Italian-Turko War

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 88, 4 October 1911, Page 5

Italian-Turko War

40,000 ITALIAN* TROOPS FOR TRIPOLI WAR VESSELS COLLIDE. A COMMANDER'S VIGILANCE. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright. Received 3, 10.55 p.m. Rome, October 3. Forty thousand troops are sailing in three divisions on the Bth, 9th and 10th October. Signor C.iolitti proposes to administer Tripoli as an Italian province, similar to France's administration of Algeria. The Italian destroyer Kembo and the torpedoer Aregia collided, and returned to Augusta, Sicily, for repairs. Messages from the Adriatic squadron emphasise the Duke of Abruzzi's tireless activity. He lias given the impression that he does not sleep or rest. His orders fall like hail day and night. The flagship Vittorpisani seems possessed of the gift of übiquity. The newspapers are greatly perturbed over the adverse criticisms of the Italian action, particularly the British criticism. The landing at Preveza is officially denied. There is no intention of landing, except in Tripoli and Cyrenaica. N'aval operations are exclusively directed to protecting the Italian coast and ehipping from Turkish raids. DISSENSION IN TURKEY. KIAMIL PASHA AND THE COMMITTEE. RESERVES CALLED OUT. THE SULTAN'S OBLATIONS. Received 3, <LI pan. r Constantinople, October 3. Kiamil Pasha's refusal to accept the tutelage of the Committee of Union and Progress prevents the ending of the crisis. Kiamil demands the dissolution of the Committee.

The Minister of Marine has resigned, and Parliament has been convoked for the 14th. Seven classes of reserves have been called out, and preparations are being made to call out nine further classes. It is explained that the torpedoers sunk at Preveza are only 150 ton vessels, which carried one-pounder guns for use against smugglers. The Sultan spends hours daily at different shrines, and holds frequent audiences with the German Ambassador, who it is understood advocates the cession of Tripoli to Italy, the Kaiser undertaking that Italy shall give adequate compensation.

TURKISH CUTTERS IX ENGLAND SEIZED. Received 4. 12.5 a.m. Ijondon. October 3. The Southampton Customs officials have taken possession of four Turkish revenue cutters built at Thorneyeroft yards. Eighteen were aboard. ORGANISING TIIE ARABS. FANATICAL ANTI EUROPEAN CAMPAIGN. ENTER BEY'S MISSION. Received 3. 0.20 p.m. Berlin, October 3. Enver Bey, interviewed, said he expected to be sent to Tripoli, via Egypt, to organise the Arabs in a fanatical antiEuropean campaign. He says that if properly organised and led by capable commanders, they will offer almost indefinite resistance. Enver Bey expects moral support from the Senussi tribesmen, and the active aid of the desert Tauregs. who are particularly suited for guerilla warfare in Tripoli. The town of Tripoli is untenable, but troops eould garrison several forts in the hinterland.

REFUGEES' PLIGHT. j TERRIBLE SUFFERINGS. Received 3. p.m. Malta. October 3. The steamer Castle (iratli arrived from Tripoli vritli twelve hundred refugees huddled on deck. They experienced three days' storm and win. suffering terrible seasickness. Owing to the boat being without cargo the steamer pitched horribly. The refugees were repeatedly thrown on the decks. Seven went raving mad as a result of thrir experiences. Others" minds were unhinged. The majority are penniless. Many fell on their knees imploring the aid of the journalist* and officials boarding the Castle Grath. and clamored for food and water, holding up their emaciated children. The refugees state that an infuriated mob of Arabs and Turks bc-ieged the Italians at their Consulate until a battalion of Turkish infantry c«cortcd them to the Castle Grath. whence the Admiral transferred the Italian refugees to another ship, owing to the Castle Grath'-> crowded condition.

