drastic steps to prevent the facts from reaching the outer world.
For three days the oasis was given over to massacre in wholesale and detail. Some 4,000 men, women and children perished in the course of it—the vast bulk of whom were certainly innocent of any participation whatever in the Italian defeat. They were murdered in the streets, in their houses, farms, gardens and, according to a peculiarly horrible narrative by a British officer serving with the Turkish forces, in a mosque, where several hundred women and children had taken refuge. Thousands more were deported by sea. All the newspaper correspondents were in agreement as to the main facts. Englishmen and Americans united with Frenchmen, Austrians and Germans in indignantly censuring them. Several of them handed in their official papers to the Italian commander-in-chief by way of protest. The feelings of these eye-witnesses may be gathered by the following brief expressions culled from a copious literature:
Tripoli has been the scene of one of the reddest dramas in the history of wars. It was a week of atrocities, a mad rush of assassins, a hecatomb of aged people, women and children—executions in groups. (Correspondent of Excelsior, Paris).
A perfect nightmare of horror … a veritable carnival of carnage. (Correspondent of the Daily Express).
We must have passed the bodies of over one hundred persons on this one high road, and as similar scenes were enacted throughout the length and breadth of the oasis, some estimate of the numbers of innocent men, women, and children who were butchered, doubtless with many who were guilty of attacking the Italian troops in the rear, may be appreciated. (From the statement signed, at the request of the British Consul at Tripoli, by the representative of Reuter's Agency, of the Morning Post and of the Daily Mirror}.
The Italians having set themselves to cow the Arabs, the floodgates of blood and lust were opened. … One hardly knows to what limits the elasticity of the phrase "military exigencies" will be stretched in the 20th century. (Correspondent of the Times.)
Parties of soldiers penetrated every portion of the oasis, shooting indiscriminately all whom they met without trial, without appeal. (Reuter's Correspondent).
For three days the butchery went on… Cripples and blind beggars have been deliberately shot; sick people whose houses were burned were left on the ground and refused even a drop of water. The Arab quarter was over-run by crazy soldiers armed with revolvers, who were shooting every Arab man and woman they met. (Mr. Francis McCullagh, Correspondent for the Daily News, Westminster Gazette, and New York World).
