OM TO TUNISIA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 42, 26 January 1943, Page 4

OM TO TUNISIA

'FALLEN Bastions' might well describe the capitulation of Tripoli, the last remaining outpost of the once powerful Italian African Empire which Mussolini vowed would be the basis for the re-establishment of a modern Roman Commonwealth. One by one the Italian peoples have seen their colonies fall, Eritrea, Somalilandi Abyssinia and now Libya. To-day the Eighth Army has not merely occupied' the Tripolitanian capital but has pursued the demoralised Axis army toward the Tunisian borders, where Rommel hopes to form a junction with the German Army now opposing , General Eisenhower. The dismal war review from Italian eyes must be bitter indeed. Two and a half years of theh ighest hopes mingled with lowest depths of despair. Today we have the unlovely vision of the mirth-loving, musical people of the Mediterrean sea, exhausted and disheartened, over-run by a swaggering German army of occupation, half starved, discouraged, gloomily regarding the hopelessness of an empty future. Forgotten are the days when the gay Italian flags waved from every masthead as their • great II Duce decided to stab prostrate France in the back and win for his country the easy fruits of treachery. Gone are the memories of the first glorious advance across the Egyptian border and capture of Sidi Barrani. Vanished too the dream of conquest which was born when British Somaliland was over-run two years ago. All is' now dispondency and utter respair. Tens of thousands of Italy's young manhood lie buried in the arid sands of Libya; hundreds of thousands more toil for foreign masters as prisoners of war; millions of her people are already beginning to know the gnawing, sense of fear created by the aii; raids, of the JI.A.F. and millions more have been brought to the fatal realisation that their country without the counterbalance of the Middle East campaign, lies open and vulnerable to invasion for the first time for hundreds of years. Of the Axis countries to-day Italy cuts the sorriest and most abject picture of that hitherto boastful alliance.