RECRUITS FOR MOROCCO.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1921, Page 7

RECRUITS FOR MOROCCO.

PATHETIC LONDON SCENES. ESCAPE FROM STARVATION. London, August 19. “If you want to get killed quick I know of a good job for you,” said a Labor Exchange clerk to ex-Corporal Sydney Fairfax, one of London’s unemployed, who was seeking work at the Palmer's Green Bureau. The clerk then informed the out-of-work of the Spanish Legion being recruited in England to, fight the Moors and the Riffs in.* Morocco, and said that the pay was 3s a day. “It is very small,” Fairfax replied, “but it is 3s more than I am getting now.” After scenes at Bloomsbury Square yesterday, when 2500 men gathered at the Spanish Consulate, it was announced that the office would be opened to-day in Jewry Street, at 10 a.m. Before thgn 700 men had assembled in a queue. The door remained closed. A youth emerged and spoke to a policeman, and a notice was soon after posted in the window that recruiting was postponed. Among the crowds attending were men speaking Spanish, German and French, several of them having university diplomas. All were down and out. A Master of Arts, throwing down twopence for a cup of cocoa, said: “There’s my last copper. No adventure in Morocco is as exciting as the adventure of starving in London.” Thirty ex-service men, having enlisted at the Spanish Consulate, tramped from London to Southampton for the purpose of embarking. Small parties, arriving after the Spanish offices closed, wandered htrough the streets at night without food. They took refuge in a workhouse, and the police fed the destitute.