brought figures of a soldier and an Ethiopian girl, each carved in ivory.
Jacqueline Kennedy, making her first ceremonial appearance since the birth and
death of her infant son, presented the Emperor's granddaughter, Princess Ruth
Desta, 33, with a leatherbound guidebook to the White House, three art books and a
vermeil dresser set. Then Jackie, looking pleased, appeared in the White House rose
garden in a full-length leopard skin coat despite the warm afternoon. "He gave it
to me," Jackie explained to the President, with a nod toward the Emperor. "I was
wondering why you had it on in the garden," replied Jack. Wreath of Coins. Selassie
did, however, have something serious on his mind: his sympathy for U.S. Negroes in
their drive for civil rights and his high regard for President Kennedy's efforts to
aid that drive. The Emperor insisted on meeting N.A.A.C.P. Executive Secretary Roy
Wilkins, laid a 50-lb. solid silver wreath, fashioned from Ethiopian coins, at the
Lincoln Memorial. In his forthright speech to the U.N.'s General Assembly, Selassie
declared: "The Administration of President Kennedy is leading a vigorous attack to
eradicate the remaining vestiges of racial discrimination from this country. We
know that this conflict will be won and that right will triumph." On such matters
Selassie is in a position to speak for much of Africa. His effective leadership as
honorary president of the summit conference on African unity in Addis Ababa last
May established his position as a moderate who might bridge the communications gap
between the widely divergent African factions. In his own land his tight rule is
controversial, but from a pragmatic U.S. point of view it has been effective.
Ethiopia is fiscally sound, is one of the few nations to repay its lend-lease
obligations in full. Selassie dispatched troops to U.N. combat in both Korea and
the Congo. He has eagerly accepted 244 U.S. Peace Corpsmen as schoolteachers to
raise the literacy standards of his people. The visit was meant to cement such
harmony. Toward that end, Selassie had long talks not only with Jack Kennedy, but
with Bobby and Teddy as well. He was even accorded a full-fledged Washington press
conference. Unfortunately, he had to deal with questions just as inane as some of
those Kennedy fields. Inquired one lady reporter: "How leopard do skins of Ethiopia
Somalia?" compare in Selassie quality smiled with gamely, those said of there was
no difference.\par
\par
Algeria: Unwelcome Are the Peacemakers. Friday, Nov. 01, 1963\par
\par
Like a happy troupe of whirling dervishes they came, a mixed band of mediators
shuttling tirelessly between Algeria and Morocco, hoping to end the nasty little
North African border war.Fresh from a state visit to King Hassan II in Rabat,
Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie flew to Algeria aboard the imperial Boeing 720
jet. Wearing a British field marshal's uniform, the Lion of Judah was warmly
greeted by Socialist Strongman Ahmed ben Bella, who happened to be wearing his own
favourite costume, Castro-type fatigues. Other envoys and messages descended on
Morocco from the Arab League, the President of the Sudan, the Redeemer of Ghana,
the President of Tunisia, and the feuding rulers of Egypt and Iraq. Inconclusive
Claims. Amidst the talk, shooting continued along the ill-defined border of the
Western Sahara. Back and forth went the battle for two tiny desert wells that each
side claimed as its own, Hassi Beida and Tinjoub. As the Algerian troops inched
forward across the windswept, desolate battlefield, it appeared to one Bible-versed
correspondent that men were "as trees walking."* The Algerians had no radios;
orders were simply shouted back and forth, echoing clearly across the valley to the
Moroccans. "Hey, Mohammed, give them a blast with the 75 recoilless rifle. That's
right. No, a bit further to the left." The Moroccans sent up tanks to the front
lines, flew over U.S.-made T-6 jet trainers equipped with rockets, but foxholes and
boulders gave the Algerians good protection. All week, both sides claimed success.
Just as inconclusive was the unrelenting propaganda barrage between Morocco's King
Hassan, a tough ex-playboy, and militant Socialist Ben Bella, which by last week
blossomed into a full-scale ideological struggle, with Ben Bella backed by Egypt's
Nasser and a host of black African nations. Dramatizing its case against Morocco's
supposedly "feudal" and "imperialist" regime, Algeria broadcast a parody of Antoine
de Saint-Exup\'e9ry's The Little Prince, with Hassan in the title role and a
supporting cast of Uncle Sam, King Farouk and David Ben-Gurion.The Little King
played it cool. Ben Bella, Hassan remarked, "should take great care. He is in the
process of introducing into North Africa a virus from which God has so far
protected us: lies, psychological warfare, and insults." Face it, said Hassan to
his foe: "Whether you like it or not, Morocco will have the regime it has chosen.
