ETHIOPIAN FEET.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 264, 7 November 1935, Page 7

ETHIOPIAN FEET.

MOVE FAST AND FAR.

THE SLAVE QUESTION.

JOHJT HOY ON THE HIM* (By ROBINSON MACLEAN.) (Special.—By Air Mail.) ADDIS ABABA, October 12. It is one o'clock in the morning here as I write this—night fell like a dropped curtain five hours ago, and the 90,000 people of Addis Ababa went to sleep. Most of them are sleeping in the little mud-walled, thatched huts that are called tukuls. They are sleeping on beds woven of raw-hide, and they are covered witli heavy cotton blankets and hides, because it is cold in Addis Ababa —so cold that you wonder how their bare feet stand it—the bare feet that drill on streets, hotel compound?, tennis courts — that learn to go right-left-right and then trudge off to the battle fronts to face invaders.

Their feet are bare, but they can travel on those feet. They can run faster than most college athletes, and they can keep up that run for mile after up-and-down-hill mile to cover from 20 to 40 miles a day in any country. More than that. As they run, they can carry a month's supplies of food. It is thirty double handfuls of shimbra —a little pea —and they get fat on a handful a day.

They have lots of faults, of course, these people of Ethiopia. They are a little lazy, and a little boastful, and there are lepers in the streets here, and fleas everywhere. But His Majesty, the Emperor, has done a lot of good work since he came to the big four-poster throne of Ethiopia. The Slave Situation. He has passed slavery laws, for instance, and he makes them stick. He caanot clean up the slave situation overnight —even the slaves do not want it— and there are still hundreds of thousands of them in the country. But children, born in slavery, can free themselves in an hour—and nearly 14,000 already have-

But a lot of them do not want to. They have a pretty easy life, just trotting around carrying their master's shoes, or his umbrella, and they get all they want to eat—which is more than they would have if they were suddenly kicked out on their own. Of course, there are hard masters —men who beat their slaves just the same as they beat their mules —but if you wanted to write an "Uncle Tom's Cabin" about Ethiopia you would have to go to one of the back corners of the country and do an awful lot cf digging around. You might run across someone selling a slave, but he would never admit it, because he could be executed for slave trading if he were found out —and the Government agents have a monotonous way of finding out. Feeding a slave, or for that matter any native, is no great problem. Lunch, in Ethiopia, consists of just the same food as breakfast and supper. It is watt and njera and coffee. The watt is a red-pepper etew that is twice as hot as the hottest Mexican chilli. The njera is a bread that looks like crepe rubber —big grey soggy blankets of flour and water. They tear off a few square inches, wrap it around their finger, poke it into the pepper stew—and that's lunch or breakfast or supper.

John Hoy Has Never Let Them Down.

They like it, too. I used to take a roll from the hotel at breakfast and give it to my mule boy, Mohamet. Mohamet would bow all over himself— and then out and trade it for a spot of the crepe-bntter and tabasco he has been eating since he was two. The people have a sense of humour. They were laughing and joking on the streets to-day just as they laughed and joked a hundred years ago —and it was probably the same joke.

To the outside world, His Majesty is Haile Selassie 1., by the grace of God King of Kings of Ethiopia and conquering Lion of Judah. But to the people he is just John Hoy—His Majesty— little bronze John Hoy in the big palace up on the hill—John Hoy who is teaching them how to be modern, though the greybeards mutter a little. John Hoy who will tell them what they must do, John Hoy, the little man with the big job* They are ready to die if John Hoy says—John Hoy, who has never let them down.

The light is still burning in John Hoy's study in the palace up the hill. John Hoy is not asleep. He sleeps .little these night. He sits and thinks of his empire and the children of his empire—> and the light burns late in the palace while hyenas prowl through the sleeping city.—(N.A.N-A.)