Saturday,
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH
June 15- 1940.
are. Supreme Co
MAGAZINE PAGE
ITALY'S RECORD
NORTH
AFTER the first disas- trous attempt at Italian Imperialism, which ended in the annihilation of an Italian army on the field of Adown in Abyssinia in 1896, no further attempts
were
made to expand overseas until the Italian Turkish war of 1911-1912.
The present Italian Govern ment under Mussolini has nttempted to tracc direct descent from Imperial Rome, but there is a gap of many cen- turies in the genealorical
table.
It was not until 1871 that the modern Italian state came
into being and its inception was greatly encouraged and helped by Britain.
The Italian national leader of that day, the famous Gar}- baldi, finally welded the vari- ous petty states into one King. dom with the previous navig. tance of the Count di Cavour, a Piedmontess Foreign Minis tor,
The gratitude of Italy for the help which she received from Great Britain was ex- pressed by the liberator Gari. baldi; who on his death-bed, swore he would return and curse any Italian who ever went to war with England.
BY 1911, Italy was again feeling the urge to found an overseas Empire. She picked a quarrel with Turkey and invaded the Turkish province of Tripoli in North Africa.
At that time, Turkey was torn with internal dissensions. The last of the Sultans, going in daily fear of assassination, was playing off the modern progressive party, known as the "Young Turks" against the older and inore conserva tive factions.
Under such internal condi tions, Turkey was in no posi tion to offer any very great résistance and at the end of the war in 1912, Italy was granted the Turkish dominions -in-North-Africa, known-to-day—
as Libya.
IC was one thing, however, to be handed over a new territory and quite another thing to rain, control.
For years the Italians made no head-way and held a pre- carious footing along the coast line. From the first, the methods of governing the new colony were ones of terror, religious oppression, hanginga und the eviction of the inhali- tants to make way for Italian pensant colonists.
Then, step by step, sided by modern implements of war, the native population was subdued and the Italian occupation bit deeper into the hinterland.
The Italians sent for the natives of another Italian colony, Eritrea, to form their armies against the Arabs. These Eritreans practised a debased form of Christianity and thus, Italy employed one religion to combat another.
By 1930, Italy had succeeded after a reign of terror.in con- trolling most of Tripoli.
of
Further westwards, aho had formed the province Cyrenaica and had installed a certain Genera! Graziani ns Governor.
Cyrenaica lay to the cast of Libya, bordering on to Egypt and being one of the most fertile areas, was coveted for settlement of peasants fron Italy.
That the original Arab octu- pants must bho dispossessed did not worry her, for the Gover. ment wished to stop the flow ils nationals to America, France and other countries and to do this, she hoped to set up an
· Italian Province in North Afros
as a counter-attraction.
AFRICA
Holmboe was a fluent Arab scholar and had, moreover, embraced Islam: he was a genuine practising Mussulman.
After many difficulties, he crossed the French border in Tanks and entered Italian territory.
From the book that he wrote about this journey, he seems to have been ignorant about conditions under Italian rule and certainly had no axe to grind. He merely wished to study. Arab conditions and Italian North Africa happened to lie across his path to Egypt.
After a personal interview with General Graziani, Holm- boe was allowed to continue his journey westwards.
remain in
He speaks of a certain Italian commander of a fort who seemed to understand that the Italian methods of government were wrong and that so long as such methods were employed the Arabs would always rebellion. This Italian seems to have been the only one in authority who held such views. Others whom he met frankly ignored the rights of the Arabs to their own country, they upheld the methods of terrorism, referring to the Arabs as dogs. One Judge when trying prisoners marked "There are only two alternatives, Death or Acquit- tal."
TC-
Holmboe discovered that the backbone of the opposition to the Italians Was centred
among the Senussi, a people - inhabiting the mountainous country between Cyrenaica and Egypt, wit htheir head- quarterters in the Kufra Oasis. This leader was a certain Ahmar Moktar. though the headquarters of this freedom movement was in Alexandria in Egypt,
THIS Danish traveller fived among the Arabs and learnt from their own lips the con. ditions imposed upon them by. their Italian masters.
a
IIIs book shows photographs of ----Arabs swinging from the gallows,--
It records sentences of life Imprisonment in the salt mines-- sentence which meant death after two or three years, Anally he records the attempt to suppress the religion of the Arabs and the violation of their mosques by the Eritrean soldiery...
*
One day, Holmboe was him- self arrested and flung into prison. With him were some of the leading and most re pected citizens of the city at which he had arrived, Derna, on the sea coast.