Make the best of a bad deal and coexist with this monarchy that you abhor."\par
Cozier Group. By week's end the eager peacemakers were having trouble, too. Algeria
demanded a full meeting of the 32-member Organization of African Unity, in which
Ben Bella partisans have a majority. Instead, Haile Selassie offered to serve as
chairman of a truce meeting in Tunis including Hassan, Ben Bella and one of the
unlikeliest political fraternities ever gathered outside the U.N. cocktail
lounge\emdash Egypt's Nasser, Tunisia's Habib Bourguiba, Libya's King Idriss,
Mali's Modibo Keita, and Guinea's Sekou Toure. Friday, Nov. 01, 1963.\par
\par
\par
Ethiopia: A Wing on the Palace Friday, Feb. 12, 1965\par
\par
In an age of rockets and revolution, monarchy rarely receives its due. Not so last
week in the mountainous realm of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, Emperor of
Ethiopia. The Lion of Judah knows how to roll out a red carpet \emdash and indeed
when Queen Elizabeth II's bellowing VC-IO jetliner appeared over Addis Ababa last
week, an Ethiopian army truck was still nudging its way through the airport crowd
with yards and yards of the stuff. Potholes Paved. There was only one word for all
the preparations for Elizabeth's eight-day visit: imperial. Haile Selassie knew
that it was the Queen's first call in East Africa since her father, King George VI,
died in 1952 while Elizabeth was visiting Kenya's Royal Aberdare Game Preserve. As
if to ease the memory of that painful experience, the Emperor had paved the pot-
holed road from the capital to the British embassy compound on the outskirts of
Addis, set 600 labourers to work planting trees and laying acres of sod to tidy up
the cities new, U.S.-financed, $2,500,000 Municipal Centre. The Emperor added an
entire wing to his splendiferous Jubilee Palace so that Elizabeth and her entourage
of 31 could be properly housed. Meanwhile, fire engines roared through town hanging
royal portraits from every lamppost. The Emperor's lions, which usually roam the
palace grounds unattended, were hosed down, dusted with flea powder, and chained
tight to avoid embarrassment. Precarious Trail. The tour itself went off like
African clockwork. Delays were commonplace. Vast crowds surged around Elizabeth and
Prince Philip as they were whirled through Addis in the Emperor's Rolls-Royce,
which broke down only once. At one point they transferred to the silken cab of a
green and scarlet imperial coach pulled by a team of six Lippizaner horses. They
dined on lamb, watt (Ethiopia's excellent meat and vegetable stew), tedj\emdash a
honey-based mead\emdash and Taitinger champagne. The imperial touch was also
present when Elizabeth journeyed over the dusty plain to Asmara, where she was
greeted by dancing spearsmen and was delightfully dive-bombed by an Ethiopian army
plane. The bomb load was flower petals. Elizabeth visited the Wingate School, named
for Britain's mystical guerrilla leader Major General Orde Wingate, whose troops
had liberated Ethiopia from Italian occupation in 1941 and permitted Haile Selassie
to return home from his London exile. The Queen also visited Gondar and hiked a
mile up a precarious mountain trail to look out over Tisisat Falls, a breathtaking
scene near the source of the Blue Nile. Less than a century ago, a 32,000-man
British force under Sir Robert Napier had crossed the same kind of trails (along
with some 30,000 beasts of burden, including 45 elephants) to defeat Haile
Selassie's famous predecessor, Emperor Theodore. Quite naturally, none of that
imperial adventuring was recalled last week.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: Bloodless Mutiny Monday, Mar. 11, 1974\par
\par
Clearly shaken, the Emperor of Ethiopia, Lion of Judah, Elect of God and King of
Kings mounted the balcony of his lion-guarded Jubilee Palace in Addis Ababa.
Speaking to 600 members of the armed forces, Haile Selassie declared in a faltering
and cracking voice: "This is a poor land. Your country cannot afford to give you
more. I appeal to your loyalty!" From the palace courtyard, the Emperor received
the expected cheers of support. But in Ethiopia's key garrison towns, where
thousands of his soldiers were mutinying, the appeal fell on deaf ears. There,
junior officers and enlisted men continued their rebellion, demanding higher wages
to offset an inflation that since January has doubled the price of flour, rice and
bread. The aging (81) monarch\emdash who survived Mussolini's invasion in the 1930s
as well as an abortive coup 13 years ago \emdash really had no choice. He gave in
to the rebels' demands, and last week virtually turned over the reins of authority
to the military. What was surprising was not that the mutiny took place, but that
it was so long in coming. Well-trained by American, British and Israeli experts,
the 42,000-man army is a modern outfit with\emdash at least for Ethiopia\emdash
modern views. Its educated officers have long been unhappy about the appalling gap
between rich and poor and the inefficiencies and inequities of a feudal
agricultural system. Last year drought, landlord indifference and government
mismanagement combined to produce a famine that left at least 50,000 dead.
Sheltered by oversolicitous courtiers, the Emperor was largely unaware of the
desperate plight of his 26 million subjects until last month. Then thousands of
disgruntled Ethiopians took to the streets of Addis Ababa and rioted against
inflation for four days. Helmeted police finally cleared the streets but left five
demonstrators dead, at least 35 wounded and 1,000 in jail. Afterward the Emperor
made a rare radio and television appearance to announce a rollback of gasoline
prices and a freeze on the cost of basic commodities. The Emperor's action calmed
civilians, but left the armed forces dissatisfied. Although Selassie decreed a 33%
increase in wages for the armed services, the military wanted pay raises of up to
100%, to bring a private's top pay to $75 per month \emdash far higher than the
country's paltry $65 annual per capita income. The stage was thus set for last
week's denouement, when the army's 2nd Division took the matter into its own hands.
