TRIPOLI AND BEYOND.
ANEW phase of the Turco-Italian War, pregnant with doubtful and perilous issues, has been opened by the effective occupation by Italy of the Tripolitan Oasis. On November 26th, it will be remembered, the virtual blockade of the Italians in Tripoli came to an end with the offensive movement, successfully carried out by General Caneva, of which the object was to recover the ground lost in the fighting of October 26th. On December 4th the capture of the Turkish camp in the oasis of Ain Zara by General Pecori Giralda destroyed the base from which the Italian lines had been exposed to attack, and by the 9th the whole of the eastern oasis of Tripoli as far as Tajura had been cleared of the Arabs. The "rout" of the Turks at AM Zara seems, indeed, to have been somewhat exaggerated in the Italian reports, since they were able to carry away with them their wounded and their dead and to fall back in tolerable order on a new base. This new base, according to the Times correspondent, is in touch with Horns on the one side and the Tarhuna hills on the other, and is conveniently situated for aggressive movement in several directions : against Horns to the east, northwards towards Tripoli in support of such Arab fighting men as still remain in the oasis of Tripoli, north-west against the Italian advanced posts at Ain Zara, or eastwards in aid of the Turkish troops still operating, on the plateau of Berea or Cyrenaica, against the Italians in occupation of the sea- port of Benghazi. Tarhuna, moreover, it is added, lying as it does on the edge of a fertile zone, offers facilities for refurnishing supplies of provisions and men, as well as many excellent natural defensive positions.
Clearly the war is only " ended " in the sense in which the Boer War was said to be ended when Lord Roberts occupied Pretoria—an ominous precedent. The oasis of Tripoli itself is, as it were, an island set between the desert and the sea. Behind and about it is a vast wilderness of sand-dunes or rocky and waterless uplands in which are scattered other such islands, notably the fertile plateau of Barca and the oasis of Aujila to the east and the oases of Ghat and of Ghadames to the south and west. For an invading army, whose only base of supplies is the sea, to advance into such a country as this would be an under- taking of enormous risk even against a seemingly con- temptible foe, as the Germans discovered under somewhat similar conditions in their war with the Hereros in South- West Africa. But the Turks and their Arab allies have shown themselves by no means contemptible ; and the quali- ties which they have so far displayed against overwhelming odds would prove ten times more formidable against isolated columns operating, far from the protecting guns of the fleet, in unfamiliar and inhospitable country. To emphasize this danger is to cast no aspersion on the proved courage of the Italian troops or the capacity of their commanders. There is a risk, however, that a failure to realize the peril of an advance into the hinterland of Tripoli, a movement which would undoubtedly appeal to Italian popular sentiment, may involve Italy in a disaster which we should be the first to deplore, not only because we have always made the true interests of Italy our own, but because it might involve incalculable consequences for the world at large.
What these consequences might be is suggested in an interesting article, " L'emeute de Tunis et he revel d'Islam," contributed to the current number of the Revue des Deus Mendes by M. Louis Bertrand, whose ten years' residence in Tunisia entitles him to speak with authority on native feeling with regard to the European occupation of North Africa. The massacre of Italians in Tunis some six weeks ago has been generally taken as merely a fanatical retaliation for the drastic measures of the Italians in Tripoli after the Arab rising of October 23rd. It was natural, indeed, as M. Bertrand points out, that the emotion caused by the Turco-Italian War should have a more profound effect in Tunis than elsewhere in North Africa because of the large number of Italians settled there—for the most part poor Sicilian labourers living in the same quarters as the Arabs and on equal terms with them. The rioters themselves were careful to impress upon the French that their action was directed only against the Italians, and to apologize to any Frenchman whom they had assaulted "by mistake." None the less to M. Bertrand certain incidents of the rising were symptomatic of a much more comprehensive anti-foreign movement. "Let us in France," he says, "be under no illusion as to the true significance of these facts. Behind the Italians it is we, with all Europeans, who are aimed at." He goes on to describe the hatred with which the French administration is regarded by the native population, a hatred which the " Arabophil ' attitude of French states- men has succeeded only in embittering. So long as the French possessions in Africa were no more than military colonies the people were content to submit to a foreign empire which, though hated, did little to interfere with their customs and traditions. When, however, after 1880, the French Government started on its policy of colonial expansion and industrial development in North Africa the hatred of the Mussulman population was reinforced by definite grievances. In Egypt the British administration is carried on by a minimum of high European officials, whose deliberate policy has been to secure to the Egyptian fellahin the full benefit of the economic improvements effected by them. The French possessions, on the other hand, have been flooded with crowds of French fonctionstaires, big and little, and thus not only are the Mohammedans of the former ruling class deprived of all power, but the people at large see themselves excluded from those petty offices of profit which it is the chief ambition of the average Oriental, as of the average Frenchman, to secure. Moreover, the increasing immigration of French colonists, attracted by the success of the experiments in scientific vine-growing, threatens to drive the less efficient native husbandmen from the soil. Not that the French Government has acted with anything but the best intentions with regard to the natives, but the very perfecting of the system by which the advanced politicians of Paris have hoped to bring their Mohammedan fellow-citizens into active sympathy with the life of France has, according to M. Bertrand, only served still further to alienate them from it. "As for the people," he says, "it is too clear that they cannot but hate us. We exasperate them by taking them from their immemorial laziness and forcing them to work for a living with the painful and continuous toil of a European labourer or artisan ; we famish them by raising the price of the necessaries of life in proportions which seem to them fantastic. We disturb them in their habits and mode of life with our motor-cars, tramways, railways, and factories. All their instincts revolt against our adminis- tration and our legislation, and, from top to bottom, they hate all our officials. They abominate our rigorous idea of property, and our fiscal system seems to them odious brigandage."
