UNREST IN SYRIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 72, 21 September 1940, Page 11

UNREST IN SYRIA

ITALIANS RESISTED

ATTITUDE OF FRENCH ARMY

"WE HAVE THE GUNS"

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) LONDON, September 19. The Cairo correspondent of "The Times" says that more news of unrest comes from the strongholds of France's army in Syria. The Italian agents in three divisional headquarters have been instructed to make an inventory of the French. army equipment. Though this is an obvious prelude to the dismantling or seizure of guns, tanks, ammunition, lorries, and planes, the two senior French delegates on the armistice commission have consented, but the junior officers and men are resisting. French regulars at the chief training base are taking their rifles to their tents at night time, and strangers have been ordered from the camp. Similar happenings have occurred at a base | where the Italians ai*e trying to secure modern Glen Martin bombers. The crews of two French submarines at Beirut are stubbornly staying aboard, grimly awaiting the moment when they will be asked to come off. Syrian soldiers at the camp of a camel corps near Damascus are refusing to give up their camels and ammunition, and they are reported to have buried ammunition in the mountains. These moves are setting a delicate and dangerous problem for the Italian agents, who are endeavouring to rot the French army from within. The Italians fear French resistance and sabotage. The attitude of the. French soldier can thus be summed up: "We have the guns. What are you going to do about it?" The Syrians say: "France is only a mandatory Power here, and she.has no right to hand us over to Italy."

A pilot who attacked Flushing Harbour saw heavy explosions in the har-