Can Mussolini Abandon Lybia?

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13240, 16 January 1941, Page 4

Can Mussolini Abandon Lybia?

(Copyright by P.P.S.) It is only natural after the shoctingly unexpected Italian reverses • Greece —or rather Albania— and th* shattering success of the British q slaught on Libya, both of which seem to indicate a humiliating inefficient of Mussolini's Avar machine, a who! crop of observers are predicting ! total collapse of the Italian African Empire, There are even stories fr om “official quarters’’ of Italy’s feelers for a separate peace with Britain The latter can be discounted, at least at this stage, because it is inconceivable that Hitler Avould tolerate such “reachery”; even the Italian High Command is not prepared to face the music Avith the admittedly powerful Nazi army.

Hitler still needs Mussolini. The stories of seething discontent among the Italian masses, are quite true, but the rumbling against the ineflp cient Fascist machine has not reached a sufficient volume to sweep Mussolini from power. The dictatorships have a trick knoAvn as purges, and Mussolini, Avith the aid of his propaganda machine, Avould surely find some suitable hunch of scapegoats for his oavu blunders. Mussolini’s mouth-pieces deprecate Graziani’s losses and hint that Italy has not played a last card yet. What this card might be it has to be played pretty soon, though, probably by Hitler himself.

What is rather difficult to comprehend, both to naval-minded and to an amateur alike —is why the Italian Navy is so timid and so hopelessly nnable to prevent British naval operations? Also what the 130 Italian submarines —Italy has the largest number of any Power —are doing? The- Fascist air force ,in spite of their numbers, are obsolescent, and are economising with oil, but surely the huge numbers of submarines and aeroplanes between them should be able to check the British Navy in the comparatively narrow seas! This aspect of the war in Libya is much more, important than the actual British and Greek successes. It is unlikely that Mussolini has lent a large number of Italian submarines to sinking of British ships in the Atlantic, when Hitler wants him to destroy the British naval forces in the Mediterranean. And what happened to the numberless Italian mosiiuitoflee so flamboyantly boasted about during the Abyssinian campaign?

Accepting the assumption that the British drive in Libya will not stop after the possible capture of- Benghazi, although an advance further west toward Tripoli would represent a tremendous military and naval operation, and that the whole Graziani army will collapse, the loss of Libya would have unforeseen consequences upon the morale of the rural Italy. Mussolini cannot possibly afford such a fatal blow.

It is bad enough that Abyssinia, Eritrea, and Somaliland are absolutely isolated - and progressively menaced by a gathering strength of Anzacs, Indians, South Africans, Free French and native rebel forces. Libya has a decisive sentimental and imperial value to the Italians. The four provinces of Tripoli, Miserat, Benghazi and Derna are not Colonies, but a national territory, an extension of the motherland where Mussolini planned a settlement of 100,000 peasants completed within the next two years. Marshal Balbo has built a good road along the 1,200 miles of coastline between Tunisia and Egypt, with branches connecting the new purely Italian settlements. Already the British forces are knocking pretty close to these concrete villages surrounded by orange, olive, almonds, wine plantations and populated mostly by children. Only families with minimum of eight children were allowed to settle there. Italy must have spent a tremendous amount of money in this effort to revive the Roman glory of Cyrenaica and Tripoli, to bore artesian wells and to dig irrigation canals. The British army will naturally follow the coastal region marching on Balbo’s highway, provided with water. The victors need not bother about the interior whic his peopleless and an arid desert. There are from twenty to thirty thousand new settlers. Will they be evacuated to the great shame of Musso and anger the masses?