ADVENTURES IN THE MOROCCAN WAR

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 36, 5 August 1911, Page 10

ADVENTURES IN THE MOROCCAN WAR

NEGRO CHANTS TO ENLIVEN THE NIGHT. (Allan Ostler, in London Express). Mishra Bashr (with El Merani's column), May 24.' Seven hundred ill-armed Moorish soldiers are trapped here on a burning plain, ringed with purple hills, whose slopes glow every night with the fires of burning crops and villages. El Merani's column is woefully weak; and it has great treasures of money, ammunition and provisions in its charge, all of them badly needed by the troops in Fez, which we cannot reach. We left Sok-el-arba a week ago. We were to have joined Colonel Brulard's column and to have entered Fez last Saturday. Instead we were cut off, and now we lie here trapped. If the mountaineers were as brave as they are cruel they would have faced our five hundred horsemen on the plain days ago. But they have not, so far, ventured out of their rock fastnesses except at night, to slaughter and harry the defenceless villages of the Gharb. There are five Frenchmen here—two officers and three non-commissioned officers —and they are furious at our helplessness. Also, they rage daily because they may not accompany the "harkas" (flying cavalry detachments), which we send out, in vain, to help the friendly villagers against the mountaineers. The Moorish soldiers will take no Christians with them on these expeditions. They say, perhaps rightly, that even now the mountaineers are hard enough to deal with, and that, if they once got an idea that there were Europeans amongst the ranks of the harka, they would fight without regard for their own lives, Paradise is assured to the Moslem who slays the infidel. I have tried myself to accompany the harkas, wearing the Moorish sulham and jellab, and carry my rifle Arab fashion across the saddle-bow. To-day, having ridden six or seven miles with the detachment unnoticed, I was hoping that at last I should see the harka in action. However, I was detected just as we came in sight of the blackened fields and heaps of ashes that had been a village yesterday; and Kaid Krafts, finding that I refused t.o listen to heated arguments in Arabic, told me flatly that unless I went back under escort, he would return with the entire harka. So my escort )>rought me back at full gallop, and nearly stampeded the mehalla, who thought we were the survivors of a fight. The rest of the harka came back later, badly beaten, with three dead and eight wounded. The heat here on the plain has been intense during the last few days, and, as there is not the remotest approach to sanitation, the camp is horribly infested with flies. In some of the quarters the stcncli from garbage, putrid meat and sick horses is intolerable.

Moorish warfare is truly Oriental, and the mehalla in camp is full of the gorgeous pageantry of the East. Longtailed, wild-eyed stallions scream and fight in their pickets all day. Grave, bearded chieftains in flowing robes sit in the shade of their tents or hold councils of war under the gorgeous pavilion of EI Merani, with its gilded ball on the centre pole, and the green flag of the Prophets planted at its door. Villagers ride in on mules and donkeys to sell charcoal and poultry, and a few poor vegetables, and to whine ceaselessly round the worried non-commissioned officers for cartridges.

By night the faint ring of giumbre3 (Moorish lutes) accompanies the weird falsetto songs of the men. There arc a few negroes, who sing at night barbaric, rhythmic chants, clapping their hands and beating bare soles upon the baked earth.

There are four newspaper correspondents here—three Englishmen and one Frenchman. We race our horses, play cribbage and bridge, swim in the river, dine with and entertain the French officers on alternate nights, and always wait hopefully for news of the outer world.

Fez is less than a day's ride away; yet we do not know what has happened there—whether the French troops have brought away the European women, oc whether, 'having once got in, they are able ever to get out themselves.

As for Europe, and news of Europe, we are as much excluded as though we were in the moon. It seems incredible there is still such a place as London, and that, even as I sit here in this barbaric camp, with half the horizon alight with burning homes, motor-'buses are rolling along the Strand.

But at any rate the reality of this strange place is not to be denied, and the gravity of our position is unmistakable.

If this mehalla is defeated, and its rich convoy falls into the hands of the rebels, the whole of the French army cannot arrive in time to save the Europeans in the interior of Morocco. Already the dreaded standard of the holy war has been raised by Mulai Harned-el-Arosi; and though the holy war can really be preached only by the Sultan, many causes unite to bring adherents to El Arosi. The Sultan is discredited throughout Morocco. He has sold his country to the Christians; so that the people need not wait for his sanction for the war.

The villagers and plainsmen whose homes and crops are smouldering are no less enraged against the Europeans than against the rebels who have brought destruction upon them. The burning and wasting and slaughter, they say, lies at the door of the Christians, but for whose presence such a state of things would never have come to pass. Morocco is aflame, and it will take more than French-drilled native troops to quench the fire. Meanwhile, here lies a weak mehalla waiting to be defeated; a rich booty for the taking, and nine Europeans ready to be killed. [The dilemma in which El Merani's force found itself, as described above, was unexpectedly removed on May 27 j when the Express' special correspondent cabled that during a truce arranged between the rebels and the Gharb tribesmen a dash would be made for Fez. It is believed that the capital was entered on May 30.]