Big Black Toe

Ten miles outside Addis Ababa one morning last week one hundred Abyssinian policemen lined the road at stiff attention. In front of them stood an Armenian commissioner and two native chiefs. Down the dusty road came a U. S. automobile flying the U. S. flag. Inside, erect and dignified, sat Addison E. Southard, U. S. Minister to Abyssinia. Smartly the commissioner, the two native chiefs, the policemen snapped out a salute. The automobile stopped. Out stepped Minister Southard. In a loud voice the commissioner read to him the Abyssinian Government's apology for a beating he had received the week before at exactly the same spot.

Minister Southard had been riding quietly along the road when his car encountered a slight bump. The chauffeur got out, found that the bump had been caused by the wheel's passing over the big black toe of an Abyssinian woman. Up rushed ten policemen, began pummeling the chauffeur. Minister Southard intervened, was himself pummeled. Secretary Stimson protested the diplomatic indignity.

Last week the ten pummelers, heavy with chains, stood behind the police commissioner while he read their sentences to Minister Southard: one year's imprisonment, 500 Abyssinian dollars' fine. Since none of them was likely ever to have so much as 500 Abyssinian dollars ($175) the commissioner explained that they would probably spend the rest of their lives in jail.

In Washington Secretary of State Stimson, who accepted a far milder apology for a worse pummeling of U. S. Consul Culver Bryant Chamberlain by Japanese soldiers (TIME, Jan. 11), pondered the sufficiency of Abyssinia's diplomatic regrets.

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