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Show ITALIANS READY 10 HOiii FOR LAN! APPEARS DETERMINED TO OE TA!N LARGE TERRITORIAL GRANT FROM AUSTRIA. Reports of Assembling of Large Ka ian Fleet and Final Tests of Heavy Guns. While People Are Clamoring Clam-oring for War. Italy's future course with respect t the war has now become a subject o intense interest. Italy has long beer making ready tor any eventuality and, according to dispatches fron Rome, the time is near at hand lot her to make her decision. There are reports or' the assembline of a large Italian fleet, of final test? of heay guns, of people gathering iu the streets crying for war. and, finally, final-ly, of Italian desires with respect to Austrian territory desires which dispatches dis-patches from Austria intimate can never be fulfilled. Prince von Buelow, the German ambassador am-bassador at Rome, is said to have given for.-.ial assurances that Germany Ger-many will be able to induce Vienna to concede to Italy what she demands of territory, but it is declared on reliable re-liable authority Italy's demands include in-clude a large extent of coast on the Adriatic sea, comprising even the Austrian naval base of Pola, as well as the province of Trent and Trieste. -Meanwhile, the battles in the eastern east-ern and western war zones continue on a much more extensive scale than the official communications issued by the respective governments would indicate. in-dicate. The Russians aparently are forcing the fighting in Poland, while, according to Petrograd, they are holding hold-ing at bay the Austro-German armies in G-alicia, and the Carpathians. In addition, they have resumed their campaign in the crown land of Buko-wina, Buko-wina, from the great part of which they withdrew a few weeks ago. All of the official statements, Austrian, Aus-trian, Russian and German, tell of the capture of prisoners and guns and progress made at various points. An official British account of recent operations at Neuve Chapelle, in which the British troops were successful success-ful in forcing back the Germans, now places the German casualties between March 10 and 13 at form 17,000 to IS,-000 IS,-000 men. There have been several other actions ac-tions in recent days where the losses are described os very heavy. Nothing of an official nature has been made public recently regarding the operations in the Dardanelles, but some unofficial dispatches indicate that the warships are meeting with determined fire from the Turkish forts in their efforts to penetrate the straits. An Athens dispatch to a German paper says that the Turks have even succeeded in placing new heavy guns in the Kum Kale battery, at the mouth of the straits. Several of the attacking ships also are reported report-ed to have been damaged. |