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Certainly the new Emperor is the greatest Abyssinian ruler of modern times. Grandeur and a fine sensitiveness are blended in his person. He is educating likely Abyssinian youths at schools and colleges throughout the world, but particularly in the U. S. His way with the priestly and feudal classes, bitter foes of modernization, can only be called masterly. Little by little, as he can, he is introducing farm machinery, building roads, waking up a land which has slept for 5,000 years. For his Coronation on Nov. 2 he decreed this striking ceremony: the people to stand all night in a vast multitude around the Coptic Cathedral of St. George, each standee holding a lighted candle; the Emperor and Empress to pass an all-night vigil inside St. George's, then to be crowned amid solemn chanting by the Coptic Abuna (Our Father) Egyptian Archbishop of Abyssinia.
*Originally a parachute jumper famed for playing the saxophone during his jumps, the Black Eagle said, on his return to Harlem from Ethiopia last July:
"When I arrived in Ethiopia the King was glad to see me. ... I took off with a French pilot. . . . We climbed to 5,000 ft. as 50,000 people cheered, and then I jumped out and tugged open my parachute. ... I floated down to within 40 ft. of the King, who incidentally is the greatest of all modern rulers. . . . He rushed up and pinned the highest medal given in that country on my breast, made me a colonel and the leader of his air force—and here I am!"
Taking off from the Harlem River in his seaplane Ethiopia I, the Black Eagle attempted a flight to Ethiopia in 1924, landed on the mud flats of Flushing Bay, explained: "Pontoon trouble."
*Abyssinians considered as a restitution rather than a gift several trunksfull of ancient Abyssinian documents brought back by the Duke of Gloucester last week, originally carried off if not stolen by British troops.