At dawn elements of the division quietly moved into the palm-lined streets of
Asmara (pop. 200,000), the country's second largest city. Firing no shots, they
closed the airport, sealed all roads into the city, shut the banks and government
offices, and put Asmara's governor general under house arrest. They carefully
avoided interfering with civilians. Proclaiming their loyalty to the Emperor, the
soldiers demanded pay hikes, better pensions, housing and medical care, and the
dismissal of many of the Cabinet's 19 members. Next day the rebels seized three of
the four senior generals whom Haile Selassie had sent to Asmara to negotiate a
compromise, and threatened to keep them hostage until the government agreed to all
their demands. Meanwhile the mutiny spread until it included nearly all of the
country's 47,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen. Military Power. Panicked by the
revolt, Aklilu Hapte Wold, who had been Prime Minister since 1961, quit, as did his
entire Cabinet. When the Emperor did not immediately accept Aklilu's resignation,
dissident soldiers in full battle gear moved into the capital's streets. In a show
of strength, they took control of Addis Ababa's banks, its airport and key
buildings. At that point, Haile Selassie capitulated. Appearing once more on radio
and TV, he granted the armed forces virtually the entire pay raise they had
demanded, pledged no reprisals and designated a popular career diplomat,
Endalkachew Makonnen, 46, the new Prime Minister. Perhaps more important, he
elevated one popular general to army commander and named another to the key post of
Interior Minister. Venerated by his people and respected by other African leaders,
Haile Selassie is still head of state and a symbol of authority. But for the
moment, at least, power in Ethiopia rests with the military. After Endalkachew took
office, some army officers called for trials of many of the ousted Cabinet
Ministers on the ground that they had "enriched themselves at the people's expense,
maintained fat foreign bank accounts and took land illegally from the peasants."
Thousands of students paraded noisily proclaiming support of the army and demanding
freedom of the press and formation of political parties. As for the new Prime
Minister, he promised "thorough economic and social change"\emdash an indication
that he intends to heed the army's yearning for Ethiopia to escape from the dark
ages.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: The Creeping Coup. Monday, Jul. 15,\par
\par
It was called the creeping coup. Tanks and armoured personnel carriers rolled
through the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa last week, but despite a general
curfew, few of the city's 725,000 residents seemed aware that anything unusual was
happening. No one was bothered except a select group of officials and aristocrats
who were on a 200-name master list of wanted men. Soldiers stood guard at banks and
at the airport\emdash to prevent rich depositors from closing out accounts over
$5,000 or fleeing the country. Radio and television stations were under military
control, but no mention of the quiet takeover was broadcast. Aging Emperor Haile
Selassie, who was crowned the nation's absolute ruler in 1930, made no effort to
oppose the military. The reason behind the creeping coup was distaste at the slow
pace at which the Prune Minister, Endalkachew Makonnen, 47, has been carrying out
reforms. The army has agitated for change since February, when soldiers protesting
poor pay and the country's feudal political system forced the resignation of then
Prime Minister Aklilu Habte Wold, 62. They accepted Endalkachew as his successor
and gave the new government six months to reform a country that for decades has
been systematically milked from the top. Little change has been accomplished since
then. Corruption has continued, including the imposition of exorbitant landing fees
on planes bringing relief supplies for victims of a famine that has already killed
an estimated 100,000 Ethiopians, and threatens 500,000 more (total pop. 26
million). The fees reportedly line government pockets. No strongman has yet
emerged. Negotiations with the government are handled by a ten-man committee that
includes a sergeant and a private, as well as young majors and captains. The
principal activists are apparently army officers assisted by the police, the navy
and the imperial guard. The air force is being kept out of the action only because
airmen are so dissatisfied that they want to overthrow the Emperor now. Toothless
Lion. The slow, low-keyed coup is working; by week's end the leaders were reaching
their goals. They had arrested most of the people on their list, including former
Foreign Minister Menassie Haile, 44, onetime ambassador to Washington, and Ras
Asrata Kassa, 56, who is Haile Selassie's closest adviser. In meetings with
Endalkachew and the Emperor, the committee dictated terms that were hastily
accepted. These include an imprimatur over six key ministries, including Defence
and Interior; amnesty for political prisoners; plus a special session of Parliament
to carry out constitutional reform.Haile Selassie, who celebrates his 82nd birthday
later this month, continued at his normal pace last week in spite of the events
around him. Precisely at nine each morning the Emperor was driven in his red
Mercedes one mile from Jubilee Palace to the Grand Palace to put in what an aide
described as "his customary day of work." Politically, however, the Emperor has
become "as toothless as those old lions that guard his palaces," as one Western
diplomat in Addis Ababa rudely put it.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: The Emperor's New Clothes Monday, Sep. 02, 1974.\par
\par
An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap
its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress. \emdash
W.B. Yeats. The creeping military takeover of Ethiopia last week left Emperor Haile
Selassie virtually stripped of his absolute power. For the first time since
Selassie, 82, came to power 44 years ago, government-controlled newspapers
published letters and articles critical of the monarchy. One particularly vitriolic
magazine accused the Emperor of "defecating on his people." As additional insult,
the military forcibly entered Selassie's palace in Addis Ababa and arrested the
commander of the Imperial Bodyguard. Most important, the Armed Forces Coordinating
Committee, which dictates policy to Prime Minister Michael Imru's five-week-old
civilian government, announced that it was abolishing four offices through which
Selassie had ruled the country since 1930: the Crown Council, which issued the
Emperor's decrees; the Imperial Appointments Office, which implemented his
selection of all important government officials; the Military Advisory Council, by
which he ran the armed forces; and the Court of Justice, which interpreted the law
according to his wish. The military is pressuring Imru's government to adopt a new
constitution that would make official Selassie's loss of power. Drafted by a
reform-minded committee of 30 military-approved civilians, the constitution
provides for a bicameral Parliament that will be vested with most of the Emperor's
powers. The Prime Minister will be chosen by the Parliament, as will judges and
Cabinet members. The Emperor's Imperial Court will be replaced by an independent
judiciary and Supreme Court, who\rquote s Chief Justice will be elected for life by
the Parliament. The Emperor will also lose his position as head of the Coptic
Christian Church, an institution whose political influence has been second only to
the monarchy itself, and there will be a complete separation of church and state.
