THE WAS IN TRIPOLI.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1, 27 April 1912, Page 7

THE WAS IN TRIPOLI.

ITALIAN KEENNESS FOE, Till WAR.

A single clay in Romo at the present time, writes Mr G. Ward Price in the Daily Mail, is enough to impress a vivid realisation of the. fact that the Italian nation is united in a. firm determination, to continue the war until she has gained every one of the objects with winch she set out to make war on Turkey.

Coming here a week ago from Constantinople, the headquarters of the other camp, I expected to find that a time of tedium had begun in Home. The activity of the Italian forces during the last months one expected would have produced a reaction from the enthusiasm created by the swift, decisive deeds of the first days of the war.

But so great a keenness for the war is still to To scon on every hand in Italy that one might believe that the campaign was of defence 'rather than aggression. And so, in fact, to the Italian mind it is. Pnjflic opinion here considers the Tripolitain and Cyrenaica to he as real and inseparable a part of Italian soil as the Gampagna at the gates of Rome. The Italians are like a man who has come suddenly into a country estate. They are frankly, almost childishly, delighted witli their new possession. They take keen pleasure in multiplying around them assurances that it is really their very own. Pictures of Tripoli arc in every shop window; particulars of the new Italian .postal service to Tripoli, pang in the, Riaaaa San Silvestra; there are shifty* new maps with the title, J ,“The new 1 Italian Provinces,” .apctpinany of the "placenames Italianised, on the walls of every Ministry, and the Italian correspondents in Africa find every day some fresh delight to fill the eyes of their readers, a new view, a picturesque native custom, an undiscovered • . i (I iii rum. j r • It may ho said , quite as confidently of Italy as of Tnykcy that the :Government that made peace at present, except on terms quite unacceptable to the other side, would ho- swept away by a wave of fierce public indignation. • In Italy it is not the Ministry' that is leading the people on a quest of colonial acquisition, but it is the people which is inspiring the Ministry. Just as the abandonment of African enterprise after the disasters in Abyssinia was imposed upon the Italian Government by the compelling weight of the people’s will, so the pendulum is swinging in the reverse direction to-day. Slowly the feeling had been gathering that Italy was ceasing to count in the world outside her frontiers. It was a feeling that was quickened by the sight of the activity of other Powers around her during the summer, and when, at a chosen moment Giolitti—a strong man fitted to lead hold enterprises—adroitly turned the nation’s eyes to Tripoli there came rolling up to him from the Italian people an irresistible demand for deeds. In Turkey, on the other hand, a.s 5 know from personal experience in Constantinople since the very beginning of the war, there has never been one sign of yielding. There, as hero, a grim, half-fanatic spirit of national resolution refuses to hear of possible defeat. Each host in tin's war, in fact, is as stubborn as its enemy, and each appeal's to hope that time will play into its hands. If is jnst the element of truth in each opinion tiial gives the chance of peace its hopeless aspect. Turkey, behind her breastwork of European commercial interests in the Levant, makes light of the damage that her enemy can do her in 'Tripoli. Italy sets oil against the cost of the prolonged campaign the consideration that her new

dominions will under any circumstances continue for many years to cost her iis much as she as spending now, by reason of the expense nerd ini to bring the provinces up to the standard of modern civilisation and equipment. No doubt exists in independent circles in Rome that the expense of the war, though unproductive, is one that Italy can hear without foreign financial help for many montus to come.