NEWS OF THE W EEK.
THE news during the past week in regard to Tripoli and the war is extremely meagre. This does not mean, of course, that nothing has been done, but merely that the censorship has been very strict. Friday's Times, however, contains a telegram from the front of considerable interest. The first Italian division holds with its outposts the fringe of the Tripoli oasis and patrols some ten kilometres of the desert where it is in occasional contact with the Turkish outposts, but there has been no serious fighting. The Times correspond- ent evidently thinks, and we should imagine rightly, that the proper plan for the Italians, who obviously do not want to compromise themselves with the Arabs—that is with the native population as contrasted with the Turks, who, of course, have always been a foreign garrison in Tripoli—is to go slow and not to attempt to move inland. He fears, however, that public opinion in Italy will not tolerate " a campaign of attri- tion." If the Italian Government is foolish enough to be guided not by true military policy but by what they believe to be public opinion, they will make a fatal error and assuredly defeat their own ends. Let Mem ask themselves what is this public opinion with which they are threatened, and they will soon find, in Dr. Johnson's words, that it is nothing but "a mixture of prejudice and newspaper paragraphs" and can be much more safely ignored than politicans usually imagine. If a Government is only patient, it will find that the noisy section of the public soon weary of screaming for more activity. Thunder showers are loud but they pass over quickly.
