NEW MOROCCO.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4703, 26 May 1924, Page 3

NEW MOROCCO.

THE FRENCH ENTIRE BUILDERS. (By G. Ward Price, in the Daily Mail.), It is hard to believe to-day that only ten years ago the French were thought by a great part of Europe to be a declining nation. People used to shake their heads over the falling birth-rate. Of France as if the faculty of reproduction were the only measure of national greatness. ■ ■ Recognition of the immense reserves of courage, intelligence, and energy possessed by the 'French nation found . expression’, however,, even in those x days; in “The Daily Mail,”, and a long . series of articles and news telegrams which appeared in its columns reflect- ; ing the “New Spirit in France” did much to prepare the .world for the magnificent mettle with which the French people faced the supreme crisis of its fate in the autumn of 1914. . , The . depth of those reservoirs of French national vitality is revealed by ..the fact that even the drain of the Great War has not exhausted them. For, besides following an active and independent policy :n Europe. France' has continued sipce the armistice to’ carry out with vigour and success great schemes bf Colonial expan- - sibn. ' . „ It is in Northern Africa that the ’ enterprise and organising genius of ' the French have been most strikingly ' displayed. Anyone who studies the map. of that continent in the light of developments since the -war will soon "realise that, while the British have been relaxing their hold on Wypt, the French have been strengthening and broadening the foundations of a great North African Empire PACIFICATION MARVELS. ■ From the 10th. parallel of North latitude to the shores of the Mediter- - ranean the greater part of Africa s in French hands. A traveller starting from the Atlantic coast could •make a semicircular tour 08 2500 miles down to below the Equator without leaving French territory. Yet in so doing he would not have touched the most important areas of Northern Africa that are under French rule. For he would not se: foot in Lower Senegal, where many of the native regiments of the French Army are recruited, nor in that huge Sahara hinterland which was crossed for the first time by French motorcars, from Touggourt to Timbuctoo, M months ago. Nor, .above all, would this traveller under the. French flag from the Guinea coast to the Lower Congo see -anything of the rich and old-estab-lished french Colonies of Algeria and ’ Tunis? "nor the new Protectorate of Morocco, where, in 12 years, five of which were years of the Great Wa-, • the French have achieved absolute . marvels of pacification and developIn all Northern Africa, from the. West Coast up to the frontiers of the Sudan there as, in fact, only three relatively small areas that are no. French. Two of these, in the extreme North-West, are occupied by Spain, and the other, Tripoli-most of it urn subdued desert —is Italian. The Northern half of the . Continent, indeed, is as preponderant-, ly French as the Southern is preponderantly British. RICH NEW TERRITORY. The creation of this vast French Colonial domain in North Africa, and especially the recent addition to it cf the rich and easily accessible territory of Morocco, cannot but have a ■ p: ofound effect upon the future hi.»- ” lory of Europe. The international interests of the Old World are regrouping themselves around the Mediterranean, after temporary transportation to the Nortn Soa and the Pacific Ocean. But the : new situation thus developing differs in one respect from the old. France —to modify Pitt’s epigram—has called 11 Africa into existence to redress the balance of Europe. ■ As the years go by the results of - thjs readjustment of the national - equilibrium of France will become increasingly apparent Henceforth . one-third of ‘ the French Army is to ■ consist of native troops, and in Morocco especially France has found a ' i eserve of warlike and vigorous rec nits. . : From the colonies which she is so : rapidly developing on the Southern shores of the Mediterranean will be drawn a constantly-increasing supply of raw materials and footstuffs. Foi . F ance, as: for Great Britain, the Mediterranean has become the main al tery of national prosperity, and a new era of co-operation should he before us and our Allies in keeping that sea fred and open for worldtraffic. ' _ . Until France obtained’ the Protectorate by a treaty with the Sultan Maley Hafid, signed on March 30. 1912, the Moorish Government was an Oriental despotism, unaltered for 1000 years. BARBARISM 15 YEARS AGO. . Here, within sight of the shores of Europe, was a country conducted on lines . of corruption, cruelty, and, primitive custom. Only 15. years ago, in 1909, the Sultan, after suppressing a risings ordered the right hands of all his prisoners to be cut off and the stumps plunged into boiling pitch. Toe Koghi, their leader, was exposed in an iron cage at Fez for several davs, to be tormented by the populace, and was then torn to pieces by the tigers of the palace menagerie in the presence of the Sultan, who looked on by torchlight. , It is some measure of the rapidity with which the French have established themselves in this country that unprotected tourists now move about daily in the streets of Fez, mingling without the smallest risk among the very people who used to take delight in such exhibitions of barbarity, and who. in 1912, rose and massacred the ’French residents of Fez under conditions of frightful barbarity. ’ . Twelve years ago the whole Buro- ' ptan population of Marrakesh 19 x persons—was in prison under sentence of death as a result of an antiChristian uprising. Yet this week, -'while I was there, a well-known Eng-

lish peeress was looking for a site '.o build a villa at Marrakesh to which she could bring her children every winter, and the principal tourist hotel, which already has 60 bedrooms, each with its bathroom attached, is so constantly full that it is planned to add 60 more. . . In the constant mingling of striking contrasts between semi-barbarism and complete modernity lies much of the fascination of a visit to present-day Morocco. Here you see people living under the immemorial conditions of Darkest Africa, in low beehive huts of rushes, Scooping their primitive food out of Stone Age dishes of rough clay; while there, a hundred yards away, men and women In evening clothes arc sitting down to a dinner cobked by a French chef. On one side of the market-square at Marrakesh huddled groups of squatting Arabs and black-robed Berbers from the snow-topped Atlas Mountains, amuse themselves by watching snake-charmers or listening to monotonous repetitions of th r - Koran to the accompaniment of a tambourine; on the other side, in the. Cafe de France, Frenchmen and girls with bare arms, bobbed hair, and pretty Paris frocks are dancing to the tune of “Yes, we have no bananas,” whose popularity is still undimmed here on the edge of Equatorial Africa. Two entirely different standards of existence —the social complex of 1924 and that of A.D. HKW-cut right across each other in this new French Protectorate. As far as is compatible with such elementary needs as military security, sanitation, and finance, Morocco has been left by the French . to run itself exactly as it has been .run for a thousand years. The French have set themselves no altruistic task of improving. elevating, or educating ths native such as we have thanklessly assumed in some parts of the woild.