Abd-el-Krim.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18414, 22 June 1925, Page 8

Abd-el-Krim.

Our cables make it clearer to-day than they have ever done before that it is not. a frontier a/fair which France is conducting in Morocco, but a war. We have tried to make it plain from the beginning that Prance might find herself any day in a situation of grave anxiety. Abd-el-Krim is not au ignorant tribesman or a petty village chief, but something perilously like an African counterpart of Kemal Pasha. .His rout of the Spaniards was quite a.s dramatic, allowance being made

for his circumstances, quite as well organised, as Kcmal's rout of the Greeks, and it must have added immensely to his prestige that he has so far had the best of it against the French as well. We aro told to-day that France is preparing an offensive on a comprehensive scale, and that Krim's early surrender may bo expected. What we had better believe is that withou'. preparations of a comprehensive kind France will not be able to hold her present line. If the surrender of Krim is in sight it is strange that the Premier should have thought it necessary to go himself to Morocco to confer with the commanders in the field. Most of our readers will expect, and desire, a victory for France when her commanders are ready to attack in sufficient force: but the position a month ago was that Abd-el-Krim was constructing (< a regular Ilindenburg " line " on the heights overlooking the French, and nothing has been reported in the interval to suggest that his preparations have bee n interrupted. It is quite possible that the French command will have to assemble a hundred thousand men before it is in p, position to move forward, and then the advance will have to be on a 200-mile front if the tribesmen are to be prevented from massing at one point and proving their positions impregnable. It is of course impossible to say how many rifles Abd-el-Krim now commands, arid we have necessarily not been told the French strength. Competent observer,? put the Riffian army at forty thousand when fighting against the French first began—or at a little less than forty thousand actually, and a little more potentially; and Marshal Lyautey at that time, and 011 that front, had no more than twelve thousand. Though we may assume that Lyautey has now trebled or quadrupled his force, and that his artillery and munitions supply has increased at the same rate, we still cannot feel sure thaihe is strong enough to attack in strength. The fact that France is attempting a blockade of the Coast looks more like an extended period of preparation than an early triumphant advance 011 land; and in any case the most the French commander can do without the permission of the other interested Powers is to clear French territory. The cables have been carefully enough censored in Paris.to obsouro the fact that the Itiffis are in French territory; but they havo been over their own borders since the beginning of May, and it is not yet clear that Frapce has been given a free hand—if and when she is able—not only to drive them baok, but to pursue, and round them up, and put the fear of the seventyfives into thorn to tho third or fourth generation. And although there is nothing to indicate such an event in the meantime, it is a fact, as the " Spectator" said some months ago, that the Mohammedan world retains its " strange, unaccountable ability suddenly to produce a man to worry the " statesmen of Europe." If, Krim has made little headway yet with the rallying of the Faithful, the reason probably is that he attaches more importance to guneotton than to texts, and has been too busy rallying, and organising, and buying up the native and European adventurers who have been drifting into his lines ever since he drove out tho Spaniar .Is. But he is being assisted out of the purses of the Faithful all over the world, and it is not pleasant to think what might happen if the French attacked prematurely and were. put up.