From Derna, the prisoners, manacled together, were sent by sea to Benghazi the hend- quarters of the Cyrenaica Provincial Government. Here he was liberated after a two hours interview with the public Prosecutor. He never finished his journey by car und his arrest had been arranged to prevent him con- tinuing it. He left by sen for Alexandria, but his final thoughts were expressed as follows:-
"The people and their struggle were left only na a memory, but-a-memory-never- to be forgotten. Always. I can see before me the patient prisoners, the salt lakes, the smoking rifles and the gal Jows."
*
THIS then is the Italy that would have us Mussolini believe to be the Saviour and Protector of Islam, an Italy too terrified to form an army from the Libyan inhabitants but dependant for its rule on a debased native race from the other side of Africa. Tho contrast to the French colonies of North Africa, where the Arabs and Moors form some of the fuest Regiments in the French Colonial. Army, is re-
IN the same year 1980, a Danish journalist, Kraud Holm-markable. D bou by name, conceived the ~idea of motoring across North Africa from Ceuta in Morocco to Egypt.
But the French, like the British -respect-the-religions- of the peoples within their 'Empire, they do not have to
IN GRIN AND BEAR IT By Lichty
call out firing aquads, erect gallows or send the inhabi- tants to a living death in the salt mines.
To-day, Italy holds her colonics by fear and the sword. General Graziani, known na the Butcher in North Africa, lived up to the same name live years later in Abyssinia.
Now that Italy is at war, will she be able to hold these people whom she has enlaved and whose religion shio han desecrat- ed and trampled upon?
THE DIVE
BOMBER
·
By T. HORACE C. MAZET Isolation!
Far below, the carth Appears to be quite flat, as on a
map.
Beneath the man-made craft
astride the wings
Of wind there lies a stratum of a
cloud Through
which appear brown fields, the greener woods, And then a river, somnolent and
grall,
So treacherously peaceful in its
bed
That stretches downward to the
sea. Above
And to the left and right extenda
the vast
Inverted bowl of heaven, piercing
blue,
Whose horizon is but the limitless White clandbank lyly like au
endless feld
Of pack ice. Brilliant silence and
the chill
Of upper stey produce a solitude Invigorating, keen, unknown be-
low.
010.
Slapping at the tingling pliot's
checks
is an unnatural wind, quivering The jowls and tearing at the
helmet strap,
Snatching at the breath and
whirling on
To twist in tortured shape the
trackless path.
A silver airscrew bites its lam-
bent way.
Through frosty atmosphere with
out a chart; ulai
A
corckscrew at infinite
It glinis reflection from the chilly
$14!1
In flickers of cold Night.
The needles un The 'dial board insure what cager
cara
Have sensed; they signify the
enginebeat
It transcendental lifetvar without
pause:
Mechanical_perfection._Now the
thrill
Seeps into fingertips alert upon The stickervecentre of the y-
ing craft.
The pilot draws a breath of icy air And grins with pleasure at the
empty sky-~
For only God has spied him on kir
ride.
In just a moment more the little
ship'
Stande upward, on its fail, then
pirourites
Aud gracefully turns headlong as
a will
Precipitates itself into the sca. Straight downward 'points the
nose! It's headed for The rupture in the cloudbank, and
it singa
A mounting engineroar which Alis
the vast
Celestial hemisphere with hellish
noise,
And now the speeding plane parts
Savagely
The air as from the heights it
phmyex down,
And screams a loud defiance at
the wind
Whitch matches potently with
jealous claws
At wings and body in a vain
attempt To
destroy this shame- utterly less thing. Split particles of air clap close
behind
The fleeting tall group; in the
cockpit swirls
An inzane pale of currenta; in-'
struments
And windshield vibrate like a
thing alive.
The seat proves strangely In-
cfectual
As in the straining belt the pilot
hangs,
His head bent to the crashpad to
escape The blast,
The airspeed meter needle points To better than two hundred miles
per hour, And keeps on moving!
Humming madly now, Insistent, louder, drowning one
the wind, The engine's shrick is like a wait.
From Hell With overtones drawn from the
aliver disc Of Whirling prop blades and the
high-pitched song That's strummed on tauténéd
wirck 'by those claws Which cause the pilot's face to
'lore its`amile
.
From apprehension. TEENS The controls are alif-
TheWatick - tay rigid, Downward'
drops the ship!!
TROPIC BAR SHER IZE CREAM!
"The white man has not made my people happy!. First,
they forced on us their Taws and customs—and now double feature movies!"
THE BABY OF THE FAMILY
JUST HAND ME that map, will you, please, Mr. Smith? Thank you; now, what do you know about South Africa?
