"When the emperor finally reached the capital on the afternoon of 30, April, he went into an immediate meeting with the Council of Ministers.It was a quiet session, during which the participants "conferred in hushed tones for hours," and convened again the next day before convincing Haile Selassie to leave with his family. Although unprecedented and certainly dramatic, it was the correct move to make: as long as the sovereign was free and unbowed, Italian rule could have no legitimacy. For the emperor to have remained in Ethiopia- and it took all the strength and conviction of the government and empress to convince him to leave- would have been vainglorious, for he would have risked a humiliating capture, death, or even worse, submission to the conqueror. Haile Selassie could not withstand the logic of the case for exile, AND AS SUBSEQUENT EVENTS WOULD AMPLY PROVE, WITHDRAWL TO EUROPE ENSURED THAT ETHIOPIA WOULD BE FREE IN FIVE SHORT YEARS." (Cap lock mine for emphasis)

-Haile Selassie I- The Formative Years, by Harold G. Marcus, Pg. 179