The War: The Deal

In trying to consummate a deal on Ethiopia shrewd French Premier Pierre (“Honest Broker”) Laval began with sub rosa dickering which the British Government would not acknowledge, progressed by getting the League to give Britain and France a mandate to make the deal respectable (TIME, Nov. 11) and last week was having pressure exerted at Addis Ababa. For the first time Ethiopian statesmen close to the Emperor discussed openly with correspondents this hypothesis: Suppose Emperor Haile Selassie should keep his rich native Province of Harrar but give up the Province of Ogaden in which the original Ualual Incident occurred, the fruitful Webbe Shibeli Valley and of course Aduwa, “if by this enlightened sacrifice His Majesty could bring a quick conclusion of bloodshed.”

Even a few days before, mention of any such deal had provoked the Ethiopian Foreign Office to blasts of scorn. Last week the feudal Rases of Ethiopia were being sounded by Emperor Haile Selassie’s confidential agents. Some of them reacted by demanding that His Majesty at once take the field and fight, as Ethiopian sovereigns always did in days of old. Instead, the Emperor sent Arks of the Covenant to encourage his troops (see p. 16) and talked of making only brief dashes to & from the front.

Joseph Israels 2d, one of the Addis Ababa correspondents who stressed the deal most heavily in dispatches last week, was so far from angering Haile Selassie thereby that the Emperor asked him two days later to read off for His Majesty in English a radio broadcast to U. S. listeners in which the wily Ethiopian cried: “You people of the United States can help . . . inflict … the international form of punishment, known as sanctions, upon the Italian people.” But the King of Kings concluded, “I ask no one to take the sword against Italy.”