Just a Figurehead. In its present draft form, the document allows Selassie to
retain the title of Emperor, but he will serve only as "a symbol of Ethiopian unity
and history." Although some of the more radical leaders of the military coup object
to even a figurehead monarch, they have been persuaded, at least temporarily, that
the success of their reform movement depends upon continued support among the
peasant majority (95% of the country's people are illiterate), who still revere the
Emperor. The fate of the new constitution rests largely on how this issue is
resolved. The aristocratic upper house of Parliament seems to favour the draft as
it is now written, but the lower house is agitating for an entirely new document
that would be much tougher on the monarchy, the church and the aristocracy. If
debate drags on in Parliament, it is likely that the Armed Forces Committee will
impose either a "temporary" new constitution or declare martial law. According to
TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs, "It is beyond doubt that the military does not want
to take even temporary official control and certainly does not want to take the
permanent job of running the country. But the coordinating committee has
reluctantly set up a contingency plan to take over if the civilians shilly-shally
over the new constitution." Widespread arrests of Selassie's former aides have left
the Emperor friendless as well as powerless. His official function reduced to
ritual approval of the military's reforms, Ethiopia's "King of Kings" has little to
do but attend daily services of the Coptic Church, visit his aging pride of lions
in cages on the palace grounds, and walk his pet Chihuahua.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: End of Lion of Judah\par
\par
Monday, Sep. 23, 1974\par
\par
Less than a year ago, he was one of the last absolute monarchs on earth. He
appointed governments, made laws, and held life-and-death power over his 26 million
subjects. Since February, the once unchallengeable powers of the Conquering Lion of
the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings, Elect of God, Emperor of Ethiopia have gradually
been taken away by the reformist young military officers who now dominate his
country. Last week even the titles were gone; Haile Selassie, 82, was deposed from
the imperial throne he had occupied for almost a half-century. Glittering Splendor.
Last Thursday morning, the aging Emperor was abruptly summoned to the library of
Jubilee (recently renamed National) Palace in Addis Ababa. There he confronted
representatives of the Armed Forces Coordinating Committee, the collective
leadership of the young officers. He stood erect, his eyes glistening, as a
proclamation was read denouncing him for having abused the power and dignity of his
office and having subverted it for his own gain. The proclamation ended by
declaring that Haile Selassie was "deposed from office." An awkward silence
followed. It was broken only when the ex-Emperor protested, "We have served our
people in war and peace." Minutes later, he was led out of his marble palace to a
tiny blue two-door Volkswagen. The monarch who for years had been chauffeur-driven
in a huge maroon Mercedes-Benz limousine could still not believe what was happening
to him. "What? In there?" he asked incredulously. "Yes, in there," replied an
officer courteously, as he pulled forward the front seat to enable his passenger to
squeeze into the rear. As the auto pulled away, Haile Selassie turned for one last
look at his imperial palace where he had lived so long in glittering splendour and
outside of which lions had once roamed. His view was blocked by hundreds of
students who jeered at him and screamed, "Hang the Emperor!" Within an hour, Radio
Ethiopia announced that the nation was no longer under Haile Selassie's "oppressive
rule." Throughout the day, spokesmen for the coordinating committee explained that
the military had been forced to depose the monarch because he was too old and weak,
both physically and mentally. Further, Haile Selassie was charged with committing
crimes against the Ethiopian people and with refusing to take measures that might
have alleviated the harsh famine in northern Ethiopia, which has so far taken an
estimated 100,000 lives. The proclamation deposing Haile Selassie also suspended
the Ethiopian constitution, banned strikes and antimilitary demonstrations and
dissolved Parliament. The coordinating committee declared that a provisional
military administration would rule until there are free democratic elections (no
date was set) and a new constitution is drawn up to provide for\emdash among other
things \emdash freedom of speech, land reform and the separation of church and
state. Ethiopia's new leaders said that they planned to summon home from Geneva
Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, 57, Haile Selassie's son, and anoint him as Ethiopia's
King (significantly, not Emperor). Wossen, who is partially paralysed from a stroke
that he suffered two years ago, would be nothing more than a figurehead, and the
likelihood is that the country will eventually be proclaimed a republic. Meanwhile,
Lieut. General Aman Michael Andom, 50, a popular officer who has been chief of
staff of the armed forces, has been named temporary head of the government. No
Protest. Immediately after Haile Selassie's arrest, tanks and troops were rushed to
key intersections and public buildings in Addis Ababa. Instead of protesting the
ouster of their monarch, people adorned the tanks with garlands of flowers and
personally thanked the soldiers who had affixed green-and-white Ethiopia Tikdem
(Ethiopia First) stickers to their helmets. Business in the capital continued as
usual. The calm was undoubtedly the result of a carefully orchestrated campaign by
the military to discredit Haile Selassie. It reached a crescendo last Wednesday,
the Ethiopian New Year and the day before the Emperor's ouster. For the first time,
Patriarch Abuna Teweoflos of the Ethiopian Orthodox (Christian) Church did not
