WITH GENERAL D'AMADE IN MOROCCO.* THE evidence which has reached

us in the last three years as to the spirit and training of the French Army has been almost uniformly favourable. Observers at the Grand Manoeuvres, and those who have watched the French conduct of minor campaigns, are agreed that the Army redeems the promises made for it after the Franco-German War; it has apparently improved as much as the French Navy has deteriorated. Major R. Rankin is a competent judge, and having spent some time with the French troops in Morocco under General d'Amade, he adds his voice to the chorus of praise. He arrived after the term of General Drude's too cautious command, and had some exhilarating experiences while the expedition in the Shawia country was animated with the feverish activity of General d'Amade. On behalf of General Drude, we think it only fair to say that he probably was too

* In Morocco with Genova d'Amade.- By Reginald Rankin, P.R.G.S., late War Correspondent for the Times, With 35 Illustrations from Photographs and a rap, London s Longing= and Co. [9s. net.J

conscious of the fact that his mission was to some extent political. Although he was instructed to punish the Shawia tribes, he did not wish to penetrate unnecessarily into the interior for fear of compromising his Government vis-a-vis with Germany. Moreover, it was not desirable for the French actively to support either of the rival Sultans, although, no doubt, it was necessary formally to recognise Abd-ul-Aziz as Sovereign till he was deposed. Major Rankin allows none of these extenuation, and we must therefore regard his condemnation of General Drude as a purely military condemnation. As such it is probably just. A soldier's chief duty is to be a soldier, and when his energy clashes with political expediency it will be time for the authorities to check him with new instructions. In a case like that of Morocco there is inevitably a certain conflict

of motive between a general with wide powers in the field and

the Government at home, which has to justify itself in the eyes of all the world; but it is fatal, none the less, for a soldier

to wage war with a too immediate sense of the possible embarrassments of his Foreign Office. General d'Amade, who was well known to Englishmen when he was Military Attache in London, and previously during the war in South Africa, always seemed to have energy, resolution, and prompti- tude, and all these qualities duly manifested themselves in Morocco. Major Rankin will be remembered by our readers as

the author of that capital book about the South African War, A Subaltern's Letters to his Wife. The attractive attributes of that work reappear in this,—the literary efficiency, the botanical knowledge which makes us see the colour and smell

the scents of the ground over which we follow him, and the ability to read history in language, architecture, and human faces.

It is a curious statement that the massacre at Casablanca was " the result of a whistle." To whistle in Morocco is to

show disdain, and when a headman of the Zenata tribe heard the whistle of an engine at Casablanca and exclaimed, "The Nazarenes are laughing at you the inflammable audience took fire and rushed at the mechanics on the line. Strictly, it is accurate to say only that the whistle was the signal or pretext for the massacre, which was the result of a long period of anti-foreign resentment, and would have happened sooner or later, if not in that form, then in another. Major Rankin pays the following high tribute to General d'Amade's Staff work :—

" It was the universal opinion amongst French officers who had served under various generals that General d'Amade's staff arrangements were as near perfection as anything can be in this wicked world. Bivouacs were found without confusion ; squares were formed without a hitch ; changes of direction under fire over a wide frontage were effected with simultaneous precision ; amid the darkness of the blackest night-march troops filed into their positions with a certainty, a speed, and an exactness that testified to the thought-out excellence of the work of the staff. Two main reasons may be assigned for this superiority. The first is the trained lucidity of mind which is emphatically the characteristic of the French officer. The second is the system of co-ordination and devolution between the headquarter, regimental and battalion staffs, by means of which the regiment is kept con- stantly in touch with headquarters, and the battalion is provided with a staff adequate to the importance of the work it has to do."

One of the few criticisms Major Rankin makes is provoked by the balloon. Time after time the balloon, soaring high above the marching army, gave the Moors the warning they wanted. It is strange that the balloon should have been allowed to do the French this disservice. Exactly the same thing happened in Cuba when General Shafter's army was advancing through the bush on Santiago de Cuba. The balloon sailing above the trees was the only thing which showed the Spaniards where the Americans were. But for the balloon they might even not have known that an army was there. As it was, the heaviest casualties were near the balloon, the rope of which gave the Spaniards a very good line of fire. Balloons may be very useful against an enemy in position when he is aware of the presence of the attackers in any case, but there cannot be many instances in which their advantages outweigh their disadvantages in guerilla fighting, It is interesting to be told that the French artillery driver is a good horse-master, for we suppose that most of these men

