ABYSSINIA: French Influence

“Also aboard the S. S. Ile de France” was the way most Manhattan newspapers referred last week to Dr. Earle Brownell Babcock, associate director of the European centre of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Cinemactor Charles (“Buddy”) Rogers. A chocolate-brown third class passenger eclipsed in news value the entire first and second class. As he stepped ashore, “The Black Eagle of Harlem,” Colonel Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, “The Negro Lindbergh,” faced batteries of press cameras, eloquently told his tale.

Just prior to the Coronation of the Emperor Power of Trinity I of Abyssinia the Associated Press reported from Addis Ababa that Colonel Julian, “then chief of the Abyssinian Air Force, had crashed in the presence of His Majesty, destroying a plane which had been a Coronation gift and so enraging Power of Trinity I that he stripped him of all honors, ordered him out of the country in such poverty that the U. S. colony in Addis Ababa had to make up a purse to pay the Black Eagle’s fare home (TIME, Nov. 10).

Though he arrived third class, Hubert Fauntleroy Julian was not meanly dressed (see cut). He carried a cane and two pairs of gloves. “The Emperor and I are pals,” he said, “and if you reporters doubt the logicability of that I will pay for a wireless to His Majesty.”

Reporter: Did they take up a collection for you?

Julian (displaying what he said was a draft on the Bank of Abyssinia for $1,400): I needed no gratuity.

Reporter: Well, why did you leave your pal?

Julian: I may as well be frank. . . . When I first got over there, I was instructed to revise the Abyssinian air force.

The first thing I did was to condemn all the French planes. That is what caused all the trouble. The French tried to bump me off. I also supplanted some of the French aviators and that didn’t sit very well.

The French tried to poison me once in my hotel. . . . Why stay in Abyssinia and be killed when I can remain alive by leaving there?

When my plane crashed, I was not incarcerated. My passport was issued to me, and it reads “For the purpose of making a temporary visit to the United States.”