LITTLE GIRL DROWNED.

[by TELEGRAPH.— PRESS association.l Stratford, Monday. A three-year-old child, daughter of Mr J. Edwards, wandered from home this morning and was drowned in the lake in Victoria Park-

PRACTICALLY UNDER SIEGE A DISCOURAGED GARRISON. ARABS BREAK THE LINES. THIRTY HOLD OUT FOR DAYS. FIRST UNBIASSED REPORT. (Received November 6, 9.35 p.m.) Malta, November 6. Reuter's Tripoli correspondent has arrived here, and is able to give an unbiassed report of events in, Tripoli. He paints a- sombre picture .of the. situation. The town is practically besieged, the Arabs holding fourfifths of the oasis outside the town. : The Italians are dejected at their | retirement within the townReuter's correspondent states that if the othor correspondents now at Tripoli stated the facts, they would be immediately expelled. The Turks engaged against the Italians on October 23 and October 26 did not number more than 2000, yet they inflicted on their enemy losses of at least 1000. • The Italian line was broken on October 26 in two places by less than 200 Arabs, who rushed the 84th Regiment at dawn, and gained the cover of the oasis.

FEVERISH WORK ON DEFENCES. A hundred dismounted Italian cavalry saved the situation by a charge, killing the majority of the Arabs. . Thirty of the Arabs, however, held the position for three days, until they were blown up by means of mines. General Caneva, the Italian leader, was so alarmed that he abandoned the outer works, including the Turkish fort Mesri. The army worked feverishly to render the inner position impregnable with entrenchments , and barbed wire entanglements. The Turks and Arabs are now holding the oasis, where there is ,ample food. Every orchard and garden affords natural defences. TURKS' ARTILLERY POSITION. The . oasis is also an ideal position from which to fire into the Italian lines. Taking advantage of this, the Turks advanced their artillery and dropped a shell into General Caneva's headquarters. The Italians have, indeed, been driven to a point from which' they cannot retire, except by way of the sea. In these, circumstances the troops have passed from a state of the greatest elation to deep depression. There are sand • storms daily, and soaking rains fall at night. Many cases of cholera have occurred in Tripoli, and the outbreak has extended to the troops.

ANOTHER ARMY CORPS. Rome, November 5. Foreign attaches inspected the Italian entrenchments in the suburbs of Tripoli. They eulogised the bearing of the troops and the measures of defence. It is semi-officially announced that General F?'ug6ni, with army corps, is proceeding to Tripoli. The "Government is determined to carry the war to a finish with the utmost energy. WARSHIPS IN THE AEGEAN. CHIOS SIGHTS THE ENEMY. \ . Constantinople, November 5. An Italian squadron of six units has been sighted off Chios, an island in the iEgean Sea belonging to Turkey, 17 miles off the coast of Asia, |at the entrance to- the Gulf, of I Smyrna..

KILLED WITHOUT TRIAL. GHASTLY REIGN OF TERROR BOYS MANACLED AND SHOT. SLAIN IN BATCHES OF FIFTY. SOLDIERS' LUST OF BLOOD. (Received November 6, 11 p.m.) Malta, - November. 6. Reuter's Tripoli correspondent, ] who has arrived here, states that the! orders of General Caneva, Italian commander,. r were - directly responsible for the slaughter of the Arabs in the oasis near Tripoli. Reuter's correspondent brought with him a sworn statement concerning the massacres of Arabs in the oasis, which statement . is countersigned by the correspondents of the Morning Post and the Daily Mirror. He declares that it was made at the request of the British Consul in Tripoli. ' The correspondents of the New York World and the Berlin Lokal Anzeiger were so disgusted that they handed their passes to General Caneva, and refused to have further dealings with the Italian army. The sworn statement affirms that until October 23 the Italians treated the Arabs kindly. The Bersaglieri were justified in shooting Arabs in the south-eastern portion- of the

oasis. ORDER TO SHOOT ON SUSPICION. Afterwards General Caneva ordered all Arabs found with arms in the oasis to be shot. Finding that the Arabs were hiding their arms, this order was changed to, " Shoot all who are reasonably suspected of bearing arms." •After that, bodies of excited soldiers, ' often without officers, scoured the oasis for four days, indiscriminately shooting the Arabs regardless of whether or not they had partaken in the attack on the Bersaglieri. Several parties of 50 or 60 Arabs, men and boys, were collected with their hands tied, and were marched to vacant places. There they were shot without trial. MEN SLAIN IN THEIR GARDENS. Others were shot while working in their gardens. Some were bayoneted and some were clubbed to death with the butt-ends of, Italian rifles. On the fourth day after the. socalled insurrection of the : Arabs, Reuter's correspondent saw a detachment of Italians meet three weaponless Arabs, obviously men of property. • These were shot without a word of explanation.

