THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN “THE FARTHEST WEST”
Those who are bored by history might do well to skip this chapter,
for, though I shall do my best to brush away the accumulated dust of
ages, so that the glittering romance of Morocco’s story may be seen, it
is nevertheless a chronicle of past events rather than an account of
present-day happenings and conditions. But a meal, to have any nutritive
value, cannot consist wholly of sweetmeats; one must take a certain
amount of meat and potato in addition to the dessert. And precisely the
same holds true in the case of Morocco, for without the background of
Moorish achievement, glory, and misrule, and of the French occupation, it
is utterly impossible to understand the anomalous situation which exists
in Maghreb-el-Aska, the Farthest West, as the Moroccans themselves call
their country, where the descendant of five-and-thirty emperors still
sits in state beneath the Shereefian umbrella, surrounded by visitors and
eunuchs and concubines and all the pomp and luxury of an Arabian Nights
court, while a quiet Frenchman, in a modest residency not a stone’s throw
from the imperial palace, speaks with the voice of a ventriloquist and
pulls the strings.
In order that you may have a clear understanding of the highly involved
Moroccan situation, it would be well, it seems to me, were I to begin by
clearing up several popular misapprehensions.
First of all, then, be it understood that the vast majority of the people
of Morocco are not Moors at all, as most foreigners carelessly assume,
nor are they Arabs. The very name “Moor” is a European invention, unknown
in Morocco, whose inhabitants should properly be called Maghribin—that
is, the people of Maghreb-el-Aska. The name that we apply to the country
is but a corruption of that of the southern capital, Marrákesh, through
the Spanish version, Marueccos.
Of the three races which inhabit the empire the most numerous and
important are the aboriginal Berbers, who were already in possession of
the land when the Carthaginians and the Romans came, and whose blood to a
greater or less extent permeates the whole population. It was the sturdy
Berber soldiery of Carthage which enabled the queen city of the South to
hold at bay for upward of five centuries her great northern rival; it was
an army of Berbers which, led by Hannibal, conquered Spain, devastated
southern Gaul, crossed the Alps, and swept the whole length of Italy. It
was the Berbers who thrice conquered Spain—once from the Visigoths and
twice from their less stalwart coreligionists, the Arabs. Again, it was
the Berbers, not the Arabs, who built those two immortal monuments—the
Alhambra in Granada and the Alcázar in Seville. The popular description
of the Moslem rulers of Spain as Arabs or Saracens (“Easterners”), is
quite erroneous. The people who made themselves masters of the peninsula
were Berbers, although their leaders often adopted Arabic names along
with the religion of the Arabs. That Morocco, alone among the Barbary
nations, should have succeeded in maintaining its independence for
upward of eleven hundred years, and that in spite of piracy, brigandage,
ferocious cruelty, misrule, and a defiance of all international
obligations, was due in part, it is true, to the immense strategic
importance of its position at the entrance to the Middle Sea, and to the
jealousies among the European powers which sought its possession; but far
more to its reinforcement by the virile and rugged Berber stock.
In spite of a history of foreign conquest, the Berber physical type and
the Berber temperament and nationality have persisted since the Age of
Stone. A common mistake is to regard them, or, indeed, any of the peoples
of Morocco, as a black race, a very common misconception which owes its
origin in part, perhaps, to the old English phrase, blackamoor; that
is, black as a Moor. Racially they are not black, nor even brown. They
are distinctively a white race, usually with brown and sometimes with
blue eyes and not infrequently with tawny hair and beards, though their
skins have been bronzed by generations of exposure to the fierce African
sun. Their children and those who have lived in cities might, if clad in
European costume, pass anywhere as Europeans.
It is commonly believed that Morocco was invaded by a great Arab horde
which carried all before it, and that the Modern Moroccans are descended
from these invaders. This is quite erroneous. It is true that in 682 the
country was invaded by the great Arab conqueror, Sidi Okba, who gave it
its name of Maghreb-el-Aska because it was to him the Farthest West.
Though Sidi Okba’s stay in Morocco was of brief duration, it was long
enough to have a profound effect on the country’s Berber inhabitants. Yet
the Arabs and the Berbers, with a common religion, a common government,
and with the same tribal groups, have failed to amalgamate to any great
extent, the Arabizing of the Berbers being limited to little beyond
their conversion to Islam. The Arab, transported to a soil which does
not always suit him, and always a nomad at heart, so far from thriving,
tends to disappear, whereas the Berber becomes more and more aggressive
and yearly increases in numbers, at present forming at least four fifths
of the population of Morocco. When Arabic is mentioned as the language
of Morocco it is seldom realized how small a proportion of the country’s
inhabitants use it as their mother-tongue. Berber is the real language of
the empire, Arabic that of its creed and court.
The third race which may be considered native is the Jewish, consisting
of two different branches: those settled among the Berbers from time
immemorial, speaking their language and in addition Arabic in a hideously
corrupted form; and those expelled from Spain and other European
countries during the Middle Ages, most of whom have got little farther
than the ports. These latter, who usually speak Spanish and Arabic
with equal fluency, are the most progressive and prosperous of all the
inhabitants of Morocco; they own banks and shops, they lend money at
usurious rates of interest to the less thrifty Berbers and Arabs, and in
their hands is most of the empire’s foreign trade.
To these white races—Berber, Arab, and Jew—constant additions of a negro
element have been made as a result of the slave-trade which Morocco
until very recently carried on with the western Sudan. The introduction
of negro slave-girls into Berber and Arab harems has produced a certain
proportion of mulattos, whose dark skins and negroid features tend to
confirm the European visitor in his misconception that the people of
Morocco belong to a non-Caucasian race.
“But,” you ask, and with good reason, “are there then no such people as
the Moors?” Whether the term Moor can properly be applied to any _race_
is open to grave question, for those Moroccans whom the word is used to
designate are ethnically hybrids, with the blood of Berbers, Arabs, and
Spaniards coursing in their veins. Morocco, as I have already explained,
was overrun by the Arabs in the seventh century, but the subsequent
conquest of Spain was effected chiefly by Berber tribes, which, however,
always had a strong admixture of Arab blood and in most respects became
Arabized. These Arabized Berbers, settling in the peninsula which they
had conquered, became known to the European nations as Moors. The
race was also influenced considerably by marriage with the natives of
Spain—even to-day the haughtiest of the Spanish grandees proudly boast
of their Moorish blood, just as many of the great English nobles trace
their descent from the Normans who accompanied William the Conqueror—and
when the Moors were finally expelled from Spain they had become almost
entirely distinct from their Berber kinsfolk, to whom they were known as
Andalusians. While the mountainous regions of Morocco continued to be
occupied almost exclusively by people of pure Berber stock, their refugee
coreligionists from Spain, the “Moors,” flocked to the coast towns and
the plains of Morocco and Algeria, where their descendants, usually
referred to as Moresques, are readily distinguishable from the Berbers
and the Arabs by their Spanish features.
