FIGHTING IN TRIPOLI

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 171, 18 January 1912, Page 5

FIGHTING IN TRIPOLI

ITALIAN'S SEIZE A FRENCH AVIATOR.

By Cable —Press Association—Copyright, Received 17, 11 p.m. London, January 17.

Italian torpedoers seized a French steamer, owing to an aeroplane being aboard wherewith Duval, the aviator, proposed to compete at the Tunis aviation meeting. ARABS DYNAMITED BY THE ITALIANS. FIFTY PERSONS BLOWN UP IN ONE HOUSE. Rome, November 27. The Italian troops in Tripoli were engaged all yesterday, from nine o'clock in the morning until five in the afternoon, in driving the Turks and Arabs from the oasis outside the town. There was hand-to-hand fighting for hours, the troops meeting with the most stubborn resistance from the enemy. General Ganava had made plans to clear the enemy completely from their position in order to protect the advance which he has decided on, and so that the work should be thoroughly done every house in the path of the soldiers was dynamited. In one house fifty. Arabs and a Turkish officer refused to surrender, and were blowh to pieces. No one escaped. The Turkish losses are said to be very heavy. No details of the Italian casual-! ties are reported. It is stated that the advance will be resumed to-morrow. ITALIANS CRUCIFIED BY ARABS. MEN BURNED ALIVE. Rome, November 29. Terrible details of Arab atrocities committed on Italian soldiers after the battle of October 23 are given in from Tripoli yesterday:— Surgeon General Sforza, accompanied yb Colonel Negrotto, Colonel Minici, Captain de Stefani, and several journalists, to-day visited the positions occupied by the Italian troops after the forward movement on Sunday. > In a house near the Henni Mosque, which was used as a first-aid station by the 27th Battalion Of the Bersaglieri before October 23, the bodies of twentyeight Italian soldiers who fell in the battle of that date (were found horribly mutilated.

Several had been crucified, while some had their throats cut, others their limbs disjointed, and yet others had been impaled on stakes or disembowelled. Among these last was the body of a military doctor.

In the neighboring Arab cemetery which was occupied on October 23 by the 4th Company of the 11th Bersaglieri, the bodies were found of seven Bersaglieri who had fallen in battle on October 23. They had been buried alive with their heads above ground. The body of a Bersaglieri of the 6th Company was also - found pierced through and through by numerous dagger stabs, and rifle shots. The man's eyes had' been torn out and sewn to his forehead, while his eyelids were also sewn up. The cotton could still be seen. His face had been distorted by spasmodic contractions.

An interesting article in the Fortnightly shows the Italian descent into the arena of war to have been the result of a gradual growth of militant patriotism, having for its chief objective an insistence upon Italy's place among the European Powers. Other objectives attached themselves as a matter of course. The need for colonial expansion was an offshoot of the larger idea. The necessity of freeing the nation from the limitations increasingly placed upon it by a growing socialist body of opinion against Imperialism and national spirit had become imperative. Gradually a movement for patriotism rose like a wave. It covered the country with new ideas concerned with conquest, expansion, national destiny. It confounded the Socialists and their weak sentimentalism, it spread among their own class, it issued at last in a fierce and almost unanimous determination to end the indignity long suffered by Italians at the hands of the Young Turks. Tripoli was the only opportunity for Italian expansion in a world in which Italy was gradually being hemmed in on all sides, and Tripoli, moreover, offered admirable chance for an expression of that Italian feeling which had long been at bursting point. Hence a twofold justification of the' Tripoli affair—it worked off old scores, and it set the Italian national spirit newly aflame. In regard to all that, however, Dr. Gregory's article in the Contemporary is aB interesting as a cold douche can be. For Dr. Gregory writes disclaiming any great value for the resources of Tripoli,, even if they come into Italian possession, and he urges, in addition, the now patent fact that Italy's task in Tripoli is one for which she can scarcely hope to be repaid.