Ethiopia's Week

Negro pastors fulminated from hundreds of U. S. pulpits last week in a vein keynoted by Rev. John King, eminent Kentucky brimstone gospeler: "Ethiopia is the land of our heritage! She is the oldest Christian nation in this world and the Lord God Jehovah can't let her down!"

To Emperor Power of Trinity in Addis Ababa the Negro Pittsburgh Courier cabled MANY AMERICAN NEGROES DESIRE TO VOLUNTEER SERVICE FOR YOUR ARMY WHAT IS ETHIOPIA'S ATTITUDE. Replied His Majesty : FOLLOWING YOUR TELEGRAM LET US KNOW YOUR CONDITIONS AND WE WILL ACCEPT YOU WITH PLEASURE. This stumped the Courier but in scores of darktowns persuasive Negroes set themselves up as recruiting agents, offered tempting terms in the name of Power of Trinity, asked from 25-c- to 50-c- as an enlistment fee. Meanwhile, on the vague frontier between many a U. S. Harlem and Little Italy, excited black curbstone orators brought scowls to swarthy brows by such appeals as: "Stop buying your gin from Italian saloonkeepers! Every shorty [nip] of gin you buy from an Italian means bullets bought by Mussolini to slaughter our brothers in Africa!"

In Washington sentiments more refined but no less friendly to Ethiopia were conveyed by that snowy-crested Tennesseean, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, to pained and noncommittal Italian Ambassador Augusto Russo. Mr. Hull, putting his very soul into the word, said that the Adminis-tration was "concerned." That he should be so, retorted Italian Government officials next day, caused them to be "surprised" and there the matter rested, except that Benito Mussolini gave one of his now extremely rare direct quotation interviews to Managing Editor Frank W. Taylor Jr. of the St. Louis Star-Times.

"Invasion of sovereign rights has been in progress for centuries!" blazed the Dictator. "Where is there a nation today which during its history has not invaded the sovereign rights of others? Take the United States! How did you push your frontier back?"

Conquest into Cash? This high-powered reference to the Noble Redskin reduced most of Mussolini's white critics last week to a state of frustration especially notable in Basle, Switzerland as the heads of Europe's central banks met for their monthly session of August gossip at the World Bank.

Not a word was contributed by II Duce's nimble Moneymen Dr. Vincenzo Azzolini, dynamic Governor of the Bank of Italy, and suave Professor Alberto Beneduce who manages the State credit pools in which much of Fascist industry is kept afloat. After the briefest courtesies they sped back to Italy, leaving the other titans of finance to chew the rag. None would permit himself to be quoted, but said one: "Only a few months ago Italy's credit position was such that she was desperately cutting down and rationing her imports, yet now she is importing war supplies from everywhere. She has taken such drastic measures as to withdraw all silver from circulation in Italy [TIME, June 24], measures such as usually are necessary only toward the end of a war. If the Dictator has to do such things now, what will he have to do later?" Said another: "Suppose even that Italy conquers all Ethiopia, how can she turn this conquest into cash quickly enough to meet her bills?"

Since the paying of bills among whites is something not always done now, II Duce last week troubled himself more about the dusky races on both sides of the Red Sea who insist on payment in the broad silver Maria Theresa dollars. These thalers are nothing but disks of silver struck in Vienna with the likeness of Austria's long dead Empress.* Silver collected from Italians last week and minted into Maria Theresa dollars was impressed with Maria Theresa's death date, 1780, only date considered any good by Ethiopian chiefs whom Signor Mussolini expects to bribe to desert their Emperor, as well as by Arab sheiks whom II Duce plans to hire from across the Red Sea and fling under Islam's banner against Negro soldiers of the Cross.

Cross & Red Cross, Most of Coptic Christian Emperor Power of Trinity's subjects are pagans, but that wily monarch claims to possess the very Ark of the Covenant described in the Old Testament and the very Tablets of the Law, straight from Jehovah's own hand and preserved for ages in Ethiopia. Last week these relics which, if authentic, should galvanize the Christian world to action in their defense, were ordered by His Majesty "removed to the mountains."

Shrewd, Power of Trinity clings to but one Cross. The Red Cross has been trying for years to get him to adhere to its Geneva Convention--i. e. to pledge that Ethiopians will not fight with unrestrained barbarity or fire on Red Cross units succoring the enemy. Last week the Emperor again indicated that neither his Govern-ment nor any authority whatsoever can hope to prevent Ethiopians from castrating wounded or captured Italians.

Such acts, natural in a country where a robber caught red-handed has his hand hacked off immediately, the Emperor did not seek to justify last week. He merely announced that he could not "conscientiously" promise that his savages would behave otherwise. All of a twitter, the International Red Cross Committee in Geneva said that this would be the first war since the Red Cross was founded 71 years ago in which the combatants did not at least promise to be on their best behavior.