FURTHER DETAIL. Rome, October 2. Italy has notified the Powers Ilia' the action at Treveza was due to intended raids on the .Italian coasts. The shipping transport Kabali, with Turkish troops for Tripoli, was captured mnd brought to Rrindisi. Advices from Corfu state that two Turkish destroyers were sunk and another captured. The police at the Piraeus ftlie port of Athens) arrested the crow of a Turkish sailing vessel suspected of being about to ship arms for Tripoli. Athens, October 2. The flrand Vizier assured (Jreece that military movements on the Thessalian frontier are due to the state of war with Italy. One of the torpedoers at Pteveza lost the captain, who was killed by a

shell, and eight of the crew were drowned. London, October 2. The special correspondent of the Daily News at Tripoli reports that the forts have been bombarded and the palace destroyed. The town has been evacuated, and defences are being prepared on the hills. Constantinople, October 2. It is officially stated that 1800 Italians landed at Preveza and destroyed the forts. London, October 3. The war news is conflicting. The Italian Emlmssy denies the Adriatic bombardments or the landing of troops anywhere except at Tripoli. Tripolitan passengers who have reached Sicily state that there was no bombardment of Tripoli up till eight on Saturday night. Berlin, October 2. The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Vossische Zeitung states that Russia has protested against the Turkish concentration on the Thessalian frontier. The Tagcblatt says that Baron von Bieberstein, German Ambassador at Constantinople, has handed to the Grand Vizier the Italian proposals for discussion of peace preliminaries.

TURKISH GOVERNMENT. OPPRESSIVE TAXES. 1 AN UN PROGRESS IYE COUNTRY. For administrative purposes Tripoli is divided into the sub-provinces, or mutis- j sarillicks, of Tripoli, Khoms. Jahel-el-Gharb, and Tezzan, and also of Genghaw or Cyrenaiea, all subdivided into cantons. Cyrenaica has been under direct Turkish government only since 167;). Each village has a sheikh, who is assisted by * sort; of municipal council. The chief judge and the receiver-general of tuxes are directly appointed by the Porte. Incident-ally, the taxes imposed are as oppressive as those usually associated with Turkish rule, and include a tithe of one-tenth <rf all the products of the soil. Generally speaking, the revenue is derived f.rom a sort of poll-tax graduated according to the wealth of the individual, in addition to other tithes. Steps have been taken lately towards co-ordinating the taxation system with that followed in the rest of Turkey. Since the French invasion of Tunis the garrison of Tripoli has'been much larger than before, and fortifications were erected. Some years ago the military numbered 17,000. Nominally they were put there to keep down insurrections, but actually they had a good deal to do with starting them. Several anti-Turkish revolutions haw taken place, the most notable being in 1842 and 1344. The ride of Tripoli has been far from comfortable, for the endless succession of Turkish governors, well of whom has pursued a policy of which the chief characteristic seems to have been that it was very different from that of his predecessor, has been fatal to material progress. The ignorance of the people has had a similar effect. In the interior the only education given is instruction in El Koran. The latest estimate made last year of the military forces in Tripoli placed the number at 10,000. Curiously, the regency has remained almost untouched by the political changes which have so greatly modified the map of North Africa since the early eighties.

TURKEY'S HANDICAP. THE LAWS OK NEUTRALITY. BLOCKED BOTH ON LAND AND SEA. Turkey, in her contest with Italy labors under a double handicap—the inferiority of her navy, and her inability to send her troops into Italy overland. On land she would be a formidable opponent for her enemy, but without a violation of neutrality there seems no chance whatever of the two armies meeting. The rules of warfare as observed by the Powers of Europe impose strict obligations on neutral States which do not wish to be drawn into a contest. If Turkey, for instance, were lucky enough to have sufficient money to buy, say, a South American Dreadnought or two, lit to smash the best ships in the Italian fleet, no South American State eould sell the Dreadnoughts without, in effect, becoming Turkey's ally and laying itself open to reprisals by Italy. Nor could Turkev march her troops overland to Italy through Austria-Hungary, unless Italy or -he was prepared to fight both Italy and Austria-Hungary. Tlie duties of belligerent States to neutral- may be summarised as follows: 1. To refrain from carrying on hostilities within neutral territory. 2. To abstain from making oil neutral territory direct preparations for acts of hostility.

