ITALY'S AMBITIONS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 138, 24 March 1930, Page 5

ITALY'S AMBITIONS.

AN EMPIRE IN AFRICA. CONTROL OF TRADE ROUTES. 'United Press Association—Copyright.) ROME, March 22. The seriousness of Italian ambitions in Africa was emphasised by a debate in the Chamber of Deputies on the Colonial Estimates. Signor Pace insisted that Italian occupation of Fezzan had not been pushed to the limit of their territorial rights. He declared that Italy could not accept a boundary which did not leave JBardai and Ain-Galakka far to the northward and did not give control of the important Fezzan-Chad-Kufraundai caravan routes

Signor Fera urged that the African Continent would eventually be dominated by the Power which most rapidly attacked it from the Mediterranean; therefore there would be a struggle between Britain. France and Italy. Britain, with great lines of communication and the possession of the ex-Ger-man Colonies, had a formidable base. France, by.the trans-Saharan railway and the existing roads, could tap the fertile Chad-Conga regions, but Italy, through Libya, had the shortest communications with Equatorial Africa from the Mediterranean, among which Tripoli was destined to become one of the master lines of the world's commerce. Signor Fera added: "The star of the world's greatest Colonial Empire is declining because it lacks ideas, and the light once coming from Rome is now reaffirmed in Signor Mussolini's enunciation of the principles of authority, order and justice." Signor Bono, Colonial Minister, made an optimistic speech, but corrected certain speakers' exuberances. "The Times."