ITALY AND ABYSSINIA

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 124, 11 May 1935, Page 7

ITALY AND ABYSSINIA

Concerns in British Circles

EMPEROR’S ATTITUDE

By Telegraph—Press Assn—Copyright. LONDON, May 10.

British official circles continue to feel concerned over the situation tn Abyssinia. It is thought that Signor Mussolini does not appreciate the immense difficulties facing him in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, where proper facilities for concentrating large bodies of troops are lacking. Garrisons have already suffered heavy casualties from sickness.

The ‘‘Daily Telegraph's” Addis Ababa correspondent says; The Emperor, in a special interview, told me that ho still hopes for a settlement us a result of the meeting of the League Council at Geneva on May 20, but he will bo obliged to order general mobilisation if Italy continues her war preparations. “Ethiopia will never accept a statb of unofficial war, us when Japan carried out operations in Manchuria,” says the Emperor. “Wo will immediately resist, ’'

EAST MEETS WEST

Battleground in Africa

ROME, May 10.

“There is an increasing tendency to represent the Italo-Abyssiniau dispute as important to world civilisation,” Senator Schanzer, presenting the colonial estimates, declared. Slavery und other primitivism in Abyssinia were irreconcilable with normal international relations, therefore Italy was both protecting her own rights and national dignity and representing tho duty of ordered, productive civilisation. He added that events had proved that Africa was destined to be the battleground between East and West, in which the latter must maintain her

superiority. Newspapers declare that Italy is pro testing against nations supplying arms to Abyssinia, pointing out that Italy's friendship depends on the cessation of such a course.