THE MEDITERRANEAN.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 24, Issue 16, 28 February 1913, Page 2

THE MEDITERRANEAN.

/ A UNIQUE SEA. Strategically tha Mediterranean can( be parcelled out into half a dozen areas. There is the Western Mediterranean dominated by France within the Toulon-Algiers Bizerta-Ooraican quadeilateral. There is an Italian sphere in the Tyrrhenian Sea bounded by the Livorno-Sardinia-Messina) lines. The Adriatic again constitutes a long 400-mile aren ;e jointly controlled by Austria and Italy. The lonian See is Italian and might be Greek. The AEgean ought to be Greek-Turkish, but is at present anybody’s, while further east the waters lap idly round spacious harbours like Marmorice untenanted since the waning power of Venice fought an uphill fight against the Turk. The Mediterranean is a unique sea —a sea of short distances, tideless waters,, inlets, and islands. Its gates are the portals of history. In the West the ten-mile gate at Gibraltar, the canal ill the Bast, the long twomile gut at the Dardanelles. A dominant strategic note is struck by the Sicilian passage where the waters narrow to eighty miles, while 150 miles eastward rise the bastioned towers of Malta in a position peculiarly favourable for naval work, 900 miles from Gibraltar’s rock, 800 from the delta of the Nile, and 700 from the wooded heights of the Dardanelles.

Then there is the Spartivento-Bi-zerta gate 150 miles wide, the wicket gate at Messina, and the Straits of Otranto closing the Adriatic with a forty-five mile bar, and eastward the AF.'eeaa, closed by the insular hurdle, Corigo, Crete,, Sarpanto, and Rhodes. It is a sea of convolutions and gates, very suitable for torpedo warfare and defensive operations.—‘'EyeWitness.”