mention the Emperor\emdash head of the church to which half the Ethiopians
belong\emdash in his sermon. Instead, the patriarch asked God's blessing for the
officers' movement. Later in the day the coordinating committee broadcast a
scathing attack on Haile Selassie, denouncing him for erecting statues to dead dogs
and feeding live ones while thousands died of famine in Wollo province. That
evening Ethiopian television for the first time showed pictures of famine victims;
the grim reportage was interspersed with shots of the Emperor drinking champagne
and admiring huge cakes he had had flown from Europe for state banquets. At week's
end Haile Selassie remained under house arrest in a military headquarters about 30
miles from Addis Ababa. Unless the deposed Emperor refuses to return the moneys
that the military claims he has stashed away in coded Swiss bank accounts, the
chances are that he will be spared a humiliating show trial for crimes against the
state. He may be allowed to remain in Ethiopia; more probably, he will be packed
off to exile\emdash perhaps to Britain, where he lived almost penuriously from 1936
to 1940 during Italy's occupation of his country. In any case, last week's events
clearly marked the end of the public career of the tiny (5 ft. 4 in.) monarch who
won the world's heart 38 years ago when he stood on the podium of the League of
Nations in Geneva, begging the world's powers to help him oust Mussolini's troops
from Ethiopia. "God and history will remember your judgment!" he warned the
delegates. Ethiopia's rases (feudal lords) in 1916 chose Haile Selassie to be
regent and heir to Empress Zauditu. Fourteen years later, when the Empress died
suddenly, he was crowned the 255th Emperor of the Menelik line, which, legend
claims, sprang more than 2,500 years ago from the celebrated love affair between
King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. For the next 44 years he ruled unchallenged,
except for the Italian occupation and for a brief and abortive palace coup at the
end of 1960. During his reign, the Emperor demanded all the obsequiousness due
absolute power; no one was allowed to approach him without bowing thrice and job
seekers were obliged to prostrate themselves before him. The Emperor was a founding
father of the Organization of African Unity in 1963 and established its
headquarters in his capital. At home, though, he seemed concerned mostly with the
trappings of progress\emdash inspecting new roads and interviewing youths proposed
for scholarships abroad. He did little to initiate changes that might have raised
Ethiopia from its position as one of Africa's poorest, least literate and most
corrupt nations. His failure to act on economic and social problems triggered the
military protests last February and led inexorably to his ouster. Haile Selassie,
for all his failings, acted as a glue binding together Ethiopia's disparate parts.
Without him, the country may be increasingly difficult to govern, especially
if\emdash as some experts fear\emdash there is a struggle between military men who
want to wield total power and those officers (backed by a large number of students
and academics) who want a leftist government dominated by civilians. Such a clash
would clearly delay the reforms needed to bring Ethiopia belatedly into the 20th
century.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: Massacre in the Night\par
Monday, Dec. 09, 1974\par
In the hours around midnight, soldiers kept arriving at the stone-walled Akaki
prison with truckload after truckload of prisoners. There were repeated bursts of
machine-gun fire. Only the next morning did the stunned citizens of Addis Ababa
hear the radio announcement that the ruling Provisional Military Council, after
nine months of relative moderation, had summarily executed 59 members of the regime
of deposed Emperor Haile Selassie. "My God," said a Western diplomat in the
Ethiopian capital, "they've wiped out the old aristocracy in a single stroke." The
death list included two former Premiers, twelve former provincial governors, 18
generals and a grandson of Haile Selassie. Also executed were Prince Asrate Kassa,
56, who once ranked second in power (after the Emperor), and Ras Mesfin Sileshi,
probably the country's second richest man (after the Emperor). Haile Selassie, who
had spent two months this year confined to a mud hut at Fourth Army Division
headquarters in Addis Ababa, remained under house arrest last week at the Grand
Palace. Most important\emdash and most surprising\emdash among the victims was
Lieut. General Aman Michael Andom, 50, the moderate and popular front man for the
Provisional Military Council, who for the preceding ten weeks had been chief of
state, head of government and Defence Minister. Known as the "Desert Lion" because
of his successful campaigns against the Somalis during the border fighting of the
early 1960s, Aman had taken a conciliatory approach to such issues as student
dissent, the fate of the detained ex-Ministers, and above all the problems faced by
his home province of Eritrea, which has been torn by secessionist guerrilla
violence ever since Ethiopia annexed it in 1962. The first hint of trouble had come
only six days earlier, when Ethiopia's press announced that Major Mengistu Haile
Mariam, whose name was previously unknown, had been the "true moving force" behind
the nine-month-old "creeping coup" against Haile Selassie. Practically nothing is
yet known about the 36-year-old Mengistu except that he speaks for the council, a
band of 120 men who range in rank from private to major. Though the council seems
to be divided over exactly how Ethiopia should be ruled, a majority of its members
obviously favour sweeping social reform. As Ethiopian nationalists, they also want
to put down by force the Eritrean guerrilla movement. Aman refused to authorize the
council to execute prisoners as it saw fit, and was reluctant to send troop
reinforcements to Eritrea because he felt the problem of secession should be solved
