WAR'S HORRORS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 186, 8 August 1935, Page 7

WAR'S HORRORS.

ITALIAN INTENTIONS.

Bomb Dropping and Poison Gas

From the Air. PURPOSE OF MOBILISATIONS. (United r.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received 1.30 p.m.) LONDON, August 7. The Italian Government is considering forming a force similar to the French Foreign Legion. It is understood that a number of offers to light for Italy have come from British Fascists.

It is reported that Signor Mussolini will attempt to overwhelm Abyssinia by means of a massed attack by 400 aeroplanes. The airmen will diffuse tear gas over wide areas, and in the last resort mustard and chlorine gases.

Hundreds of pilots are practising in Sicily with a new type of aeroplane capable of attaining a speed of .'SOO miles an hour, 200 of which arc being constructed.

The machines will carry 500 bombs capable of spreading gases, smoke screens or shrapnel. Experts are perfecting themselves in chemical warfare in the Sicilian mountains.

A message from Addis Ababa says that 3000 German-made gas masks have arrived, and 20,000 are en route.

A message from the Italian Embassy in London states that many British ex-officers and soldiers, engineers, doetors and nurses are volunteering to serve with the Italian Army in East Africa. The French Government has awarded Marshal Badoglio the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and Marshal Petain has telegraphed the entire French Army's homage to Italy's valorous Chief of Staff.

The Rome correspondent of "The Times" says the new mobilisations in Italy are represented as being necessary, firstly to meet the increasing Abyssinian forces along Italy's East African frontiers, and, secondly, to support Italy's right to a place in the sun which she has claimed for years and which to-day she- demands shall be justly and definitely satisfied.

International considerations, it is said now, can neither limit nor influence Italy's needs, which Signor Mussolini has carefully weighed.

The new mobilisations are described also as the best comment on the Geneva discussions. Tho "Giornale d'ltalia" says: "Geneva can continue to chatter and threaten, but cannot alter the course of Italy's will." Tho public, therefore, are warned not to nurture excessive illusions regarding the possibility of a peaceful settlement, but to pay increasing attention to the military aspect of the situation, becauso "the terms of this situation clearly indicate that things now are moving toward a climax." Only by arms, it is declared, can the dispute be satisfactorily settled.

AID ABYSSINIA. EGYPTIANS AND ASSYRIANS. (Received 1.30 p.m.) LONDOX, August 7. "The Times" Addis Ababa correspondent says that numbers of Egyptians and Assyrians are arriving and seeking commissions in the Abyssinian Army. Turkish sympathy with Abyssinia is indicated by the arrival, as the first Charge d'Affaires at Addis Ababa since the Great War, of the ex-Consul-General at Alexandria, Bey Nizameddin.