War Speach: Yet, this is the ultimatum presented to us: secure the conditions whereby men will entrust their security to a larger entity, or risk annihilation; persuade men that their salvation rests in the subordination of national and local interests to the interests of humanity, or endanger man's future. These are the objectives, yesterday unobtainable, today essential, which we must labor to achieve. Until this is accomplished, mankind's future remains hazardous and permanent peace a matter for speculation. There is no single magic formula, no one simple step, no words, whether written into the Organization's Charter or into a treaty between states, which can automatically guarantee to us what we seek. Peace is a day-to-day problem, the product of a multitude of events and judgments. Peace is not an "is", it is a "becoming." We cannot escape the dreadful possibility of catastrophe by miscalculation. But we can reach the right decisions on the myriad subordinate problems which each new day poses, and we can thereby make our contribution and perhaps the most that can be reasonably expected of us in 1963 to the preservation of peace. It is here that the United Nations has served us - not perfectly, but well. And in enhancing the possibilities that the Organization may serve us better, we serve and bring closer our most cherished goals. I would mention briefly today two particular issues which are of deep concern to all men: disarmament and the establishment of true equality among men. Disarmament has become the urgent imperative of our time. I do not say this because I equate the absence of arms to peace, or because I believe that bringing an end to the nuclear arms race automatically guarantees the peace, or because the elimination of nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the world will bring in its wake that change in attitude requisite to the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. Disarmament is vital today, quite simply, because of the immense destructive capacity of which men dispose. Ethiopia supports the atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty as a step towards this goal, even though only a partial step. Nations can still perfect weapons of mass destruction by underground testing. There is no guarantee against the sudden, unannounced resumption of testing in the atmosphere. The real significance of the treaty is that it admits of a tacit stalemate between the nations which negotiated it, a stalemate which recognizes the blunt, unavoidable fact that none would emerge from the total destruction which would be the lot of all in a nuclear war, a stalemate which affords us and the United Nations a breathing space in which to act. Here is our opportunity and our challenge. If the nuclear powers are prepared to declare a truce, let us seize the moment to strengthen the institutions and procedures which will serve as the means for the pacific settlement of disputes among men. Conflicts between nations will continue to arise. The real issue is whether they are to be resolved by force, or by resort to peaceful methods and procedures, administered by impartial institutions. This very Organization itself is the greatest such institution, and it is in a more powerful United Nations that we seek, and it is here that we shall find, the assurance of a peaceful future. Were a real and effective disarmament achieved and the funds now spent in the arms race devoted to the amelioration of man's state; were we to concentrate only on the peaceful uses of nuclear knowledge, how vastly and in how short a time might we change the conditions of mankind. This should be our goal. When we talk of the equality of man, we find, also, a challenge and an opportunity; a challenge to breathe new life into the ideals enshrined in the Charter, an opportunity to bring men closer to freedom and true equality. and thus, closer to a love of peace. The goal of the equality of man which we seek is the antithesis of the exploitation of one people by another with which the pages of history and in particular those written of the African and Asian continents, speak at such length. Exploitation, thus viewed, has many faces. But whatever guise it assumes, this evil is to be shunned where it does not exist and crushed where it does. It is the sacred duty of this Organization to ensure that the dream of equality is finally realized for all men to whom it is still denied, to guarantee that exploitation is not reincarnated in other forms in places whence it has already been banished. As a free Africa has emerged during the past decade, a fresh attack has been launched against exploitation, wherever it still exists. And in that interaction so common to history, this in turn, has stimulated and encouraged the remaining dependent peoples to renewed efforts to throw off the yoke which has oppressed them and its claim as their birthright the twin ideals of liberty and equality. This very struggle is a struggle to establish peace, and until victory is assured, that brotherhood and understanding which nourish and give life to peace can be but partial and incomplete. In the United States of America, the administration of President Kennedy is leading a vigorous attack to eradicate the remaining vestige of racial discrimination from this country. We know that this conflict will be won and that right will triumph. In this time of trial, these efforts should be encouraged and assisted, and we should lend our sympathy and support to the American Government today. Last May, in Addis Ababa, I convened a meeting of Heads of African States and Governments. In three days, the thirty-two nations represented at that Conference demonstrated to the world that when the will and the determination exist, nations and peoples of diverse backgrounds can and will work together. in unity, to the achievement of common goals and the assurance of that equality and brotherhood which we desire. On the question of racial discrimination, the Addis Ababa Conference taught, to those who will learn, this further lesson: That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: That until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained; And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique and in South Africa in subhuman bondage have been toppled and destroyed; Until bigotry and prejudice and malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and good-will; Until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven; Until that day, the African continent will not know peace. We Africans will fight, if necessary, and we know that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil. The United Nations has done much, both directly and indirectly to speed the disappearance of discrimination and oppression from the earth. Without the opportunity to focus world opinion on Africa and Asia which this Organization provides, the goal, for many, might still lie ahead, and the struggle would have taken far longer. For this, we are truly grateful. But more can be done. The basis of racial discrimination and colonialism has been economic, and it is with economic weapons that these evils have been and can be overcome. In pursuance of resolutions adopted at the Addis Ababa Summit Conference, African States have undertaken certain measures in the economic field which, if adopted by all member states of the United Nations, would soon reduce intransigence to reason. I ask, today, for adherence to these measures by every nation represented here which is truly devoted to the principles enunciated in the Charter. I do not believe that Portugal and South Africa are prepared to commit economic or physical suicide if honorable and reasonable alternatives exist. I believe that such alternatives can be found. But I also know that unless peaceful solutions are devised, counsels of moderation and temperance will avail for naught; and another blow will have been dealt to this Organization which will hamper and weaken still further its usefulness in the struggle to ensure the victory of peace and liberty over the forces of strife and oppression. Here, then, is the opportunity presented to us. We must act while we can, while the occasion exists to exert those legitimate pressures available to us, lest time run out and resort be had to less happy means. Does this Organization today possess the authority and the will to act? And if it does not, are we prepared to clothe it with the power to create and enforce the rule of law? Or is the Charter a mere collection of words, without content and substance, because the essential spirit is lacking? The time in which to ponder these questions is all too short. The pages of history are full of instances in which the unwanted and the shunned nonetheless occurred because men waited to act until too late. We can brook no such delay. If we are to survive, this Organization must survive. To survive, it must be strengthened. Its executive must be vested with great authority. The means for the enforcement of its decisions must be fortified, and, if they do not exist, they must be devised. Procedures must be established to protect the small and the weak when threatened by the strong and the mighty. All nations which fulfill the conditions of membership must be admitted and allowed to sit in this assemblage. Equality of representation must be assured in each of its organs. The possibilities which exist in the United Nations to provide the medium whereby the hungry may be fed, the naked clothed, the ignorant instructed, must be seized on and exploited for the flower of peace is not sustained by poverty and want. To achieve this requires courage and confidence. The courage, I believe, we possess. The confidence must be created, and to create confidence we must act courageously. The great nations of the world would do well to remember that in the modern age even their own fates are not wholly in their hands. Peace demands the united efforts of us all. Who can foresee what spark might ignite the fuse? It is not only the small and the weak who must scrupulously observe their obligations to the United Nations and to each other. Unless the smaller nations are accorded their proper voice in the settlement of the world's problems, unless the equality which Africa and Asia have struggled to attain is reflected in expanded membership in the institutions which make up the United Nations, confidence will come just that much harder. Unless the rights of the least of men are as assiduously protected as those of the greatest, the seeds of confidence will fall on barren soil. The stake of each one of us is identical - life or death. We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fall-out should catastrophe overtake us. When I spoke at Geneva in 1936, there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the League of Nations. I am neither the first, nor will I be the last head of state to address the United Nations, but only I have addressed both the League and this Organization in this capacity. The problems which confront us today are, equally, unprecedented. They have no counterparts in human experience. Men search the pages of history for solutions, for precedents, but there are none. This, then, is the ultimate challenge. Where are we to look for our survival, for the answers to the questions which have never before been posed? We must look, first, to Almighty God, Who has raised man above the animals and endowed him with intelligence and reason. We must put our faith in Him, that He will not desert us or permit us to destroy humanity which He created in His image. And we must look into ourselves, into the depth of our souls. We must become something we have never been and for which our education and experience and environment have ill-prepared us. We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community." Oct. 6, 1963
