RIFFI TRIBES.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18461, 15 August 1925, Page 14

RIFFI TRIBES.

SILENT AND UNSEEN. FRANCE'S MOROCCAN TASK. Looking throu t ;h glasses yesterday, with all that adjusting: and focussing aiid lowering of the glasses to got the objective with the naked eye, after all tho mistakes and lalso successes which always precede an eflort to discern with glasses what you cannot discern naturally, I saw a Rifli tribesman at- last (wiites tie special correspondent of the "Daily Mail at French headquarters on Juno othl. He was a dark line on a path, ni->cienk j bS, fixedly watchin" the track which wound iwvi'.y benca.u him. Around me were all the life and the | cries and laughter in the Frer.eh eauip i perched en the heights of Ain Aislut". above tliji Ouorgha River. Here the mobile column of Colonel Freydenberg, which flits from place to place, now to relLvo a post, now to scour ta valley, now to storm a hill-top but ever moving a,t full speed to tho place of emergency like a fire-engine tearing to the danger of tho hour, was takiiw a dav of rest. The Desert's Challenge. The sun poured dov n 011 tents which seemed like a couple of playinc-cards put together, beneath which nightblack Senegalese were lvin<£ prone. Yellow-airbaned Zouaves, "Algerian sharps..o„te.s, "legionaires, Frenchmen burned brick-red, talked and strolled, or s;t eating round lartje niesstins and drank peppermints and aniiettes at a Bohemian canteen. In the plain below tho horso and supply lines moved ceaselessly like a new-sprung mining settlement. Even though it was a period of what soldiers call rest, the whole industry of war stirred and vibrated. T e contrast lay before, in the empty landscape, in that motionless figure watching all day on tho ridge near T.iounat. So much lay westward. Eastward was a stretch of green empty land at the end of which were derelict airsheds which airmen had burned that morning so that they might give no shelter to the Riffis. The northern foreground was filled with the mountain of Sonadja. barren as a slate to look upon, and behind was the bluo prospect of mountain 011 mountain. Into that stony labyrinth of mountains the Riffis go, and from it they come. All lay bare, silent, sinister in tho sun, which seemed to pour down its warmth in vain on- the mountains, which responded with no eulturo or liouse or s.gn of man. They seemed to 1 brood and say in voices of rock, "We 1 -ire waiting for you, O soldiers of Kurope. Come forward, O soldiers of Europe; wo aro waiting for you all lay." Into these central recesses —for it this point is the centre of the preent front—it looks as if thousands of ncn could enter and disappear. First Warning. 111 the little posts 011 the taps of the esser hills below tfyem small French jetachments have lived liko heroes, .hey went there really in times of eace. a few men and a lieutenant and . political officer perhaps. The lieuenant himself was generally his own lolitical officer. He was there to get nto contact with tho tribes and learn r'lio passed over the tracks aud what ras the gossip of tho ranges. There came a day—those who have 0 do with native races know what it leans—when a sort of chill fell, and strange form or two were seen on he mountain paths and tho few local Toors answered questions differently. Warily the little posts drew- themselves nto their hilltops. And those who ould do so laid in water and proviions. And then a day arrived: well, it was k© one of those occasions when) you re walking in the mountains and turn high corner into what seems an mpty valley and then suddenly its ides are filled with shadows, and birds ome from nowhere are flying and risig and dipping all alxiut you. Round io little posts came tho Riffis liko the hadows of birds. And the bullets 'hich cast 110 shadow in this world allowed fast. There was such a post at Ain l Leuli, just the other side of Taounat. I have been talking to Lion ten ant Barthelomy, of tho 13th Tirailleurs, who was relieved with his tiny garrison after striding a twelve days' siege there. He is the conventional mere boy. a pinlioheeked, fair-haired voun'or fellow from the Vosges, with, as he tells his story, a wonderful laugh which has yet something of a straiu in it. Ice From Aeroplanes. "You c-.n't see Abd-el-Krim's men." he said; "they are all behind rocks and trees. They flit about and throw grenades ceaselessly. I ln-.d to withdraw every one of my men from the centre of the post, and we lay all the last eight days, night and .day, behind a breastwork I had buift quietly of sacks of coffee and a few other stores. There wo hod to lio in utter silence! The tribesmen would creeo within calling distance and cry to ray Algerians to come out ar.d they would give them wom«n and milk. "But I never 1 et..t.hciiv whisner an answer. I had to match the Riffis at then- own mystery, so that they did not know whether we were dead or alive, and when they stole ui> to see the first and last they heard* was my machine-gun. Tho airmen I used to signal to by strips of material specially placed on the ground, and sometimes I ventured a heliograph. Tlie airmen flew so low. so dangerously low for themselves, that they could drop blocks of ice without smashing them into fragments into my twenty 0 r thirty yards of open surface. Tho ice saved us, as it gave my men water to drink. I had some wine, hut most of my men who are Moslems would not drink it even then. "The worst experience of all was when we were lolieved yesterday Tho 'on'y side to get out safely from the post was a sheer descent. All the other sides were commanded bv marks men, and even the cliff side was cover ed by two we could not dislodge. When it came, to niv turn to go after my men and the sergeant I cuessed marksmen would be waiting specia ® for nie. the officer. So I just nut my hands to my shins, made mvself into a ball, let myself go over the edo- 0 and turned over and over, against Ilfcty " ever - vthi "£> down into j