FIGHTING IN TRIPOLI

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 162, 8 January 1912, Page 5

FIGHTING IN TRIPOLI

PEACE IN SIGHT. By Gable—Pre3s Association—Copyright London, January 5. The Times' Salonika correspondent states that there is reason to believe that peace will be arranged and hostilities terminate in the near future. ITALY'S WAR EXPENDITURE. A curious and interesting calculation was made by a military expert at Malta last November regarding Italy's war expenditure in Tripoli. Italy at that time was believed to have sent considerably over 80.000 soldiers to Tripolitania There were 4000 in Tripoli town, and •20,000 in the trenches around, about 20,000 at Benghazi, about 21.000 at Derna. Horns and Tobruk, or about 05.000 altogether in these various places. The difference between about 80,000 and about 05,000, or 15,000, represents the wastage of war in the Italian dead, wounded and sick. But, according to Italian official, semiofficial and unofficial statements, three (imes as many Moslems have been killed and incapacitated as Italians, say. therefore, 45,000. The conflict in Tripolitania has consequently already brought death or ruin to 00,000 combatants, and perhaps a quarter as many non-combatants have died or are crippled by sickness, exile and loss of means of living. The grand total of sufferers up to date may be thought to amount to "5.000. The cost of the expedition for the Italian fleet and army at 200 miles from its b?.se is reckoned to be half a million pounds sterling a day, or, say, nearly £30,000,000. The expenses of the war for the Moslems must approximate to the expenses for the Italians. Damage to buildings and land must represent to Tripoli the loss of a good many millions, and to the dislocation of : business and cessation of labor are , chargeable a very heavy but incalculable negative sum. The costs of the war, . added together, for the two contending \ parties, are reckoned at £75,000,000, and the situation of the opposing armies is a t stalemate.