ITALY AND AFRICA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 24 March 1930, Page 5

ITALY AND AFRICA

SERIOUS AMBITIONS

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright)

ROME, 22nd March

The seriousness of Italian ambitions in Africa was emphasised by a debate in the Chamber on the colonial estimates. Signor Pace insisted that the Italian occupation of Fezzan was not pushed to the limit of territorial rights. He declared that Italy could not accept a boundary which did not leave Bardai Aimglanka far to the northward and did not give control of tlio important Fezzan-Chad Kufraundai caravan routes.

Signor Fera urged that the African continent would eventually he dominated by the Power which, most rapidly attacked 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-Ger-man colonies, has a formidable base; France by the. traus-Saharan railway and existing roads could tap the fertile Chad-Congo regions; but Italy through Libya had the shortest communications with equatorial Africa from the Mediterranean. Signor Fera a'dded: "The star of the world's great est colonial empire is declining because it lacks ideas. The light once coming from Rome is now reaffirmed in Mussolini's enunciation of the principle of authority, order, and justice." Signor Bono, Colonial Minister, made an optimistic speech, but corrected certain speakers' exuberances.