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ENCOURAGING OUTLOOK.
ALARMISTS. CHANGE THEIR.
MINDS.
LONDON. February 0.
The "Daily Chronicle's" Rome "corre
spondent reports that the fighting in
Egypt has caused a notable change in
the attitude of the Italian war corre
spondents in Egypt, who have hitherto
been alarmist regarding the situation.
Nine German officers are included
among the prisoners. The latter, chiefly
Syrian and Arabs, are dead beat through
exhaustion, defective victualling, and the
consumption of water tainted with
petrol from the tanks used to convey it
across the desert.
A former officer in the Egyptian army,
who has visited the Turkish camps, states
that 90,000 Turks and 20,000 Bedouins
are in the main camps at El Mayaarah,
twenty-two miles east of the salt lakes,
and Birmabeink, eleven miles east of
Suez, and that the expeditions were
forced to abandon thirty centimetre
cannon, the transport difficulties being
insuperable. The largest guns in use
by the Turks are 15 and 18 centimetre.
The "Morning Post's" Alexandria cor
respondent states that considerable sur
prise is felt that twelve thousand Turks
should have reached the Canal without
any commissariat. It is conjectured that
(he main army may succeed in crossing
the desert, since the Germans have been
making tremendous .efforts to build a
railway to tbe frontier via Sebasties,
Lydda, and Gaza. A thousand laborers
are taking up the rails of tbe Haifa
Damascus and the Jaffa-Jerusalem rail
ways for the new line.
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