St. George for Ethiopia
By HARRY FRANKLIN
Addis Abab.a HE Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah is vastly and gaudily emblazoned, in mediaeval colours and style, upon the fuselage of the latest Convair aircraft which deposits bewildered European passengers on the airpor; at Addis Ababa. Ethiopian Air Lines, State-owned but American-conducted, thus forewarn the visitor of that queer mixture of feudalism and Fords which is the essence of Ethiopia. . Along the neglected tarmac road from the airport, "General Smuts Avenue,' trot little donkeys with big loads and ponies drawing rubber-tyred " sulkies " that might have come straight from a Virginian racetrack. Coptic priests in black and scarlet robes spit vigorously into the dust of the footpath and are bowed to, three times, by barefooted laymen in topees, jodhpurs and cotton shoulder-scarves.
Car-brakes screech as a humped cow chews reflectively in the middle of the road, gazing at the goal-posts across the way, Which do not look quite the right dimensions for either Associa- tion or Rugby football. They are, in fact, gallows, and there are others' in the market-place and other points of vantage in the city. Public executions take place on a Saturday, when the greatest audienceS can be expected. A few months ago the gallows were all in use together, when a group of men convicted of an attempt on the Emperor's life were taken by lorry from gallows to gallows, one man being left dangling at each. The cow decides to move. The car continues, dropping its passengers at a smart hotel. Along the pot-holed pavement a sew yards from the hotel entrance is a concrete gully-hole, five feet square and twelve feet deep. At night a man could step into it and break his neck. It would matter llttle if he did, for life is cheab in Ethiopia. The country swarms with armed police. armed private guards, armed individuals. Occasional shots after Midnight indicate that somebody' night watchman is having a Crack at some " Shifta " (thieves) or the " Shifta " are having a Crack at somebody's night-watchman, or a policeman may be firing at a daring European, late from a party and breaking the curfew, whizzing past with his foot on the accelerator and his head well down.
Along Churchill Road. near the fine new police-headquarters building, are the filthy hovels of the drink-shops and brothels, the mud and tin shacks of the poor, where beggars, mutilate& and diseased, display their horrors. An emaciated horse is lying near the roadside, dying. Nobody dares put it out of its misery. Nobody but a foreigner particularly wants to, and any foreigner that did would risk arrest, and a claim for damages from thol owner of the horse.
The cinema in the main square blares forth its sound-track from an outside loud-speaker, competing with the propaganda stream from a public-address system set up by the Governmen6 radio-station. Violently coloured American posters showing under-dressed women inadequately resisting male advances fait to sell dollar seats to the bemused tribesmen in from the hills. They gaze at the posters and whack their donkeys on towards the market.
Addis Ababa—" City of Flowers "—has acquired the worse features of Westernistn, in patches, like leprosy. Beyond tho town the IVIaskal daisies still cover the hills, and the Maskat Ceremony marking the end of the rains is just over. It was a fourteenth-century picture of gorvous Coptic bishops and semi. pagan mysteries ; of galloping white horses • of the solemn march' of the Emperor round the Maskal pole ; of bonfires, drumming and blowing of hgrns. EthiOPia, you would think, should have stayed like that. The country where slavery was a scandal in the 'thirties, and where lt is still suspected in the outer Marches, can hardly be civilised In less than a century. Its progress depends too much on one kan and on whoever may succeed him. His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie I, is completely sincere and honest, wise and humane, working always for the 400d of his country and his people, but the same cannot be said for most of his Ministers, advisers and officials. Nor does the Emperor's writ by any, means always run in the provinces, where the local governors rule like feudal lords, capriciously, and little local wars stilt break out.
The Ethiopians, like the English, have adopted St. George as their patron saint, as well as the lion for their royal emblem. All the virtues and courage of the saint will be needed by the present Emperor and his successors for several generations before this barbaric country can achieve more than the superficial appearance of Western civilisation.
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