The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19th, 1924. AFRICAN UNREST.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 December 1924, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19th, 1924. AFRICAN UNREST.

Stories of vast movements hy all the peoples of North Africa have been current at intervals during the past twenty years and the latest, mentioned in the cable messages this morning, is no different in kind from its predecessors. Frankly, says the “Lyttelton Times’’, the story seems to have no real basis, because in spite of the Arab influence that runs through it, there is little community of interest between the Berbers and the Fellaheen. Any comprehensive movement of the tribes would necessarily have to bo engineered by the Arabs, because

they represent the only common thread, and since Arab influence is really negligible in Morocco and in the western Sudan it can scarcely lie assumed that the Arabs could succeed, even if they had the will, in uniting all the tribes in a movement against the Europeans. The Berbers are a settled people living by ngrieultiire primarily, while the Arabs are nomads. Moreover, the Berbers are a while raee, intensely independent and self-reliant, essentially democratic. organised bv villages rather than by tribes, and although their religion i.s nominally Mahommeda-uism they have never resigned the right of individual action. Tile struggle they are carrying on in Morocco is simply the assertion of the right to selfgovernment . It is possible that the movement in Morocco has had its influence in Algeria, where three-filths of the population are Berbers, and the discontent may even extend to Tunis, but so far there i.s not a tittle of evidence to connect tho anti-Spanish war in Morocco with the nationalist movement in Egypt, where the population is, in the main 1 lambic and Semitic. It i.s worth while hearing the ethnological distinctions in mind, because there is often a tendency to suppose that community of religion involves a community of thought and habit. The truth is that the Berbers and their relatives, includii/g the Kabylcs and tile Tuaregs of the Sudan, are among the most intelligent, the most progressive and most independent peoples of Africa. They have nothing in common with the Arabs, who are for the most part a degenerate race, or with the Eellahceen. The probability, therefore, i.s that the story of a vast north •African movement, originating in Egypt and spreading west, lias no foundation in fact. The Berbers certainly would not look to the Nile for inspiration, and the magnitude of their present rising against the Spanish may he attributed solely to the fact that they have at last consented to operate under a- common leader. Their struggle against the invader, of course, i.s no new development, but in the past they have been handicapped by the nature nf the tribal organisation and by their traditional habit of independent action, as well ns by the further fact that for centuries the tribes have resisted the payment of taxes or tribute to a. central government. Twenty years ago there seemed to bo a possibility of a general anti-European movement in North Africa, for the Senussist propaganda had been developed in quite an amazing extent, but that surge of religious fervour subsided long ago and apparently left no permanent influence behind it.