Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “History doesn’t repeat Itself, but it often rhymes.”  Seeing and hearing President Zelenskiy addressing the world, pleading for meaningful help to resist Putin’s vicious assault on his country, I realised that this was a repeat performance of Emperor Haile Selassie’s plea to the League of Nations to save Ethiopia from Mussolini.  Click here to read a full transcipt.

That was in June 1936.  The League of Nations did nothing.  Mussolini created his colony of Italian East Africa.  Fast-forward to April 1945: Mussolini’s corpse was hung upside-down in a public square in Milan, and three days later Hitler shot himself.  But during those nine years unimaginable crimes against humanity were committed; millions died; and much of Europe and Japan lay in ruins.

This is more than a rhyme.