ITALY IN NORTH AFRICA.*
Mn. McCanna's book probably contains the truest estimate of the work and conduct of the Italian army in Libya that has been published in English. The author has written at his leisure, after verifying and amplifying from numerous sources what be saw with his own eyes. Most Englishmen are friends and admirers of Italy, and they will feel nothing but pleasure in knowing that so industrious an investigator as Mr. McClure .has been able to give a certificate both of competence and conduct to the Italians. The stories of massacres by Italian troops were very widely spread over Europe at the beginning of the campaign in Tripoli, as were also whispers about Italian liability to panic. We are glad to remember that the Spectator professed scepticism about all the persistent stories of Italian brutality. Not indeed that it needed any prodigies of discrimination to keep us in a wholesome state of scepticism ; it seems to us rather that prodigies of credulity are required in those who accept the allegations which are always made about armies in modern wars. The defamations had a too familiar sound. Englishmen who remember the amazing untruths which circulated throughout the world about the behaviour of our own troops in South Africa ought to be the last to lend a ready ear to the traducer. No doubt the accusations against the Italians were the natural result of what may be called the ordinary economics of traduction ; when a nation is unpopular a supply of sinister allegations grows up to meet the demand for them. And of course Italy was temporarily unpopular owing to what was felt to be her cynical and avaricious adventure in North Africa.
Mr. McClure does well to open his book with a retrospect of the historical relations of Italy to North Africa. If his justification of Italy's action in declaring war on Turkey does not exactly convince us that she behaved with a pure passion for international righteousness, he does at least make it clear that Italy did nothing more and nothing worse than almost every nation with colonies has done at some period of its career. The Italian claim to North Africa—it is, of course, a claim of propinquity; in other words, a geographical claim, which is one of the strongest of all sentimental and commercial claims— dates back three-quarters of a century. When the French occupied Tunis in 1881 the disappointment of the ancient Italian dream was very keen. Those who study foreign politics remember the discussion which Italy then provoked in all the Chancelleriee about her ambitions on the North African littoral. It was a sense of her powerlessness which caused 1104 to joie the Triple Alliance in 1887. At the .1 nay in liooltIt Afrim : on dreamt re the Tripoli Enterprise. By W. K.
Natare. WithDiastrationa _L?;.Mos. London: Constable and Co. 71s. not'.]
same time it is not very clear to us why Italy should have ranged herself against France—an inevitable outcome of joining the Triple .Allianee—seeing that France had more or less continuously countenanced the Italian ,claim to Tripoli. French action in Tunis, after all, did not change that fact. German support, cm the other hand, was never very sore, and at one time it had to be discounted owing to the well-known Bismarckian principle that it was a good plan to keep troublesome people quiet by encouraging them to burn their fingers outside Europe. Today there is a story widely believed in Italy that when Germany was negotiating with France over Morocco she proposed that she should be allowed a free hand in Tripoli and Cyrenalea, and that France not only refused, but conveyed the substance of the German proposal to Italy. Mr. McClure does not accept the story, but the fact that it is believed in Italy is in itself an indication of the questioning allegiance of Italy to the Triple Alliance. What is certain is that Italy eventually decided on the campaign in North Africa exactly when she did because Germany was demanding at Constantinople economic privileges in Tripoli- tania of a sort that had always been denied to Italy.
Mr. McClure emphasizes the critical position of the Italians immediately after the first landing in Tripoli. A week passed between the landing of the sailors and the arrival of the soldiers.
"The sailors who were marched through the streets to impress the native population were used like the members of a stage army,
passing the same point two or three times, and each time posing as fresh troops ; while the patrols in the town and in the oasis made it their aim to show themselves in as many places as possible and as often as possible. Ordinary reliefs were an impossibility when each man had to do the work of three and look as though he were six. Men who patrolled the town by day watched out on the edge of the desert all night. In the town or at the trenches twelve hours was a common period of sentry-go; food and sleep were snatched somehow, but there was little time for either. Coldly reviewed, the task which the sailors were set to perform appears in the light of an impossibility. To defend a line nearly eight miles long against attack from an enemy numbering some thousands, and at the same time to police an unruly Eastern town full of armed men potentially hostile, was obviously beyond the powers of the two thousand sailors who, at a pinch, could be spared from the ships. But they dared to pretend that they were masters of the situation, and the ' bluff ' came off."
