'Memoirs and Recollections of An Officer of the Indian Political Service' [‎12r] (23/156)

12 -
To our surprise and delight we learnt, after an anxious wait, that the Government of
India was agreeable. The necessary troops and supplies were being urgently assembled,
and a vessel requisitioned to bring them from Bombay to Djibouti. How they got up
to Addis Ababa, how the Sikhs were to be fed and accommodated, was left to us. But
there was still the problem of securing the Emperor's permission in allowing foreign
troops to enter and remain in his country. He was an intensely proud potentate, and
would certainly resent with contumely any suggestion that his armies would be
defeated even by the military might of Italy, or worse, that, even if he had to
retreat on the capital, he would prove incapable of maintaining law and order and of
protecting the lives and property of foreign nationals in his country. The British
Minister had a difficult time with the Emperor but, in the expectation that Haile
Selassie would eventually prove amenable, the preparations went ahead. In fact the
Indian Army detachment to reinforce the Legation had already left Bombay on board the
S.S. Jehangir before the Emperor reluctantly gave in. At the same time he informed
the Minister that he could rest assured that, whatever happened, he would never
abandon his country arid his people.
During the past few months Addis Ababa had been filling up with the pick of the world's
journalists, war correspondents and newsreel photographers. They were variously
American, French, Spaniards, Japanese, Canadians and Australians, and last - but not
least - British. The doyen of them all was Sir Percival Philips, Special War
Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, whose effective career had started with the
Russo-Japanese War, and who had covered pretty well every battle ground ever since
then. Other notabilities were Patrick Balfour (later Lord Kinross), Evely Waugh the
A.
author ( persona non grata with the Bartons whom he had bitterly offended in his
earlier book "Black Mischief"), George Steer of The Times (the best of them all),
W. F. Deedes (now Editor in Chief of the Daily Telegraph), and Knickerbocker and Van
Weygand, the most famous of all the American War Correspondents, and many others.
They and the cine-camera people daily bes^iged the Ethiopian Press Authority for reli
able news and for permission to proceed to the northern and southern fronts where the
armies were massing. All their efforts were unavailing - no-one was allowed to travel
out of Addis Ababa, in the total absence of the reliable news, they sat in the hotels
of the capital concocting long inaccurate and highly tendentious cabled reports to
their editors. But it was not just the world press who were descending on Addis
Ababa. Every train arriving from Djibouti disgorged its quota of highly questionable
remittance men, ex-soldiers, aviators and would-be mercenaries to offer their somewhat
dubious services to the War Ministry in return for hard cash in foreign currency.
The one who caused the most stir was a flamboyant American negro named Colonel Julian
and nicknamed "The Black Eagle". He posed as a famous air ace with an international
reputation, and so persuasive was he that was given command of the few light aircraft
which-the Emperor possessed, which Colonel Julian promised to transform into an