Though the sultans never saw fit to order an enumeration of their
subjects, and though, under the French administration, the occupation
of a census-taker would not be a healthy one in certain districts,
the total population of the empire is estimated at about six millions,
including one hundred thousand Europeans, the majority of whom are French
and Spanish. By way of offering a familiar comparison, it might be said
that Morocco is slightly larger than Texas in area and slightly less than
our six New England States in point of population.
* * * * *
On those of my readers who have stayed with me thus far, but who are
doubtless impatient to get on to Fez and Marrákesh, I shall inflict
the merest modicum of Moroccan history—two thousand years of conquest,
cruelty, and corruption compressed into a tabloid, as it were.
We know from ancient records that when the Carthaginians, those
indefatigable sea-traders, first planted their trading-posts and
colonies along this coast, they were opposed by savage and inhospitable
tribesmen, some of whom dwelt in caves; but the dolmens discovered on
Cape Spartel and the curious megalithic monuments at M’zorah point to a
still earlier race—the men of the Stone Age, perhaps. At the beginning of
the Christian era, and for some centuries thereafter, the country which
we know as Morocco was the Roman province of Mauretania, its northern
portion crisscrossed by Roman roads and dotted with Roman cities, the
most important of which, perhaps, was Volubilis, the ruins of which,
not far from Mequinez, are now in process of excavation. In the fifth
century Mauretania became subject to the Vandals, and in the seventh to
the Goths, both of whom, judging by the scarcity of Roman remains, fully
justified their reputations.
The coming of the Arabs under Okba in 682 was of far greater moment,
and instilled in the natives the greed for conquest, and laid the
foundations for their conversion to Islam. The force of ten thousand
Arabs and Egyptians with whom Tarik, the Berber general who commanded
the Arab armies in North Africa, held the Moroccan side of the Straits
of Gibraltar in 710 was trebled by the recruiting of Berber mercenaries,
his augmented force being large enough by the following year to permit
him to cross the straits and invade Spain, burning his boats behind him.
By 714 Tarik had pushed as far northward as the foot of the Pyrenees. In
718 the Moslem invaders, having subjugated Spain, crossed the mountains
into Gaul, but their triumphal onsweep was arrested by the solid power of
the Franks under Charles Martel, the Hammer of God, at Poitiers, which
might be called the high-water mark of Islam. While the invasion of Gaul
was still in progress, the Berbers who had settled in northwestern Spain
revolted against their Arab rulers, and in 739 the Berbers of Morocco
followed suit with equal success, throwing off the Arab yoke and setting
up one of their own chieftains, Maisara, as an independent ruler.
The recorded history of the Moorish Empire does not really commence,
however, until half a century later, when an Arab missionary, Mulai
Idris ben Abdallah, a direct descendant of the Prophet, a fugitive who
had fled from Arabia during the bloody struggles between the rival
claimants to the caliphate, settled in northern Morocco and founded a
city on a hill within sight of the Roman ruins of Volubilis. Islam had
already been established in these parts for eighty years, and so Idris,
by virtue of the sanctity attaching to him as a relative of the Prophet,
experienced no great difficulty in uniting the Berbers of the region
into a confederation which was greatly extended by his son, Idris II,
the builder of Fez, which became the capital of the Idrisi kingdom.
Meanwhile there was being founded in southern Morocco what later grew to
be the kingdom of Marrákesh. Toward the close of the thirteenth century
the kingdoms of Fez and Marrákesh became united under one ruler, whose
successor, after numerous dynastic changes, Arab and Berber, is the
present sultan of Morocco.
The sixteen rulers of the Idrisi line, an Arab dynasty, controlled
northern Morocco for nearly two hundred years, though they were in
part supplanted by the Berber family of Miknasa in 922 and ousted
altogether by another Berber dynasty, the Maghrawa, in 988. These
last were exterminated in turn by a third Berber dynasty, the Murabti
(or Almoravides, as they are better known), who added the remainder
of Morocco, most of Spain and Portugal, and the sultanate of Tlemcen
to their dominions. Their principal existing monument is the city of
Marrákesh. In 1149 the Almoravide power was overthrown by the Muwahhadi
(Almohades), another Berber horde. Under them the Moorish Empire reached
its zenith at the close of the twelfth century, when it included, in
addition to Morocco and the Iberian peninsula, what are now Algeria,
Tunisia, and Tripolitania, its borders extending to the frontiers of
Egypt, which the Moors were prevented from occupying only by the rise of
Saladin. To them we owe the Alcázar, the Giralda, and the Torre del Oro
in Seville, the Hasan tower at Rabat, the Kutubiya tower at Marrákesh,
the castle of Gibraltar, and a portion at least of the Alhambra at
Granada. Yet before the thirteenth century had reached the half-way mark
the Almohades had been driven out of Spain and had lost all of their vast
empire save what is now known as Morocco, whence they were finally ousted
by the Marinides—a Spanish corruption of Beni Marin. The Marinides,
Berbers like their predecessors, ruled in Morocco for something over
three hundred years, yet they have scarcely left a mark upon the
country. They were succeeded by the short-lived dynasty of the Wattasi,
the chief episode of their reign being the expulsion of the Moors from
Spain by the Catholic princes, Boabdil, the last king of Granada, and
his followers taking refuge in Morocco, where they built themselves the
city of Tetuan. The Wattasi was the last Berber line to reign in Morocco,
being succeeded by the house of Sa’adi, whose members were Sherifs, or
“nobles”—that is, descendants of the Prophet—and came originally from
Arabia. This change of dynasties took place about the middle of the
sixteenth century, and Morocco, though four fifths of its population is
Berber, has been known as the Shereefian Empire and has been ruled by
Arab sultans ever since.
Under the sway of the Sa’adi the Moorish dominions were pushed southward
to Timbuktu, but the line ran out in drunkards and degenerates; another
Shereefian family, the Filali of Tafilalt, was then invited to undertake
the task of government and by 1649 they were masters of Fez. The reign
of the Filali, more generally known as the Alides, who still hold the
Shereefian umbrella, the present sultan being the twentieth of the
line, has been, with very few exceptions, a record of cruelty, tyranny,
debauchery, corruption, and revolution. The most beneficent of them,
Mahomet XVI, had an Englishwoman in his harem, so that his successor, the
wretched Yazid, whose reign was mercifully of short duration, was English
on his mother’s side—a curious circumstance for an Oriental country.
