Moroccan Manoeuvres • General Juin is clearly being forced against
his will to 'quit Morocco, where his g.rptest interests lie. Duty first called him to Indo-China ; now the summons is to the defence of Europe. He may still hope not to have to dig up his roots in Morocco completely, but whatever happens he will soon cease• to be the Resident-General there in fact, even if he keeps the title a little longer. It is probably his desire to tidy up the political situation as much as possible before he leaves that has brought affairs between the Sultan and the French to a head in the last fortnight. On the face of it the General has won a considerable triumph. The Sultan has dismissed the advisers who surrounded him, and whose advice was often obnoxious to the French ; the Istiqlal Party, which champions Moroccan independence, has been denounced by numerous local chieftains up and down the country and may even be denounced by name by the Sultan. The strange alliance which, so the French claim, united Sultan, bourgeois Nationalists and Communists against them has been broken. But the political ,situation in Morocco is much too complex to be settled for long by a few proclamations. The idea of nationalism has caught too strong a hold to be easily smothered, and it may well grow more quickly without the some- what unnatural alliance with the Palace ; its real leaders are in any case in exile. Over the whole of French North Africa nationalism is still feeling its way, gradually realising that the -nature of French control presents a problem wholly different from that encountered in Egypt or Libya. In Morocco the problem is particularly difficult, for the only unity which the area can claim derives from the French connection. All that is clear at the moment is that French Morocco is much less well equipped for independence than the Nationalists claim ; but that the existing state of affairs offers in the long run equally little hope of producing any real. tranqUillity.
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