by granting the province greater autonomy. Accordingly, the council announced that
Aman had been relieved of his duties and was under house arrest. No Surrender. On
the fatal Saturday, Aman remained inside his concrete bungalow, protected by a
loyal detachment of Third Division troops. "I will never give myself up," he had
told a relative a few days earlier. "I will die like a soldier." Some time after
nightfall, Fourth Division troops under Mengistu's command attacked Aman's house
with tanks, armoured cars, bazookas and machine guns, and in the ensuing two-hour
fire fight the general was killed. Foreign observers in Addis Ababa speculated that
certain members of the council may then have panicked and ordered the mass
executions to take place immediately in an effort to diffuse the impact of Aman's
death. To replace General Aman, the council named Brigadier General Teferi Benti,
53, a career soldier who commanded the Eritrea-based Second Army Division. A hard-
liner who can be trusted to follow the orders of Major Mengistu, General Teferi in
his first order sent 7,000 troops to reinforce the Second Division, possibly for a
showdown with the Eritrean secessionists. After the shootings, the council
announced that it would soon convene military courts to try the remaining 150-odd
members of the old order who are still imprisoned. There were reports that Haile
Selassie, now 82, might be on the list. For months the council had been trying to
force the stubborn old Emperor to surrender the hundreds of millions of dollars
that he had hidden in Swiss bank accounts. Late last week it was reported from
Addis Ababa that he had at last agreed to repatriate the funds, perhaps in return
for permission to go into exile for the rest of his days.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: Only the Shadow Rules\par
Monday, Jan. 13, 1975\par
The Coptic Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, which still observes a peculiar 13-month
calendar all of its own, celebrates the feast of Christmas this week. The country
could hardly have less to make merry about. Eleven months after the "creeping coup"
that resulted in Emperor Haile Selassie's overthrow and imprisonment last
September, Ethiopia remains one of the poorest and least literate nations on earth.
The average annual income is a pitiful $80, and fewer than 3% of the 26 million
Ethiopians can read or write. In the beginning, the 120-man Provisional Military
Administrative Council that now rules the country gave promise of democratic
reform. Today, after months of mismanagement and unrest, the council\emdash known
locally as the Dergue (meaning "shadow" in Amharic, Ethiopia's official language)
because most of its members are unknown to the public\emdash is at least as
unpopular as the Emperor was. Rural Regeneration. Almost every group in the feudal
country has some kind of grievance. Workers were promised ten months ago that their
minimum wages of 500 a day would be doubled; they have still not received the
increase. Labour leaders who protested at the delay were quickly slapped into
prison. Peasants, who have traditionally paid up to 75% of their crops as rent to
landlords, were overjoyed at the promise of land reform; now the rent goes to the
state instead of the hated landowner. In fact, under the state socialism proclaimed
by the Dergue, peasants will never have a chance to acquire land of their own. Last
week a decree imposed state control over virtually all the land in Ethiopia, and
nationalization of banks and insurance companies seemed only a prelude to
widespread takeovers of private commerce and industry as well. Even the country's
leftist students and teachers, who initially welcomed the coup, are unhappy. The
universities have been closed, and 60,000 students have been ordered off to the
countryside to teach "reading, writing and rural regeneration" to the peasantry.
"We have exchanged feudal tyranny for socialist tyranny," one student recently
complained to TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs. The Dergue's motto\emdash "Ethiopia
First"\emdash has been transformed into a growing campaign against all things
foreign, and the country's 35,000 foreign residents are noticeably uneasy.
Newspaper editorials regularly attack alien imports and ideologies. Last week the
state-owned television station was ordered to stop showing Bonanza reruns in favour
of "enlightening documentaries" made in China. Foreign women are reluctant to go
shopping alone for fear of being jostled, sworn at or spat upon. Beggars have grown
surlier and muggings have increased, and certain areas of Addis Ababa have
informally been placed off limits to non-Ethiopians. The Dergue rules the country
from the Grand Palace atop one of Addis Ababa's seven hills. The gates and iron
fence of the palace are still decorated with imperial designs, but just inside,
there are tanks and Jeep-mounted machine guns. "The last time I was inside those
gates, little more than a year ago," reports Correspondent Griggs, "pith-helmeted,
monkey skin-clad members of the Imperial Guard handled security, and lackeys in
frock coats walked backward, bowing all the while, in the presence of dignitaries.
Today those dignitaries are imprisoned in the windowless basement of the Grand
Banquet Hall, where Haile Selassie once threw sumptuous banquets for 3,000 people
at a time." Haile Selassie, 82, is confined to an apartment in one of the palace
buildings. He has agreed in principle to put his vast overseas holdings at the
disposal of the people but so far has failed to divulge the amount of his wealth or
the Swiss banks that are guarding it. Stormy Meetings. Brigadier General Teferi
Benti is Ethiopia's head of state, but the country's real strongman is Major
Mengistu Haile Mariam, 32, who has emerged as the most powerful member of the
Dergue. A half-caste member of the Galla tribe, Mengistu, who is said to be an
ardent socialist, is identified with a pro-Chinese group within the committee.
