Trafalgar Square hears that Ethiopia’s cause belongs to all

At a rally in Trafalgar Square James, as chairman of the International African Friends of Abyssinia, declared that the Ethiopian crisis had produced a union of sentiment among black people in Africa, America, the West Indies and everywhere else, and that its cause was theirs to defend by every means available. Hogsbjerg shows the Haitian material feeding directly into the campaign. James argued that Toussaint had beaten European armies through a ruthless guerrilla war fought from the mountains and that the Ethiopian victory at Adwa in 1896 had been won in a comparable way, by scorched earth and retreat into high ground before falling on a cut-off Italian column. He urged an Ethiopian audience to destroy their country sooner than hand it over. The committee even considered raising an international brigade in Britain.