ETHIOPIA: George & Mary & Ualual

Importantly in London last week Ethiopia’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, Dr. Azaj Wargneh Martin, observed that J. P. Morgan is now in the British Isles and that it would be most gratifying if they could get together on a $10,000,000 loan. Next day an enormous limousine carried Ethiopia’s envoy to Buckingham Palace and, in behalf of his sovereign Emperor Power of Trinity, the Conquering Lion of Judah, the King of Kings and the Elect of God, coffee-colored Minister Martin proceeded to decorate King George and Queen Mary.

After somewhat fantastic genealogical research the late Queen Victoria became obstinately convinced that her Royal Family is descended from Biblical King David. Today Emperor Power of Trinity is as obstinately convinced that his ancestors sprang from the loins of Biblical King Solomon, son of David. Thus British and Ethiopian royalty would be related by a faint strain of Jewish blood. George V, who does not share his grandmother’s enthusiasm for King David as an ancestor, last week let himself be invested by Dr. Martin with the gold chain of the Ethiopian Order of King Solomon, and Queen Mary received the gold chain of the Order of Saba (or Sheba). In neither case did Ethiopia’s envoy venture to put the gold chains around Their Majesties’ necks, merely handed them over.

Meanwhile in Addis Ababa sharp-nosed Power of Trinity was celebrating his 44th birthday. When the U. S. Chargé d’Affaires, William Perry George, arrived at the Palace, a large and ostensibly impromptu Ethiopian crowd suddenly produced small U. S. flags from beneath their loose garments, waved these frantically and shrilled something that was supposed to sound like “Long live America!” During the birthday reception, the Abouna Kyrillos, head of Ethiopia’s Christian Coptic Church, stood with his large right foot prominently planted on the base of the Emperor’s Throne. Grouped around His Majesty were potent chiefs, headed by Ras Moulougueta, Minister of War. Pointedly absent was the Italian Minister. Said native courtiers with arched eyebrows: “Such an affront is much more grave in Ethiopia, where we attach such great importance to etiquette.”

Obedient to etiquette, the Emperor, after bidding his foreign guests goodby. sat down with 5,000 officers and soldiers of all ranks to a characteristic Ethiopian feast of whole sheep and oxen, served raw and warm from the kill, and washed down with heroic drafts of tej or mead. Etiquette further decrees that such a royal feast shall close with Homeric boasting.

“How do you think we routed Mussolini’s tanks in the skirmish at Ualual?” roared a chief. “We routed them with cattle! Our bullets would not pierce the steel monsters, ,o we stampeded our herds against them. In the blinding dust raised by the brave beasts’ hoofs our valorous warriors rushed upon the blinded Italian cowards! We shoved our rifles into the gun holes of their tanks—Bang! Bang! Bang!—We took possession of the bullet-proof machines. . . .”

Strict etiquette consecrates the whole afternoon to such boasting, but Emperor Power of Trinity rose at 3 p. m. to attend Ethiopian patriotic dramas in which the Ethiopians were invariably victorious.