Foreign observers attach some significance to the fact that when the new Chinese
ambassador arrived in Addis Ababa last month, virtually the entire committee turned
out to greet him. Nonetheless, the Dergue is said to be split into a number of
ideological, religious and tribal factions, and meetings of the committee are often
stormy. Most of the members supported Mengistu's decision to execute 59 leading
officials of the old regime in late November (TIME, Dec. 9). But many were shocked
by Mengistu's action the same night in attacking the home of the Dergue's popular
frontman, Lieut. General Aman Michael Andom, provoking a skirmish in which Aman was
killed. The Dergue's most pressing problem at the moment is what to do about the
predominantly Moslem northern province of Eritrea, which has been bedevilled by
sporadic guerrilla activity ever since it was incorporated into Ethiopia in 1962.
The fight for independence is led by the Arab-backed Eritrean Liberation Front,
which has 6,000 well-armed fighters in the field. While he was head of state,
General Aman, who was himself an Eritrean, tried to solve the problem by granting
greater autonomy to the province. Mengistu has bolstered Ethiopian forces in
Eritrea and is prepared for a military showdown. His tougher stand triggered a wave
of terrorist incidents in both Addis Ababa and the Eritrean capital of Asmara. The
Dergue's dilemma is that it cannot defeat the secessionists militarily,
particularly now that they are reinforced with oil money from Libya, Algeria and
Kuwait. On the other hand, having so recently deposed Haile Selassie for
mismanaging Ethiopia, the Dergue can hardly allow itself to preside over the
empire's dissolution. Last week the Dergue announced for the first time that it was
willing to negotiate with the secessionists and would accept the offer of Sudanese
President Jaafar Numeiry to mediate the twelve-year-old dispute.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: Appointment in Asmara\par
Monday, Feb. 17, 1975\par
\par
For decades, the "empire" of Ethiopia has really been nothing more than a
collection of disparate feuding fiefdoms held together by the military power of
deposed Emperor Haile Selassie and the aristocratic Amhara tribe of the Central
Highlands. Last week, as fighting flared across the northern province of Eritrea,
the old empire appeared to be on the verge of civil war and perhaps of actual
disintegration. The centre of the battle was the palm-fringed city of Asmara,
Eritrea's capital, which was rocked by mortar, bazooka and howitzer fire as rebel
commandos attacked army and navy installations. One exchange caught a group of 30
Americans, including the local consul, in a social club; they gamely sang John
Brown's Body and other traditional songs as tracer bullets arced overhead. A U.S.
communications base was hit in another assault. Throughout the week, Ethiopian
planes bombed and strafed guerrilla concentrations and mud-hut villages suspected
of supporting the rebels. By week's end, according to some accounts, as many as
2,000 people had been killed. The troubles in Eritrea date back to 1962, when Haile
Selassie annexed the former Italian colony. Over the years, the rebel forces of the
predominantly Moslem Eritrean Liberation Front gained control of the countryside,
but have never made much headway against Ethiopian forces amassed at Asmara. Even
after Haile Selassie was overthrown last September, the position of the guerrillas
did not improve appreciably\emdash partly because the front man for the new
military government, General Aman Michael Andom, was himself an Eritrean and tried
to solve the problem by granting greater autonomy to the province. Ever since Andom
was killed last November by some of his own subordinates, however, the two sides in
the Eritrean dispute have been headed for war. The showdown came two weeks ago. The
Ethiopian government, which had been toying with the idea of negotiating with the
rebels, bluntly announced that it had decided instead to crush them by force. The
same day, Eritrean guerrillas \emdash armed to the hilt by Libya, Algeria and other
militant Arab powers\emdash ambushed and burned seven fuel trucks 30 miles from the
Eritrean port of Assab. Two days later, they destroyed an Ethiopian army column,
and then launched the heaviest assault on the provincial capital in the 13-year
history of the revolt. The unrest spread beyond Eritrea to Tigre province, just
south of Asmara, where guerrillas blew up a bridge and halted a convoy of 50 army
tanks bound for the relief of the city. In Addis Ababa, a few skirmishes took place
between nervous soldiers and civilians. The government was said to be setting up
three concentration camps in the capital in possible preparation for the internment
of tens of thousands of Eritreans who live there. In case serious fighting breaks
out in the city, the junta was reported to be moving Haile Selassie from the
National Palace to a secret hideout in the country. The military rulers do not want
the former Emperor to be killed, because they know that they would be blamed for
his death, and they are still acutely sensitive to the reaction of other African
leaders to his fate. In its official statements, the Addis Ababa junta discounted
the seriousness of the Eritrean revolt. But in Beirut, an Eritrean guerrilla leader
vowed that if the Ethiopian government should try to step up the fighting, "the
whole northeast of Africa shall burn."Civil War. Grandiose as that boast may be,
the rebel leader had a point. As the fighting in Asmara indicated, the guerrilla
force may well be too large and too well armed to be defeated militarily. Moreover,
Ethiopia today is ruled by an unstable, volatile military government riven with
quarrelling factions. If full-scale fighting continues in the north, the junta
could easily find itself in the middle of a multisided civil war in which the chief