This is, perhaps, no news to those who realize the diffi- culty, if not the impossibility, of governing an Oriental race strictly according to European ideas. It gains a special significance, however, in view of the anti-European movement, based on Mohammedan fanaticism, which, according to M. Bertrand, is in process of organization in North Africa. Religious fanaticism is apt to be held in leash by a sense of material interests ; ceremonial spitting and a muttered curse will satisfy the exigences of the odium theologicum while the hand is held out for bakshish. The comparative ease with which in 1902 the French broke the Senussi power in Wadai has been ascribed partly to the fact that the zeal of the Sheik-es-Senussi was equally divided between his spiritual and temporal affairs, which led to a fatal division in the forces of Islam. But where religious zeal and a sense of intolerable material grievance go hand in hand the combination may indeed be fateful ; and this in M. Bertrand's view, is the present condition in North Africa. The "Freethinkers and Radical-Socialists" in power at Paris have, he says, never been able to under- stand the fanaticism of a people whose ideas are those of their ancestors in the first century of the Hijra ; they have meted out to them better treatment than is accorded to the Catholics of France, in the hope, it would seem, by the gradual infiltration of Western ideas of producing some workable form of Mohammedan Modernism; they have only succeeded in adding, in the minds of the Mussulmans, contempt for their supposed weakness to hatred of their undoubted infidelity. The answer to all the efforts to win over the peoples of North Africa to European civilization has been the drawing together of all the conservative forces of Mohammedan North Africa on the basis of their common faith.
It is possible that M. Bertrand exaggerates the force and organization of this pan-Islamic movement, as he is certainly in error in assuming that the grievances of the Egyptians are the same as those of the Algerians or Tunisians. The movement is, however, undoubtedly strong enough to add another element of doubt to the future of the struggle in Tripoli. It is clear that the Italians had expected to have to deal only with the small Turkish garrisons in the Tripolitan coast towns, and that the furious Arab resistance took them wholly by surprise. Nor was this miscalculation without excuse. The powerful order of the Senussi, whose Sheik, established now in the oasis of Kufra,, is virtually the territoral ruler of all the eastern desert country as far south as Darfur, Bonin, and Wadai, is strongly represented in Tripoli and Cyrenaica ; and the Senussi, whose tenets are looked at askance by orthodox Sunnites, had under Sultan Abdul Hamid good reason to fear and distrust the Turks. It was not an unreasonable hope that they might be persuaded without much difficulty to transfer their allegiance to a Power which, though infidel, was less likely than the Khalif of Islam to interfere with their peculiar institutions. This hope has been belied, though it is too early as yet to say whether the whole Senussi organization is to be thrown into the scale against Italy. If so, the task of subduing the Tripolitan hinter- land by force would be formidable indeed. For the Senussi, whose zawias, or fortified monasteries, are established in all the oases along the caravan routes, are rich, warlike, and well armed, and their desert fortresses could only be reduced by European troops after overcoming immense difficulties.
In all the circumstances wisdom would seem to dictate to the Italians a less heroic policy than an. advance far from their base into the interior. A single reverse suffered by them in the trackless wilderness of the hinterland might fan the embers of Mohammedan fanaticism into flame far beyond the borders of Tripoli, and raise against them and all Europeans a jih,ail to which the present war would be child's play. But while they keep their position on the coast they have time as their best ally. The hold which the Turkish officers, whose courage and capacity we all admire, have over the Arab tribesmen is due to their common religion. But there are other factors which will emerge when the Mohammedan forces shall have wearied of hurling themselves in vain against the Italian lines. The Arabs—and notably the Senussi—are great traders, and the Italians, by holding the seaports and patrolling the coast with their warships, can paralyze the greater part of their commerce, of which the main outlets are Tripoli and Benghazi. When Providence shall have seemed to declare definitely against their arms, it is to be expected that even the fanatics of the desert will stoop to that" accommodation" which is the safety-valve of religious zeal, and come to terms with the janitor who guards the doors of their material wealth. Italy's motto in Tripoli should be Festina lente.
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