Summary
APPEAL TO THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
I, Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, am here today to claim that justice which is due to my people, and the assistance promised to it eight months ago, when fifty nations asserted that aggression had been committed in violation of international treaties. There is no precedent for a Head of State himself speaking in this assembly. But there is also no precedent for a people being victim of such injustice and being at present threatened by abandonment to its aggressor. Also, there has never before been an example of any Government proceeding to the systematic extermination of a nation by barbarous means, in violation of the most solemn promises made by the nations of the earth that there should not be used against innocent human beings the terrible poison of harmful gases. It is to defend a people struggling for its age-old independence that the head of the Ethiopian Empire has come to Geneva to fulfil this supreme duty, after having himself fought at the head of his armies. I pray to Almighty God that He may spare nations the terrible sufferings that have just been inflicted on my people, and of which the chiefs who accompany me here have been the horrified witnesses. It is my duty to inform the Governments assembled in Geneva, responsible as they are for the lives of millions of men, women and children, of the deadly peril which threatens them, by describing to them the fate which has been suffered by Ethiopia. It is not only upon warriors that the Italian Government has made war. It has above all attacked populations far removed from hostilities, in order to terrorize and exterminate them. At the beginning, towards the end of 1935, Italian aircraft hurled upon my armies bombs of tear-gas. Their effects were but slight. The soldiers learned to scatter, waiting until the wind had rapidly dispersed the poisonous gases. The Italian aircraft then resorted to mustard gas. Barrels of liquid were hurled upon armed groups. But this means also was not effective; the liquid affected only a few soldiers, and barrels upon the ground were themselves a warning to troops and to the population of the danger. It was at the time when the operations for the encircling of Makalle were taking place that the Italian command, fearing a rout, followed the procedure which it is now my duty to denounce to the world. Special sprayers were installed on board aircraft so that they could vaporize, over vast areas of territory, a fine, death-dealing rain. Groups of nine, fifteen, eighteen aircraft followed one another so that the fog issuing from them formed a continuous sheet. It was thus that, as from the end of January, 1936, soldiers, women, children, cattle, rivers, lakes and pastures were drenched continually with this deadly rain. In order to kill off systematically all living creatures, in order to more surely to poison waters and pastures, the Italian command made its aircraft pass over and over again. That was its chief method of warfare. Ravage and Terror The very refinement of barbarism consisted in carrying ravage and terror into the most densely populated parts of the territory, the points farthest removed from the scene of hostilities. The object was to scatter fear and death over a great part of the Ethiopian territory. These fearful tactics succeeded. Men and animals succumbed. The deadly rain that fell from the aircraft made all those whom it touched fly shrieking with pain. All those who drank the poisoned water or ate the infected food also succumbed in dreadful suffering. In tens of thousands, the victims of the Italian mustard gas fell. It is in order to denounce to the civilized world the tortures inflicted upon the Ethiopian people that I resolved to come to Geneva. None other than myself and my brave companions in arms could bring the League of Nations the undeniable proof. The appeals of my delegates addressed to the League of Nations had remained without any answer; my delegates had not been witnesses. That is why I decided to come myself to bear witness against the crime perpetrated against my people and give Europe a warning of the doom that awaits it, if it should bow before the accomplished fact. Is it necessary to remind the Assembly of the various stages of the Ethiopian drama? For 20 years past, either as Heir Apparent, Regent of the Empire, or as Emperor, I have never ceased to use all my efforts to bring my country the benefits of civilization, and in particular to establish relations of good neighbourliness with adjacent powers. In particular I succeeded in concluding with Italy the Treaty of Friendship of 1928, which absolutely prohibited the resort, under any pretext whatsoever, to force of arms, substituting for force and pressure the conciliation and arbitration on which civilized nations have based international order. Country More United In its report of October 5th 193S, the Committee of Thirteen recognized my effort and the results that I had achieved. The Governments thought that the entry of Ethiopia into the League, whilst giving that country a new guarantee for the maintenance of her territorial integrity and independence, would help her to reach a higher level of civilization. It does not seem that in Ethiopia today there is more disorder and insecurity than in 1923. On the contrary, the country is more united and the central power is better obeyed. I should have procured still greater results for my people if obstacles of every kind had not been put in the way by the Italian Government, the Government which stirred up revolt and armed the rebels. Indeed the Rome Government, as it has today openly proclaimed, has never ceased to prepare for the conquest of Ethiopia. The Treaties of Friendship it signed with me were not sincere; their only object was to hide its real intention from me. The Italian Goverment asserts that for 14 years it has been preparing for its present conquest. It therefore recognizes today that when it supported the admission of Ethiopia to the League of Nations in 1923, when it concluded the Treaty of Friendship in 1928, when it signed the Pact of Paris outlawing war, it was deceiving the whole world. The Ethiopian Government was, in these solemn treaties, given additional guarantees of security which would enable it to achieve further progress along the specific path of reform on which it had set its feet, and to which it was devoting all its strength and all its heart. Wal-Wal Pretext The Wal-Wal incident, in December, 1934, came as a thunderbolt to me. The Italian provocation was obvious and I did not hesitate to appeal to the League of Nations. I invoked the provisions of the treaty of 1928, the principles of the Covenant; I urged the procedure of conciliation and arbitration. Unhappily for Ethiopia this was the time when a certain Government considered that the European situation made it imperative at all costs to obtain the friendship of Italy. The price paid was the abandonment of Ethiopian independence to the greed of the Italian Government. This secret agreement, contrary to the obligations of the Covenant, has exerted a great influence over the course of events. Ethiopia and the whole world have suffered and are still suffering today its disastrous consequences. This first violation of the Covenant was followed by many others. Feeling itself encouraged in its policy against Ethiopia, the Rome Government feverishly made war preparations, thinking that the concerted pressure which was beginning to be exerted on the Ethiopian Government, might perhaps not overcome the resistance of my people to Italian domination. The time had to come, thus all sorts of difficulties were placed in the way with a view to breaking up the procedure; of conciliation and arbitration. All kinds of obstacles were placed in the way of that procedure. Governments tried to prevent the Ethiopian Government from finding arbitrators amongst their nationals: when once the arbitral tribunal a was set up pressure was exercised so that an award favourable to Italy should be given. All this was in vain: the arbitrators, two of whom were Italian officials, were forced to recognize unanimously that in the Wal-Wal incident, as in the subsequent incidents, no international responsibility was to be attributed to Ethiopia. Peace Efforts Following on this award. the Ethiopian Government sincerely thought that an era of friendly relations might be opened with Italy. I loyally offered my hand to the Roman Government. The Assembly was informed by the report of the Committee of Thirteen, dated October 5th, 1935, of the details of the events which occurred after the month of December, 1934, and up to October 3rd, 1935. It will be sufficient if I quote a few of the conclusions of that report Nos. 24, 25 and 26 "The Italian memorandum (containing the complaints made by Italy) was laid on the Council table on September 4th, 1935, whereas Ethiopia's first appeal to the Council had been made on December 14th, 1934. In the interval between these two dates, the Italian Government opposed the consideration of the question by the Council on the ground that the only appropriate procedure was that provided for in the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928. Throughout the whole of that period, moreover, the despatch of Italian troops to East Africa was proceeding. These shipments of troops were represented to the Council by the Italian Government as necessary for the defense of its colonies menaced by Ethiopia's preparations. Ethiopia, on the contrary, drew attention to the official pronouncements made in Italy which, in its opinion, left no doubt "as to the hostile intentions of the Italian Government." From the outset of the dispute, the Ethiopian Government has sought a settlement by peaceful means. It has appealed to the procedures of the Covenant. The Italian Government desiring to keep strictly to the procedures of the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928, the Ethiopian Government assented. It invariably stated that it would faithfully carry out the arbitral award even if the decision went against it. It agreed that the question of the ownership of Wal-Wal should not be dealt with by the arbitrators, because the Italian Government would not agree to such a course. It asked the Council to despatch neutral observers and offered to lend itself to any enquiries upon which the Council might decide. Once the Wal-Wal dispute had been settled by arbiration, however, the Italian Govemmcnt submitted its detailed memorandum to the Council in support of its claim to liberty of action. It asserted that a case like that of Ethiopia cannot be settled by the means provided by the Covenant. It stated that, "since this question affects vital interest and is of primary importance to Italian security and civilization" it "would be failing in its most elementary duty, did it not cease once and for all to place any confidence in Ethiopia, reserving full liberty to adopt any measures that may become necessary to ensure the safety of its colonies and to safeguard its own interests." Covenant Violated Those are the terms of the report of the Committee of Thirteen, The Council and the Assembly unanimously adopted the conclusion that the Italian Government had violated the Covenant and was in a state of aggression. I did not hesitate to declare that I did not wish for war, that it was imposed upon me, and I should struggle solely for the independence and integrity of my people, and that in that struggle I was the defender of the cause of all small States exposed to the greed of a powerful neighbour. In October, 1935. the 52 nations who are listening to me today gave me an assurance that the aggressor would not triumph, that