Western-educated Ethiopians of the earlier generation who thought that Ethiopian traditional rulers could modernize the country without serious societal strains that might lead to revolution were clearly wrong. Ethiopia was run under a feudal system of government until the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie; and feudalism and modernization are by their very nature incongruous and cannot live side by side without creating fissures in the body-politic. Even Emperor Haile Selassie himself had realized this earlier when he said at the opening of Tafari Makonnen School in the 1920’s. "Ethiopia is like a sleeping beauty but is being awakened by modernization" which might lead to the overthrow of the old system in place - even his own government.