Italy and North Africa For a long time it has
been difficult to gauge the value of the scanty news that has reached us from the Italian Province in North Africa. Italy has thus unwisely led others to suspect that failures were hidden and successes magnified. We could only be sure that no visible progress was yet being made by which Europe should be fed, as in Roman Imperial days, by cornships sailing from an African granary. But it does appear that a step was taken towards peaceful development when some days ago the chief Senussi insurgents made a picturesque surrender inland from Benghazi. The modern Italian has not yet developed the colonizing genius of his Roman ancestors. On the other hand Signor Mussolini shows the inheritance of another side of the Roman spirit by proposing to raise the age for compulsory military service in the Reserve from 39 to 55 years. • Comment will no doubt be made at Geneva. We hope that there is no connexion between this and the questions of the frontier between Tripolitania and Tunisia,. which have been suspended while Italy's difficulties were so absorbing.
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