During the reign of Abd-er-Rahman II occurred the war with France,
brought on by Morocco’s espousal of the cause of Abd-el-Kader, and as a
result of this conflict the Moors renounced their claims to Tlemcen and
France consolidated her Algerian possessions.
Upon the death of Sultan Hasan in 1894 there came to the Shereefian
throne his son by a Circassian slave-girl: Abd-el-Aziz IV, then a lad
in his teens. The young ruler showed himself sincerely desirous of
bettering the condition of his distracted country by introducing foreign
reforms, but lack of experience made him an easy prey for schemers and
speculators, who pandered to his worst traits and squandered his fortune.
This aroused the resentment of his people, and in 1902 the Berber tribes
of the Algerian frontier rose in rebellion under the leadership of a
fanatic named Jelali Zarhoni, popularly known as Bou Hamara, who claimed
to be fighting on behalf of the imprisoned brother of the sultan. Finding
himself powerless to subdue the rebellion, Abd-el-Aziz borrowed money
from France to reorganize his army, thereby providing the French with
an excuse which they used later on for intervention. To complete the
demoralization of the empire, a local chieftain, Mulai Ahmed er-Raisuli,
made himself master of the district round Tangier, terrorizing the
country-side and holding even foreigners to ransom. His kidnapping
from Tangier itself of a Greek named Ion Perdicaris, an American by
naturalization, brought from President Roosevelt the brusque demand for
“Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead,” a demand which was backed up by an
American naval demonstration in Moroccan waters.
By 1904 the situation in Morocco had become so chaotic and intolerable
that it seemed as though nothing could prevent intervention by the great
powers. Now it should be kept in mind that the European situation had
become peculiarly delicate at this time as the result of the outbreak
of war between Russia, the ally of France, and Japan, the ally of Great
Britain. But for some time there had been a movement on both sides of
the Channel to reduce to a minimum the possible causes of conflict
between the two countries, and, largely by reason of the efforts of
King Edward VII, there was signed in London in April, 1904, a series of
agreements between the two countries which marked the opening of the
era of _entente cordiale_. Here we are concerned only with the joint
declaration respecting Egypt and Morocco. With regard to Egypt the French
government declared that “they will not obstruct the action of Great
Britain in that country by asking that a limit of time be fixed for the
British occupation or in any other manner.” The British government, on
its part, announced that “it appertains to France, more particularly, as
a power whose dominions are conterminous for a great distance with those
of Morocco, to preserve order in that country, and to provide assistance
for the purpose of all administrative, economic, financial, and military
reforms.” It was further agreed that by virtue of her geographical
position, and from her territorial possessions on the Moorish coast, the
interests of Spain in Morocco should be taken into special consideration,
the government at Paris pledging itself to effect an understanding with
the government at Madrid. By May day of 1904, therefore, everything
was harmoniously arranged. England was free to continue in occupation
of the Nile country as long as it suited her to do so. France was free
to consolidate her position in North Africa by making French influence
supreme throughout the Shereefian Empire; an operation which, so the
Quai d’Orsay announced, was to be effected by “pacific penetration,” but
which, as every chancellery in Europe knew full well, would in fact be
effected by penetration with the bayonet. Spain, which was just beginning
to recover from the effects of her disastrous war with the United States,
was to be appeased with a few all but worthless _enclaves_ along the
Moorish seaboard. Though the Declaration of London affected six hundred
thousand square miles of territory and twenty millions of human beings,
the cynical diplomatists of Downing Street and the Quai d’Orsay in
perfecting the arrangements for this colossal land-grab deemed it quite
unnecessary to consult the opinions of the peoples whom it directly
affected, the Egyptians and the Moroccans themselves.
The wheels of the chariot of empire were greased and it was ready to
start on its course of conquest when, early in 1905, a monkey-wrench
was suddenly tossed into the machinery by a gentleman now known as Mr.
William Hohenzollern. Germany had viewed with jealous eyes the growing
influence of France in Europe, had seen herself threatened with political
isolation by the _rapprochement_ between France and England, but she
had bided her time until the disasters suffered on the battle-fields
of Manchuria by France’s Russian ally had, by removing the threat of a
Muscovite attack from the rear, led the statesmen of the Wilhelmstrasse
to believe that the hour had struck for Germany to proclaim herself the
arbiter of European affairs. The Moroccan situation provided them with
the pretext that they needed. Here was Germany’s opportunity to gain “a
place in the sun.” A firm of German bankers, the Mannesmann Brothers,
had obtained from the sultan mining concessions in the Sus, and to
“protect” them a German gunboat, the _Panther_, was rushed to Agadir.
Shortly before this the imperial yacht _Hohenzollern_ had dropped anchor
in the roadstead of Tangier, and the German emperor—“Hadji Guillaume,”
as his Turkish friends flatteringly called him—had gone ashore for a
conference with the representatives of the sultan, assuring them that
Germany would insist on the maintenance of Morocco’s integrity and on
the equality of European economic and commercial interests in that
empire. Germany’s solicitude for Morocco was, of course, only a pretext
to embarrass France, but it served its purpose, for Abd-el-Aziz, who had
all along protested the right of France to interfere in Moroccan affairs,
was emboldened to reject the scheme of reforms suggested by the French
government and at the suggestion of the kaiser invited all the powers to
advise him as to the needed improvements in his administration. To this
the French foreign minister, M. Delcassé, strenuously objected, but the
German chancellor, Prince von Bülow, used such threatening language that
Delcassé resigned from office in order not to plunge his country into war.
So far German diplomacy had triumphed. Or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say German bluff. The conference asked for the sultan
and instigated by Germany met in January, 1906, at Algeciras, a
little Spanish coast town across the bay from Gibraltar, where the
representatives of the powers spent the remainder of the winter in the
delicate task of reconciling French claims for predominance in Morocco
with the German demands for equality for all. The British delegates gave
firm support to their French colleagues, while Germany was stanchly
backed by Austria. The deciding voice was really that of the United
States, which on this occasion took a part in European affairs for the
first time. (It is an interesting fact that the chief American delegate,
Mr. Henry White, was again one of the representatives of his country at
Versailles, just thirteen years later.) President Roosevelt once told me
that, in his opinion, it was largely the moderating influence exercised
by the United States at Algeciras which prevented war between Germany
and France over the question of Morocco.
