LEAGUE OF NATIONS Communicated to C .357.M.182.1935.VII the Council and Members of the Geneva, September 14th,1935 League. DISPUTE BETWEEN ETHIOPIA AND ITALY. REQUEST OF THE ETHIOPIAN GOVERNMENT. Note by the Secretary-General, The Secretary-General has the honour to r'-rsmsjiit to the Members of the Council the following communication which he has received from the Ethiopian Government, Geneva, September 4th, 1935 To the Secretary-General. On several occasions the Italian Government has referred in its Memorandum against Ethiopia to the scientific authority of M. Marcel GRIAULE. The Ethiopian Government has already signified its determination to co-operate loyally with the League in the impartial enquiry for which it has asked. It has therefore requested M. Marcel GRIAULE to make an independent and scientifcally impartial survey of the accusations contained in the Italian Memorandum, The Ethiopian delegation sends M. Marcel GRIAULE*s scientific report to your Excellency for communication to the Members of the Council, In a few hours’ time the Ethiopian delegation will hand to you its own reply to the Italian Memorandum. I have the honour, etc. (signed) P, TECLE-HAWARIATE Ethiopian Minister. The map annexed to this Memorandum will be issued as soon as possible. - 2 - COMMENTS 3Y M. MARCEL GRIAULE ON SOME OF THE QUESTIONS DEALT WITH IN "THE ITALIAN GO VERNIRENT S MEMORANDUM ON THE SITUATION IN ETHIOPIA. No te. - These comments relate to the second part of Volume I, "Report", They do not form an exhaustive criticism of the Memorandum. (map annexed.) I. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. (1) The value of the Italian Memorandum as a col­ lection of documents would have been enhanced had the chapters on ethnography, sociology and legislation been amplified by experts on these subjects s Italy has an Oriental Institute at Naples with trains each year a large number of Distinguished students interested in Ethiopian affairs„ Their assistance would undoubtedly have given a scientific character to a work of this importance- and would have made it clearer end more convincing. They would have given considerable space to writers whose studies are authoritative in the matter, They would have quoted from other scholars as well as from Conti Rossini, .Montendon and Marcel Griaule; they would have devoted at least as much space to the first of these writers as bo the two others; they would have quoted from the scientific section of Marcel Giaule’s work, compared with which the literary section would seem to be of minor importance. Lastly, Orientalists of all schools of thought will be surprised that the name of Enrico Cerulli, the best known linguist end philologist who has specialised in Ethiopian studies> is omitted from this document. The excuse that in order to preserve an appearance of impartiality the Memorandum could not contain too much Italian evidence, cannot be accepted. It deprives the reader of very valuable assistance of scholars whose reputation rightly stands high. (2) The documents contained in the Report have been collected and used without due consideration. For instance, on page 59 the name of the distinguished Orientalist, Conti Rossini, and the name of a fantastic witness will be found side by side. Quotations from writers would have been more valuable had they been used carefully and correctly. (5) The evidence has not been adequately correlated; the most important evidence has not been correlated at all. Thus it is thought sufficient to mention hypothetical figures given by Lady Simon with regard to the number of slaves in the whole of Abyssinia (2 million) and to state that there were 900 slaves out of 5,000 inhabitants in Gondar in 1932, no description whatever being given as to how these figures wore arrived at. (4) Most of the witnesses mentioned were not con­ sulted. Some of them would have given valuable information. Others might have been eliminated, thus relieving the Mémorandum of matter that is not only useless but prejudicial to the arguments in support of the Italian case -, (5.)- To carry conviction, a memorandum of that kind ought to have contained - from a sense of justice - a few less sombre pages describing the good features of the extra­ ordinarily well developed social organisation of a people that has subsisted for twenty-five centuries, and the maintenance of whose independence,-down to the present date, cannot be ascribed solely tc cannibalism, emasculation, xenophobia and slavery. (6) Finally, the memorandum should have avoided certain obvious mistakes, which may justify doubt as to the entire argument adduced. For instance, the map appended to the memorandum seems to show that the Province of Shoa was largely conquered by. the Abyssinians between 1887 and 1893. That assertion should, we think, suffice to clcs e the dis­ cussion an:1, to discourage any attempt to enter upon the consideration of the Italian paper. It is, we consider, hardly possible that the editor could have omitted, tt$ough inadvertence a mistake of mar e than a millenium. The occupation of Shoa by the Dynasty of Solomon dates back tc about 937 (nine hundred and thirty-seven).