ABYSSINIAN CRISIS

Taranaki Daily News, 30 August 1935, Page 4

ABYSSINIAN CRISIS

AN ENGLISHMAN’S VIEWS LETTER FROM DJIBOUTI MAN. SYMPATHY WITH ITALIANS. UNFRIENDLINESS TO EUROPEANS. Its people still living in the colourful and rather dirty pageantry of the Middle Ages, Abyssinia to-day has gained from civilisation and the influence of the Western world only a tinge of tawdriness and the unconscious humour of anachronism. Writing to relatives at New Plymouth from Djibouti, the administrative centre of French Somaliland, Mr. D. L. J. Bilton, an ex-officer of the British military forces in British Somaliland and now the travelling representative of an Anglo-African firm, gives much interesting information at first hand of conditions in Abyssinia as late as December of last year, when he visited Addis Ababa on trading business. At that time' trouble between Italy and Ethiopia was expected hourly, although as yet the situation had been little noticed by the outside world.

Without commenting upon the rights of Italy to interference Mr. Bilton writes: “The job of dealing with the average Abyssinian would try the patience of a saint. Without the means of impressing on the natives that one is powerful and rich, the average European gets scant courtesy. Like many of the African independent States Abyssinia suffers from ‘nigger’ rule, although that expression would be considered a deadly insult if voiced to an Abyssinian. The petty chief and many of the merchants are intolerably arrogant savages who consider it only 4 due to their pride as an independent people to treat Europeans with contempt or at least unfriendliness. The Adowa business has done more to hold up progress in the country than even the self-willed policy of isolation from the rest of the world.”

Slavery, added Mr. Bilton, undoubtedly existed despite the undertaking of the Emperor that it would be abolished. The actual living condition of the peasantry was almost as primitive as among other African tribes with no pretensions to an ancient civilisation. REMARKABLE ANOMALIES. Mr. Bilton described Addis Ababa as a remarkable, ramshackle little city and the only point in a vast tract of country in which European influence was felt even indirectly. There the most remarkable anomalies existed, a few dusty and depressed looking motor-cars sharing the right of way in the streets with camel trains and ragged, unwashed petty chieftains and their escorts come to town for a palaver with the court or on business of trade. In the dry season the city was ravaged by epidemic sickness caused by the clouds of septic,, evil-smelling dust blown from the unsewered gutters and middens of the native quarters. If unescorted by armed retainers Europeans were subjected to provocative insult and annoyance in the street. It was a convention of official representatives of the great Powers to go abroad escorted by a small detachment of armed soldiers. Britons, as a whole, were more favourably treated than French and Italians, largely as a result of the impression made by the smart and precise escort of Indian troops accompanying the officials of the British consulate. Although Mr. Bilton admitted that he had seen little of the hinterland other than on the route to and from the coast, he gained the impression that a campaign engaging , infantry would be an undertaking in which far more loss would be sustained from heatstroke, lack of water and diseases than the bullets of guerilla fighters who would, unless they received some training, be about the world’s worst marksmen. In a brief comment on the possibility of British interference Mr. Bilton wrote: “I do not think an outright support of Abyssinia will meet much favour with Europeans in Africa. The average Englishman has the colour prejudice pretty strongly over here, and in South Africa particularly there is a fairly strong feeling of sympathy with Italy’s complaints. Of course, we don’t know the political ins and outs of the affairs any better than you do in New Zealand, but I do not think the British Government will get much moral support from South Africa if it decides to. oppose Italy. “The Italians make a far better job of colonial administration than the Belgians or Portuguese and are inclined to be more easy-going with native peoples than the French. On the face of things I think Italian control, would do the world of good in Abyssinia—most of all to the Abyssinians, who are at present deliberately holding themselves back and bottling up the resources of a wonderful country’’ for no good reason other than a vanity in their independence and backwardness. However, we all realise here that there are strings to every proposition and are awaiting the outcome of the business with a good deal of anxiety.”