W

Thursday,

· MAGAZINE

MIDDLE EASTERN

Odessa: first port of USSR. and centre for vast distributing organisation for oil supplies from Baku wells via "Black Sea route.

Dardanelles:strategic connection between Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea, controlled by Turkey. If thrown open to Anglo-French Fleets Russian Black Sea routes! would be threatened.

Haifa, Beirut, Tripoli: from

· these ports come Anglo-French oil supplies. Any Russian attack through Iran would threaten Allies' wells (marked ¤). -

In Egypt Britain concentrates troops against possibility of Turko-Russian clash, prepares defences of Suez Canal and vital sea routes to East. Newly-built strategic roads through Egypt (marked) to Sinal Peninsula speed up military communicatioris]

JILL the war in the West he switched to develop in the East? Huf wyll Turkey do? Will Africa now become a battlefield? These questions dominate the worl to-day:

The map above shows the vast Implications of such a development. Egypt. and India are not too remole to be drawn into the conflict, and it is certain that now Haly is in the

war, the Balkans rust sooner

later become involved.

If we should come to the Middle East I will be an Oll War.

at those circles in the map. mark the olf wells.

Look They

To the

Both sides would make immedi ate attempts to cripple each other's oll supplies: the Russian by a great military movement through Iran Into Iraq and Syria, backed by at- tempts at continuous aerial bom- bardment of Ailled wells; the Allies by air attacks upon Baku, Batunt, arul those Russian wells which le In the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. These-Allied. attacky-would-probably be backed. by naval attacks upon Batum.

Above all things Russia fears a naval war in the Black Sea. attack Batum from the sea Allies would have to inter the Black Sea Orough the Straits nľ Dardanelles, Turkey controls these strails. In the event of a clash -with-Russia_11 is virtually certain

Turkes would that

these open straits to the Allied Berts.

An Italian attack would have' us Its ultimate object the seizing of the Suez Canal. To guard against such possibilities, however remote they may seem at the moment, the Egyptian Government has structel strategle roads which link up the main military slations of Egypt with the Sinal Peninsula.

Some strategists suggest that in the event of a Middle Eastern clasht the totalitarians would attempt a drive on India. but such a move would be improbable, although not Impossible. Aussta ́ ́could move swiftly through the lowlands of Turkoman, but then would come the fearful

through passage Afghanistan (now, more than ever before, én invaluable beffer State of new-style between the clash Russian imperiallam and establish- after ed British Imperialam) and Afghanistan would come the even to hazardous moro

eampaign pierce the North-West frontier.

BARONESS LOST HIM

con-

New York. FOR three years, blonde beautiful Baroness Margaret von Mauchen- helm, twenty-two, fought at Detroit to prevent her husband, Baron Egon Karl Mauchenheim from being de- ported to Germany and behended under the Nazi regime.

CON-

The baroness won the battle. The baron, who would be demned to death in Germany because he fed from military conscription and took his money out of Germany. was allowed to remain in the United States.

+

Recently-the-barones-filed a sulk.

for divorce.,

"Sinco Inst August," she said, "he's repeatedly told me he no longer Joves me and wants to marry woman of social position and wealth".

The baroness helped to keep their home togethor at Dotroit by working. "in"s ̈tur:shop,*

RUMANIA

HONGKONG-TELEGRAPH

R

U

S

Odessa

Rostov

Bucharest

JULGARIAS

Astrakhan

BLACK SEA İstanbul

Balur

Ankara

TURKME

Bakum

MIDITÉRRANEAN SEA

Tripoli SYRIA

Ichoran

Isfahan

IR

RAN

Tairo

EGYPT

"

ARABIA

m

•Mecca

Great Arabian Desert

HADRAMUT

June 13, 1940.

PAGE

NEWS

GULY OF

OMAN

Kanachi

INDIAN OCEAN

SCALE IN MILES

9 190 142 394 400 190

O Allied Oil Wells

O Russian Oil Wells

• Turkish Oil Wells Iranian Oil Wells ww Mountains-

WARSHIPS OF THE POWERS-V

REEL

Russia's major oil wells (showno) ́ere mainly in southern area of U.S.S.R, These wells would be vulnerable to, air attacks from Turkish bases, and the Batum depot from Black Sea naval hombardment. To counteract such attacks Russia could strike at less accessible Allied wells in Iraq through Iran (Persia).

Russia could attempt difficult drive into India through low- lands of Turkistan, and thence through mountainous Afghanistan,

Most fearful and vulnerable of all possible participants in a Middle Eastern conflict is fran, for through Iran lies Russia's most strategic route to Iraq's oil wells. Meanwhile Iran tries to remain aloof from all foreign": entanglements and political pressure,watches warily growing Turko-Russian tension.

Of the ships shown above. Courageous, Glorious and Royal Oak have been lost.

This Is Why Italy Wants

C10 Italy has at last come 24,000 Frenchmen and 71,000 Sinto the open in claiming Italians.

Tumis as Italian. For more than 60

Tunis hus yours rankled in the Italian mind.

France occupied the coun try (then part of the Turkish empire) in 1881 after a hint from Prince Bismarck, who remarked to the French Am- bassador that the "Tunisian pear was ripe."

And ripe it was, for Italy was powerless without Ger- man support to prevent the French occupation which Bis- marck encouraged, because he

hal, as he said on more than on occasion, a "nightmare of coalitions," and wished to ree the French immersed in their colonial schemes rather than planning revenge for their defent in the Franco- Prussian war.

M M -----WHAT-moral---right-hør France got to Tunis? and Italy. There were 10,000 Italans thero. in 1881, and -only 700 Frenchmen. Twenty years later things were just as bad from the French point of view. There were then

Now, according to the most recent figures, there are 108,- 000 Frenchmen and 94,000 Italians. But this French superiority is partly due to many Italians acquiring French citizenship.

A lot of them were arigin- ally Italian Jews, and they are now loyal Frenchmen. Italy is pursuing her anti-Jewish policy with regard to her own citizens in Tunis, and recently some Italian Jewish doctors. have been expelled from the Italian hospital there. They became French.

Curiously enough, the French in Tunis have a higher birthrate and a lower morta- lity rate than the Italians there. So that Franco feels that if she sits tight, ilme is on her side.

WHAT are the guns behind Let us look thin diplomacy? at the problem theoretically, in, terms of military strategy.

If Italian armies marched from Libya into Tunis, all

BRITAIN

Wants Tunisia

might go well for 120 miles. Then they would come to K narrow bottleneck only 15 miles wide, with the Gulf of Gabes on the right-hand side and the Lake of Jerid on the left.

I am not revealing any close military secret when I say that the French have fortified the bottleneck and could hold it against a very superior force. And in their rear they have reserves of colonial troops from Algèria.

And on sea? Here the pic= ture is not quite so pretty for France.

Pantelleria, the island on which no foreigner has act foot for many years, is only 60 miles from the Tunisian const. The island is a power- ful air as well as naval base.

In a few minutes its war- planes could bomb the Tuni- sian naval harbour of Bizerta, the only one between Malta and Alexandria that can ac commodate 45,000-ton battle- .ships like the Rodney and

Nelson.

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HIS MASTER'S VOICE

A LIGHT CLASSICAL PROGRAMME

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.Boston Promenade orch. Webster Booth. www...Morek-Webers-orche

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TSANG FOOK PIANO COMPANY

Mattinata

Overture

Goodbye

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