With great difficulty a scheme of reforms was finally elaborated, but
not until France had agreed to a rectification of the German frontiers
in the Cameroons and Togoland at her expense in return for a free hand
in Morocco. It was eventually agreed that a Moorish gendarmerie under a
Swiss inspector-general should be instituted, that a state bank should
be established for the protection of foreign loans, that the acquisition
of land around the ports by foreigners should be permitted, that the
authority of the state over the public works and public services should
be recognized, and that the customs administration should be more
efficiently controlled. The pact containing these provisions, whereby
the Moroccans ceased to be masters in their own house, was signed by the
representatives of the powers in April, 1906, and reluctantly accepted by
the sultan in June.
While the diplomats were wrangling at Algeciras, Morocco, only thirty
miles away, was in a state of chaos. The weakness of the sultan’s rule
was illustrated by Raisuli’s capture of the British soldier of fortune,
Caïd Sir Harry Maclean, instructor-general of the Moorish army, who,
after seven months in captivity, was ransomed by the British government
for twenty thousand pounds. The activities of the bandit chieftain, who
had long subjected the northern districts of the empire to a reign of
terror, were brought to an end in 1906, however, by a Franco-Spanish
naval demonstration off Tangier. The murder of a French physician at
Marrákesh in 1907 provoked prompt retaliation by the French, who occupied
the frontier town of Oujda. In July of the same year the Shawia tribesmen
attacked the European laborers who were employed in improving the
harbor-works of Casablanca and killed nine of them, whereupon French
gunboats bombarded the town, and it was occupied by French troops, though
thousands of townspeople were killed or wounded before order could be
restored. The vigorous action of France at Casablanca fanned into flame
the smoldering fanaticism and resentment of the tribes, and for the next
year or so the French were engaged in constant fighting along the border.
While thus engaged on the eastern frontier and the Atlantic seaboard,
France had been giving financial and moral support to Abd-el-Aziz, whose
grasp on the Shereefian umbrella was threatened by his brother, Mulai
Hafid, who had escaped from prison. Because of his acquiescence to the
French demands and his failure to offer armed resistance to the foreign
invaders, Abd-el-Aziz’s influence with his people had been steadily
waning, and shortly after the bombardment of Casablanca the _ulema_ of
Marrákesh declared him deposed and Mulai Hafid sultan. There ensued a
year of desultory fighting between the armies of the two brothers, but in
August, 1908, while marching on Marrákesh, which was the hotbed of the
rebellion, Abd-el-Aziz was defeated and fled for his life, taking refuge
within the French lines. He talked vaguely of renewing the struggle, but
ended by accepting a pension from his brother and comfortable exile in
Tangier, Mulai Hafid being generally accepted by the Moroccans as their
new ruler.
His rule was scarcely stronger than that of his brother, however, as was
shown by his inability to control the Berber tribesmen of the Riff, who
in July, 1909, killed a number of European laborers in the vicinity of
the Spanish fortress of Melilla, on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.
To vindicate her authority Spain sent across the straits an army of
fifty thousand men, thereby embarking on a war which has cost her
thousands of lives and millions of pesetas, has wrecked such military
prestige as she possessed, and continues in sporadic fashion to this day.
Though powerless to enforce his will in the Riff, whose fierce Berber
tribesmen have always regarded the Arab sultans of Morocco as interlopers
and usurpers, Mulai Hafid did succeed in defeating the forces of his
former partizan, Bou Hamara, who was now seeking the throne for himself,
and in capturing that pretender, otherwise known as El Roghi. Atop of a
camel, in an iron cage constructed for the purpose, so small that he was
forced to assume a cramped position, Bou Hamara was exhibited in city
after city like a wild beast—I was in Morocco at the time—and finally
taken to Fez, where the fiendish tortures inflicted upon him and his
fellow-rebels horrified even the natives and elicited vigorous protests
from the representatives of the European powers.
By this time it had become obvious to every one that the intolerable
conditions which existed in Morocco could not long continue. The country
was in a state of anarchy. No European’s life was safe a dozen miles in
from the seaboard. The sultan’s feeble authority was mocked north, south,
east, and west, and a large force of rebellious tribesmen was mustering
in the hills to sweep down upon the capital city. France’s ambiguous
position in Morocco had by now become unendurable. French citizens were
being attacked and murdered; the Algerian frontier was constantly being
threatened; and a final outburst of affronts and outrages brought the
republic’s patience to an end. In Morocco France was confronted by much
the same problem which we were called upon to solve four years later in
Mexico, and to restore order she invaded the one just as we invaded
the other. But with this difference: France coveted the country beyond
the Mulwiya and intended to keep it; we did not covet and had not the
slightest intention of retaining a foot of soil below the Rio Grande.
A French force under General Lyautey, who was destined to become
resident-general in Morocco and a marshal of France, advanced on Fez;
and on March 30, 1912, in the throne-room of the imperial palace of Bou
Djeloud, surrounded by his white-robed, white-hooded ministers of state
and faced by a little group of French officials and army officers in
brilliant uniforms ablaze with decorations, Mulai Hafid, with sorrow
and reluctance, wrote his sprawling Arabic signature from right to left
across the bottom of the parchment which the French minister tendered him.
“_Inshallah!_ It is God’s will,” the sultan sighed resignedly as he laid
down the pen.
By signing that treaty Mulai Hafid brought to an end the independence
which Morocco had misused for eleven hundred years and gave to France an
empire.
(A curious circumstance, is it not, that republican France, whose
motto is _Liberté, égalité, fraternité_, should have become the most
imperialistic of European nations? In a space of little more than ninety
years she has extinguished the independence, and in some cases exiled
the rulers, of Algeria, Cambodia, Tunisia, Annam, Dahomey, Madagascar,
and Morocco. In every case, it is true, French rule has brought
material benefits to the natives, but as an English statesman—I think
it was Campbell-Bannerman—pithily remarked, “Most peoples prefer to be
self-governed rather than well governed.”)
The ink on the Treaty of Fez was scarcely dry when the besieging
tribesmen burst into the city and precipitated a massacre which cost
three hundred lives, the murdered including more than three score
Europeans. The fighting was fiercest in the narrow streets of the old
city, where the French military mission and a company of Senegalese
_tirailleurs_ were beleaguered for some days by the tribesmen. After a
desperate resistance—which is commemorated by a marble plaque set in
the wall of the building—and after half of the _tirailleurs_ were dead,
the survivors were relieved by a force under Colonel Gouraud, now a
general of division and military governor of Paris, who commanded the
advance-guard of General Lyautey’s column. While Fez was being subdued
another French force under General Alix crossed the Mulwiya and prepared
to attack Taza, the stronghold commanding the pass which forms the
gateway to eastern Morocco.