the resources of the Covenant would be employed in order to ensure the reign of right and the failure of violence. I ask the fifty-two nations not to forget today the policy upon which they embarked eight months ago, and on faith of which I directed the resistance of my people against the aggressor whom they had denounced to the world. Despite the inferiority of my weapons, the complete lack of aircraft, artillery, munitions, hospital services, my confidence in the League was absolute. I thought it to be impossible that fifty-two nations, including the most powerful in the world, should be successfully opposed by a single aggressor. Counting on the faith due to treaties, I had made no preparation for war, and that is the case with certain small countries in Europe. When the danger became more urgent, being aware of my responsibilities towards my people, during the first six months of 1935 I tried to acquire armaments. Many Governments proclaimed an embargo to prevent my doing so, whereas the Italian Government through the Suez Canal, was given all facilities for transporting without cessation and without protest, troops, arms, and munitions. Forced to Mobilize On October 3rd, 1935, the Italian troops invaded my territory. A few hours later only I decreed general mobilization. In my desire to maintain peace I had, following the example of a great country in Europe on the eve of the Great War, caused my troops to withdraw thirty kilometres so as to remove any pretext of provocation. War then took place in the atrocious conditions which I have laid before the Assembly. In that unequal struggle between a Government commanding more than forty-two million inhabitants, having at its disposal financial, industrial and technical means which enabled it to create unlimited quantities of the most death-dealing weapons, and, on the other hand, a small people of twelve million inhabitants, without arms, without resources having on its side only the justice of its own cause and the promise of the League of Nations. What real assistance was given to Ethiopia by the fifty two nations who had declared the Rome Government guilty of a breach of the Covenant and had undertaken to prevent the triumph of the aggressor? Has each of the States Members, as it was its duty to do in virtue of its signature appended to Article 15 of the Covenant, considered the aggressor as having committed an act of war personally directed against itself? I had placed all my hopes in the execution of these undertakings. My confidence had been confirmed by the repeated declarations made in the Council to the effect that aggression must not be rewarded, and that force would end by being compelled to bow before right. In December, 1935, the Council made it quite clear that its feelings were in harmony with those of hundreds of millions of people who, in all parts of the world, had protested against the proposal to dismember Ethiopia. It was constantly repeated that there was not merely a conflict between the Italian Government and the League of Nadons, and that is why I personally refused all proposals to my personal advantage made to me by the Italian Government, if only I would betray my people and the Covenant of the League of Nations. I was defending the cause of all small peoples who are threatened with aggression. What of Promises? What have become of the promises made to me as long ago as October, 1935? I noted with grief, but without surprise that three Powers considered their undertakings under the Covenant as absolutely of no value. Their connections with Italy impelled them to refuse to take any measures whatsoever in order to stop Italian aggression. On the contrary, it was a profound disappointment to me to learn the attitude of a certain Government which, whilst ever protesting its scrupulous attachment to the Covenant, has tirelessly used all its efforts to prevent its observance. As soon as any measure which was likely to be rapidly effective was proposed, various pretexts were devised in order to postpone even consideration of the measure. Did the secret agreements of January, 1935, provide for this tireless obstruction? The Ethiopian Government never expected other Governments to shed their soldiers' blood to defend the Covenant when their own immediately personal interests were not at stake. Ethiopian warriors asked only for means to defend themselves. On many occasions I have asked for financial assistance for the purchase of arms That assistance has been constantly refused me. What, then, in practice, is the meaning of Article 16 of the Covenant and of collective security? The Ethiopian Government's use of the railway from Djibouti to Addis Ababa was in practice a hazardous regards transport of arms intended for the Ethiopian forces. At the present moment this is the chief, if not the only means of supply of the Italian armies of occupation. The rules of neutrality should have prohibited transports intended for Italian forces, but there is not even neutrality since Article 16 lays upon every State Member of the League the duty not to remain a neutral but to come to the aid not of the aggressor but of the victim of aggression. Has the Covenant been respected? Is it today being respected? Finally a statement has just been made in their Parliaments by the Governments of certain Powers, amongst them the most influential members of the League of Nations, that since the aggressor has succeeded in occupying a large part of Ethiopian territory they propose not to continue the application of any economic and financial measures that may have been decided upon against the Italian Government. These are the circumstances in which at the request of the Argentine Government, the Assembly of the League of Nations meets to consider the situation created by Italian aggression. I assert that the problem submitted to the Assembly today is a much wider one. It is not merely a question of the settlement of Italian aggression. League Threatened It is collective security: it is the very existence of the League of Nations. It is the confidence that each State is to place in international treaties. It is the value of promises made to small States that their integrity and their independence shall be respected and ensured. It is the principle of the equality of States on the one hand, or otherwise the obligation laid upon smail Powers to accept the bonds of vassalship. In a word, it is international morality that is at stake. Have the signatures appended to a Treaty value only in so far as the signatory Powers have a personal, direct and immediate interest involved? No subtlety can change the problem or shift the grounds of the discussion. It is in all sincerity that I submit these considerations to the Assembly. At a time when my people are threatened with extermination, when the support of the League may ward off the final blow, may I be allowed to speak with complete frankness, without reticence, in all directness such as is demanded by the rule of equality as between all States Members of the League? Apart from the Kingdom of the Lord there is not on this earth any nation that is superior to any other. Should it happen that a strong Government finds it may with impunity destroy a weak people, then the hour strikes for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give its judgment in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment. Assistance Refused I have heard it asserted that the inadequate sanctions already applied have not achieved their object. At no time, and under no circumstances could sanctions that were intentionally inadequate, intentionally badly applied, stop an aggressor. This is not a case of the impossibility of stopping an aggressor but of the refusal to stop an aggressor. When Ethiopia requested and requests that she should be given financial assistance, was that a measure which it was impossible to apply whereas financial assistance of the League has been granted, even in times of peace, to two countries and exactly to two countries who have refused to apply sanctions against the aggressor? Faced by numerous violations by the Italian Government of all international treaties that prohibit resort to arms, and the use of barbarous methods of warfare, it is my painful duty to note that the initiative has today been taken with a view to raising sanctions. Does this initiative not mean in practice the abandonment of Ethiopia to the aggressor? On the very eve of the day when I was about to attempt a supreme effort in the defense of my people before this Assembly does not this initiative deprive Ethiopia of one of her last chances to succeed in obtaining the support and guarantee of States Members? Is that the guidance the League of Nations and each of the States Members are entitled to expect from the great Powers when they assert their right and their duty to guide the action of the League? Placed by the aggressor face to face with the accomplished fact, are States going to set up the terrible precendent of bowing before force? Your Assembly will doubtless have laid before it proposals for the reform of the Covenant and for rendering more effective the guarantee of collective security. Is it the Covenant that needs reform? What undertakings can have any value if the will to keep them is lacking? It is international morality which is at stake and not the Articles of the Covenant. On behalf of the Ethiopian people, a member of the League of Nations, I request the Assembly to take all measures proper to ensure respect for the Covenant. I renew my protest against the violations of treaties of which the Ethiopian people has been the victim. I declare in the face of the whole world that the Emperor, the Government and the people of Ethiopia will not bow before force; that they maintain their claims that they will use all means in their power to ensure the triumph of right and the respect of the Covenant. I ask the fifty-two nations, who have given the Ethiopian people a promise to help them in their resistance to the aggressor, what are they willing to do for Ethiopia? And the great Powers who have promised the guarantee of collective security to small States on whom weighs the threat that they may one day suffer the fate of Ethiopia, I ask what measures do you intend to take? Representatives of the World I have come to Geneva to discharge in your midst the most painful of the duties of the head of a State. What reply shall I have to take back to my people? June, 1936.
I defected in Italy and remember the stellar from Axum. I
knew nothing about Africa, I didn't know my future. I am still
sure that I am a master of my own fate. with a few exemptions,
the accidents. I don't remember that my gender, size,
environment, do I have to continue? -- all of it is not of my
making. I go through myriads of events reacting to them -- and I
think that I am in charge!
Destiny, the forgotten word. That how he understood birth.
We, modern minds, like the accidental. He was born into a
conflict, a war. He was born to answer, not to question. He was
the answer to their confusions.
The time before your birth is crucial. Your path to a being
is not in your hands. "To be or not to be" is a modern view of
being. My presence is a long chain of events outside of my
control. And for so long! My actual life is only an explosion of
this eternal waiting desire to be born.
I and Esther weren't born yet. That was an important time in
life of my children. Their grandmother was born and lived through
the war she knew little about. It was the year 1934 of western
style, September 5th of Ethiopian calendar; the new catastrophic
year began wonderfully after the rains skies, huge stars and the
eucalyptus trees with their night whispers. The moon light poured
silver on dark green grass and smell of new life was everywhere.