* II* DISORGANISATION OF PUBLIC AUTHORITIES IN ETHIOPIA (P.69). Even if the view sot forth on p'. 71 of the memo­ randum is accepted, viz., that Ethiopia forms a nucleus of conquerors living in the midst cf conquered tribes, who have been, to put it shortly, "colonised” by them, the inter­ national obligations concerning the exercise of effective authority over the border districts must surely be viewed with the same tolerance as is extended to European Powers in the discharge -of the same duty on the borders of their un­ pacified or semi'-pacified colonies. In any case, there is no ground for charging the central Government with incapacity because of frontier incidents, for which the neighbouring Power might equally well be held responsible, Again, even if such incapacity were proved, it should be attributed to reasons quite other than those given by Lord N )el Buxton and Lord Polwarth. These writers report (pp.69-70) that it is impossible to say how far the laws are known, and to what extent they are in practice carried cut, that the machinery for the prevention of crime is absent except at Add is Ababa, and that in one place there is no police agent whatever to take, action when murder is commi tted. This statement is ",ue, first of all, to a miscon- cepti:n ,because crime in Ethiopia is a private, and not a public matter, and it is for the family to institute proceed­ ings in the courts. T 4-. demonstrate that this system is a barbarous one, it would be necessary .to shew that there was a higher percentage of crime in Abyssinia than in a country possessing a judicial organisati :n "-n Eur opean lines. * About this time an insurrection by the Agaos and Fallashas, led by a queen named Judith or Esther, f reed the Dynasty of Solomon to take refuge in Shoa. Cf. Sapeto, Viaggio e missione cattolica fra i Mens a, i B-'g.s e gli Habab, con un cenno ge^grafico e storico dell* Abissinia: Basset, Etudes sur l’histoire dTEthiopie, p.227; Morie, Les civilisations africaines, Histoire de l ’Ethiopie (Nubie et nbyssinie) depuis les temps les plus recules ,iusqu~ra n s .jours, Vol.II, pp. 181- 183. For Ethiopian history in general, consult the works cf Conti Rossini, Budge and Coulbeaux. - 4 - As to knowledge of the laws in general, that is one of the curses of this country, where any Ethiopian or for­ eigner may be chosen as judge by the parties, and where any individual may, from natural inclination, be drawn into a new lawsuit almost every week. (e.g., the writer of the present commentary rendered in one year more than one hundred judgments concerning cases affecting his staff). The same English writers make a somewhat uncharitable allusion to the headmen, whose pay consists of the exaction of labour and such dues as they can collect. To give a complete picture, it would be necessary to deal at least summarily with the system of land tenure, the favours granted by the sovereign to third parties and the conception of authority in Ethiopia. In the absence of such a commentary, any portrayal of one feature or another of the system is necessarily one-sided. In any case, it would have been desirable, in order to enlighten the reader, to lay before him certain documents which are perfectly easy to trace be­ cause they may be found in the very works of which such large use is made elsewhere. Here, for instance, from "Les Flambeurs d fHommee”* (p.109) is the literal translation of a statement made by a soldier of low rank in the army of Has Hailu, with reference to taxation; "The rule is the rule, and taxes are the king's affair. It is said that the Prince enriches himself by grinding down the people, and this is proved by the number of his granaries. In very truth, there is no instance in the chronicles of a Prince who has grown thin through a lack of grinding stonesÎ But there is this that I would cast upon thy mind : in hard times the people make a hollow of the palms of their hands and stretch out their arms towards the granaries of the Princet for the king is the people’s steward11. It is a disturbing fact that the question of the disorganisation of the public authorities In Ethiopia should be taken up by the very people who have been attempting to undermine them for close on half a century by fomenting rebellion in numerous districts.