By this time the authority of Mulai Hafid had reached the
vanishing-point, for his acceptance of the French protectorate had
convinced his subjects that he had sold his country to the foreigners.
The only course open to him was abdication, and he took it, being
consoled for the loss of his throne with a lump sum of four hundred
thousand francs and an annual pension of nearly as much more. In August,
1912, he stepped from the pages of Moorish history to disappear into the
limbo to which so many other native rulers who had flouted the power of
France had succeeded him, being succeeded by his brother, Mulai Yusef,
the present sultan, an amiable and indolent gentleman of middle age who
takes care to conduct himself as a well trained puppet should. From
his mouth issue the suave words put into it by the resident-general of
France, and he makes the proper gestures of friendship when the latter
pulls the strings; but what he is thinking deep down in his Moorish heart
is quite another question.
[Illustration: THE RIFF
A grim land, a savage land, with no means of communication save narrow
mountain trails, its gorse-covered slopes and rocky defiles invite
ambushes and sudden onfalls; small wonder that in such a country the
embattled mountaineers of Abd-el-Krim were able to defy the military
might of France and Spain so long]
Under the direction of General Lyautey the systematic pacification of
Morocco was vigorously undertaken. In the autumn of 1912 the _harkas_ of
El Hiba were smashed by the French, and the sultan’s standard—a green
triangle on a scarlet ground—was raised over Marrákesh, the southern
capital. Eighteen months later two French columns, one advancing
eastward from Fez, the other westward from Oujda, effected a junction
at Taza, thereby rendering secure for road and railway traffic the only
practicable gateway between Algeria and northeastern Morocco. But the
outbreak of the Great War in August, 1914, abruptly halted the ambitious
plans of Lyautey, who was summoned post-haste to Paris to take the
portfolio of minister of war. At the same time he received orders from
the home government virtually to strip Morocco of European troops, every
bayonet that could be mustered being desperately needed to protect the
motherland.
To most observers it appeared inevitable that the protectorate must
collapse in ruin, and that Morocco, evacuated by the French garrisons,
would relapse into anarchy and barbarism. But, before he left for Paris,
Lyautey summoned the Grand Caïds—the great native chieftains who are
still all-powerful in the south—to Rabat. The precise terms of the
bargain which he struck with them may only be surmised, but certain
it is that he did not wave the tricolor and appeal to them on grounds
of sentiment and patriotism, for most of them detested the French as
invaders of their country and dogs of unbelievers. The shrewd old
soldier-statesman, who understood the complex Moorish character as have
few Europeans, realized that the way to reach the hearts of these men
was through an appeal to their cupidity, by promise of power and wealth,
for your Moroccan always has an eye out for the main chance. I imagine
that he laid all his cards upon the table, for he is that sort of a man,
admitting to his visitors quite frankly that the bulk of the French
troops were to be withdrawn from the country, leaving the door wide open
for a successful rising.
“If Germany should win this war,” I can picture him as saying, “nothing
is more certain than that the Germans will annex Morocco; and their form
of government will not be the benevolent protectorate which we French
have given you, either. _Ma foi, non!_ They will rule you with the iron
hand, as they have ruled the natives of Togoland and the Cameroons, of
East and Southwest Africa. They will enforce their ideas of discipline
by wholesale seizures of property, by fines and floggings and hangings,
as is the German fashion, until you, my brothers, will wish that Yazid
the Bloodthirsty was back on the throne again. The best way for you to
avert such a calamity, which could end only in your own loss of wealth
and power, is to aid France instead of opposing her. If, with your own
_harkas_, you will maintain law and order throughout the empire during
the continuance of the war in Europe, protecting foreigners and upholding
the authority of the sultan, I, speaking in the name of my government
will pledge you that the broad powers you have hitherto enjoyed in your
own territories shall not only be respected and increased, but that so
far as gratitude can be expressed in terms of gold, your loyalty to
France shall be lavishly rewarded. I have spoken.”
This proposal the great feudal chieftains accepted, and they faithfully
kept their pledges, for throughout the four years of the great conflict
beyond the Mediterranean law and order were maintained in Morocco by
the Moroccans themselves, and this despite repeated attempts of German
emissaries to instigate revolts and otherwise foment trouble. Not only
this, but two divisions of _tirailleurs_ were recruited in Morocco and
sent to the battle-fields of Europe, where they were brigaded with
American troops under General Daugan, and whence they returned covered
with glory and wearing two _fourragères_—the only troops to win such
distinction in the French army.
When, in the summer of 1917, Lyautey returned to Morocco bearing the
baton of a marshal, he found the country, generally speaking, at peace,
though the authority of France was still very shadowy in certain
remote and troublesome districts beyond the Atlas. That this state of
tranquillity was due to the lavish subsidizing of the native caïds and
pashas, rather than to any deep affection they had for France, or any
overpowering desire for a continuance of French rule, in no wise detracts
from the great credit due to Marshal Lyautey, who, by his statesmanship,
breadth of vision, sincerity, and knowledge of native character, held an
empire for his country.
* * * * *
In the old, bad days, before the white helmets came, the form of
government of the Empire of Morocco was an absolute despotism,
unrestricted by any laws, civil or religious, the sultan—who is known
to his subjects by the title of _Emir-el-Mumenin_, Prince of True
Believers—being chief of the state as well as head of the church. As
spiritual ruler, the sultan stands quite alone, his authority not being
limited, as in most other Moslem countries, by the _ulema_—that is,
the interpreters of the Koranic law—under a sheikh-ul-Islam. Since the
establishment of the French protectorate, however, the sultan is required
to follow in all matters the advice of the French resident-general,
whose seat is at Rabat. In deference to native susceptibilities, _le
gouvernement chérifien_ remains, in form at least, substantially
untouched, though the two most important portfolios are held by
Frenchmen, the French resident-general being also Moroccan minister
of foreign affairs, while the officer commanding the French troops in
Morocco is likewise the Shereefian minister of war. In addition to the
grand vizier, who also holds the portfolio of minister of the interior,
the native members of the government include the ministers of justice,
crown lands, instruction, religious foundations, and the president of
the Shereefian High Court. These deal with the resident-general through
the medium provided by the Bureau of Native Affairs, which consists of
a large number of under-secretaries and technical advisers—financial,
legal, agricultural, sanitary, and the like—all of whom are French. The
final appeal in all matters relating to Morocco is not to the Ministry
of the Colonies in Paris, as might be supposed, nor to the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, but to the Ministry of War, for the administration of
the protectorate remains wholly in the hands of the military. It is
generally assumed, however, that the coming of M. Théodore Steeg, who
became resident-general of Morocco in 1925 upon the retirement of Marshal
Lyautey, means that military control will be replaced as soon as possible
by civil control such as the former represented while governor-general of
Algeria, whose affairs he directed with conspicuous success.