The rising of October 23rd, when even Arabs in the city of Tripoli who had given in their submission turned against the Italians, caused an abrupt change from over-confidence to an extreme caution. This caution, combined with highly rigorous measures against natives who were false to their terms of submission, accounts for the stories both of panic and brutality. Mr. McClure was guided by a right sense in examining fully the sequel to the revolt of October 23rd because it is on the events of those particular days that Englishmen found their judgment of the correctness or inhumanity of Italian behaviour. We have not space to do more than quote the words in which Mr. McClure sums up his judicial discussion of the whole subject :—
" Two sets of charges were brought against General Caneva. First, that he had treated as rebels Arabs who could claim the rights of belligerents, men who were simply fighting for their country; and second, that even if the Arabs were rebels he had given an order which rebellion itself did not justify—that all Arabs found in the oasis should be shot. Both these charges may be dismissed very shortly. All the local Arabs within the Italian lines had made formal submission, either personally or through their chiefs. Many of them had been clothed and fed and medically tended during the days which followed the occupation, and they bad undoubtedly lost belligerent rights. Moreover, both they and those Arabs from outside who had never made technical submission, but were within the Italian lines, are covered by the rule as to occupied territory.' All of these who took up arms against the Italians were technically rebels. The second charge was made explicitly by at least one correspondent, but it appears to be absolutely without foundation. Impartial investigation will find no trace of such an order, and General Caneva has cate- gorically denied that it was ever issued. The correspondent who made the charge has never given any authority for his assertion, and I think we may take it that the story of this bloodthirsty order has no foundation in fact. It may have been the subject of a flying rumour, but flying rumours ought not to be used as the basis of grave charges. The orders actually given to the troops were to this effect: that the oasis should be cleared, and that those found in arms against the Italians should be shot. Obviously, such orders left room for individual discretion or indiscretion, but these are the orders that were given, orders that wera both natural and necessary. . . . It is admitted that the plan of reprisal was severe, and it must be admitted also that ittiteeoeeutioa there were cases of error and excess, where individual soldiers or parties of soldiers made mistakes Or got out of heed- These cases of excess have been incredibly magnified and distorted, and the conclusion I wish to sustain is that while the severity was fully justified, the errors and excesses, however regrettable and blamable, were not unnatural or altogether unpardonable. I have not found that any Italian with whom I have spoken on the subject claims any other verdict on the events. A picture of the situation may furnish explanation and excuse : the soldiers at the front overwhelmed in a hell of firing, defending themselves desperately against a half- seen enemy; reinforcements struggling through a maze of gardens, fired on from all sides, from houses, from mosques, from behind walls, from palms, from wells ; and nearer the city groups of soldiers from the medical, transport, and commissariat corps, waiting the reported coming of the Arabs, actually fired on by stray parties which had left the main bodies and pushed forward in hope of loot. And the scene of this critical situation : a net- work of orchards and gardens, split up by narrow roads and winding paths, where the radius of vision varies from a hundred yards to five ; a district closely populated in parts, where com- batants and non-combatants were often inextricably mingled. Many Arabs had had an inkling of the revolt, and had come into the town with their families, in order to be out of the way, but others had stayed, unbelieving or uncaring, or, in many cases, actually sympathetic. It would be idle to pretend that on that day no innocent persons were killed. The circumstances of the case, the ordinary limits of human judgment and control, absolutely forbid the possibility."
Mr. McClure's general criticism of the campaign amounts to this, that when it had been decided to carry out only the
minimum of operations—the programma mininto as it was called—even this was not prosecuted with vigour. The fault, in the author's view, was that of the generals and of the politicians at home; the men fretted at the inaction and ridiculed the excessive caution. The projected advance to Jebel was abandoned because it certainly involved some risk, and it was felt that whatever was undertaken must be
accomplished without failure or even without any adverse incidents. Mr. McClure is evidently inclined to believe
that a bold desert campaign would have better served the interests of Italian prestige. But we venture to doubt the justice of his conclusion. A desert campaign may swallow up many thousands of men for little result
except the undesired one of wearing out the spirit of men who pursue an elusive enemy under conditions of great hardship. The Arabs are traders and would never refrain from trade with the coastal towns for a long time. To wait for the Arabs to come to terms was, then, a policy which perhaps delayed the end of the war, but had the very great advantages of being safe and inexpensive. The outcome has, we think, justified the policy. At all events, the justification is pretty clear in Tripoli proper. The future of Cyrenaica, where considerably less has been accomplished in the way of military occupation or the establishment of civil administration, is much more doubtful.
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