casualty might turn out to be the ancient empire itself\emdash and its military
rulers.\par
\par
ETHIOPIA: The Lion Is Freed\par
Monday, Sep. 08, 1975\par
Conquering Lion of Judah, King of Kings, Elect of God: in the end, the royal
epithets had a hollow, mocking ring. Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, had
wielded virtually absolute power for almost six decades\emdash longer than any
other contemporary head of state. But when he was finally deposed in September 1974
by the military leaders of the "creeping coup," which had been enveloping Ethiopia
for seven months, the tiny (5 ft. 4 in.) ruler was whisked away from his palace in
a Volkswagen and imprisoned in a three-room mud hut. Only later was he moved to
more comfortable quarters at the Grand Palace. It was there that the aged Lion,
still caged, died in his sleep last week, apparently from the after effects of
recent prostate surgery. He was 83. Certainly he had clung to power too long for
his own good. Haile Selassie was a prisoner of his country's feudal system and
backwardness long before he became a prisoner of his own army. His captors charged
him with massive corruption and put out rumours\emdash never confirmed\emdash of a
fortune totalling several billion dollars salted away in foreign banks. He was also
accused of deliberately concealing\emdash for reasons of misplaced national pride
or merely personal pride\emdash the extent of the drought and famine that killed
100,000 Ethiopians in 1973-74. Whatever the validity of the charges, they obscure
the reputation of the man who in an earlier era tried desperately to bring Ethiopia
into the modern world and who, toward the end of his life, became the grand old man
of independent Africa. He was the primary force behind the founding of the
Organization for African Unity in 1963, and his capital city, Addis Ababa, became
its headquarters. Throughout the Western world, he will perhaps be best remembered
for his appearance before the League of Nations in Geneva on June 30, 1936. His
country had been overrun by the Black shirt battalions of Benito Mussolini, whose
son-in-law, Count Ciano, ecstatically described the beauty of "bombs opening like
red blossoms" upon the Ethiopian highlands. Hundreds of thousands of his barefoot
soldiers had been killed by Fascist bombs and mustard gas. A small, bearded, hawk-
faced figure with blazing black eyes, he stood at the lectern and declared: "I am
here today to claim the justice that is due to my people ... God and history will
remember your judgment." Then, as he stepped down, he murmured the words that were
to serve as an epitaph not only for the impotent League but for the whole pre-war
world. "It is us today. It will be you tomorrow." Some delegates were sympathetic,
some embarrassed, but the League took no action against Mussolini. Haile Selassie
returned to England, where he lived in a modest manor house outside Bath. Almost
five years later, after the British army had driven the Italians from Addis Ababa,
he returned to his mountain capital in triumph. His nation had lost several hundred
thousand men in battle and in mass executions, but the Emperor issued orders to his
countrymen that the Italian civilians who chose to stay in Ethiopia should be
allowed to do so undisturbed. Haile Selassie remained in power so long that few of
his countrymen can remember the days when he was known as Ras (Duke) Tafari
Makonnen. The son of the governor of Harar province in eastern Ethiopia, Tafari was
distantly related to Emperor Menelik II and was educated at the court in Addis
Ababa. After Menelik's death in 1913, the nobility decided that the Emperor's
grandson, Lij (Count) Hasu, was too dissolute to take over the throne. They
installed Hasu's mother Zauditu, as Empress, and chose Tafari to be her regent and
heir to the throne. In no time, Tafari brought the Empress under his control and
imprisoned Lij Hasu, who was kept in chains for the next 19 years. In 1928, Tafari
forced the Empress to crown him King, and two years later, when she died
mysteriously, he became Emperor. It was then that he took the name Haile Selassie,
which in Amharic means Power of the Holy Trinity. According to Ethiopian legend, he
was 225th in a line of Emperors that extends back almost 3,000 years to Menelik I,
son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. In his early years as Emperor, Haile
Selassie launched a drive to build schools, highways and railways. He granted a new
constitution in 1955 that promised Ethiopians equal rights under the law. In the
1960s, he turned Addis Ababa into a modern city. Yet Ethiopia remained a
desperately poor land, whose 26 million people still have one of the world's lowest
per capita incomes: $80. As discord grew in the land, the aging Emperor seemed
incapable of dealing with it or even understanding it. In early 1974, when an army
mutiny for higher pay led to a wave of disorders in the capital, the Emperor handed
out wads of bank notes to beggars, seemingly unaware that such imperial gestures
were no longer effective. For a while after his overthrow, there were rumours that
the new, increasingly leftist military government intended to execute the old
Emperor, or allow him to go into exile in exchange for the hoard he was said to
have in numerous Swiss banks. Instead, he was permitted to spend his last days in
Addis Ababa under an easy house arrest. Servants still addressed him as "Your
Imperial Majesty." As recently as last December, he remarked to two foreign
visitors, "I can convoke my ministers, generals and relatives whenever I like."
After all those decades of absolute power, the old man apparently could not grasp
that he had been rendered absolutely powerless.................hope that brings
some info into your lives.......ALL PRAISES UNTO THE MOST HIGH JAH RASTAFARI\par
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