To save the face of the Moroccans, who are a proud, high-spirited people,
the French have taken great pains to maintain the polite fiction that
Morocco is still a sovereign state by official reference to it on all
occasions as “the Shereefian Empire”; by requiring that all laws and
decrees shall receive the approval of the sultan, who is their own
passive instrument; by surrounding him with the pomp and circumstance
which Oriental peoples expect of their rulers; and by permitting him
to maintain a miniature, highly picturesque, and quite innocuous
military establishment in the form of the famous Black Guard, or, as
it is better known, the Garde Chérifienne. The solicitude displayed in
safeguarding the sultan’s prestige, the constant catering by the French,
in superficial matters at least, to native pride, serve to illustrate
France’s administrative policy in Morocco, which is one of control as
opposed to command, of direction instead of repression, of the velvet
glove rather than the iron hand. The truth of the matter is that France
occupies a highly delicate position in Morocco; she is seated on a
volcano which, though quiescent, is not extinct; and in order to avoid
stirring it into action she realizes that she must pick her steps with
the utmost care.
In view of the disturbed conditions which still exist in certain
districts, the country is at present divided into three administrative
zones. In the first, military control has ceased altogether and the civil
administration has been firmly established; in the second, which is in
a somewhat less advanced state, the civil and military authorities work
together; while in the third, which is closed to travelers and colonists,
active military operations are still in progress and the army is in full
control.
The purely domestic affairs of the country are under the Ministry of the
Interior, nominally headed by a vizier, whose orders are executed among
the tribes by caïds and in the cities by pashas. Criminal cases are now
adjudicated in the French courts, which have set the natives an example
of uprightness and justice undreamed of by them before; but civil actions
are tried by native tribunals, a pasha sitting in judgment when the cases
are of a secular nature, a cadi when religious questions are involved.
The Jews have their own rabbinical tribunals, immune from Moslem
interference; and the Berber hill tribes, with whose domestic affairs
the French and native authorities alike wisely refrain from meddling,
administer justice according to their own barbaric ideas and the customs
of their fathers.
Finally there is a corps of _controleurs civils_ whose duty it is to
report on the condition of the country as a whole, on the crops, the
roads, public health, and municipal administration, on the temper of the
natives, the character and conduct of native officials. But the duties of
the controllers go still further, for they are expected to educate and
guide the native functionaries, to take a lively interest in agriculture
and sanitation, to protect the peasantry from injustice and oppression,
and to propose needed improvements and reforms. These French controllers
are the eyes and ears of the Ministry of the Interior; they form what is
in effect a bureau of civil intelligence, which keeps the central Maghzen
constantly informed as to all that is being thought, said, and done in
the districts under civil control, just as the officers of the army
intelligence keep the general staff conversant with conditions in the
regions under military administration.
It should be clearly understood, however, that the control of the
southern districts of the empire remains almost exclusively in the
hands of the Grand Caïds, those great feudal chieftains who even in
the days of Morocco’s independence never gave to the sultans more than
a perfunctory allegiance and who continue to exercise over their own
half-savage peoples almost as harsh and tyrannical powers as they did in
the worst days of the _ancien régime_. Such are El Glaoui, the khalifa
of Marrákesh, and his two powerful colleagues, Mtouggui and Goundafi,
overlords of the High Atlas and the Sus. In theory they are the khalifas,
or viceroys, of the sultan, and are supposed to carry out his orders,
but in reality they are virtually independent rulers, who regard the
puppet-ruler at Rabat with a contempt which they take little pains to
conceal and who treat on terms of perfect equality with the French. Their
wealth is believed to be enormous; in their own territories their rule is
absolute, and their decrees are ruthlessly carried out, for they exercise
over their peoples the high justice, the middle, and the low. They have
splendid palaces in the cities, filled with concubines, slaves, and
guards; and in the inaccessible fastnesses of the High Atlas they have
enormous fortress-castles, called _kasbahs_, where they dwell in a rude
feudal grandeur reminiscent of medieval Europe. Undisputed lords of the
southern marches, they make and administer their own laws, collect their
own taxes, and maintain their own military establishments, it being said
that between them they can place in the field an army of fifty thousand
well armed fighting-men. Though on terms of amity with the French, who
have bought their friendship with enormous subsidies, the Grand Caïds
hold the whole Southland in their hands—and are perfectly aware of their
power.
The negotiations between France and Spain as to their respective rights
in Morocco came to an end in the Franco-Spanish Treaty of Madrid, signed
in November, 1912. In this France acknowledged the right of Spain to
certain spheres of influence in Morocco, the extent of which was clearly
defined. The north Spanish zone, which is the only one of any importance,
political or commercial, consists of a narrow strip of territory, about
two hundred miles in length, with an average breadth of sixty miles,
and having an area equivalent to that of the State of New Jersey. It
occupies virtually the entire Mediterranean coast of Morocco and a
portion of its Atlantic seaboard, stretching from the town of Alcázar (Al
Kasar) on the west almost to the Algerian border. Forming the backbone of
this peculiarly desolate and savage region, which is peopled by highly
warlike tribes of Berber mountaineers, is a range of lofty mountains
known as the Riff, which have been aptly described as Morocco’s balcony
overlooking the Mediterranean. The zone is under the control of a Spanish
high commissioner, being administered—mostly in theory, however—by a
khalifa, or shereefian viceroy, chosen by the sultan from a choice of two
candidates presented by the government at Madrid.
It was further agreed that, by reason of its immensely important
strategic position on the Straits of Gibraltar, the city of Tangier
and its immediate hinterland, consisting of 140 square miles, should
be internationalized and its permanent neutrality guaranteed by
Great Britain, France, and Spain. Its administration is carried on,
accordingly, by two bodies: a committee of control and an international
legislative assembly. The former consists of the eight consuls-general
representing the powers, including the United States, which signed the
Act of Algeciras; the latter of twenty-six members—four French, four
Spanish, three British, and fifteen natives. The convention forbids the
construction of fortifications of any sort, and the city is well policed
by an international gendarmerie, but foreigners are subject only to their
respective consuls-general, for the powers have refused to abandon their
ancient extraterritorial rights.
