765.84/3200: Telegram
The Chargé in Ethiopia (Engert) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 20—11:50 p.m.]
243. My 240, December 18, 10 p.m. Ethiopian reply was handed to British and French Ministers this afternoon. After reviewing briefly the situation leading up to and since the outbreak of hostilities it proceeds (translation from the French):26
“We are convinced that neither the Council nor the Assembly of the League of Nations will support such a project of settlement going outside the framework of the Covenant, destructive of the very basis upon which that organism was founded, attack the independence and the territorial integrity of a member state and involve a premium to the aggressor at the expense of the injured party. Persuaded as we are that Italy possesses the most modern means of making war and that it has decided to decimate our people and to conquer our territory but confiding in the power of our Creator and the justice of our cause recognized as such by World opinion we are resolved to defend to the end our land and our liberty.
At a time when an International Institution for collective bargaining of peace exists and as Italy has been condemned by this Institution and as this invader commits barbarous acts and contrary to the laws and usages of war, we ask ourselves what are the reasons why it is proposed to us to retain anything but a nominal sovereignty over about a third of our territory which would be abandoned to Italy and to partition likewise to the profit of that power our people and our province of Tigre.
The proposed zone of establishment and of economic development which would be reserved exclusively to Italy evidently finds its origin in the Triparty Treaty of 1906, a treaty which has not been accepted by Ethiopia in that which concerns its provisions tending to accord in Ethiopian territory a favored economic treatment to nationals of any foreign power whatever. This treaty included, nevertheless, the [Page 719] recognition by the three powers of the full independence and territorial integrity of Ethiopia, which, however, did not prevent one of its signatories from undertaking a war of conquest of our territory and of our people. The proposals in question are likewise contrary to the principles laid down by the Franco-Ethiopian treaty of 1908 of equal treatment for all foreigners in Ethiopia of interdiction of commercial or economic privileges and monopolies and of maintenance of the open door. They tend to institute in Ethiopia, a free and sovereign nation, a system worse than that of the mandate. The mandatory system in fact always safeguards the rights of the native population and seeks to promote and encourage its economic progress; it includes as a fundamental principle equality of treatment for the nationals of all member states of the League of Nations. The project respects only rights already acquired by Ethiopian and foreign nationals and in consecrating in favor of Italians an exclusiveness of future economic initiative it assures by the absence of any possibility of competition the development of this region by Italy alone and for its own profit.
To demand of us to make such sacrifices in favor of the aggressor would be to prepare the dismemberment of Ethiopia and to collaborate in the collapse of the sacred principles of the League of Nations and of the system of collective security.
We have confidence that the French and British Governments in common with all the other member states of the League of Nations which have studied this conflict closely will apply themselves to assure the respect of the legitimate rights of Ethiopia and that the League of Nations will take all measures provided for in the Covenant against the aggressor to stop the war deliberately launched by it.
In conclusion, we inform you that we think we must communicate the present aide-mémoire to the Council of the League of Nations.”
I have now also succeeded in obtaining full text of Anglo-French proposals of December 13th and shall telegraph them if Department has not already received them from another source.
- Complete text printed in New York Times, December 20, 1935, p. 22.↩