"Receive Kindly and Protect"

Last week Haile Selassie, who began to think he might soon again be Negus (Emperor of Ethiopia) in fact as well as name, set up field headquarters at Burie, 150 miles from Addis Ababa. Next day he issued a proclamation to his native troops which was a bald-faced misrepresentation even if issued for laudable ends.

"I charge you solemnly to receive kindly and protect those Italians who may surrender to you without arms and not to retaliate with the cruelty that they inflicted upon our people, but to show yourselves to be honorable, humane soldiers.

"Do not forget that when the valiant Ethiopians made the Italians prisoners in the Battle of Aduwa they handed them over to the Emperor without doing them any harm, thus earning for Ethiopia honor and a good name."

The "harm" to which the Negus referred was castration. For centuries the Ethiops have taken unmanning for granted: 1) to supply eunuchs for the harem trade; 2) as punishment for criminals; 3) as an expression of triumph over a slain enemy. After emasculation, the natives often made trophies of the virilities. Contrary to the Negus' claim, there were numerous castrations at Aduwa. Says one authority: "In an attempt to minimize the savagery of the victorious army, it is claimed that only 30 white prisoners were castrated. The truth is that only 30 survived and returned to Rome; innumerable others were reckoned among those killed in action; a few . . . lived but to have preferred, in shame, to remain in Africa."

The Italians also showed the League of Nations gruesome photographs to prove that castration was practiced by Haile Selassie's troops in the Ethiopian war five years ago. On the other hand, the Italians themselves were not simon-pure: the cruelties of the troops of Rodolfo Graziani, whose colonial career last week ended in military unmanning, are famous.

Best guess: the British had heard that atavistic instincts had again got the best of many an Ethiop patriot. So Haile Selassie was asked to try to stop it. For if the conquest of Ethiopia were accompanied by numerous atrocities, victory would turn into a moral defeat.

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