A 1936 Speech Offers Dire Warnings for Today - Haile Selassie had few weapons but warned Europe of the doom that followed.

Emperor Haile Selassie

HT BCF : At first, the speaker solemnly recounted, the invading aircraft dropped tear gas bombs but the “soldiers learned to scatter, waiting until the wind had rapidly dispersed the poisonous gas.”

Adjusting their tactics, the aircraft then dropped barrels of mustard gas. The barrels would rupture upon impact, but the poisonous effect was limited. So, for more efficient delivery, “Special sprayers were installed on board aircraft so that they could vaporize, over vast areas of territory, a fine, death-dealing rain.”

Haile Selassie of Ethiopia addresses the League of Nations in Geneva in 1936

Groups of aircraft formed in long trails so the “fog issuing from them formed a continuous sheet.” The aircraft, on orders from higher command, made multiple passes so that “soldiers, women, children, cattle, rivers, lakes, and pastures were drenched continually with this deadly rain.”

This, the speaker charged, was the invading army’s chief method of warfare: “to scatter fear and death” and “to kill off systematically all living creatures” and carry “ravage and terror into the most densely populated parts of the territory.”

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