Edjigayeheu, the baby-girl left Ethiopia when she was eight
months old. Her father, Crown Prince, Asfa Wossen, left Addis
Ababa with his family. The world didn't know that World War II
had began. Africa wasn't a part of the world.
Contents:
I. THE WAR TO LOSE
A PROLOGUE
II. THE WORLD TO GAIN
III. THE GOOD OF THE EVIL
IV. THE CROWDS FROM THE FUTURE
V. THE EXILE: EXPERIENCE OF MODERNITY
VI. THE OCCUPATION
1. MODERN COMMON MAN
VII. AFTER THE WAR
1. NO TIME FOR PROPHETS
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--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. (MOY)1
A PROLOGUE
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 Sellassie 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.
(MOY)
During a visit to Addis Ababa of the King of Italy's cousin,
the Duke of Abruzzi, the Italian Government reopened the question
of Ethiopia's request for access to the sea. They proposed making
Assab a free port, and building a motor road to link it with Das,
which, it was assumed, would be connected by a road to Addis
Ababa. A twenty-year Treaty of Friendship and Arbitration between
the two countries was duly signed, on 2 August 1928.
Relations between the two countries were, however, at
first superficially cordial. When Ras Tafari visited
Rome in 1924 he was warmly welcomed by Mussolini. The
fascist dictator, as his wife Donna Rachele recalls,
then foresaw a "great future for Italy in Abyssinia",
and conceived the idea of "developing Abyssinia with
Italian labour". He found his Ethiopian visitor "a
clever and cultured man", with whom he believed he
could `get on very well'. With this in mind the Duce
sponsored the 1928 Treaty of Friendship and Arbitration
in the hope of achieving rapid Italian economic
penetration through the port of Asab and a proposed
Italian-road to Dase. When, however, it became apparent
that the Ethiopian Government would not accept any
infringement of its sovereignty, the Italian fascists
turned their thoughts from peaceful pressure to
outright war.2
Eritrea was under the Italian rule for forty years.
Post-colonial migration (transformations).
Italian agents were thereafter actively engaged in the
attempted subversion of Ethiopian chiefs, and nobles,
who were given lavish bribes. Action was also taken to
ferment ethnic tension, particularly in militarily
strategic areas in the north and south of the country,
notably in eastern Wallo, Ogaden and Hararge. Emperor
Haile Sellassie commented at the time that he knew that
many of his chiefs were accepting Italian money, but
was confident that when the testing time came they
would not betray Ethiopia. Later he declared, with
unusual bitterness, in his Autobiography, that the
Italians had "always been the bane of the Ethiopian
people". (Pankhurst. Part 7)
He knew what they didn't know. He knew how the Italian army
looks like. He had nothing to put against it. It wasn't 1896.
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 the Ualual Incident neither
Italians nor Ethiopians nor anyone else was to blame.
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
Sellassie to deny that Italians used dumdum bullets
instead of charging them with that military offense. 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 -- a frail, exquisite Semite who speaks French
-- on terms of friendly respect with robust Anglo-Saxon
correspondents when they arrived in Addis Ababa and
promptly nicknamed him "Little Charlie. (MOY)
The force came from the North. As always.
I. THE WAR TO LOSE
At 5 am on October the Second 100 thousand troops under
general Emilio De Bono crossed the Mareb River. By October 6 the
Italians entered the city of Ethiopian glory and Italian shame --
Adwa... and dej. Haile Sellassie Gugsa defected with 1500
well-armed men. Haile Sellassie knew what was coming. On October
15 the Italian army marched into the ancient capital, holy Axum.
General De bono was a methodical and careful soldier, his
advancing was slow and consistent. By November 28 the emperor
left the capital for Dese -- to give a decisive battle in Tigrey.
De Bono learnt to respect forceful Ethiopian soldiers, the
general was too careful and the invasion was too slow for El
Duce. On 21 and 22 December a new Italian commander general
Pietro Badoglio sent airplanes with poison gas bombs on Ethiopian
positions. Nobody counted the casualties in barefoot Ethiopian
army (238). "The Duce shall have Ethiopia, with the Ethiopians or
without them, just as he pleases."3
In considering official Italian accounts of the war it
should be noted that the fascist use of gas is fully
substantiated, and was known indeed at the time
throughout the world. Any mention of gas was, however,
strictly excluded from the Italian press, which was
highly censored. The use of gas is likewise entirely
concealed in all the subsequent writings of Badoglio,
Graziani and all other Italian officers, which
therefore give a manifestly incorrect picture of the
war. No mention was likewise made of the deliberate
fascist bombing of International Red Cross units. The
Italian Ministry of Defence, even more remarkably,
refused, for almost sixty years, to admit that gas had
been used in Ethiopia, until forced to do so in 1995,
largely through the persistent efforts of an Italian
professor Angelo Del Boca. (Pankhurst 11)
Emperor knew that the only possible tactic in this war
against superior military power could be a guerrilla style
warfare. What was his role in such underground war? To surrender
the capital saving the army? To move deep down into the south? To
break army into a small unites? To let the resistance take its
natural course? To establish his war headquarters in Sudan?..
He never had army, only a "delaying force" -- hoping that
diplomacy will stop the war. The last hours before his run from
Addis -- he went mad; they never saw him losing his cool. He tire
down the drapes in the palace and they say, he wanted the capital
to be looted before the Italians come in. He cursed his fate and
his people. inevitable end. Yes, a few hours before he left
Addis. He went mad -- his order to trash the city. King without
kingdom. There were many of them in Europe.
War showed that he is just a little African king. The Great
Powers of the West were real empires. He saw it before, and one
the came and took away his kingdom, the way he would do it with
some local king. By the of the strong. (Did he have problems with
the brutal nature of history?)
On 31 March with the last and best forty thousand troops he
went on the offensive -- and lost...
Suffered a breakdown Haile Sellassie hid in the country holy
churches to seek the divine wisdom at the time of his nation's
ultimate defeat. After the defeats at Mai Chew and Lake Ashengue,
the Emperor disappeared, having gone on a pilgrimage to the
shrines at Lalibela where he spent two days in prayer and
mediation." (S 57-58)
He returned to the capital on the last day of April.
"Soldiers? Today there are no more soldiers; they are
brigands for whom we no longer exist," the Russian adviser
Konovaloff recorded the reaction of the emperor:4
Along the track, villagers failed to bring the
customary gifts of food or even to come out to meet
their sovereign. "The emperor himself," Konovaloff
wrote, "was losing a great part of his authority... The
disintegration of Ethiopia continued at galloping
speed... [but] everywhere the villagers had live-stock
and lived in peace." (Dugan 279)
Everything was lost. There was no army left. First week of
May in Addis Ababa of 1935 was catastrophic. the capital was
bombed already. "Sound of shooting in the city increased. I was
told that this was the accepted practice for notifying a family
that son or father had been lost in battle," writes Spencer who
had a fortune to come or to leave HIM at the most climatic
moments. (S 61) Nobody was in control, the mob of shiftas began
to loot the city. It was the Gala's hour of revenge. Abyssinians
became a pray.
On May the Second, afternoon, a train left the rail-roll
station for Djibouti. Everythiong had to be dropped, even arms.
He entered the French territory as a private man. This trip
abroad looked like the last.
...
The Italians entered Addis Ababa on May the Fifth after a
few days of looting by the Galla. They said that emperor himself
ordered the trashing of the city not to leave it to the enemy on
a silver plate. There was no army left to fight on the streets.
Oromo shiftas took their revenge over the pride of Menelik who
conquered their land and placed his capital in the valley. The
Italians entered Addis Ababa as liberators from the Galla, and
the long caravan of trucks with troops and arms drove for hours
through the streets to demonstrate the power of the new order.
Four days later Mussolini proclaimed the begining of the
Ethiopian Italian empire. The crowds in Rome were intoxicated
with a renewed national super-identity. This little emperor of
Ethiopia was finished. Finite!
II. THE WORLD TO GAIN
He knew that the war was lost before the Italians approached
the capital. H.S. knew that the war was lost before it began.
Mussolini was looking for a country to concur to claim the
begining of the new Roman Empire. He didn't have to look hard.
Italians still remembered the humiliation of Adwa. "The battle of
Adwa was fought between Ethiopia and Italy on March 2 in 1896
when Italy attempted to invade and colonize Ethiopia. Ethiopia
decisively and unexpectedly defeated the Italian army bringing
respect to blacks all over the world. `The most notable victory
of an African over an European army since the time of Hannibal.'
The London Spectator March 1896."5 The Italian came to the place
where the pride of Italy was lost. Ethiopia had to join the fate
of Djibouti and Somalia. Italy has to have its colonies, to an
empire, equal to its European neighbors. El Duce crashed the Lion
of Juda and the ancient black stellar from Axum was brought to
Rome for all to see the victorious triumph over the kingdom of
legendary Prister John.
I, Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, am here today
to claim that justice which is due to my people, and
the assistance promised to it eight months ago, when
fifty nations asserted that aggression had been
committed in violation of international treaties.6
The emperor appealed to the League of Nations Assembly in
1936. If Menelik made himself known to the world because of the
victory, Haile Sellassie became a world leader because of his
loss.
I pray to Almighty God that He may spare nations the
terrible sufferings that have just been inflicted on my
people, and of which the chiefs who accompany me here
have been the horrified witnesses.
At the last moment he changed his mind to deliver the speech
in French, he spoke in Amharic:
Apart from the Kingdom of the Lord there is not on this
earth any nation that is superior to any other. Should
it happen that a strong Government finds it may with
impunity destroy a weak people, then the hour strikes
for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations
to give its judgment in all freedom. God and history
will remember your judgment.
They listen. And did nothing.Did they know what was ahead of
them? Who could imagine the horrors of the biggest war in world
history began. They were politicians and diplomats, they thought
that they can outmaneuver the history. Austria and Czechoslovakia
were about to come. Hitler and Stalin listened also. They heard
the silence. They knew how to read it.
I ask the fifty-two nations, who have given the
Ethiopian people a promise to help them in their
resistance to the aggressor, what are they willing to
do for Ethiopia? And the great Powers who have promised
the guarantee of collective security to small States on
whom weighs the threat that they may one day suffer the
fate of Ethiopia, I ask what measures do you intend to
take? Representatives of the World I have come to
Geneva to discharge in your midst the most painful of
the duties of the head of a State. What reply shall I
have to take back to my people?
The world heard him. No, the world heard of him. The Time
Magazine placed HIM on the cover as Man of the Year. He became a
celebrity.
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 Sellassie
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. (MOY)
Was his loss a better outcome for him and his country than
their impossible victory? To entertain such a question one has to
believe in God and Lord's which is ways of providence unknown to
us.
Above all, Haile Sellassie 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. (MOY)
....
His new and different life began. His country didn't make it
into the twentieth century. He did. He became known and made
known his cause and his country. That was the politics. And
publicity. And public relations.
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
Sellassie!" In the last week of 1935, Haile Sellassie
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. (MOY)
Everything was strange in this conflict. The medieval
Abyssinian monarchy and the newly resurrected Roman (!) Empire.
At the time of economic imperialism both had very little of
economy. Both needed a radical modernization, a revolution -- the
best way to start a war against your own citizens is play on
their patriotic feelings. El Duce had less need for a national
ideology to inspire his Italians, the idea of totalitarian state
was a good enough concept. Something the thirties everywhere
experimented with. Including Ethiopia.
If wars are indeed are economic politics carried out by
different means, they should be consider as "international"
revolutions. The third, in name only, force in this tragic comedy
was the League of Nation. Even today "United Europe" is still a
project, to dream of an European Union between the two World Wars
was something of wishful thinking. Europe, the battlefield of
modern history, was the last place to look for a peace making
initiative.
If the Covenant of the League of Nations be law, then
in law Ethiopia and Haile Sellassie 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 -- much too late for
popular acceptance -- that under the League Covenant,
membership in the League of Nations is barred to states
in which slavery still flourishes, 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. (MOY)
Leaving aside the issue of slavery in Ethiopia and the
presence of only one "black" leader, the League of Nations felt
comfortable with the leading European countries having
colonies... What was so surprising in Hitler's attitude that
Germany by virtue its superiority has a right over other
countries? The black and white division of the world wasn't
debated much between the two great wars, the ethnicity was the
racial agenda. Europe had its militant national imbitions. The
Great Powers lived through what we see today in the Bosnia.
In successfully brushing aside these contentions of a
Great Power; in dexterously 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
brow-beating Ethiopians while he charms foreigners,
Emperor Haile Sellassie 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. (MOY)
III. THE GOOD OF THE EVIL
Two Ethiopian Wars with Italy had an enormous impact of the
course of developing Ethiopia. Since the politics always comes
first, the positive input of the national wars can't make it to
the psyche of any nation. A review of military conflicts as
constructive forces of historical interaction is a field for
future analysis. Usually, any implication of positive results of
such a destructive event as war is an impossible proposition.
Never-the-less, the unification of Ethiopia was possible because
of the outside aggression. Especially, it's noticeable in the
1935 war with Italy; the "patriots" movement borne during this
period served as means of superseding ethnic differences within
the Ethiopian empire.
Both direct contacts with Europe were war, in 1896 and 1935,
and they were of a national magnitude and re-enforced the
direction of modernization of Ethiopian. Ironically, the Italians
produced the most radical support for the policies of Haile
Sellassie. The presence of an outside power forced Ethiopians to
search for centralized government and to form a new national
identity. Haile Sellassie's plea for changing the feudal
structure of governing the country became obvious even for
opponents. It wasn't a matter of eternal politics but a matter of
survival. As a result the defeated military Ethiopia reemerged as
a new country-nation after five years of Italian occupation.
World history is a cruel business. Ethiopia's cultural and
commercial indirect contacts with Europe, the West and the world
were replaced by direct confrontational experience.
Interesting aspect of this military interaction is the
situation of two different historical times: modernity and
pre-industrialism, National Social Imperialism and Autocratic
Feudal Imperialism.
The positive outcome of two wars with Italy is naturally
down played, since the paradox of "war as a means of progress" is
a political and ethical trap. Alas, not if we separate the local
historical motivations from global actuality of history. War is
an event that goes beyond the national "spaces" of parties
involved. War is an international exchange of technologies,
including such sophisticated as cultures. War forcefully opens a
nation for understanding of the Other, moves it on a new level of
organization.
As in most cases in the twentieth century, Ethiopians
benefitted more from their defeat more than Italians from their
victory. This paradox best known as "Japanese miracle." Even
today national sensitivity on both sides prevents us from
acknowledging the fact that Japan benefitted from its total
capitulation and occupation. The previous socio-political
structures was radically removed and replaced in after-the-war
conditions. Cynically enough, the size of catastrophe is an
indication of "progress" -- a potentiality of progress. The
Italian revenge in 1935 was a triumph of western technology, a
demonstration of advantages of being integrated within the world
environment. The Italians did what Haile Sellassie could effort
-- to start the war on his own country. It would be a civil war,
which Ethiopia later had to experience in order to go through the
experience of modernity. War is a revolution, a break, extreme
means of evolution.
IV. THE CROWDS FROM THE FUTURE
How did he lived through the after-crisis?
What was there to learn?
What has to be done?
Haile Sellassie's "progressive" policy had affected not
only the church but the whole class of the Masafint,
Makwanent and Balabat. Compare the battle of Adwa
(1896) and the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935), Menelik had
the whole ruling class united behind him. The Emperor
and the Empress had kindly requested some of the
governors to remain behind because the army was so
large that the battle place could not be enough to
accommodate all and feared that they could kill each
other than fighting against Italy. Seven years later in
commemorating the 7th anniversary of the battle of
Adwa, Menelik held military parade in which 390 000
armed troops participated. Of these, the Emperor's
central army numbered 90.000.7
There were many reasons for Ethiopians to lose, and none for
the possibility of victory. The subject is well researched and
documented. Except for a within view -- what did he go through
during those days? What were his thoughts about the country?
Coptic church in Ethiopia never played its historical role
openly. By the Orthodox doctrine church stays away from the
earthly matters. If a democratic society insists on separation of
the church and the state, the "original" didn't want to mix with
the government in order to keep its purity.
When Haile Sellassie marched to Mai Chew in March 1936
he had a force of 31.000 consisting the Imperial guard
(ca. 11 000) and the survivor troops of Ras Kassa and
Ras Seyum. Why such a visible decrease in the numerical
strength of the imperial army? We need a fresh study on
the impact of Haile Sellassie "progressive" policy on
the military organization of the state.8
That was the critical time for the whole world and Ethiopia
was only a small part of the great crisis of modernism. Not only
Empires and nations were in question but the very identity of
nations and races. Black American intellectuals reacted to
Ethiopia and Haile Sellassie with a great degree of confusion.
Garvey's position perhaps explains it.
It was a criticism from a man who started "the cult" of Jah.
The July/August and September/October [1936] issues of "The
Black Man' carried criticisms "pro" and "con" about the Emperor
of Abyssinia -- Haile Sellassie -- who is now residing in exile
in England. The criticisms on the matter were really prompted for
the purpose of enlightening the Negro world about the true
situation of affairs and to awaken him from his usual sentimental
dreams [...]
