EMPEROR’S STORY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 142, 18 May 1936, Page 7

EMPEROR’S STORY

LAST GREAT STRUGGLE. HORRORS OF YPERITE. STILL SYMBOL OF NATION. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received May 18, 10.5 a.m. LONDON, May 17. How, seeing his faithful warriors tortured by a “burning rain” of yperite be staked his all on the last battle, was told by the Emperor Haile Selassie and bis secretary to Mr Douglas Duff, the Sunday Pictorial’s special correspondent. Haile Selassie said the warriors could endure bombings by shells and even gas, but not the burning rain or fperite. “It fell like a gentle rain. Tnen, if you were not quick enough in getting your clothes off, you were burnt. if it fell on your face you were blinded. My men could not remove their clothes in the desert because the next rain of Yperite would have fallen on their bare skins,” said the Emperor. “1 was forced to make the decision that we must fight a desperate battle rather than be tortured to death. Guerilla warfare was impossible; we bad no means of communication and bands would have been herded slowly together and slaughtered.” Mr Clieorches, the Emperor’s secretary, taking up the story, said that before tlie final battle ot Alembi tile Emperor addressed the Imperial Guard. He said be intended that they should die at the last ditch rather than abandon the country to the invaders. “We fought for hours, blade to blade, but we were beaten by machine-gun fire. There were few of the Imperial Guards left. When the Emperor realised that Ire could do no more as a general ho fought as a simple soldier, and rushed, sword in hand, against the Italians. He pleaded with us to let him die on the battlefield, but we seized him and led him away,” the secretary declared. Haile Selassie, resuming the story, said : It is not my wish that I am here. I oil looted .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 arn still the symbol of an Empire not entirely under Italy’s heel. AMERICAN DOCTOR. NATIONALITY CHANGED. Received Mav 18. 9.50 a.m. ADDIS ABABA, May 17. The American. Dr A. Lambio, FieldDirector of Ethiopian Missions, who made himself a naturalised Abyssinian in order to extend bis contact with the natives, has become an Italian subject, explaining that Haile Selassie has failed his people by listening to Armenian adventurers.