3. To oliev all reasonable regulations made by neutral States for the protection of their neutrality. 4. To make reparation to any State whose neutrality they may have violated. The duties of a neutral State to a belligerent State are principally:— 1. Not to give armed assistance to either belligerent or grant to one privileges denied to the other. ■>. Not to supply belligerents with money or instruments of warfare. 3. Not to allow belligerents to send troops through its territory or levy soldiers therein. 4. Not to suffer belligerent agents or its own subjects to fit out armed expeditions within its dominions, or increase therein the warlike force of any belligerent, ship or expedition. .">. Not to permit its subjects to enter the military or naval service of the belligerents. or accept letters of inan|iie from either of them. ii. To make reparation to any belligerent who inav have been seriously and spccilically injured by failure on its part to nerforin its neutral duties. THE POWERS THAT GOVERN TURKEY. THE COMMITTEE AND THE JEWS. , PRO-GERMAN INFLUENCE.

The mvsterious Secret Committee of I'liion aixl Progress which brought aibout, die Turki-h revolution tliree years ago i" still the power behind the throne in Turkev. Tlie Committee in its three .parts — at Constantinople. at Salonika. ami at Moiia-sitir —rules the Parliament, and rules the Cabinet. Ministers are important only in so far as they speak for the Committee. There is not an autocrarv —that danger has disappeared; hut there is an almost absolute authority exorcised by an unSeen. almost unknown, and wholly incalculable, lmdy. This lias been the case all along since the revolution of July. 100 S. Kiamil Pasha, ihe C.Wnd Vi/.ier and Prime Minister, fell in the spring of 1!)00 because lie would m.l obey the unseen Committee. Now it 'till remains as the real power .behind the Sultan (who is an amicable nonentity"! and the Ministry. Martial law still obtains in Constantinople, writes Sir William Ramsay in the Manchester Guardian, though it is exercised so gently thai

the mere .foreigner would never observe it, and it certainly is not an evil, so far as public appearance shows. But this governing Committee is not in harmony with Moslem sentiment either in Turkey or beyond Turkey, though it has learned in the reactionary movement of April, IflOfl, that it must respect that sentiment and keep it placated. The Committee, in this dangerous position, cannot afford to indulge too far in internal quarrels, and yet the dissenions within are acute.

It. has been alleged that- behind the Committee there is again some secret force which is using it as its instrument. This force is supposed by many to be the power of the .Tews. That the Jews are at least a power of enormous importance in Turkey has long been .said by everybody. Tt is a highly unpopular power, and it hides itself. Djavid Bey, the la'te Minister of Finance, was the only Jew in openly declared authority, and he belongs to the nominally Moslem Beet of Jews, the Dunnie. "What truth there may be in this suggestion of an ultimate moving cause," continues Sir William Ramsay, "I am unable to say. The Ministry and the Government have always as yet opposed the scheme for settling colonies of Jews in any part of the Empire, both the Zionist movement and the plans of the 'Association Israedite' for the purchase of land in Anatolia. This cause, if it is a real one, as many people say, both Turks and foreign observers, is working for some far more remote end than such simple things as colonies. Shrewd observers are found who declare that this hidden Jewish power is working for some ambitious purpose, a game in which a great Moslem army forms a mere pawn to be played as ocoasi«n requires and sacrificed as occasion requires. At present it is wholly proGerman; the press, which is violently anti-British, is controlled by Jewish influence, and written sometimes by Jews; buit no one can believe that the Jewish prime force (assuming it to exist) is Germanophil. Accordingly, it is involved in this theory that the Germans also are a more pawn in the Jewish game. Is all this a fantastic, dream, or is there some truth in it? I do not venture to express or to hold any opinion."