ITALY AND TUNIS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 29, 4 February 1939, Page 8

ITALY AND TUNIS.

EXAMINATION OF AIMS. ANGLO-FRENCH REACTIONS. An examination of the colonial claims of Mussolini in regard to Tunisia are made in an article which appeared in a recent issue of the "Spectator." The article gives a -brief history of the territory, and estimates at the same time Italy's success, and the respective interests of France and Britain. II Slice's chief claim to attention, the article states, is the presence in the territory of some 05.000 Italians—a community which, being about equal in numbers to the French .residents, makes its presence felt the moment you land, either by talking Italian at the next table, or by striking your eye with the magnificence and prominence of its bookshop and library, or by waking you to the strains of "Santa Lucia" 011 one of its multitudinous concertinas. Thanks to a nineteenth-century •treaty between Italy and the Bev of Tunis, .this community enjoys rights which are not shared by other foreigners. In particular, it may maintain its own schools, audits members may retain their Italian nationality—privileges to which the French .agreed in all magnanimity at a moment when* Italy was in low water. Briefly, the.liistory is that Italian peasants, from Sicily and Calabria crossed to Africa in the iirst half of the nineteenth century in order to. escape from the poverty of their bome provinces. By the time of the Unification, jn/1870, some 10,000 of them had migrated. Appreciative of the glamour of Tunis, most of the newcomers settled down as townsmen and artisans, but as a whole they formed a self-contained community, thanks to the presence among them of some 3000 Jews from Leghorn—a group of Spanish origin—which •had adopted Tuscan ways and the nationality <?f its land of adoption during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Colony of Jews, These Jews, who are wholly Europeanised, and bear 110 resemblance to the. penurious Arabic-speaking Jewish community that is to 1 be found in every Xortli African town, soon, rose to all the key positions among their j fellow Italians; they ran their banks, their, chamber of commerce, and their Press, and presided over their social clubs. At this time, though the Frencli were busy peopling Algeria, only some 700 of them had settled further ■ east. The Italy of the Risorgimento, there-, fore, considered with some justice that, if' Europe was helping itself to Africa, she had I a prior claim to Tunisia. She calculated without the duplicity of her fellow Powers. In order to deflect French thoughts from another war with Germany, Bismarck suggested the occupation of Tunisia. "Let us hope that »n the* ruins of Carthage they will forget the cathedrals of Alsace-Lorraine" (which Germany had annexed a few years earlier). To Italy's' chagrin, therefore, it was France and rtot she who carried off the prize in. IS.SI. Xot until ISflG—the year in which the disaster at Adowa killed her appetite for colonies—did she consent to accept the fait accompli.: v : For years France welcomed Italian immigrants. She had spent herself colonising first Canada, then Algeria,, and though she couJd supply the officials and capitalists for her new protectorate, she was in need of European labour. The Italians were equally pleased with the situation. ' They felt no regrets for a homeland so poor and so ill-organised as southern Italy, and were flattered to adopt the habits and sometimes also the nationality of a great Power. In time, alarmed at the Italian, rate of increase, the French decided that the flow must be curbed before they, were hopelessly outnumbered. Between 1021 and 1920 they succeeded in readjusting the balance, chiefly by offering Italians inducements to accept naturalisation. Enter II Duce. Here the Dtice appears upon the scene. By 1926 he was firmly established at home; he had silenced his opponents, pegged the. lira, and was ready to look further afield. He decided to cheek the transfer of manpower co France, and gave appropriate orders to his Consul in Tunis. Hence everyone who had followed form was thunderstruck to read, one morning in January, 1935, the. text of an Italo-French agreement by which, in return for some 'trifling" concessions secured from Laval, the Duce agreed to renounce all rights in Tunife. This most 1111-Fascist capitulation was accompanied, however, by a saving clause—time. The Italian schools were to enjoy rights until 1045, the Italian nationals until twenty years later. M. Laval, in perpetrating perhaps the most inept piece of statesmanship of modern times, failed to appreciate the Duces reasoning, which was —that much water might flow, under tlie bridges before 1045, while for the present it was vital to secure an ally who,would turn a blind eye to Ins plans for conquering; Ethiopia. As things turned out, France fell between two stools. Thanks to her connivance, the Duce cracked the fabric of the League, which was the cornerstone of her European policy. At the same time, her participation in sanctions, though lialf-hearted, t provided him with the grounds he needed for' continuing to preach loyalty to the mother country in Tunis. This he has done with gusto from 1935 until to-day.