Position in Ethiopia

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 8, 10 January 1936, Page 2

Position in Ethiopia

REMINISCENCES OF A VETERAN The following extracts 'are from an article by Colonel H. G. C. Swayne, in the London Times, who has over 4G years’ experience of Ethiopia, its rulers and people. In 1897 he represented the Government of India in the Mission to the Emperor Menelek under Sir Rennell Rodd (Lord Rennell). Colonel Swayne says:—

It was in 1897, riding by camel at daybreak along a bushy, winding path, that I met the Italians. Round they came, quite suddenly, causing me to force my mount aside against the undergrowth. Company after company, in khaki, and unarmed; officers riding mules; brown men with rifles riding other mules. They' passed mo smiling, as well they might, for they were happy, returning home after IS months. 1 ‘ Buon glorio, signore!” I jumped from my camel and shook hands with some officers, among them, if I remember rightly, a brigadier. They were part of the captured survivors of the battle of Adowa, said to have numbered originally' 2000, about 4000 of their comrades having been killed in action. These survivors had served their time while prisoners of war as gardeners, or, as artists, adding their work to the “old masters” which decorate the interiors of the Ethiopian churches. The “old masters” generally depicted Ethiopians on fierce chargers spearing their enemies, probably Moslems, who conveniently lay prone, with woebegone faces.

An African State. A few days later I saw two unpleasant sights. One was a great pit full o old bloodstained bandages, which hyenas would scatter broadcast during the night, to be covered up again byscavengers each morning. It was sah; to have been the site of a dressing station used for some weeks by captured Italian doctors who had been put to attend on Ethiopian wounded, who, if the story was true, must have come to the capital on muleback from the far-dis-tant battlefield. The second unpleasant sight was that of a rather tattered Ethiopian grinning at me with an old Italian forage-cap perched on his woolly head. So, after 40 years, we are to have it all over again. The Ethiopians have been to some extent cultured for centuries. Owing partly to the Jewish blood in their veins, they are not ignorant of music, painting, b-ooka and church ceremonies'. Once in their stride, they would civilise rapidly. If the country were to be allowed to modernise itself with the help of technicians from Europe, chosen by the Emperor and the League, it would bo good for the self-respect of the African, wherever he may be, to know of a civilised sovereign State, existing in Africa, where Africans look upon people of other continents and colours as equal to equal. From all I heard when Frenchmen were helping Ethiopians to railways, telephones and other innovations, I believe Ethiopian rulers want all the engineering scicncu white men can bring to them; but the white men would be welcomed as employees of the Emperor and not as political masters.

Roads, railways and facilities at the coasts are vital to Ethiopia, and rich rewards would be reaped by the three great neighbours, and perhaps others; especially if those rewards could be pooled without rivalry between them in return for permanent sovereignty and peace; and the gift of a real peace might no doubt tempt Ethiopia to agree with Italy for some rectification of frontier which would give the expansion to Italians in Eritrea which they need.

Invaders’ Handicaps. I am afraid this war is going to bo very upsetting to the friendly relations between white men and natives all over Africa. We were all getting on so well until this threat of war occurred. Without being a fanatic, I have good reasons for shrinking from the war. One, I confess, is entirely sentimental. (There have been many Africans having statecraft; Chaka, Lobengula, Tippu-Tib, the Mahdi, the Senussi, and Raisuli, to mention a few who have mado history in the last 60 years. But the' greatest achievement of Africans in Africa within known history has been the maintenance of this feudal organisation of Ethiopia, keeping its sovereignty like a rock through .the ages.

There are some handicaps to a white invader which will make war expensive. No one doubts the invaders’ courage or minimises the power of aircraft, which may decide the first campaign off-hand at the start. But you cannot control and police a great population by merely sprinkling it with bombs from the air. The African can outmarch the European easily; he can outclimb him in a difficult country which he knows; his eyes and ears are better. “Two thousand pounds* of education drops to a 10-rupee jezail.” Nearly everything the European eats, the gadgets in his heavy pack, the spare parts of all machines, come from a distance of thousands of miles by, land, and aea,.^