I hope you won't fall into the usual trap of thinking that the Union of South Africa is all that vast splodge of red on the southern side of the equator.
a
about South Africa is only fifth of the British'territory in the whole continent.
Still, it's quite a big place, five times greater in area than this funny little island of ours up here, although it has only sixteen people to the square mile.
This country has an average at 468 people herded together on cach square mile.
THERE are four provinces in the Union, which is only twenty- eight years old; Cape of Good Hope, Nalal, the Transvaal, and Orange Free State.
ns
They are not-so-burdened-with- local provincial government some of the other Dominions, but each province has an Administra- tor appointed by the Central Gov- crnment
and
locally elected assembly.
On the other hand, they may be said to have two capitals.
"How is that?" usks Mr. Smith. seat of Government is ira The Pretoria, in the Boer country, while the parliament meets 1,000 miles (ike. away in Capetown. Also Canuda, which uses French) there' two official "lauguages—the
are
Plunging faster, faster, toward a
small
Objective on the field-the enemy! Beyond three hundred twenty
miles per hour The needle cannot register increase Although the plane Itas not
reached terminni Velocity. The craft iwists in ita
fight,
Desperately aiming at its mark Now suddenly aware of Jove's
approach,
Flying specks of dirt insinuate Themselves into the goggles, nose
and mouth
Belonging to the plummet's quid-
ing soul.
The altimeter lags in recording- A looming earth is yawning for its
preu.
But then a fumbling hand,
“awkward “gloves,"
in
Secures a grip upon the toggle.
Now!
And in a desperate jerk upon the
cord
The horrible egg-cargo is released To plunge down, weaving, shiver-
ing, to the earth
Which never looked as close as it
does now!
But at the instant of delivery. The very birth of deeth, the stick
is yanked!
And with a shriek unholy to all
cara
Within a ten mile radius from
there
The little bomber curves up from
its dive,
Rushing through the air at break
neck speed,
And points its snarling nose, up.
toward the store
To climb into the blue from:
whence it came o
It leaves its echo ringing at
second being Afrikaans, which is a form of Dutch.
More than 60 per cent. of the words spoken in the Union Parllu- ment are in Afrikaans. So you see that it is far from being an Eng- lish sort of Dominion.
The policy of the majority (and the majority elect the Govern- ment) is based on self-protection: The native must be kept a native natural state as for 43 possible; so he is not given, any vote.
In
1
But the view of the "intellec- tual" section-and therefore minority is that the native should be allowed the same opportunities for education and development as the Europeans; and they advocate
policy of assimilation.
Their opponcats say thut this would lead to a coffee-coloured nation in the future; but the pro- blem, in 1940, is as far from solu- tion as ever.
NOW, let a South African col league of mine-none other than Bob Crisp, the Test cricketer-tell you something more.
The new history of the Union renily dates from 1931, when two great men shook hands and found- ed the Arst Coalition Government," Ruya Crisp.
General
Africa's
"The two men were General Hertzog, who had always been an ardent Republican, and Smuts, wlio saw South destiny as in the British Empire.
There was one point over which the two men could not agree—the divisibility of the crown, and dual nationally.
"General Hertzog-and nearly every Dutchman in the country- claimed that South Africa had its own king and that he just hap- pened to be king England as well:----7
---They also said-that-there- was such a thing as South African nationality as well as British na- tlonality.
see
сус
"General Stouts-and every Eng- lishman in the country-could not.
to rya with him on this matter. But it was rather an sea- demic point, and, like wise men, they just agreed to differ.
The result of this fusion has been the birth of a new nation In South Afrien-not. English, Dutch, but first and last South African.
the
ΠΟΡ
"SOUTH AFRICA
tremen- dously rich. Its export of gold is approaching
£100,000,000 which is quite a lot of mark, money, you will agree. It has cer- tainly kept the country going, and by the vast amounts are taken Government each year in taxation.
"From this sum" they subsidisc overything, "from pin-making to cattle-raising.
Ours is a big Empire, Mr. Smith, and although the white man doml nates, there are only 70,000,000 of
him.
But the interests of the other 430,000,000 must not be forgolten by us: 360,000,000 assorted Indland, 40,000,000 negroes, 0,000,000 Arabs, 0,000,000 Maloys, 1,000,000 Polyne
And with all those people there sans and 1,000,000 Chinese. are yet millions of square miles of across The devastated target, bollowly, Empire wailing to be occupied by Menacingly, but diminishing-some one. The United States of Its threat, for now its mission le America has paid bitterly for the alfajuled
unrestricted Immigration which ahe, permitted for the forty years. bofore the late war began,
And Afaraj, omnipotent, has been
appoasedi
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