Evidence

Definitely not fit for public print, but locked up with the Geneva souvenirs of League Statesmen, is the Italian Government's official white paper on Ethiopian customs (TIME, Sept. 16). Copies reaching the U. S. last week satisfied curiosity as to what strong-stomached, peasant-born French Premier Pierre Laval was looking at when he remarked to Captain Eden, with a shrug, "Nice, aren't they?"

In addition to the sexual trophies of Ethiopian warriors who had castrated their enemy, lepers in advanced stages of physical decay were depicted mingling with the populace of Ethiopian towns. Snapped in Ethiopian jails were prisoners chained amid human excrement. Among printable pictures in the white book, one shows a normal Ethiopian flogging, administered daily to culprits throughout the Empire (see cut).

Significance. Ethiopians charge credibly that some of Italy's photographic evidence is faked or miscaptioned. Yet it confronts the eye with nothing not attested by the consensus of all reports by historians and recent explorers of Ethiopia. In nearly all parts of Africa the lash remains a usual punishment for natives but proud obscenity and ignorant insanitation are on the wane wherever whites have colonized.

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