"Nobler Race." Stark was the fact that in Benito Mussolini and Power of Trinity realist faced realist and cunning fenced with cunning. In Europe last week the Dictator's pervasive diplomacy had caused Britain, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Sweden and Denmark to make official their ban on arms shipments to Ethiopia, induced France to have her High Commissioner in Syria bar Ethiopian recruiting among the savage Druses, and caused Sweden to forbid her airmen to sell their wings to Power of Trinity.

In Addis Ababa, where the Emperor knows perfectly well that famed Colonel Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, "The Black Eagle of Harlem," who is always trying to horn into the Ethiopian Air Force (TIME, March 4), is nothing but a chiseler and a clown, His Majesty was constrained in desperation to give Julian an airman's job again. In France meanwhile stray U. S. members of the oldtime Lafayette Escadrille began organizing a flying circus to fight for Power of Trinity, his Minister in Paris promising "plenty of promotions and plenty of decorations" but showing small readiness to advance cash.

Events in Ethiopia last week were featured by the hasty departure from Addis Ababa of six U. S. Negroes not in the least anxious to fight or nurse for either cross.

Also getting out, shepherded by sweet-faced Italian nuns with faint mustaches, were numerous bright-eyed little girls of assorted colors, daughters of Italians who have gone native in Ethiopia but made pious provision for their bastards by founding a convent school. Said an Italian consular official as he put the little girls on the train: "They are the future mothers of a new, nobler generation that is going to inhabit the country that was called Ethiopia."

Near Gondar meanwhile Donna Di Lauro, beauteous young wife of the local Italian Consul General, was pulled roughly off her camel by impetuous Ethiopians who detained her in the desert for two days--or so the Italian Government announced, loudly protesting this "outrage." For the rest of the week Rome rang with outrages. Ethiopians on the border of Italian Eritrea were charged with every petty villainy from "stealing an Italian shepherd's ten bulls'' to "arresting Ethiopians caught selling food to an Italian consul."

Engert for Hanson, Though U. S. peace societies continued to press President Roosevelt at least to invoke the Briand-Kellogg Pact formally, the White House lingers remained crossed last week. Famed State Department "Trouble Shooter" George Hanson who was dispatched to Addis Ababa last month with a book about Ethiopia called The Hell-Hole of Creation in his luggage (TIME, July 8), received countermanding orders last week when it was realized in Washington that his knowledge of Chinese dialects and experience in dealing with Chinese bandits might not be of great help in shooting Ethiopian trouble. Mr. Hanson was therefore ordered to Saloniki, Greece. To Addis Ababa was ordered First Secretary Cornelius Van H. Engert of the U. S. Legation at Cairo, the State Department having discovered that he has served in Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Persia and Afghanistan and speaks languages likely to be more useful in Ethiopia than Chinese.

False Alarm of the week was an interview in which the Japanese Nippon Dempo News Agency quoted His Excellency General Kazushige Ugaki, Governor General of Korea, as saying that Japan could not remain neutral in the event of war between Italy and Ethiopia.

"I am amazed," cried Governor General Ugaki later. "The interview was a fabrication!"

Nonetheless a dither of suspicion persisted that Japan's militarists are now definitely Ethiopia-conscious. In Tokyo famed Foreign Office Spokesman Mr. Eiji Amau said: "The Japanese Government is watching the situation with grave concern because the outbreak of war anywhere is a calamity that indirectly injures many countries besides the combatants. I believe the stories that Japanese capitalists have obtained cotton concessions in Ethiopia are unfounded. The story that an Ethiopian prince was seeking to marry a Japanese girl is groundless. We have received no appeals from Ethiopia, we are not engaged in consultations of any kind regarding that nation, and we are not shipping munitions to Ethiopia. There, gentlemen, is that definite enough?"

*Such coins, considered the only sound money by natives on both sides of the Red Sea, are disparagingly said by bankers to "bear no obligation of redemption." Being worth always exactly the value of the metal they contain, Maria Theresa dollars therefore cannot be devalued by any unscrupulous currency jugglers. With a standard content of 28.0668 grams of silver .8333 fine, the Maria Theresa dollar was worth in U. S. money 19-c- in January 1933 just before Calvin Coolidgc's death, 26-c- in May after President Roosevelt took the U. S. dollar off gold, and 53-c- today after the dollar has been devalued and the price of silver boosted by U. S. purchases. Thus if Mr. Coolidge before his death had sold any U. S. Government gold bonds that he owned and invested the money in Maria Theresa dollars, Mrs. Coolidge could today convert them back, getting approximately $2,780 for every $1,000 her husband had salted away in the sound money of Ethiopia.

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