FOREIGN NEWS
An under dog and a black one at that, Ethiopian Emperor Power of Trinity decided to appeal last week to President Roosevelt and the collective conscience of U. S. citizens. Resident in Ethiopia are 125 U. S. citizens, 110 of them missionaries. Judging by them His Majesty felt he was appealing to a highly Christian people who had given the world the Briand-Kellogg Pact "renouncing war as an instrument of national policy." When Ethiopia was successfully pressed by President Coolidge to adhere to this Pact, Ethiopians hoped they had an ace of some sort in the hole, and they looked to President Roosevelt last week to make Premier Mussolini renounce his blatantly announced war-as-an-instrument-of-Italian-national-policy upon Ethiopia.
On the Fourth of July at the State Department, plodding Secretary Cordell Hull said that he had received a flash from the U. S. acting Chargé d'Affaires at Addis Ababa giving the gist of the Emperor's appeal but that the U. S. Government obviously could not act before the full five-page text of His Imperial Majesty's communication was received. Next afternoon President Roosevelt, having glanced at the flash, delivered what admiring Idaho Senator Pope later called "a masterpiece of diplomacy." Around 4 p. m. correspondents found the President in one of his most elated moods. When one of them started to ask whether the Government might act under a formula covering cases of aggression voiced last year and year before by Mr. Roosevelt's special Ambassador-at-Large Norman Hezekiah Davis and began to quote the formula, the President cut him short by bursting into laughter and asking with his twinkle: "Why don't you sing it?"
Talleyrand? This nettled only the discomfited questioner. Soon the correspondents as a group were agreeing with the President's secretaries that in diplomacy he is very adroit, revels in doing "the smart thing," and would have made a perfect Ambassador in the great days of diplomacy, a sort of Talleyrand. The master stroke delivered by Talleyrand Roosevelt last week was to have the U. S. Chargé d'Affaires inform Emperor Power of Trinity that:
"My Government, interested as it is in the maintenance of peace in all parts of the world, is gratified that the League of Nations, with a view to a peaceful settlement, has given its attention to the controversy which has unhappily arisen between your Government and the Italian Government and that the controversy is now in process of arbitration.
"My Government hopes that, whatever the facts or merits of the controversy may be, the arbitral agency dealing with this controversy may be able to arrive at a decision satisfactory to both of the governments immediately concerned.
"Furthermore, and of great importance, in view of the provisions of the [Kellogg] Pact of Paris, to which both Italy and Abyssinia are parties, in common with sixty-one other countries, my Government would be loathe to believe that either of them would resort to other than pacific means as a method of dealing with this controversy or would permit any situation to arise which would be inconsistent with the commitments of the Pact."