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Francis McCullagh, of Tripoli. 



IN' 1876 an Irishman in the service of the British 

 and American ])ress paralysed the policy of 

 Lord Beaconsfield, destrojed the traditional 

 alliance between Great Britain and Turkey, and 

 created Bulgaria. His name was MacGahan. 



In igri we have again the apparition of an Irish- 

 man in the service of the British and American Press 



who has exer- 

 cised and is 

 exercising a 

 ] 1 o t e n t i n tl u- 

 encc upon the 

 policy of Great 

 Britain, and 

 who may yet 

 make as not- 

 able an imprint 

 upon the pages 

 of the history 

 of the Near 

 East as his 

 great prede- 

 cessor. I refer 

 to Francis 

 McCullagh — 

 McCullagh of 

 Tripoli. 



MacGahan 

 three months 

 after the atroci- 

 ties in Bulgaria 

 visited the de- 

 caying remains 

 of the victims 

 of the massacre. 

 He described 

 what he saw- 

 accurately, vividly, like a photographic camera with a 

 heart in it, and the |)icture which he held up before the 

 eyes of a shuddering world rendered possible Mr. 

 Gladstone's great campaign. 



NfcCullagh had the advantage over MacGahan that 

 he saw the atrocities in progress. Not three months 

 .ifter the event, but as an actual eye-witness on the 

 s|X3t, he saw the massacres as they were being carried 

 out. He had a photographic camera and photo- 

 graphed the murderers and their victims. A host of 

 other correspondents had reported the facts briefly. 

 .McCullagh repprted them in detail, and backed up 

 his narrative by handing in his pa[)crs, as he refused 

 any longer to be associated with an army which had 

 degcnetaied into a band of as.sassins. Hence the 

 immediate and far-reaching effect of his testimony. 



It is illogical, no doubt, but the fact is indisputable 

 that the atrocities committed by the panic-stricken 

 Italian soldiery in tin- oasis of Tripoli rreatetl a 

 gri-ater f)opular rL•vlll^ion of feeling against Italy than 



Mr. McCullagh. 



was roused by her buccaneering expedition to Africa. 

 The real crime, of course, was the war. The atrocities 

 were only an incident of the war. A burglar breaks 

 into my house and incidentally kills one of my children 

 in trying to avoid capture. The n urJer was only an 

 unanticipated corollary of the hoi stbreaking. But 

 the burglar would be hangeil for the murder, whereas 

 he would only have been sent to penal servitude for 

 tiie burglary. So it is in the rough and ready 

 tribunal of public opinion. '1 he Italians are exe- 

 craltd throughout the worl 1 for the massacre, which 

 was merely a collateral and undesired accident 

 resulting from their raid on Tripoli, just as the British 

 public revolted against the Turkish Alliance merely 

 because they suddenly realised one of the normal 

 and constantly recurring incidents of Ottoman rule 

 in Europe. 



It is this fact which has invested the personality of 

 Mr. McCullagh with such interest both in the Old 

 World and the New. That the massacres took 

 place is a fact the evidence for which does not 

 depend solely on his testimony. The Times corre- 

 spondent, Reuter's correspondent, the correspondents 

 of the Daily Mai/, of the Daily Mirror, of the 

 Figaro, of the Lvkalaiizciger, and of five other Ger- 

 man papers, to say nothing of the English lieu- 

 tenants serving with the Turkish forces, all attested 

 the grim reality of the three days' massacre which the 

 Italians are now attempting to deny. Of course it is 

 impossible to prove the exact number who perished. 

 It is generally placed at 4,000, more or less, and of 

 these 400 are said to be women and children. The 

 fact that the Italian soldiers shot every Arab at 

 sight without the slightest regard to their guilt or 

 innocence is not denied ; it is, indeed, even admitted 

 indirectly by the excuses made by the Italian 

 authorities, and whether 4,000 perished or only 

 r,ooo is a mere matter of detail. There was the 

 same luiprofitable controversy as to the number of 

 the Bulgarians slaughtered at Batak. The numbers 

 ran much higher then, and only those who do not 

 remember MacGahan's reports can ever say that the 

 Tripoli atrocities outdo the Bulgarian horrors. But, 

 alter all deductions are made for exaggeration, the 

 fact remains that the Italian army got out of hand, 

 and that the soldiers were allowed, if not encouraged, 

 by their officers to violate the rules of civilisation by 

 shooting unarmed non-combatants, surrendered pri- 

 soners, women and children, three days after the fight 

 in whii h the Italians were nearly worsted. 



The Tripoli alro:ities impressed the imagination of 

 the world, and Mr. Francis .McCulligh was the man 

 who rendered it possible for that imprission to be 

 made. Hence the univers;d interest in .Mr. .McCullagh. 

 Who is this man whose ready [)en, whose fearless 

 spirit, and whose [iresence in the tiring line rendered 

 it possible to make the great public realise the crimin- 

 ality of the plunder-raid on 'I'ripoli ? 



