A STRANGE WAR

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 132, 25 November 1911, Page 7

A STRANGE WAR

ITALY'S INDISCRETION. THE TUltlvS DJiTEIttMNKD, London, October 0 Italy and Turkey are at war, and Europe is watching anxiously for the outcome of the struggle, which seems likely to have far-reaching consequences. Tripoli has been bombarded and occupied, a few Turkish ships have been destroyed, and a big Italian force is proceeding to the African coast.

Why Italy lias forced a war upon Turkey is not clear, since Tripoli could have been secured much more cheaply through the channels of diplomacy. Before the presentation of the ultimatum, as a London newspaper remarks, there was very little feeling for Tripoli in the mind of the average Turk. The province was a source of weakness, not of strength, to the Ottoman Empire. To defend it from attack meant the employment of troops which were far more urgently needed in European Turkey, and required the help of a naval force which Turkey is unable to provide. A province like Tripoli, separated from Turkey by hundreds of leagues of sea, could be lopped off without sacrifice of pride by , or loss of vanity to, the Ottoman Empire. Further, it is notorious that Turkey is badly in need of money, and there was thus the possibility of a friendly deal in regard to Tripoli, which Italy might have acquired peacefully by payment of £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 and the acknowledgment of Turkey's suzerainty.

The more difficult and perhaps less honorable course has been taken, and it is evident that the Turks are angry and determined. The Italian people are showing enthusiasm only in the southern part of the kingdom. The Turkish view is expressed well by Kaimil Pasha, who has three times been Grand Vizier.

"We relied," he told a correspondent of the Daily Chronicle, "on treaty alliances and understandings. We kept our doors wide open, and hoped to live in security. Then Italy pounced upon us without warning, and with extraordinary fcrutality. We at once appealed to Great Britain, whom we look up to. Unfortunately, England was too judicious, and advised us to appeal to Germany. We did so, and the reply we received was that it was too late, and now we are at war with Italy, whom we cannot strike on land.

"We shall never abandon Tripoli. We could not justify such a course before our own people. If we did so, we could not face them with a clear conscience. The fight must be carried oh until an honorable peace can be obtained. To give up Tripoli would be to proclaim our national bankruptcy. We shall fight until the last unless the Powers can find a 'modus vivendi.' I foresaw Italy's intention long ago, but the late Cabinet was careless. It could not expect any help from the Union and Progress party, which is now in a fijx, for it can neither go forward nor backward. It is discredited everywhere. "War does not frighten us. Our soldiers are brave and enduring, and they can fight the whole day without food, drink or rest. Then we have the Arabs in the hinterland of Tripoli, who are strongly for Turkey. Italy has misjudged and miscalculated the forcas which we can bring against her, and she will repent of her action." A Constantinople journal, the Tanin. in a semi-official article, points out that should Italy make any attempt upon Symara, Salonika, or Beirut, she will come into conflict with large British and French interests. These countries have big sums invested in. various enterprises at all these and other places in the Turkish Empire. The people in Syria are in a .state of intense excitement.

The war is not likely to be a short one says the Tanin, and adds that it will only end when one side has been defeated, or when it is stopped by armed intervention. A startling offer of help has come to Turkey from Mehmed Pasha, lie. is the son of Sheikh Adel Knder, the last Algerian Sovereign. He asks the Snltan to allow him to return to Tripoli for the purpose of rousing all the .Mussulman ■people of Africa to rise and repel the Italian invasion, llehmed Pasha proudly declares that if his father was able to resist France for .thirty years. \u: will be able to resist Italy for fifty years. Twenty thousand Arab volunteers are said to lie on the march from Fezzan, which is the inland district of Tripoli, to the help of the Turks.

A lighter incident of the grave crises is the publication in Constantinople of an "open letter" to the Italian people. The letter is written by General Lwet Fuad, a famous old soldier. "The Old Begirne deprived us of naval strength, making it difficult for us to give, chase after the Italian fleet, and to drive them from our distant possessions," he writes. "Nothing, therefore, is easier than for Italy to declare war—ltaly, whose army has no glorious past and no records of victory! She has made war upon a brave people whom she will never meet in fair conflict. Is not this ludicrous, and bordering on the grotesque?—"l, therefore, throw in the face of Italy this challenge: Let the Italians land here in Turkey, or let us land in Italy. Let us then face one' another with equal forces. Let Italy choose her finest troops, and array them in the most favorable situations. Then let these forces, and the conditions of the battle—and the results of the battle—be decided and verified by the military attaches of neutral Powers. Then we shall see! Then this war, declared by Italy in such a dastardly inhuman way, will no longer ibe an eternal shame to her. But the memories she would carry away from such a field of battle would make her slow, another time, to provoke a foe ready to die for the defence and integrity of its country." Unhappily, wars are not conducted in this fashion nowadays. Might is right,