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This drilling the Emperor kept up only in Addis Ababa, presumably to impress white observers, for he well knows that his wild legions will fight best in savage skirmish formation under the Ethiopian rule of every fighter for himself.
Power of Trinity, who continues to hope that President Roosevelt will help Ethiopia, was installed last week in an office with U. S. furniture resembling the President's and on the walls autographed photographs of every White House occupant from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin D. In this setting His Majesty worked himself up for the Associated Press until large tears trickled down his dark cheeks and he moaned: "We have had little more to help us fight Italy than the weapon of publicity."
A royal virtuoso, Emperor Power of Trinity revealed on another day last week that his fighting coffers are stuffed with every sort of treasure wherewith to buy munitions, including some 10,000,000 gold lire ($2,000,000) paid by Italians after their 1896 defeat at Adowa and hoarded ever since by Ethiopians. That there is plenty of money at the Emperor's command appeared from the fact that huge quantities of munitions have been unloaded and spread over several acres at Djibouti in French Somaliland, terminal of the one & only railway to Addis Ababa. By order of French Premier Pierre Laval these constantly growing acres of munitions continued to be withheld from Ethiopia last week, constitute a major trick up the French sleeve which can be played either for or against Dictator Mussolini.
The fact that His Majesty is a usurper, the rightful Emperor of Ethiopia being dusky Lij Yasu (Child of Jesus), came again to the fore when imprisoned Child of Jesus was rumored to have been put to death by Power of Trinity who last week denied the deed, claimed that Child of Jesus remains safe in jail.
Residents of Addis Ababa were informed that the first air raid (real or for practice) will be announced by three cannon shots. At this the entire populace, some 100,000 black and white souls, are to flee into the environs. When they hear six cannon shots they are to return home. Finding that many foreign correspondents new to Addis Ababa were queasy about the lepers lounging in the streets, His Majesty ordered lepers to "get out and stay out."