TANGIERS.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 January 1922, Page 4

TANGIERS.

A SINISTER CITY. Politically, Tangier is a source of serious European disagreement—it has been described as a pqwd.er l/prrpl with a f.as.e burning steadily to the bunglipje; ff.qjn a h,ealth point ,qf view it is an a bomjpafile ,cess-pj t of disease —a foul agglppreratipn of jags, filth, apd vermin.

Three proposals have been advanced for the settlement of the Tangier dispute—its surrender to Spain or to France, or its internationalisation. The city npd .district of Tangier, appointed original as the Residence o i the foreign diplomatic ip is slops accredited to th.e Court of th,c full an of Morocco because of the capital, Fez, was a sacred city, is surrounded to landward hv the section of country known as the Spanish zone. Tin’s zone, in turn, nowhere much more than 60 miles deep as the crow flics and mainly coastal, yields l.mduauis to the French zone, which embraces all the rest of Morocco. The whole country, Tangier included, remains under the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan, hut l>v the recognised agreement of March 30th, 1012, the Sultanate itself became a protectorate of Franco. Spain, whoso right—both historic and geographical—to an inteiesl in Morocco has never been disputed an<l has again aud again been formally established, recognises within her zone the suzerainty of the Sultan in the form of a Khiilif or Viceroy. In the Tangier zone the Sultan always maintains a Naib or Representative for Foreign Affairs, whereby he can keep in tounch with the diplomatic missions. Spain claims the right to occupy Tangier because it falls entirely within her zone; France claims because of her treaty of protectorate. All the treaties, or almost all, affecting Morocco provide for a “ special regime ” for Tangier. Neither claimant disputes the binding character of these agreements regarding the regime special, but each proposes to interpret tho meaning of the phase as it prefers. Up- to 1913 no attempt had been made to specify the exact form which the special regime was to take. But in that yew a tripartite commission (Great Britain, Franco, and Spain) sitting in Madrid, drew up a sort of special constitution for the Tangier zone which provided for international control.

A correspondent of “ The Times ” at Tangier stated recently that the report of the director of the Pasteur Institute amazingly exemplified the futility of international cdntrol. The director reported that in inspecting the Mohammedan suburb of Tangier he found it a veritable inferno, peopled by madmen and naked women, while children lay prone from exhaustion and uncovered save lor flies. Elsewhere there wore motionless figures in filthy rags, witii regard to whom it was hard to decided whether they were sleeping or dying. The director stated that he emerged swarming with vermin, and he denounced such horrors existing in proximity to the high road frequented daily by fashionable people proceeding to golf or polo. ______