Selassie & Fiuggi

With 41 crates reportedly containing gold bars and Ethiopia's well-worn old green Imperial treasure chest among his luggage, His Majesty Haile Selassie reached London last week bravely smiling and heavily perfumed. En route from Palestine he had been transferred from a British warship to a British liner, and the British Government insisted that his status was "strictly incognito."

In London screaming red placards reading "WELCOME EMPEROR!" had been pasted on delivery vans by Labor and Liberal newsorgans but, taking their cue from their Government, Conservative London papers did their best to ignore Haile Selassie, tucked news that he was coming into obscure squibs. Nevertheless, 5,000 unofficial welcomers rushed to Waterloo Station. Among them were Chinese, Hindus, Arabs and Negroes, cheek by jowl with English of every class, including pink-cheeked gentlemen in high silk hats and ladies, some of whom waved simultaneously the British and Ethiopian flags as the private Pullman car of Haile Selassie drew in.

Seated at a flower-decked table was His Majesty in blue-serge trousers, silk blouse and flowing black cape with his children in well-tailored, tweedy sports clothes and flannels. Roared hearty British voices: "Welcome to the land of the free! Hurrah for the one and only Emperor of Ethiopia! Down with Mussolini!"

Great efforts by the British League of Nations Union to coax down to the station the British Foreign Secretary, well-dressed Captain Anthony Eden, were rewarded to the extent that he sent his tactful private secretary, Mr. Oliver C. Harvey, who is always careful to dress somewhat badly. Rumpled Mr. Harvey slipped into the Pullman, spoke for a few minutes to Haile Selassie, then presented His Majesty to many an eminent, top-hatted friend of the League of Nations and of Ethiopia, including Economist Sir Walter Thomas Layton and Lord Allen of Hurtwood. They pressed upon His Majesty an engraved, though quite unofficial, scroll declaring:

"We lament that Ethiopia has suffered invasion. We, with thousands of people of Great Britain, express the hope that the day will soon dawn when Ethiopia will regain her ancient independence and her rightful Emperor will return and, trusting in God, will continue to lead his people toward light and peace."

Taking this scroll His Majesty cried: "God grant that it may be so! ... I come to England confident that I will obtain justice here. . . . May the British Crown and the British people live forever!"

After that, cheering never stopped as Haile Selassie, his children and his crates were whisked by limousine under guard of Scotland Yard detectives to a sumptuous, cream-yellow house facing Hyde Park at No. 5 Princes Gate, the home of the U. S. Ambassador being nearby at No. 14. Alighting, His Majesty was met with shouts of "Say any old thing, Haile Selassie! Hurrah for the Emperor! Good Old Haile Selassie!"

When the King of Kings and Conquering Lion of Judah refused to speak into a microphone provided for his use, an excited fair-skinned dowager seized it herself, uttered sounds which British radio listeners may well have thought were words spoken by His Majesty in his native Amharic--until an announcer cleared up the mistake. As Good Old Haile Selassie withdrew into the house, 1,000 admirers out front snapped up popular dailies, one of which cried under a banner headline: ''Haile Selassie is a welcome visitor, for he belongs to that band of men with the courage to stand up against tyranny and stand by what is right at the risk of death in order that justice might live."

Imperial Garden Party, Bright & early next morning a round hundred admirers of Haile Selassie gathered in Whitehall to see him lay a wreath on the Cenotaph honoring Britain's War dead. With dogged British grit they waited all morning and all afternoon until finally dispersed by a thunderstorm. All through the day Haile Selas sie had been demanding that the Foreign Office accord him "official permission" to lay the wreath which meanwhile drooped and withered in his hallway. Captain An thony Eden's subordinates had kept insisting all day that His Majesty should merely apply to Scotland Yard for whatever protection he might think he needed in laying a wreath on the Cenotaph.

Second round of the Emperor's struggle to be officially noticed came as a request to be received by King Edward VIII. To this the Foreign Office replied that Emperor Haile Selassie, since he was traveling incognito, was no more likely to be received by the King Emperor than any other distinguished but unofficial visitor.

Third round was the issuing by Haile Selassie, as Emperor of Ethiopia and apparently no longer incognito so far as he himself was concerned, of official invitations to an "Imperial garden party."

Swift to snub Haile Selassie by sending diplomatic regrets were the U. S., Russia, France, Germany, Japan, the Little Entente, all the Scandinavian and Balkan States, and five of the 20 Latin American republics, plus all the British Dominions, vice-regal India and His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. Captain Eden excused himself by saying that he had to make a political speech elsewhere. His swank Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Viscount Cranborne, explained: "My presence is possible only because I can meet the Emperor in a private, non-political capacity." In their official capacities came the Argentine, Turkish, Brazilian and Chinese Ambassadors and the Ministers of Cuba, Finland, Iraq, Nepal, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Uruguay, and Paraguay's charge d'affaires. Also the Deans of Westminster and St. Paul's, Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George and Salvation Army General Evangeline Booth.

Even as Haile Selassie chatted in French with his guests, his doom as an Emperor seemed in course of being sealed by Orator Anthony Eden, who told his constituents that "The League finds its authority weakened" and that Geneva must now act "in the spirit of candid realism." Far from suggesting any anti-Italian or pro-Ethiopian action of a virile nature. Orator Eden announced for the British Government this unpretentious objective: "We must at this time maintain the League of Nations in existence." In quarters close to Haile Selassie it was said that he was being pressed to quit Great Britain, probably would go to live in a villa he owns in Switzerland, if Italian pressure is not exerted on the Swiss.

Corporal &Marshal. Meanwhile in Italy every newsorgan which reported the doings in London spoke, of Haile Selassie by his family name, "Signore Tafari." However, nobody much bothered to read the papers. All Italy was rapturously celebrating the return from Ethiopia of its Conqueror. His skin seemed suntanned to the toughness of leather. Moist upon it were the kisses of Benito Mussolini as II Duce embraced and smacked on both cheeks grizzled, tough, triumphant Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Viceroy of Ethiopia.

After the smacks Corporal Mussolini, who has never had himself promoted above his actual War grade, patted Marshal Badoglio affectionately on the back, presented a bouquet to the Marshal's wife, affably greeted their daughter. Later Emperor Vittorio Emanuele and Marshal Badoglio reviewed troops amid deafening plaudits near the Triumphal Arch of Constantine. Once home, the Viceroy of Ethiopia confided with an old soldier's simple candor the main reason why he did in fact return to Rome last week.

This reason Italians clearly understood when the Marshal said he was going to take the cure at Fiuggi, drinking its famed waters. Popes with gallstones gave the springs of Fiuggi their fame and today its bottled waters may be had in almost any city of the world. Last week learned Italians, sympathizing with their great Marshal, turned to the Italian encyclopedia, scanned the famous letter in which great Artist Michelangelo described how he was cured at Fiuggi in the year 1549 as Marshal Badoglio may well be cured. Wrote Michelangelo: "I am immensely better. For about two months I have been drinking morning and evening water from a spring about forty miles from Rome, which breaks the stone. It has broken mine and enabled me to pass a good deal of it in my urine. I must lay in a store of it and use it exclusively in drinking and cooking and change my way of living.'' After taking the cure at Fiuggi, the Viceroy of Ethiopia was slated to return to take up residence at Addis Ababa.

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