THE PROSPECTS IN MOROCCO.
S0 far the occupation of Oujda by the French has produced no appreciable result, and it is very bard to say what France ought to do next to exact the reparation which is indisputably due to her for the murder and ill-treatment of her citizens. The situation is extremely difficult. On the one hand, France cannot act as freely as she would have done two or three years ago, because she has to take into account the jealousy of Germany, as well as the letter of the Algeciras Convention, to which she has every intention of being scrupulously loyal ; and, on the other hand, she knows that there is no guarantee that even the most moderate promises made by the Sultan will be fulfilled, because be has not got the country behind him. The powerful tribes by whose consent alone it is possible for him to govern in any real sense will withhold that consent when it comes to recognising the right of France to demand that her citizens shall not be murdered. In the Manchester Guardian of Tuesday there is a most interesting letter from a correspondent at Mogador. " From every part of the interior" he writes, "with which I am in touch evidence is daily accumulating to show that Morocco generally, the seaports only excepted, is arming in readi- ness for a war of independence. The publication, in the mosques and elsewhere, of the Sultan's recent letter to his people, in which he hints that the French were justified in occupying Ifjda and urges patience and calm, has had a wholly contrary effect to what was apparently intended. ' We have no Sultan' and 'The Maghzen has been bought with French gold' are the words in every man's mouth." By a coincidence, the Sultan's announcement arrived during the annual gathering of the fighting tribes of the Hoz,— the district of which Marakesh, where Dr. Mauchamp was murdered recently, is the capital, and of which Mazagan, Safi, and Mogador are the seaports. This gathering of the clans is usually a purely religious affair in honour of the family of saints known as the Ragregga. The tomb of Sidi Wasmin, the chief of the Ragregga, as the correspondent says, is familiar to every traveller who has explored the Iron Mountains of Shiedma. But although the meeting is religious, it is the occasion for a display of all the smartest cavalry of Southern Morocco, and it is difficult to exaggerate the patriotic fervour which inspires the celebration of the "Dor," as it is called, of the Ragregga.
During the recent Dor, then, we are told that the one subject of discussion between the swarthy men of the plains and the fairer sons of the Berber Mountains was French "encroachments." What the Sultan or the Makhzan may say or do troubles no one. For years all this splendid fighting material has sent not a hundred men to join the remnant of the Sultan's Army at Fez. Wiser than their predecessors, the chieftains have abandoned the habit of plundering their neighbours, and enrich them- selves out of the road traffic. The result is that district rebellions have ceased, and the tribes are forming into a solid body behind their chiefs, who out of the money extorted from the tollhouses arm their supporters, and bestow presents of handsome horses on their most trusted and gallant warriors. This united body of fighting material is passively anti-Makhzan and violently anti-French. During the recent Dor it was resolved to ignore every arrangement between the Sultan and France tending to impose foreign control over the internal administration of the country, and, if necessary, to resist it by force of arms. The same story reached the correspondent from Marakesh, where a Moor remarked :—" We want no French hospital, no French doctor, no French drugs. France has so played her game that even we, fools as we may be, know her object. These doctors are spies sent to breed trouble. Let France tend her own sick. We want none of her charity." It will be remembered that br. Mauchamp was setting up a pole on the roof of his house to aid a French survey, when he was attracted by a disturbance in the street, and on going down was beaten and killed by the crowd. It is thought that the Moors mistook the pole for an instrument of wire- less telegraphy, which they mistrust and fear. As M. Pichon admitted in the Chamber of Deputies, Dr. Mauchamp was not distinguished by tact, but that, as we remarked at the time, should not diminish the rights of Europeans to live. A few days ago all the Europeans at Marakesh were escorted out of the town by Moorish troops, and .unless their lives were in danger there does not seem to have been any reason for removing them. The fact that they were protected by an armed escort proved that some one in authority recog- nised the importance of securing them against injury. It would be unwarrantable, however, to deduce from this that the anger of the people of Marakesh is directed only against Frenchmen, for if that were so the Moors would have made their point more clear by letting other Europeans remain. The Manchester Guardian correspon- dent suggests that the tribesmen are playing for a European guarantee against French control, and are simply calling the attention of Europeans to their wish by making things very uncomfortable for them. This seems to us much too clear a deduction from the very confused disturbances which are agitating Marakesh and its district.
It will need all the caution, tact, and resource of French statesmen to steer a way through the rocks and shallows of this problem. It is an unhappy paradox that the series of attacks on French citizens should have become more acute just when the aspirations of France in Morocco have been vastly restricted by the stipulations of the Algeciras Convention. But of course all Europe is paying the penalty for the dispute between Germany and France. The Sultan observed this dispute, and, following the example of all masters of weak and chaotic States, he began to practise the immemorial game of playing off one European State against the other. The violence against Frenchmen is not to be explained by any new aggression on their part, but by the fact that their wings are clipped by the action of Germany. France cannot fly at Morocco in retaliation. She can only flutter on the margins of Moorish territory, and we are not surprised that the timidity inspired in the Makhzan is inappreciable. Meanwhile the influence of Germany is allowed to grow without any dire results to German subjects, because the maintenance of German power at a certain pressure is immediately useful to the Sultan in his anti-European game. The whole point for Europe is to see to it that it does not lend itself to this manoeuvre. To say that France must be guilty of threatening Moorish independence because the ill-treat- ment of Frenchmen is only a protest against her activities, and to pass over unnoticed German influence, which has been exerted in so many ways, lately, because the murder of German subjects does not happen to prove that it is immediately distasteful to the Sultan, is to be blind both to Moorish methods and to the interests of all Europe. It is all too easy to argue as though calculable results could have been extracted from the quite incalculable conditions in Morocco. There is no justification for the ungenerous suggestion that France chose Oujda for occupation because it was free from the 'operation of the Algeciras Convention. It was chosen because it was the nearest convenient spot to the French frontier of Algeria, and the comparative powerlessness of the French army now that it is there is the surest proof of the absence of any unworthy intention.
No doubt every French action—such as the naval demonstration last December—provokes an anti-European movement, but that is no reason for inaction. One Might as well say that the police should cease to arrest criminals because a prosecution often excites them to worse acts. The lesson, surely, is that the European Powers—including Germany, which approved of the occupation of Oujda-- should help France in every possible way in an action which is in the interests of them all. Probably France would be well advised to state her difficulties frankly to the other Powers and consider their advice. Action which concerns them all should be approved by them all. Open war with Morocco is not to be thought of lightly. The brave and skilful tribes might give any European army a heart-breaking task for years. We know that France has not the least desire to find herself involved in such a war. But we hope that she will be most careful in considering what step she is to take next, in order that neither by want of foresight nor by too much zeal may she be committed to a course of which no one could see the end and from which it would be impossible to turn back. It should be the honest desire of Europe, and particu- larly of Britain, to help her to emerge with credit for herself and safety for her citizens from a perplexing situation. We have stated the possibility of growing resistance to European action in Morocco amounting to a war of independence only for the purpose of showing how much wisdom the gravity of the problem demands.
Previous page