No one desires to be unfair to Haile Sellassie. The
only sad thing is that he has been unfair to himself,
to his country and his countrymen, by acting in a
manner not consistent with ordinary political
intelligence necessary to our age, in understanding the
machinations, cunning and vile methods and systems of
Governments and peoples.
Those who pay a little attention to European and
American politics, must wonder, with great
astonishment, how Haile Sellassie could have made such
colossal blunders in ignoring the sacred trust imposed
upon him, of jealously safe-guarding the interest of
the country and people whom he elevated himself to rule
so as to prevent them from falling into the very
covetous hands and under the domination of an enemy who
made no secret of his threat toward the usurpation of
the people's political freedom and the conquest of the
country.
Black Americans, how much African are they? American blacks
were perhaps the only big groups outside of Africa at that time.
What is the main reason for Garvey's disappointment in his Ras
Tafari? The relations between African American and Africans is a
closed topic. Liberia became another African country with very
little liberty and all the troubles of the Black continent.
African diaspora and Mother-Africa have platonic, romantic
relations. It was symbolic then and it is poetic now.
There were a few fight with their African brothers. (143)9
After all it was the time of Black Renaissance as we call it.
Julian, Black Eagle of Harlem, he trained a squadron of pilots.
In 1935 he became an Ethiopian citizen and leader of the
Ethiopian air-force. No, Black Americans didn't come to fight
Ethiopian cause. They have their own wars to fight. And Garvey is
bitter:
He kept his country unprepared in a modern civilization
whose policy was strictly aggressive. He resorted
sentimentally to prayer and to feasting and fasting,
not consistent with the policy that secures the
existence of present-day freedom for peoples whilst
other nations and rulers are building up armaments of
the most destructive kind as the only means of securing
peace and protection. He reclined on the peculiar
policy of leaving everything to the Almighty Wisdom of
the Universal Creator Who, in all history, has never
yet taken political sides between two rival human
political forces and powers. For God to maintain his
equilibrium, He cannot take sides in human political
differences between peoples and nations, otherwise He
would cease to be the God of the one, yet positively
declaring Himself to be the God of the other. So as the
result shows, God had nothing to do with the campaign
of Italy in Abyssinia, for on the one side we had the
Pope of the Catholic Church blessing the Crusade and
the other the Coptic Church fasting and praying with
confidence of victory.
"God of Menelik" referred to Christianity in Africa.
Menelik conquered them all traveling on the back of a mule.
There were no roads, only tracks, no maps. Acceleration of
modernity left Africa behind.
American highways replaced railroads at the time when
Ethiopia had only one railroad! The Great Depression was a result
of the high modernity's success!
Fuel jets and rockets...
Ethiopia got a taste of modernity -- mustard gas. What an
invitation to European family! Why not to surrender like the rest
of Africa?
Garvey and Haile Sellassie both had their questions to ask:
The Italians triumphed by the use of mustard gas.
Surely God was not on the side of the Italians helping
them to disload the gas of death.
The Abyssinians lost. God could not have been on their
side either. It is logical therefore that God didn't
take sides, but left the matter to be settled by the
strongest human battalion. Haile Sellassie had no
equipment and no food. He never even had gas masks. The
Emperor remained in the Palace long enough to give the
Italians a good foothold in Abyssinia, and then when he
left the Palace it was only for seeing his poorly
equipped soldiers flee before the enemy and to gain
time for himself to get back to the Palace and flee the
country with all he could lay his hands on, leaving the
unfortunate people to the mercy of the heartless
invader.10
"Kings and Emperors do not hold their crowns today by Divine
right," Garvey wrote. "They hold them by superior statemenship,
such as is being demonstrated to us by the nations of Europe and
America." That's where the Rastafari thought stopped. Superior?
Like Nazi Germany? After five in the West, H/S lost his
unconditional enthusiasm for modernity. Hitler's death camps were
the triumph of modernity. WWII is a triumph! Mussolini's
atrocities in Ethiopia were a rehearsal of the big time evil
spectacle. Evil became an industry, or was it the industrial an
evil in its nature? Rasta named it "Babylon." What was the whole
purpose of master gas if not death? Where was the Western idea
with its most valuable centerpiece -- individual? Not in the
West.
Did Haile Sellassie became a reactionary in his second long
tenure as a ruler? Conservative? Careful in his drive for
changes? Wise?
.... We need a fresh study on the impact of Haile
Sellassie "progressive" policy on the military
organization of the state. I raised this point to
indicate that the defeat of Haile Sellassie could be
related to other factors (consequence of his policy,
for one) not only lack of support from the church
(again if we have evidence). One result of his
"progressive" policy which could be applied to the
church was the land and taxation policy of Haile
Sellassie.11 This policy had eroded the privileges of
the Masafint, Makuanent and Balabat, and during the war
they said "Bechawun Yebela Bechawen Yemotal", and
hesitated to support him."12
Now in England, he had time to reflect. Five short years of
his reign and five long years of exile. Mussolini made him an
offer of one million British pounds and a palace in Italy in
exchange for dropping all claim for Ethiopia. There was another
version of a deal -- a ceremonial position of King of Shoa. They
say, his son, Asfa Wossen, was negotiating with the Italians. The
Emperor should always be blemish. In 1939 Italy entered the pack
with Germany and Emperor dropped the subject. That was the answer
to his prayers. Haile Sellassie was a great believer in British.
It was a matter of time before he will be back to his country.
Choices, choices...
No man chooses his own parents. But in the last
analysis, a man's ultimate worth is, in the modern
world, determined by his accomplishments and his
service in the cause of his nation and his countrymen.
(HIM)
But in 1935 he knew little about his future. The future was
bleak... He failed. He was leaving the country, the greatest sin
an Ethiopian ruler could possibly commit...
It was his choice.
V. THE EXILE: EXPERIENCE OF MODERNITY
Bath, a small place in England, became his home for long
years of exile. He did his best. The big war was unfolding in
Europe before his eyes. Hitler was triumphant. What could H.S.
expect?
As a man, the Emperor was a bundle of contradictions:
courageous, cowardly, generous, avaricious, intuitively
sensitive to the needs, thoughts and designs of others,
suspicious, trusting, loyal, jealous, cynical, romantic
and idealistic. He was fundamentally an intensely
self-centered person for whom the lives of others
counted for little beside his own. During this period
of supreme crisis, his escape to Lalibela demonstrated
that personal survival was certainly a factor. That
characteristic was to mark his conduct on the flight to
Djibouti and his attitude towards overtures from Italy
during exile, his avarice during the post-Liberation
period and, at the end, his willingness to sacrifice
even the members of his immediate family. (S 62-63)
The defeat asks for a different kind of bravery. Courage of
humility. And again, being on the top asks for hard choices.
There are always several voices in us, which marxism calls
"social functions." Very rarely they speak in unison. He was an
Emperor which is complex construct, where "father" had to
surrender to the "leader" of the nation, and being a "husband"
could be an obstacle for functions of "politician," and so on. It
takes a courage to exercise the judgement all the time and every
time it's a different choice. Who was he now, a king without
kingdom.
The Emperor had acquitted himself with bravery at Mai
Chew and Lake Ashengue. His decision, nevertheless, to
abandon Ethiopia for Europe at the moment of defeat was
in striking contradiction to the inviolate tradition of
that ancient nation that the warrior Emperor should
seek death on the battlefield rather than flee. (S
63)13
Spencer understands the logic of his choice. There was
another logic which moved emperor Teodoros to shoot himself --
and made him a folk hero for generations to come. "The realistic
necessity of avoiding capture by the Italians did not count in
national consciousness." (S 63) That were the logic of Ras and
Rasselas. Tafari and Haile Sellassie both believed that not all
was lost. He still believed in the powers of League of Nation. He
will appeal to Europe. The world was different in the mid twenty
century and Ethiopia was a part of it.
On the train to Djibouti. Everything had to be dropped,
including arms. He entered French territory as a private person.
According to Abyssinian tradition, high-ranking political
prisoners had to be taken in exile; they were released only on
the border with his pardon and their promise not to challenge his
power again. Now they all have new common enemy -- the Italians.
VI. THE OCCUPATION
What was left behind? The country, everything. He was the
first Ethiopian ruler to visit Europe, he was the first to know
the exile. The country failed HIM.
Marshal Badoglio had delayed the entry of the Fascist
forces in order to give time to these shiftas, the
Azebu Galla, to loot and ravage the countryside and
towns. In that fashion, the Italian troops would have
the way cleared for them and would be welcome as
liberators. (S 65)
And so they did, the Oromo nation, as they call themselves
now. They, the repressed, the occupied, had their short hour of
revenge.
Abyssinian pride has collapsed. Ethiopia, the empire, became
a colony! Italian troops marched past billboard of Mussolini,
saluting El Duce.14 They didn't feel at home in Abyssinia. Policy
of apartheid was established, the race issue was born. Ethiopian
became Africans. Next was ethnicity. Next were the Nazi Germans.
