GRAVE REPORTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 119, 19 April 1934, Page 7

GRAVE REPORTS

BOMBING OF ISLAND. ITALIAN EMBASSY’S DENIAL. MESSAGES STRICTLY CENSORED. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received April 19, 9.40 a.m. LONDON, April 18. Tho Manchester Guardian says grave reports, denied, by the Italian Embassy in London but nevertheless coming from Athens, are that Italian aeroplanes and warships bombed the Island of Rhodes, which is governed by Italy though the inhabitants are mostly Greeks. Athens insists that the trouble _ is political necessitating troops shooting unarmed villagers. ■ Italian reports, which are strictly censored, insist that the affair was simply a drunken brawl of no significance.

The Island of Rhodes, once a wealthy state of ancient Greece, lies twelve miles off the south-west coast of Asia Minor, having an area of 563 square miles, and is traversed by a chain of mountains. The soil produces wine, oranges, figs, olives and other fruit, hut much land lies waste. Sponges are exported. The population of 30,000 is stated to consist of Greeks, except 7000 Turks and 2500 Jews. Tho Rhodians submitted to the Persians in 490 8.C., and to Alexander of Macedon in 332 8.C., beating off Mithridates in 88 8.C., and sided with Caesar. In 1309, after a three years’ siege, the city fell into the hands of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John. The Turks besieged them there in 1480, and in 1522-23, when they compelled them to capitulate. Rhodes was taken by the Italians in 1912, and held in pledge for the fulfilment of tho Treaty of Ouchy. On one of tho two harbours stood the bronze Colossus of Helios (280 8.C.), 90 to 120 feet high, one of the seven wonders of the world. The city has often suffered from earthquakes.