WAR INEVITABLE.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 September 1926, Page 8

WAR INEVITABLE.

ITALY AND TURKEY. 9 NEE® FOR EXPANSION. ITALIAN JOURNALISTS VIEWS. A good many sidelights are east upon current events by Major Arnoldo Cipolla, the fipeeial correspondent id lai Stampa, the leading journal of Turin, and one of the great Kewspapers of Italy. Major Cipolla is at present engaged on one of his many world tours undertaken on behalf of his newspaper, and has already forwarded half a dozen articles on New Zealand to La Stampa. He has just come from America, and will leave Wellington on I uesday by the Tahiti for Sydney. He has been greatly struck with the prosperity, as well as the scenic beauty, of those parts of New Zealand he seen. “Coming from Taupo through to Napier and then to Palmerston North, the country reminded me much of parts of Italy—the Apennines, '■' he said. "If it were more closely ’ peopled with little farms it would be another little northern Italy. Another thing, you are a bright and happy people. Nearly everyone wears a smile, and there is real friendliness behind it for the stranger whose ways may be so very different.” , \Vhat is most interesting about the visitor is that during the Great War be was sent by the Italian Government to act as one of the liaison officers on Field-Marshal Haig's staff in France. MUSSOLINIMajor Cipolla said that Signor Mussolini was one of the results of the condition of Europe generally. Not only was someone strong needed in Ivliom tire feeling against the growth of Communism in Italy could be centred, but he wag the one man who had realised that it was essential to the life blood of the nation that Italy must expand it must find an outlet for its surplus population. There were 4’2,000,000 people in Italy, and perhaps 10,000,000 elsewhere ill the world —-in America, the Argentine, France, Germany —and everywhere they went there was antipathy on the part of the northern peoples to Italians. It crops out every now and again. “To anyone who studies tne question closely,said Major Cipolla, "it is not far to seek the reason for this. Away at the back of these actions, it is the old antipathy of Roman Catholicism by the Protestants or other factors opposed to Italian national religion. 1 have just been to Mexico, where, as you see by the cablegrams, they are turning religious orders out of the country. That is the result of a combination of forces against which the orders rcligiuese are powerless. It has to he remembered that it was Cortes who imposed the religion of Rome on Mexico after his famous conquest early in tire sixteenth century. After all these years there .is a population of 14,000,000 in Mexico, only one million of which are really white people, the rest being Indios (not Indians, but the descendants of the people that succeeded the cultured Aztec civilisation). These Indios say they do not want European culture, traditions, or religions, and now they are in power, with General Cailly as President, they are doing the tilings they have long wanted-, to do, and they do it in a way that shoclS the civilised world. The particular urge at this time is to do away with the religious orders, who are tbe mainspring of the education system.

AN IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE. “You will remember how last year the British Ambassador was ordered to leave Mexico, and on his refusal to do so hie electric light, water and telephone were cut off from the Embassy, and soldiers were posted round the place to watch every movement. Eventually he had to leave, and for five months Great Britain had no representative in Mexico City. There was possible Soviet influence behind that; certainly it was the Bolshevism that gave the Indios Government the opportunity to dispense with the Roman Catholic institutions and workers, as they openly stated they do not want a European religion, bitt prefer their own native Gnatemoc. It was a clever American who recently suggested that the map of America should he reissued, leaving Mexico a blank. It is an impossible country.” WAR WITH TURKEY. “To get back to Italy and its trom hies,” lie continued. ■•Mussolini is a man who has put his finger on Italy’s major necessity—expansion. We must expand; we must find the means of allowing our people to live decently somewhere. Under the .Treaty of Versailles Italy was promised opportunity for expansion in Anatolia (under Turkish suzerainity), the southern half of Asia Minor, a country rich in minerals and good for agriculture, of only some 5,000,000 people only, but that promise was not kept. The Greeks overran the country after the war, and were afterwards driven out by the Turks. Now we are insisting that it is our right to be allowed to immigrate to this country. Rhodes, a large island off the Anatolian coast, belongs to Italy, and ig at the present time the centre of great military preparations, and it is no secret and not exaggerating the situation to say that the Turks are daily in fear.of an outbreak of hostilities. On Italy’s part there is immense enthusiasm for this war. Turkey was on the side of the Germans in the war, and he flouted the desire of Italy to be allowed to colonise this territory, which by* .treaty has been granted to her for that purpose; therefore site feels herself morally in the right in going to war—and war it is going to be.” THAT TRIP TO TRIPOLI. “You remember only a few liiontbs ago Mussolini paid a visit to Tripoli, and wa e escorted by a substantial part of the Italian Navy, At that time it was understood that the fleet was to proceed to sea, and after visiting Tripoli and Malta (to secure the goodwill of England) was to make for the Anatolian coast to make her claims upon Italy at the cannon’s mouth. But just before lie sailed from Rome Mussolini was shot through the nostrils by a mad Irishwoman, and something else occurred to postpone the event, but unless Turkey gets into line there is going to be another war, and who knows that it might not be a big on.c'l”