The Italian War

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 9, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 26.

The Italian war drags on. A recent despatch in the Sunday Los Angeles Tribune, from Berlin, declares that the Mohammedan world are concentrating against Italy in their defense of Tripoli, and that the contest has become a "holy war." Mohammedans would do very much to retain Tripoli, but the simple fact is that Turkey is not the center of Mohammedanism. It is quite a serious question whether the great mass of Mohammedanism would not just as soon see Turkey humbled as not, but they do not wish to lose any Mohammedan stronghold or center in Africa. This report comes from one who had spent four months among the Turkish and Arab forces. He was warned in London that his throat would be cut by Arabs, or that the Italians would shoot him at sight; but the Arabs treated him as a friend when they were sure that he was not an Italian, and he said that there was little danger of the Italians' shooting him, because they did not dare come out of their trenches. Italy, he tells us, fails of success because they did not carry the war into the interior with vigor. At the first the Arabs were ready to submit to the invader without striking a blow, but now the attitude of the Arabs is that "we shall go on fighting as long as there is one drop of blood left in our veins."