have acquired through definite teaching the judgment, con. sideration, and foresight which count for so much in getting the utmost out of an animal. We are reminded that in the evidence given before the War Commission after the Boer War it was pointed out that the British cavalryman, who had

learned all he knew from his officers, was a better horse-master than the Irregular Colonial cavalryman, whom one would have expected to have natural intuitions. • It would. be interesting to know what Major Rankin thought of the Spahis, the Goumiers, and the Moors themselves as horse-masters. As for the marching of the French, it is not surprising that Major Rankin has nothing but praise. The French Army is the best marching army in the world, and even the French Army is extraordinarily proud of the marching of the Foreign Legion. Those who have taken part in a French march must have noticed that a kind of emulation falls on .the men as they reel off the miles, giving them second feet, as it were, rather than a second wind, and that they often end their day in a better temper than that in which they began it.

General d'Amade made it a practice to put almost all his men in the firing-line, but his strategy and his formations varied with his experience

"The plan first adopted was to employ two or three columns simultaneously, converging on a given rendezvous from different points, with an enveloping intention which perhaps may be traced to the General's experience as an Attache on Lord Roberts' Staff in the South African War. But this was not an unqualified success ; chiefly because of the excellent information possessed by the Moors, and their superior mobility. They invariably knew accurately the respective strengths and positions of the various columns, and they attacked the weakest with their whole force, retiring when a second column came up in support of the first."

The troops marched in squares, each column forming two squares,—the first the fighting square, and the second the baggage square, which was kept as close as possible to the first and was defended by the smallest possible force. But General d'Amade soon ceased to employ both the converging columns and the square formation. Owing to the smallness of the squares, the enemy's fire on one face involved the face opposite also, and, besides, a square cannot take full advantage of tracks and is unwieldy to handle. General d'Amade there- fore united his forces in one strong column, and the squares gave place to column of route and deployments :—

"The attack formation adopted was a shoulder to shoulder firing-line, without extensions, in-single rank, with ammunition mules close up, and the 'supports in line of sections in fours, a quarter to half a mile in rear ; guns close up to the supports, flanks protected by cavalry, and a comparatively small reserve kept by the General to meet any enveloping movement. The French prefer deep formations with wide intervals to shallow formations and extensions, believing with reason that the. former offer a much worse target, even to rifle fire. At the manoeuvres near Angoulme last September men advanced to the attack in single file ; and in the Chaouiya the many advantages of keeping men in deep formations till the very last moment were abundantly established. The tactics of the Moors varied with the strength of the force opposed to them. Against a force inferior to their own they advanced with great dash, infantry between cavalry, two foot soldiers running between each pair of horsemen, while almost invariably the main attack was supported by an envelop- ing cloud of horsemen. They were wonderfully quick to discover the weak point in their enemy's defence, as when at R'Fakha they hurled themselves with all their force against the unsup- ported French cavalry, leaving a few men to hold the French infantry to their ground. Lack of organised control and cohesion generally prevented . their attacks from .proving very serious ; although at Mekki Boutegourd had his square doubled up, and at Sidi Ben Sliman Taupin's men had to use their bayonets.'

We must notice, by the way, Major Rankin's striking evidence as to the weakness, which has often been suspected, of the extravagantly long French bayonet. It was common to see a bayonet twisted like a fish-hook after it had been used. Major Rankin has no criticism to offer of the auxiliary services of the Army. These all seem to have worked extremely well. We do not mean to say anything in detraction of the French Army if we remind our readers, however, that the lucid and scientific minds of the French have generally enabled them to be well equipped at the beginning of a campaign. We omit the exceptional disaster of the Franco-German War, when the authorities were caught napping ; but were net the medical and commissariat services of the French in the Crimea the despair of our ill-served troops P . Yet at the end of the Crimean War the positions were nearly reverie& The British Army, in fact (though

this is no justification whatever for "muddling through"), has a high power of improvisation.- It is better never to hive to rely upon that resource. We do not know what the French

army in Morocco might have done if it had had to construct, or to reconstruct, itself in the presence of the enemy ; but we do know after reading Major Rankin's very interesting book that it triumphantly came through such teats-as the peculiar campaign imposed upon it, and that all Frenchmen may well be proud of its record.