1940-06-13 — Page 13

Thursday,

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

June 13, 1940. -

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MIDDLE

· Odessa: first port of USSR, and centre for vast distributing organisation for oilf 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-Frerich Flects Russian Black Sea routes would be threatened.

Haifa, Beirut, Tripoli: from these ports come Anglo-French oil supplies. Any Russian allack through Iran would threaten Allies' wells (marked O).

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 Sinai Peninsula speed up military communications) WILL the war in the West be

switched to develop. In the East? What will Turkey do? Wil! Africa now become battlefield? These questions dominate the world to-day.

The map above shows the vast implications of such a development, Egypt and India are not too remote to be drawn into the conflict, and

· is certain thai now Italy is in the war, the Balkans must sooner or later become involved.

If we should come to the Middle East it will be an Oll War. Look at those eireles in the map. They mark the ofl wells,

Both sides would make immed!- ate attempts lo cripple each other's 'oll supplies: the Russians by a great military movement through Iran Into Iraq and Syrla, backed by at- tempts at continuous aerial bom- bardment of Allled wells; the Allies by air attacks upon Baku, Batum, and those Russian wells which le in the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. These Allied attacks would probably be backed by ̋naval”aftacks upon Batunt" ~~~~~ Above" all things” Russia"fears"a"

naval war in the Black Sea. To Black Batum from the sea the Allies would have to enter the Black Sea through the Stralis of Dardanelles. Turkey controls these straits. In the event of a clash with Russia. It is virtually certain that · Turkey would open These stralis to the Allled fleets.

An Hallan atlack would have as Its ultimate object the seling of the Suez Canal. To guard againsi such possibilities, however remote they may seem at the moment, the Egyptian Government bas con- alructed strategic roads which link up the main military stations of Egypt with the Sinal Peninsula.

Some strategists suggest that in the event of a Middle Eastern clash the totalitarians would attempt a drive on India, but such a move would be improbable, although nol Impossible. Russia could move swiftly through the lowlands of Turkoman, but then would come Whe fearful

Through passage Afghanistan (now, more than ever before, an invaluable buffer State between the clash of new-siyle Russian Imperialism and establish- ed Brilish imperialsın) and after Afghanistan would conic the oven more hazardous campaign to pierce the North-West frontler,

BARONESS LOST HIM

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

The baroness won the batile. "The Baron, who would be__cop- demned to death in Germany because ho déd from military conser|ption and took his money out of Germany, was allowed to remain in the Unlied States.

Recently the baroness filed n-sult for divorce,

"Since last August," she gold, "ho's repeatedly told me he no longer loves me and wants to marry woman of social position wealth."

and

thetr

Tho baroness helped to keep home together at Detroit by working

In a fur shop.

EASTERN

PAGE

NEWS

(RUMANIA

$

Odessa

A

Bucha

Soft? ¡BULUARJA

Rostov

Astrakhan

BLACK SEA·· Istanbul

Ankara

TURKE

EAN SEA

Tripoli

OSYAJA

Ratem

IRAQ

Tcheran Isfaha IRAN

ISTAN

Alexand

A. RA BLA ·

EGY PT

.Mecca

ABY 5 SSEINUA

Greet Arabian Desert.

HADRAMUT

GULF OF

Karachi

O CE AN

SCALE IN MILES

₫ 190 100 300 400 580

O Allied Oil Wells

Russian Oil Wells

• Turkish Oil Wells' @ Iranian Oil Wells

its Mountains

WARSHIPS OF THE POWERS-V

REEL

Russia's major oil wells (shown)

are 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 bombardment. To counteract such attacks Russia covid 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 Iran, for through Iran lies Russia's

·most strategic route to Iraq's oil wells. Meanwhile tan tries to remain aloof from all foreign entanglements and political pressure, watches warily growing Turko-Russian tension.

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

This Is Why

Italy has at last come

Sinto the open in claiming

Tunis as Italian. For more than 60 years Tunis has 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 Temarked 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 had, as he said on more than one occasion, a "nightmare of coalitions," and wished to see the French immersed in their colonial schemes rather than planning revenge for their defent in the Franco- Prussian war.

MM

WHAT moral right had Franco got to Tunis? said

Italy

24,000 Frenchmen and 71,000 Italians.

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 origin- 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

the enough, French in Tunis have a higher birthrato and a lower morta-. lity rate than the Itallons there. So that France feels that if she sits tight, time is on her side...

L

Italy. There were 10,000 ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄WHAT are the guns belindTM-

Italians there in 1881, and only 700 Frenchmen. Twenty years later things were just as bad from the French point;. of vlow. There were then

this diplomacy? Let us look at the problem theoretically, in terms of military strategy. If Italian armies marched from Libya into Tunis, all

BRITAIN

Wants Wants Tunisia

might go well for 120 miles. Then they would

come. to a 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 fortifed the bottleneck and could hold it against a very superior force. And in their rear they have

of colonial troops from Algerią.

reserves

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

Pantelleria, the island on which no foreigner has set 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_wvUr-__ 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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