Boy Sultan of Morocco Is Only 14

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 268, 2 February 1928, Page 9

Boy Sultan of Morocco Is Only 14

Dresses in Robes But Plays Tennis CONTROLLED BY FRANCE Mohammed, the son of Yussef, the son of El Hassqn, God is his Protector, he is the envoy of God, he makes the lions tremble in their very dens, O most noble of creatures!” That is the official description of Mulay Mohammed ben Yussef ben El Hassan, the new Sultan of Morocco, as his grand seal puts it on documents of State, writes Mr. C. K. Streit in the “New York Times.” But he •who would like to recognise this Daniel come to the throne of Morocco would do well to begin by forgetting the official description which, incidentally, is applied to every Sultan of the Sheriffian Empire. He should look instead for a lad of 14 with a slim body clothed in the graceful folds of a white burnoos, and a well-modelled head with a rather longish, oval-shaped face set with glowing black eyes. A good-looking lad, .with a decided air of not having been brought up on the farm or in the bronzing Moroccan plains, mountains or deserts.

Indeed, the skin of Mulay Mohammed is not only not of the tint of Othello’s (which his father had), it is white almost to the point of pallor. He seems a hot-house plant, which means, in Morocco, that he has been brought up iji the shade. A skin that has escaped the sun in so infernally sunny a country is enough to indicate wealth and position. Little is known about Mohammed’s personality and character by any outsiders save the French. But the fact that he was chosen Sultan over the heads of his older brothers, Mulay Idriss, aged 19, and Mulay El Hassan, aged 15, speaks volumes for this boy of 14. It speaks not of a twist for lion taming, but of a docile, tractable temperament, which yearns for protection—the same sort of temperament as that which led the French to put Mulay Yussef on the throne in the tumultuous days of 1912. The Sultan's Unruly Subjects

The official lion-tamer of Morocco is fortunately blessed with an empire in which there are no lions. It dqes, however, contain some 2,000,000 tribesmen, and nothing is said in the seal about these subjects trembling in their adobe huts or spreading tents. Indeed, these subjects were making the Sultans cower in their palaces so much that, in 1912, Mulay Mohammed's uncle, Mulay Haf id, called in the French to protect him from them. Four months after he signed the protectorate treaty he was forced to abdicate. Mulay Yussef, who succeeded him, Was the kind of Sultan for whom the French could sincerely wish many happy returns on each birthday, but he died prematurely at 45.

The French, however, realise that the good are likely to die young, and they have been keeping an eye on Mulay Yussef’s sons. It is safe to say that their study of the characters of the boys led them to make their choice even before the father fell ill.

It is widely supposed that one can see in a child the salient characteristics of the future man. There is not always ground for this supposition. Nothing but the years can tell whether the French are right in their appraisal of Mulay Mohammed. They will no doubt try to help the years confirm their hopes. But Islam is now waking. Turkey has thrown off the veiled protection of the extra territorial powers and the picture of Mustapha Kemal, the Westerniser, is to be seen in the bazaars of the four capitals of Mulay Mohammed—Fez, Ramat, Meknes and Marrakesh. Meanwhile the French are doing twentieth century pioneering in Morocco. The mail comes not by pony express, but by airplane. The natives travel, not by covered wagon or yet by train, but by motor bus. Mulay Mohammed is a boy and his youth means not only that his French protectors will have a chance to form his character during his most impressionable age. It means that he is of a new generation in Morocco, a generation exposed to the "West, a generation that still dresses in the good robes of the fathers, but which plays tennis in them—tennis in the very shadow of the minaret. France Faces Problems

The French are sagacious colonial tulers, despite ideas to the contrary held by members of the Englishspeaking' world who have not seen them at work in North Africa. But they face now in Morocco a special problem in imperialism worthy of their best mettle I , an ?, 18 astir with Western ferment and a Sultan of a coming, not a passing generation is on the throne of Morocco. He has the forms of power and should he grow restive and attempt to use them, he may meet with a warm response from his subjects The young have a way of becoming restive imbued with new'ideas and old ambitions. Mulay Mohammed may ; , c t. to make the lions tremble in their very dens.