HOPE IN LEAGUE

Taranaki Daily News, 11 May 1935, Page 7

HOPE IN LEAGUE

ABYSSINIAN DISPUTE THREAT FROM EMPEROR NO UNOFFICIAL WARFARE DIFFICULTY FOR ITALY SICKNESS AMONG TROOPS By Telegraph—Press Assn—Copyright. Rec. 10 p.m. London, May 10. British official circles continue to be concerned over the situation in Abyssinia. It is thought that Signor Mussolini does not appreciate the immense difficulties facing him in Eritrea, Italian Somaliland, where proper facilities for concentrating large bodies of troops are lacking. The garrisons have already suffered heavy casualties from sickness. The Daily Telegraph’s Addis Ababa correspondent says: “The Emperor of Ethiopia in a special interview told me that he still hopes for a settlement as a result of the meeting of. the League of Nations Council at Geneva on May 20, but he would be obliged to order a general mobilisation if Italy continued her war preparations. Ethiopia would never accept a state of unofficial war as when Japan carried out operations in Manchuria. ‘W4 will immediately resist,’ he said.”

There is an increasing tendency represent the Italo-Abyssinian dispute as important to world civilisation, says a cable from Rome.

Senator Schanzer, in presenting the colonial estimates in the Italian Senate, declared that slavery and other primitivism in Abyssinia were irreconcilable with normal international relations. Therefore .Italy was both protecting her own rights and national dignity and representing the duty of an ordered, productive civilisation.

Events, he added, proved that Africa was destined to .be a battleground between the East and the West, in which the West must maintain superiority.

Newspapers declare that Italy is protesting against the nations supplying arms to Abyssinia, pointing out that Italy’s friendship depends oh the cessation of such a course.