A Town That Might Make a War.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 August 1921, Page 1

A Town That Might Make a War.

LI!AX( K AXI) SI’AIX CLAIM TAX'D ilviL liv (L Wiml Price).' TAX BILK. Sniiill buys, dividing up apples, often put tin* biggest on one side to lie allotted Inter. That is wlmt the Powers have done with Tangier, only in this ease tlie apple is going had. Well situated to he the outlet ol the rich hinterland of .Morocco, and blessed with a hay that forms tv sheltered roadstead, Tangier is none the less moribund, povertystricken, and inert. Where should stretch rows of watehouses lull ot the produce of Morocco lies nothing but the empty sands the Barbary pirates knew. The reason for this degeneration L simply that the Powers have never been able to make up their •minds who is to have Tangier. Sinfv 1912 the l-'reneh have held the southern portion of Morocco in the the form of a proteetoiate over the Moorish Sultan, while tie northern coastal strip was allotted to Spain, lint Tangier was the big apple put oil one side to he shared tuulei m coin pile:! ti*d sclioiiu* ol inlornaiioiin coni nil known as tin* Statutes. We signed those* aiul so did tin Preneii, lull the war started lie fore the Spanish signed, and they did not cart' to e .1,1111 iL themselves. Thus it nip peiifi that Tangier still remains a Xc Man’s Land, under the nominal sttxeraintv of the Sultan of Morocco, but with a Imst of foreign dipic.m, is. consuls, oliicials ol the Public Debt, the Sanitary Council and the Per,, all jostling each other in the little town, intriguing, obstructing, treading uu each other’s national corns, and scheming, most oi them, to get as (jig a sbate of the administration as possible, in tile hope, some day, ol being aide ultimately to annex the place. Ludei this Pooh-Bah administration Tangier quite naturally decays. Xc one will put money it Wo a town that is mu by a squabbling committee and whose future is utterly uncertain. Ihe .In: a I population, once prosperous, is wove poor. But more serious still is the danger that the Kreueli and Spanish on the spot in Tangier, belonging to the two count ties w hich especially cuvet possession of the port, may one (lay break out into open hostilities. 1 Lor Tangier is all ready to boil over on the slightest provocation. The Lit licit believe they ought to have the town because the Sultan, its suzerain is under their protection ; the Spaniard.claim it because their zone runs a'l round the place; the local Moors thruselves say they would like it to he British ; and the British recommend that it shall he internationalised with a pmper system of control instead of the

o aim-ion of authority that prevails at present. No attempt to fix the destinies of Tangier lias been made, however, since before the war, and it will not he at till surprising if some day soon Tangier calls attention to herself by nn outbreak of “regrettable local incidents” which it will need another whole series of international conferences to settle.