Far down the Atlantic coast of Morocco is another Spanish zone, the
little _enclave_ of Ifni, with a population of some twenty thousand
native farmers and fishermen and an area no larger than that of Rhode
Island. Though ceded to Spain by Morocco in 1860, its occupation has been
purely nominal, the small Spanish garrison having been exterminated in
1925 by tribesmen from the hinterland.
By the Franco-Spanish agreement of 1912 the frontiers of Ifni were
extended southward along the Moorish coast to the River Dra’a, where they
join up with those of the large Spanish territory of Rio de Oro, which
has an area of 109,000 square miles but whose utter worthlessness is
emphasized by the paucity of its population, which numbers less than five
hundred souls. Rio de Oro, which is under the governorship of the Canary
Islands but is administered by a sub-governor residing at Villa Cisneros,
consists of three zones: the colony proper; the protectorate; and the
occupied territory, whose northern boundary is the Dra’a, which likewise
forms the southern boundary of Morocco, so that Rio de Oro is not within
the confines of the Shereefian Empire.
[Illustration: THE PRICE OF EMPIRE
Riffi bringing their wounded down from the mountains on improvised
stretchers
Blood-stained blankets take the place of Red Cross ambulances in the
roadless Riff]
Though France’s active rôle in the Riff was brought to an end in the
spring of 1926 by the submission of the Riffian chieftain, Abd-el-Krim,
the events which have been occurring in that portion of Morocco during
recent years are of such deep political significance, and so thickly sown
with the seeds of future trouble, as to require more than perfunctory
mention.
Spain’s interests in northern Morocco are of long standing. Her first
foothold on the African mainland was secured at Melilla, seven score
miles to the east of Gibraltar, which she seized from the Moors two years
before Columbus set sail for the west. In 1580, upon the subjugation of
Portugal by Philip II, Spain obtained possession of Ceuta, the immensely
strong fortress city which crowns the rocky promontory marking the
eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar, the two great rocks being known
to the ancients as the Pillars of Hercules. Larache, on the Atlantic
coast of Morocco, was held by the Spaniards throughout the greater
part of the seventeenth century. (Incidentally, tradition identifies
Larache—El Araish, the natives call it—with the Garden of the Hesperides,
’Arasi being the Arabic for “pleasure-gardens,” and the “golden apples”
being perhaps the oranges for which the place has long been famous.) In
1860, Spain seized Tetuan, an important town near the mouth of the Wadi
Martil, forty miles southeast of Tangier. Between Tetuan and Melilla a
Spanish fortress crowns one of the islands, occupied in 1673, in the fine
semicircular Bay of Alhucemas, which forms the seaward end of one of the
most beautiful valleys in the Riff, and within recent years the Spaniards
have also appropriated the group of dry and barren islands known as the
Zaffarines, or Saffron Islands, off the eastern extremity of the Spanish
zone, by the seizure of which the French were cleverly forestalled. Most
of these Spanish holdings are utterly worthless, Ceuta and Melilla alone
being worthy of consideration.
As the years passed considerable numbers of Spaniards, not of the best
sort, settled themselves along this littoral, where they have drifted
into a semi-Oriental habit of mind and body, living more like natives
than like Europeans. Yet they claim Spanish protection, either as
subjects or _protégés_, and it is the existence of this utterly worthless
element on Moroccan soil, plus certain mining concessions which Spaniards
have obtained from local chiefs, which have provided the government at
Madrid with a pretext for intervening in Morocco.
But, despite her alleged “interests,” despite the fact that she has
held Melilla for upward of four centuries, Spain has never succeeded in
pushing her effective rule more than a few miles in from the coast, for,
looming like a purple storm-cloud above the narrow strip of littoral,
rise the mighty mountains of the Riff. During the last century Spain made
repeated attempts to conquer this savage region, and to impose her rule
on its warlike and independence-loving inhabitants, but always without
success. In 1922, however, the Spaniards made a real effort to occupy
effectively the zone which had been allotted to them, an army of fifty
thousand men being sent to Morocco for the purpose.
To resist the invaders there now arose in the Riff a very remarkable man,
a tribal chieftain by the name of Abd-el-Krim. Incensed by the cruelty,
corruption, injustice, and glaring inefficiency which had characterized
Spanish rule along the coast, he raised the standard of revolt and called
upon the people of the Riff to drive the Spaniards out of the country
altogether. Though Spain replied by pouring troops across the Straits by
the tens of thousands, her military record in Morocco for the next three
years was one of almost uninterrupted defeat, retreat, disaster, and
shame. Not only did a mere handful of Riffi succeed in resisting all the
forces that the government at Madrid could bring against them, but they
steadily drove the invaders toward the sea, until, by the summer of 1925,
the Spaniards occupied only a few of the coast towns and fortresses,
clinging to these only with the aid of their fleet.
That Abd-el-Krim was more than justified in his revolt no fair-minded
person who is conversant with the facts can truthfully deny, for the
Spaniards had been guilty in Morocco of exactly the same cruelties and
excesses which had caused them to be driven out of South America at the
beginning of the nineteenth century and out of Cuba, Porto Rico, and the
Philippines at its close. Had Abd-el-Krim been content to confine his
operations to the Spanish zone, Spain might be without a foot of Moroccan
territory, and he might be sultan of the Riff to-day.
But, elated by his comparatively easy successes over the Spaniards, he
proceeded to turn his attention toward the south, where the French had
pushed their outposts into the fertile valley of the Ouergha, a region
on which the Riffian leader depended for his supplies. Whether the
French were responsible for precipitating the conflict which ensued by
entering the Riff, or whether the Riffi first invaded territory under
French protection, is open to some question. In any event, the spring of
1924 found the warriors of Abd-el-Krim formed in two lines of battle,
one facing the Spaniards on the north, the other confronting the French
on the south. For many months the tide of battle ran in favor of the
Riffi, for the Spaniards were discouraged by disasters at the front
and by political disorders at home; while the French, who had vastly
underestimated the strength of their enemy, were slow in bringing up
sufficient men and guns.
