WHY SELASSIE LEFT ABYSSINIA

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 198, 19 May 1936, Page 9

WHY SELASSIE LEFT ABYSSINIA

Story Told to Journalist MEN COULD NOT ENDURE “BURNING RAIN” By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, May 17. How, seeing that his faithful warriors were being tortured by a “burning rain” of yperite, he staked all on the last battle was told by Haile Selassie and his secretary at Jerusalem to Mr. Douglas Duff, the “Sunday Pictorial’s” special correspondent. Selassie said: “The warriors could endure bombing with shells, and even gas, but not the burning rain. Yperite fall’s like gentle rain, and then, if you are not quick enough in getting your clothes off, you are burnt. If it falls on your face you are blinded. My men could not remove their clothes in the desert because the next yperite would have fallen on their bare skins. I was forced to the decision that I must ficht a desperate battle rather than be tortured to death. Guerilla warfare was impossible. We had no means of communication and bands would have been herded slowly together and slaughtered.” Mr. Cheorches, Selassie’s secretary, taking up the story, said that before the final battle at Alembi the Emperor addressed the Imperial Guard and said he intended to die in the last ditch rather than abandon his country to the invaders. “We fought for hours, blade to blade.” he said, “but were beaten bv machine-gun fire. There were few of the Imperial Guard left. When the Emperor realised that he could do no more as a general he fought as a simple soldier, and rushed sword in hand against the Italians. He pleaded with ns to let him die on the field of battle, but we seized him and led him away.”

Resuming, Selassie said: “It is not at my wish that I am here. I collected all the soldiers available for policing the city, which was burned and sacked later by outlaws. My capture would have been taken as a sign that Abyssinia was no more. Here, though in exile, I am still a symbol that the empire is not entirely under Italy’s heel.”