It is with very great regret that we have to
record that the full reports of the newspaper correspondents which have been received from Tripoli leave no doubt that the Italian troops, officers and men, lost their heads in the acts of retaliation upon the Arabs who had risen within the Italian lines and in the rear of their trenches. For four days the oasis was given up to military executions, and there was something like an indiscriminate slaughter of all men who were supposed by the excited Southern soldiery to have taken part in the insurrection. Even when we have made full allowance for the fact that the Italians had acted most generously and humanely to the Arabs in their lines, had fed them and con- ferred many other benefits on them; when we remember, also, how the terrible tension of war renders men liable to accesses of fury, especially if, while defending themselves in front, they are attacked by what they hold to be treason in the rear ; and remembering, finally, that panic is always cruel, we are still obliged in justice to say that it is impossible to refrain from strongly condemning the behaviour of the Italian troops.