[Illustration: FROM OUT OF THE UNKNOWN
Strange masked mendicants drift into the Saharan border towns, their
progress marked by the throb of desert drums]
Although, by the summer of 1925, the French and Spaniards had in the
field between them a force which probably exceeded half a million men,
under forty generals, two marshals of France, Lyautey and Pétain, and
the Spanish dictator, Primo de Rivera, the outcome of the campaign,
which had all but bankrupted Spain and was said to be costing France a
million dollars a day, was by no means certain. In fact, so eager was
France for encouragement, if not for reinforcement, that she accepted
the services of a group of young American aviators who during the Great
War had served with distinction in the Lafayette Escadrille. As the laws
of France do not permit the enlistment of foreigners in any branch of
her army save the Foreign Legion, the difficulty was solved by forming
the American volunteers into a unit known as the Shereefian Air Guard
and having them take service under the sultan of Morocco, against whose
authority, as nominal sovereign of the whole empire, the Riffi were
technically in rebellion. That these young Americans, in their thirst for
excitement and adventure, should have seen fit to take service under an
African ruler is surprising enough, but that they should have bombed and
raked with machine-gun fire the defenseless villages of a people with
whom they had no quarrel, a people who were fighting for independence,
is incomprehensible to those who had been the first to applaud their
achievements in the air during the Great War. They claimed to be fighting
for France, yet France, with one of the most powerful air forces in
the world, did not need them. In effect, then, they were fighting to
perpetuate the rule in the Riff of Spain, a country whom the preceding
generation of Americans had driven from her last foothold in the New
World because her tyranny and cruelty stank in the nostrils of decent men.
By the late winter of 1926 France and Spain, by a lavish expenditure of
their resources, had enveloped the Riff in a wall of steel, employing
every device of scientific warfare against the embattled tribesmen. Even
the Riffi recognized that further resistance was futile; the tribal
chieftains, either bought up by French and Spanish gold or to save
their skins, began to fall away from Abd-el-Krim, and before spring had
turned to summer that gallant fighter came riding astride a mule into
the French lines. The authority of his Shereefian Majesty the Prince
of True Believers had been upheld; the tyranny of Spain in the Riff
had been perpetuated; and France had won what the newspapers of Paris
proclaimed _une victoire glorieuse_. But I imagine that those who viewed
it, as I did, at close range and through glasses unclouded by rancor or
propaganda, thought it a rather sorry triumph.
Could France acquire the Riff from Spain—as there is no question that
she would like to do—and extend over that region the just and beneficent
rule which she has given to her own protectorate in Morocco, there is
no doubt that it would be the best thing for every one concerned, the
Riffi themselves included. And there is good reason to believe that
at one period of the conflict, when the gloom of discouragement and
threatened bankruptcy hung like a cloud over Spain, some such solution
was under serious consideration by the Madrid government. But it was here
that England stepped in. To France’s present position in Morocco Great
Britain has no objection; indeed, she made it possible through the pacts
she signed in London and at Algeciras. But to a French Morocco which
came down to the shores of the Mediterranean, particularly to a French
Morocco which included the great fortress at Ceuta, the statesmen of
Downing Street have the most unalterable objections. Ceuta, as you will
see by glancing at the map, is vis-à-vis to Gibraltar. And Gibraltar,
because of recent developments in warfare—particularly the airplane, the
submarine, poison gas, and long-range guns—is no longer so impregnable as
the British War Office and the Prudential Insurance Company would like
the world to suppose. Situated on a peninsula, with Spain at its back,
it is cut off from reinforcements save by sea, and it lacks, moreover,
a suitable terrain for the effective use of airplanes. Ceuta, which is
naturally even stronger than the Rock, and which could be made absolutely
impregnable by military engineers, is on the mainland, with all of Africa
from which to draw supplies and reinforcements, and it possesses the
other military facilities which its great British rival lacks. In the
hands of Spain, a second-rate power with few colonial ambitions and no
navy worthy of the name, Ceuta is not the slightest menace to Britain.
But let it pass into the possession of France, let it be fortified and
armed by French engineers, let strategic railways be brought up to its
back door and its harbor converted into a hornets’ nest of submarines ...
well, as the English will tell you, that is quite a different matter.
England has no objection to French colonial schemes in Africa so long as
they do not conflict with her own. But her possession of Gibraltar and
the Canal has made her mistress of the Mediterranean—and mistress of the
Mediterranean she intends to remain.
The fall of Abd-el-Krim—now an exile in the island of Réunion—gave birth
to the hope, if not the belief, that Morocco would no longer remain a
potential menace to the peace of Europe; but during the summer of 1926
there thrust himself upon the stage of North African affairs a new
and highly disturbing figure in the person of the Italian dictator,
Benito Mussolini. Now the fact must not be lost sight of that Italy has
never forgiven France for forestalling her in Tunisia, with its eighty
thousand Italian inhabitants, nor for the fashion in which Italy has
been systematically ignored in the settlement of questions pertaining to
Northwest Africa. That Italy now purposes seriously to challenge French
dominance of the Mediterranean there can be but little doubt, for in the
air she is immensely stronger than her rival, she is very nearly as
strong upon the sea, and though she is weaker in land forces, she is in
better financial condition, and she has, moreover, recently strengthened
her position by effecting with Spain an understanding which, in the
opinion of competent observers, is not far removed from an offensive and
defensive alliance.
France could probably successfully defy Italy alone; Spain alone would
not be a very serious menace to her; but, with an unreconciled Germany on
her flank, it is to be doubted whether she is in a position to challenge
the two together, for their combined fleets could probably destroy her
lines of communication in the Mediterranean and cut her off from her
sources of man-power and food supply in North Africa. The government at
Paris is perfectly aware, moreover, that in the event of such a conflict
France could look for no aid from Great Britain, whose interests in the
Mediterranean are confined to insuring the security of her sea-road to
the East.
Just how Italy will set about realizing her African ambitions remains a
matter for anxious speculation, though she has inserted an entering wedge
by demanding a reopening of the highly delicate Tangier question, which,
as every one conversant with Mediterranean politics knows, is loaded with
high explosive. Whether Mussolini’s plans for colonial expansion, which
he has emphasized over and over again in his public addresses, will lead
to armed conflict with France is extremely doubtful; but he occupies a
very strong position, not dissimilar to that occupied by the kaiser at
the time of the Algeciras Conference, and he is a past master at the
game of bluff. Certain it is that Il Duce intends, by hook or crook, to
wring from France some sort of territorial concessions, to obtain for
his rejuvenated Italy a place in the African sun. So, though it has
been assumed by the more sanguine that the dove of peace has settled
permanently on the soil of Morocco, it may prove to be only a bird of
passage.
[Illustration: STRANGE FOLK FROM THE FAR PLACES
A negro clown from the Great Bend of the Niger
A half-demented holy man from the Atlas]