ITALY AND TURKEY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 81, 22 August 1912, Page 4

ITALY AND TURKEY.

The cable? told us the otlier day that diplomats,! as a result of private pourparlers, hiul discovered a basis on which peace negotiations can go forward. The Turkish Minister of \Var was interviewed recently by l )r - K. .J. Dillon, the correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, and was found to be still presenting a cheerful face to the world in spite of bis country's troubles. Mahmoud Slievket Pasha, who has since resigned on account of the discontent -of the army, received - Dr. Dillon at the War Office in Constantinople. He was busily signing papers with the assistance of a civilian official, who first presented the square little documents and then .scattered sand from , a wooden spoon over the .wet ink of the signature. "Like most Orientals," writes Dr. Dillon, "the Turkish War Minister is accustomed to dispenso with a table when writing. He simply lays the paper in .the palm of his left hand and scribbles away rapidly. 9n the right han<i of his table hangs a trumpet of a telephone-—one of the few that exist in the Ottoman Empire. As yet Constantinople has no public telephone, but certain Government offices in Stamboul have the use of the invention among themselves." Shevket Pasha, in answer to questions, said that lie did not know how the war with Italy was going; to end. The Turkish warships could not fight the Italian fleet and Italy , dare not land troops on the Turkish mainland. The position was.a deadlock, and his country was prepared to continue it indefinitely, secure in the knowledge that its enemy was suffering an enormous financial drain. "We cannot say that the Italians have impressed us as a gpod fighting people on sea or on land," added the War Minister. "We may be prejudiced against them, but 100k 1 at the facts. They fired soma tliree hundred missiles—more or less—at our -works on the shore' of the Dardanelles, without inflicting five pounds' worth of damage. Yet each of those projectiles cost, roughly speaking, about £l2O. And oier and above, you must ' bear in mind tlio enormous damage which the firing did to their own guns, which deteriorate rapidly. Our gunners, on the other hand, with moving targets, hit two Italian ships and injured them sensibly." Shevket Pasha evidently was disposed to place his faith in the fact noticed by many foreign critics, that the war is costing Italy ,£lO for each sovereign spent by Turkey.