THE BUCCANEERS' APOLOGY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 8046, 27 February 1912, Page 6

THE BUCCANEERS' APOLOGY

A Bill introduced into ' the Italian Chamber ratifies Italy's sovereignty orer Tripoli and Oyrenaica. Annexation is justified as essential' to tho equilibrium of political influences in the Mediterranean.

The ancient adage as to the imprudence of shouting until one is fairly out of the wood has apparently no Italian analogue. The Annexation Bill,/ so the cable informs us, was "greeted with deafening _ cheers." No doubt Rome echoed similar Vivas when the Italian expedition set out for Abyssinia, but none the less in many a marble mansion, or homely peasant's hut in Italy, the very names of Abyssinia and Adowa can awaken to-day memories of bitter sorrow. . It is now sought to justify the buccaneering expedition to Tripoli on the ground that it was "essential to the equilibrium of political influences in the Mediterranean." The equilibrium of political influences is, of course, merely an up-to-dato synonym for our good old friend, "balance of power." How many hundreds of thousands of human lives have there not been wasted ewer this wretched, and, in so many instances, utterly hypocritical pr.etence of a "balance of power" being necessary. And here again is the wicked old fetish being dragged out and set up for the Italian people to bow down before. Had the Italian statesmen who drafted this precious excuse of an "equilibrium" been honest they would have confessed that the impotency of Turkey to prevent this latest example of the "grabbing" policy was the one really dominant reason for forcing upon the Turks a quarrel which was one-sided and almost completely unjustifiable. To prate about any necessity, for an "equilibrium" 1 is sheer cant and hypocrisy. The British are in Egypt, it is true, just as the French are practically masters in Morocco, and both, apparently, permanently. But there was no carefully planned British "grab" on Egypt, for the occupation of that country was practically forced upon Great Britain. The French in Morocco is perhaps more open to criticism on ethical pounds, but there again ' the local government, as in Egypt, had drifted into a condition so chaotic as to be almost a state of anarchy, and seriously threatened to menace Algeria with a spread of similar disorder. In Tripoli, however, the Italian population' was so small, and Italian interests so relatively unimportant, that the carefully and unscrupulously "engineered"- cry that armed intervention was absolutely necessary to protect Italian lives and property was from the first the shallowest, most paltry pretence. Even Russia herself never swallowed up a Central Asiatic State upon a more, transparently empty and wantonly unjust plea. The Turk was weak and poor; the Turk had no navy; the Turk's dear friend, the Kaiser, could not be expected to offend a member of-the Triple Alliance by objecting to the "steal"; France was* busy with Morocco; Great Britain could not obseeint; her permanent "occupation "of was nothing to prevent the "steal": save considerations

of political morality—an indefinable thing, given,' as we all know, to sudden disappearance when an annexation scheme is on the tapis. And so the quarrel was picked with, nay, forced, upon the unfortunate Turk, at almost a week's notice. The big warships were dispatched, and Tripoli and Cyrenaica are now to be formally annexed. It is curious, indeed, that modern Italy should so deliberately, callously forget its own struggles for freedom from Austrian greed and Austrian tyranny. But "it has forgotten and is seemingly proud and happy over having done an evil thing. There are national crimes just as much as there are individual crimes, but both have to be expiated sooner or later.' Just now, Italy—or, rather, we should say the Italian Parliament—is jubilant. But tho day may come when history may repeat itself -and when Italian mothers may learn to loathe the very name of Tripoli as they learned, for all too sad a reason, to detest the name of Abyssinia. "With all their power, with a'll their money, their up-to-date arms, their warships, "their aeroplanes out of which to drop bombs upon Turkish hosoitals—a fact recently sworn to by an English war correspondent—the Italians have only scored a. very partial success. They hold, it is true, the cities of Tripoli and Barca, but into the hinterland they dare not penetrate more than a few miles. The cost of conquest, such as that conquest is, must constitute a heavy strain upon the Italian exchequer, and when the Italian peasant, already the poorest, most heavily -burdened taxpayer in all Europe, comes to realise what that cost means to him personally, it is doubtful whether the Vivas which resounded in tho capital the other day will find sympathetic echoes throughout the country. The Turk is playing a waiting game, just as did the Abyssinians, and sooner or later the Italians must become very weary of their latest African adventure.