...
Even the forgotten currency had reappeared.
The Maria Theresa thaler, an Austrian coin of one troy ounce
and 83% fineness, first minted in 1751, was the traditional
currency throughout Ethiopia and the Arabian Peninsula. The
peasants tested them for counterfeits by bite, taste, and ring
when dropped, and also by counting the number of pearls in the
shoulder brooch of the Empress Maria Theresa (nine for a true
coin).
Italians were in control mostly in the cities. Their new
colony was expensive and troubling acquisition....
It was February 19, 1937, when two Eritreans threw grenades
into the crowd. The reaction was devastating. After a failed
assassination attempt against Graziani, the colonial authorities
executed 30,000 persons, including about half of the younger,
educated Ethiopian population.
Three months later, on 20 May, Graziani ordered the
execution of the monks at the historic Shawan monastery
of Dabra Libanos. Two hundred and ninety-seven monks
were accordingly shot, and 129 deacons were killed a
few days later, after which Graziani proudly
telegraphed to Mussolini, "of the monastery, there
remains no more trace". (Pankhurst 13)
Alas, this harsh policy, however, did not pacify the
country. In November 1937, Rome therefore appointed a new
governor and instructed him to adopt a more flexible line.
Accordingly, large-scale public works projects were undertaken.
One result was the construction of the country's first system of
improved roads. In the meantime, however, the Italians had
decreed miscegenation to be illegal. Racial separation, including
residential segregation, was enforced as thoroughly as possible.
The Italians showed favoritism to non-Christian Oromo (some of
whom had supported the invasion), Somali, and other Muslims in an
attempt to isolate the Amhara, who supported Haile Sellassie.
Perhaps, the pride of Abyssinia was reborn in having the
enemy. The outside aggression laid the ground for a unification
of the country. One has to trust Lord's ways. The Emperor was
gone but the country was left to resist. The people, the church,
the local Abyssinian aristocracy. All are from the past...
...
At first, after his double defeat -- on the battlefield and
at the League of Nations -- H/S even thought about accepting
Mussolini's offer, but now El Duce lost interest in an emperor
without empire. When it became obvious that the resistance in
Abyssinian isn't over and Italy was forced to enter the war in
Europe, H/S knew that the occupation days are numbered. Emperor
went to Sudan to prepare for British campaign against the
Italians.
The wresting of Ethiopia from the occupying Italian forces
involved the British, composed largely of South African and
African colonial troops penetrating from the south, west, and
north, supported by the patriots, guerrilla-fighters. The emperor
arrived in Gojam on January 20, 1941, and immediately undertook
the task of bringing the various local resistance groups under
his control. The campaigns of 1940 and 1941 were based on a
British strategy of preventing Italian forces from attacking or
occupying neighboring British possessions, while at the same time
pressing northward from East Africa through Italian Somaliland
and eastern Ethiopia to isolate Italian troops in the highlands.
This thrust was directed at the Harar and Dire Dawa area, with
the objective of cutting the rail link between Addis Ababa and
Djibouti. At the same time, British troops from Sudan penetrated
Eritrea to cut off Italian forces from the Red Sea. The campaign
in the north ended in February and March of 1941 with the Battle
of Keren and the defeat of Italian troops in Eritrea. By March 3,
Italian Somaliland had fallen to British forces, and soon after
the Italian governor initiated negotiations for the surrender of
the remaining Italian forces. On May 5, 1941, Haile Selassie
reentered Addis Ababa, but it was not until January 1942 that the
last of the Italians, cut off near Gondar, surrendered to British
and Ethiopian forces.
During the war years, British military officials left
responsibility for internal affairs in the emperor's hands.
However, it was agreed that all acts relating to the war
effort--domestic or international--required British
approval. Without defining the limits of authority, both sides
also agreed that the emperor would issue "proclamations" and the
British military administration would issue "public notices."
Without consulting the British, Haile Selassie appointed a
seven-member cabinet and a governor of Addis Ababa, but for
tactical reasons he announced that they would serve as advisers
to the British military administration.
1. MODERN COMMON MAN
Ironically, the Italian invasion was a strong force of
modernization also. God answered Tafari's prayers. The Italians
cemented his young empire into one country. Something which would
be hard to achieve without them.
Pragmatist philosopher William James taught that all young
people should be conscripted in order "to get the childishness
knocked out of them and to come back into society with healthier
sympathies and soberer ideas." Such conscripted service would
serve as the "moral equivalent of war," enabling the state to
impose upon individual rights in the interest of a common goal.
Mussolini militarized Italian society and referred to his various
centrally directed initiatives as "wars."
This time came. Ideology of war was applied to the
organization of the state, the civic nature was re-define. War on
individual -- end of liberal societies. Declaration of war on its
own subjects (new concept of the citizen, service) is the source
of super-power. Italy on slavery in ethiopia. Voluntary slavery
-- fascism. America was the best equipped to adapt this new
concept of citenzenry (Tocqueville).
[T]here is the great silent, continuous struggle; the
struggle between the State and the individual; between
the State which demands and the Individual who attempts
to evade such demands. Because the individual, left to
himself, unless he be a saint or a hero, always refuses
to pay taxes, obey laws, or go to war. - Benito
Mussolini
Benito Mussolini's the Fascist worldview: "The man of
Fascism is an individual who is nation and fatherland, which is a
moral law, binding together individuals into a tradition and a
mission...."
Fascist ethics begin with the acknowledgment that it is
not the individual who confers a meaning upon society,
but it is, instead, the existence of a human society
which determines the human character of the
individual.... According to Fascism, a true, a great
spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has
risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of
man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified
at once, with this need of raising the State to its
rightful position. Mario Palmieri _The Philosophy of
Fascism_ (1936)
According to Fascist apologist Mario Palmieri, "The Fascist
Revolution [teaches], that there is a way to end the war of
classes and that this way is found in placing all classes under
the protection, the aegis, and the discipline of the state."
When an opponent says, "I will not come over to your
side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us
already.... What are you? You will pass on. Your
descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a
short time they will know nothing else but this new
community." - Adolf Hitler
The war against an individual begins before he arrives on
stage. Never forget, that nazism wasn't a nationalism, but mashed
with socialism. No wonder that nazis went after the communists,
their competitors in idea of socialization. The Jews represented
the challenge to the national idea (Zionism later applied the
techniques of socialism). Individual in high modernity was
totally understood in marxist's terms -- a "totality of social
relations." He is a property of the big tribe (nation, state,
society)... Ethiopia lacked this technology of modernity.
Ethiopia wasn't a nation, it still isn't. Haile Sellassie rushed
to make Tigreans, Amharas, Oromos and the multitude of other
cultures into Ethiopians. Mussolini came to help him.
Man is a social animal, says basic marxism. All right, an
individual is nothing. Environment is everything. Away with the
family, make the country, nation, society into one big family! Do
you like it?
Man and the country... I know the feeling. Why in America,
where the competition and rat race is always a place for one who
isn't used by his own country? Betrayed by the country. Why
didn't they come to fight? Menelik army was ten times bigger than
H.S.
Suppression of an individual? Who is more suppressed than
HIM?
Family idea -- limiting everyone? Trading love (security)
for equality? Family, the false promises. What anyone could do
top help me? Away with the family! Who need it, said Christ. Not
when you are free, when you are immortal, when you are dead.
What country a spirit belongs to?
Why not communism... like in America? That's what the
Bolsheviks thought. Why not to skip the fascism and nazism and
leap onto socialism of communism? Stalin and Trotsky had their
points. They didn't have a material, the people without
countries, the Americans.
Oh, Hitler would like to be an Emperor, Stalin wanted to be
a tsar. Look at them, don't you see it? They acted out, he was.
But do you know the difference? Not in spectacular state when the
crowds ask for a show. In fact, actor could be a better image
than an original. You don't know that the copy could be as good
as the original? Did you see the cover girls?
Oh, the tired world of modernity! Imperial impersonators.
Canned laughter and applause -- to energize the public. The crowd
has no energy of its own.
VII. AFTER THE WAR
This interim Anglo-Ethiopian arrangement was replaced in
January 1942 by a new agreement. The convention provided for
British assistance in the organization of a new Ethiopian army
that was to be trained by a British military mission. In addition
to attaching officers to Ethiopian army battalions, the British
assigned advisers to most ministries and to some provincial
governors. British assistance strengthened the emperor's efforts
to substitute, as his representatives in the provinces,
experienced administrators for the traditional nobility. But such
help was rejected whenever proposed reforms threatened to weaken
the emperor's personal control.