Others from Tripoli state that a reign of terror exists there. House to house searches continue, and summary punishment is meted out on the least pretence. Batches of about 50 people are executed after a minute's trial before a tribunal of officers. A REPUDIATION BY CANEVA SOME COUNTER-CHARGES. (Received November 6, 9.35 p.m.) Tripoli, November 6. In an interview, "General Carieva denies the charges of cruelty and of massacres. He accuses the Turks of stripping Italians naked and of shockingly and disgustingly mutilating their bodies. A PROTEST FROM STAMBOUL. TURKISH CHAMBER ( ACTS. Constantinople, November 5. The Chamber of Deputies unanimously, determined to despatch a

protest to the Powers against the alleged atrocities by the Italians in the oasis.

ISLAMIC POWER IN AFRICA. FORCES THAT ARE AROUSED. At last the cablegrams contain an unbiassed and uncensored report of events in Tripoli, from which it would seem that, notwithstanding the withdrawal of Turkish. troops - due to Germany's assurance that Italy would not seize Tripoli, the Turk and Arab forces have been strong enough to force the Italians back to the seaboard. In fact,|Were it not that the sea lies open, and that the Italian fleet commands it, Tripoli might be for Italy a second Sedan. What is-the secret of Turkey's unexpected strength? An answer is probably supplied by a recent special article in The Times, and may- be summed up as Pan-Islamism, more particularly as this force manifests itself among the powerful Senussi - sect that has its centre ip-the Tripolitan hinterland. The following quotation from ' The- Times s article may be read in conjunction with last-week's Egyptian riots and other widespread symptoms 'of Mahomedan unrest within the British Empire as well as without.

" Events seem to bo shaping themselves in a fashion calculated to stir Islam f throughout Africa to its depths. Given f sufficient imagination to place oneself at , the present moment in the shoes of a black or brown African Moslem is to realise that < the action of Franco in- Morocco followed by the contemplated .Italian coup in In- ] poli amount to a combined onslaught upon Islam, both as a political and spiritual force— two being virtually inseparable, i at any rate, to the African mind— cannot but be so regarded from the Mediterranean littoral to the Nile on the cast and the-.Niger on the south. A few years ago Italian ambitions in Tripoli might, perhaps, have been achieved without very much difficulty—whether morally justifiable or not-—but their active expression now occurs at a time when two circum- ( stances have entirely altered the situa- ( lion. I refer to the recrudescence of } political activity on the part of Turkey in Tripoli .and its vast hinterland in the Central Soudan; and to the recognition by the Senussis of the spiritual authority of ■ the. Sultan, an -event of the deepest sig- , nificance. . Turkish Activities in the South. " In the course of the last two years, the Young Turks have changed their attitude of passive protest into one of sustained activity. Last autumn I found the French authorities at Dakar, the capital of French West Africa, considerably perturbed at the discovery of a Turkish patrol two days march north of ; the Asben oases on the great caravan route between Murzuk (Fezzan) and British and French Nigeria. The presence of a Turkish force in the oasis of Ghat, further north, had been reported some months . previously. _ It was there believed, I found, that Turkish movements, inspired from, Constantinople, Tripoli, and Alexandria, heralded further and more comprehensive • activities; but the opinion was held—erroneously as •it has turned —that there was no connection between them and Senussi ' intrigues' in Wadai and Borku. That these apprehensions were justified events were quickly to show. In the spring of this year Turkish troops moved southwards and occupied, almost simultaneously, Bardai, in Tibesti, and Airi-Galakka. in Borku, the mountainous districts lying south of , the Kufra oases, west of the Libyan desert, and immediately north of YVadai. And there they, remain. By its • action the Turkish Government* would*seem to have definitely intimated to all concerned that Turkey does not propose to remain a purely negative factor in the affairs of the Central Soudan. Who knows but that some of Turkey's leading men of long sight may not, like certain French politicians and soldiers, in--line to the belief that for Turkey, too, the ' future lies in North Africa'—at least, in part ? - - The Sway of the Senussi. "The Turkish position in these regions has, of course, been immensely strengthened by the unrest which permeates the whole' of the Islamic world of North Africa, of the Central, and perhaps to some extent the Eastern and Western. Soudan, by the occurrences in Morocco, the fighting in Wadai, and the occupation of "Mauritania" by the French, To the fears which these incidents have generated and, incidentally, to the anger at the decay in the trans-desert caravan trade from the Nigerian region with the North, which has so impoverished Fezzan, must undoubtedly be ascribed the steps taken by the Senussis to come to a political understanding with Constantinople. This understanding is to-day an accomplished fact, and has been sealed by the despatch of a Senussi mission to Constantinople. Its existence must make of the Ottoman flag a, symbol and a rallying point focjthe whole mass of disquieted Moslem elements in a vast region of North and Central Africa. Although Senussi-ism is essentially a religious and spiritual force, preaching avoidance of the European rather than active hostility against him, the aggression of a European Power upon that region of Africa where its : adepts are most numerous and most powerful, could not fail to light a torch which might well set all - North Africa and many parts of the Soudan ablaze." - '■;*< '' ' ■