ITALY’S SPIRIT

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 99, 24 March 1930, Page 7

ITALY’S SPIRIT

GROWING AMBITIONS. POSITION IN AFRICA. THREE-POWER STRUGGLE (United Press Association.—By Electrio Telegraph—Copyright). Received March 24, 10 a.m. ROME, March 23. In a message to the “Blackshirts” throughout Italy, commenorating the eleventh anniversary of the march on Rome, Signor Mussolini says: “Let everybody know that we still possess the same spirit, and the same will as in 1919.” . The seriousness of Italy’s ambitions in Africa is emphasised, by a debate in the Chamber of Deputies on the colonial estimates. Signor Pace insisted that the Italian occupation of Fezzan had not been gushed to the' limit of territorial rights. [e declared that Italy could not accept a boundary which did not leave Bardai and Ain Galakka far to the northward, and did not give control of the important Fezzan-Chad and Kufra Undai caravan routes. Signor Fera urged that the African Continent would eventually be dom.nated by the Power which most rapidly attached it from the Mediterranean, therefore, there would be a struggle between Britain, France and Italy- Britain with her great lines of communication _ and possession of ex-German colonies, had a formidable base; France, by the trans-Saharan railway and existing roads could tap the fertile Chad and Congo Tegions, but Italy, through Libya, had the shortest communications with equatorial Africa from the Mediterrean. Tropoli was destined to become one of the master-lines of the world’s commerce. Signor Fera added: “The star, of the world’s greatest colonial empire is declining because it lacks idens. The light once coming from Rome is now reaffirmed in Signor Mussolini’s enunciation of the principles of authority, order and justice.” General de Bono, Colonial Minister, made an optimistic speech, but corrected certain of the speakers’ exuberances.