The terms of the agreement confirmed Ethiopia's status as a
sovereign state. However, the Ogaden and certain strategic areas,
such as the French Somaliland border, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti
railroad, and the Haud (collectively termed the "Reserved
Areas"), remained temporarily under British administration. Other
provisions set forth recruitment procedures for additional
British advisers should they be requested. About the same time, a
United States economic mission arrived, thereby laying the
groundwork for an alliance that in time would significantly
affect the country's direction.
A British-trained national police administration and police
force gradually took the place of the police who had served
earlier in the retinues of the provincial governors. Opposition
to these changes was generally minor except for a revolt in 1943
in Tigray--long a stronghold of resistance to the Shewans--and
another in the Ogaden, inhabited chiefly by the Somali. British
aircraft brought from Aden helped quell the Tigray rebellion, and
two battalions of Ethiopian troops suppressed the Ogaden
uprising. The 1942 Anglo-Ethiopian agreement enabled the British
military to disarm the Somali rebels and to patrol the region.
After H.I.M. returned to the throne, the British assumed
control over currency and foreign exchange as well as imports and
exports. They helped Ethiopia to rehabilitate its national
bureaucracy. The changes and innovations made by the Italians
during the occupation, made clear to many Ethiopians the need to
modernize -- at least in some sectors of public life -- if the
country were to survive as an independent entity.
The emperor made some new territorial demands, including,
requests for the annexation of Eritrea, which the Ethiopians
claimed to be racially, culturally, and economically inseparable
from Ethiopia. Similarly, Italian Somaliland was intended by the
British to be part of "Greater Somalia"; thus, the emperor's
claims to that territory were also rejected. At this time.
1. NO TIME FOR PROPHETS
Prophets do not see themselves as such -- it's so obvious,
the future. Why can't all see it? He saw Ethiopia's future, it
was easy. He saw it through -- the vast African continent behind
his empire, the powerful Europe, too powerful to hold itself
under control. He was in a privilege position in between the
worlds, he represented them both, the high and the low, the new
and the old. He knew what his subjects didn't know, the powers
which could come on them from the skies. He knew what the West
didn't know; that the millions, the silent majority of human race
will be there to get it their way. He was a good student of
history, he remembered the first great war in Europe which they
in Europe, of course, called "World War One." He saw it from the
distance. It took four cataclysmic years for Europe to change its
face -- where are the great empires? Austrian, Russian... British
didn't know that they will be next.
Why didn't WWI complete the job? What was left? Well, it
wasn't truly world wide war, the world wanted to be included into
western timetable. WWI was a preview.
League of Nations? He tried. United Nations? United? Like in
America? or UK? He had many nations to deal with, making them
into Ethiopians.
War as a high technology of progress. Did we name it
"Revolutionary Age"?
The war, big war. How big? Nobody knew it. It would take a
few more years to discover that the world asked for the biggest
war in history -- WWII. This war will end modernity in the
spectacle of atomic bomb.
Imperial Japan, this model of Ethiopia's modernizers, would
face a new imperial super-power....
According to Lenin, the two principles of the late stage of
capitalism (imperialism) are interconnected -- concentration of
capital and the wars to redefine the national borders. Italy was
late to arrive to this stage during the WWI. In 1930 Italy was
ready to try imperialism.
Technology of imperialism? Imperialism is a technology.
Tank or airplane are only concentration of knowledge,
physical expression of new ideas, new feelings. Technology is a
hyper-condensed labor, true hyper-capital.
The First Great War had to end with the Great Depression.
Urbanization, concentration of crowd, industrialization asked for
new forms of the social -- and the super state formula was born.
Best known is fascism -- the super-nation. We know another,
Soviet, super-state. Less familiar to us a sof totalitarism,
fascism with a human face, super-society -- USA. All three model
of super-collectivization manifested their intentions: New Order
(Hitler), New World (Stalin) and New Deal (Roosevelt). In a long
run the American model proved to be the most productive.
What is the super (hyper)? Not just superior, but supreme.
...
World as war machine. Modernity organized living on military
principle. Revolutionary time is a civil war. All of us are
already civilian soldiers.
Dialectics is a philosophy of catastrophe. Maximum conflict
is a new engine, we have to have a confrontation (thesis and
anti-thesis in order to go to the highest level). We create the
situation of the catastrophe which we control.
Foucault gave us a different view of technologies of power.
They don't have to be visible, or openly violent. Fascism was
primitive ways apply discipline, there are discplines.
Peaceful war -- industrialization. Transportation revolution
= speed is the essence of time. time is a space of speed. What is
territory? "Time and space died yesterday" -- there are no border
anymore. Ethiopia had no roads. Ethiopia had no cities to have
the roads. War is the movement. To move is to be engaged in act
of war. Mussolini didn't know that he fought Emperor's war.
Garvey should look again at the Divine Providence.
...
In modern times we like to think that the past time has no
hold on us, only the present. We want to believe that the present
is NEW, forgetting that even marxist dialectic negation
recognizes the inclusion of the past into the present. Should we
say that though the negation the past become invisible, i.e. gets
stronger than even before. Isn't that how the culture grows?
That is what was left there to resist -- the culture. Not
necessarily the high culture but the customs and habits, national
taste for food and music, sense of time and belonging, myriads
invisible links and myths. The Patriots movement was born without
much of propaganda and organization. Abyssinian warriors of the
past, the ground forces, which Sellassie tried to control so hard
from the capital, now were his supporters and last hope.
The ancient lived, there was a place for HIM to return,
there was a space left -- Ethiopian Emperor.
It was his place. Was it?
How did he get back the throne?
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.
.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" who 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, hut 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 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 Zaudito, 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 savor of ancient lineage and of Biblical if not Divine authority is traced with British scholarship.
ntimate Glimpse.
Although good and wise, Haile Selassie I, 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 — 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 band, especially when he is dealing with Europeans, his eyes know how to be soft, caressing, affable — 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 favorite.... 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."
ld Chains; Ice Water.
After so intimate a glimpse through the eyes of Man of the Year's longtime 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 another 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.
.Suckers.
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 the Ualual Incident neither Italians nor Ethiopians nor anyone else was to blame. 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 offense. 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 — a frail, exquisite Semite who speaks French — in 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 — much too late for popular acceptance-that under the League Covenant, membership in the League of Nations is barred to states in which slavery still flourishes, 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 brow-beating 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 over-run by Italian forces as the year ended was about 30,000 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 maneuvers on the Diplomatic Front have been secret and clandestine, Il 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 themselves than they have thus far.
.New Deal.
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 — 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 defense. In His Majesty's favorite 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: a) Mussolini's forces are to withdraw; a) 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 Selaisie holding all the trumps and calling it Civilization.
TIME EUROPE October 28, 1935
Ethiopia: Shammas into Dirt
During the past weeks thousands upon thousands of Ethiopian warriors have marched past their Emperor in Addis Ahaba before going off to the front and thousands upon thousands more will probably do so in the weeks to come. What made last week's march-by notable were the facts that the Minister of War, grizzled Ras Mulu Getta, was personally leading 100,000 troops to war, and that those near the reviewing stand heard their sad-eyed little Emperor deliver his most moving campaign speech to date.
One chief, followed by his own band of delirious drummers, was bitterly disgraced when his mule suddenly shied in front of the royal stand and sent the rocketing Ras sprawling on the ground. Proudest of the warriors was General Machacha's chief adjutant who went cantering by on a donkey, magnificently arrayed in stiff shirt, dinner jacket, crossed cartridge belt. To these and their followers bushy whiskered little Power of Tnnity cried: "It is not the Emperor who wants war but the Italians who are pushing the fight. We will all die one day, either by typhus or pneumonia, but it is much better to die for your country.
"The Italians will try to repulse you with machine guns. They have machine guns but we have God on our side.
"We urge you not to fight in the traditional old way of massing against the enemy. Guard against hot-headedness, because if the enemy discovers you in angry groups he will burn you as wood in a blaze. . . . If you see an airplane, leave the open spaces and hide in the forest. All soldiers with good guns should then shoot at the plane When fighting begins you will be within range of the Italian guns. Divest yourselves of shields and spears, because they will form a brilliant target.
"Do not wash your shammas.* Allow them to become dirty and therefore less visible. When we have defeated the invader you may again take up your shields and don clean clothes.
"Comrades I shall be with you on the battlefield to shed my blood freely with yours in defense of our common fatherland. We shall accept no such peace terms as those France proposes. I shall die with you if necessary rather than submit to such humiliation."
Railway Bargain At Awash last week, at the edge of the spidery railroad bridge crossing the Awash River, 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 à 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 splendor 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 becauae 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.
*The white cotton wrap-around by all Ethiopian men
Liberty is always unfinished business. --anonymous
(c)2004 HIM 
