THE ATLAS BERBERS

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 145, 17 December 1934, Page 20

THE ATLAS BERBERS

MYSTERY OF ORIGIN

AN INEXPIABLE WAR

THE LEGION WINS MOEOCCO

Almost every summer for the last twenty-five years France has fought a campaign against tho Berbers of

Morocco. The summer of 1933 saw the

fall of the last of their strongholds in the Atlas Mountains. They were tamed at last—temporarily,.at'any ratej for they are among the fiercest and most stubborn people in the world. Who are the Berbers? Their origin, says Mr. G. Ward Price, the distinguished war cor- • .respondent, is a mystery which ethnolo- ; gists have never solved:— "One theory is that they are the - descendants of Jews, driven out by the ; Emperor Trajan, who crossed Africa and found an impregnable refuge in the . Atlas Mountains. Another traces them back to the Visigoths, who crossed over ■ the Straits of Gibraltar from Spain. Among the Berbers of the Biff in the North of Morocco, in. whose encampments I once spent three weeks, redbearded, and blue-eyed 'men of pale complexion are by no means rare." THEMSELVES TO BLAME. Their religion is nominally Moslem. They have only themselves to blame for the long and bloody warfare with Prance. Had it not been, says Mr. Ward Price, for the fact that these Berbers of the Atlas are incorrigible cattle-thieves, it w likely that tha French authorities of the protectorate would have been glad enough to leave the Grand Atlas as a sort of Hagenbeck's Zoo, where the wild clansmen might have been allowed to carry on their inter-tribal warfare undisturbed. Marshal Lyautey had always divided Morocco into two parts—the "useful. and the "useless." "Useful" Morocco consisted of the fertile plains. The "useless" Morocco was the savage mountain area in which the operations of 1933 took place. ' l Unless mining engineers 'find unsuspected mineral wealth, France has nothing much to show for twenty-five years' hard work. Even with all the resources ot modern warfare, the last campaign was terribly difficult. The rocky slopes, pigeonholed with caves, made an almost in- ■ accessible fastness for the .final stand. ."Rifle fire was useless. Artillery could not damage the caves "except by a direct hit through the entrance. The aeroplanes . helped by flying low and dropping 100-kilogram bombs —Ing as a 12-inch shell —as close to the cavemouth as possible, tho explosion of which, caused a concussion of air that shattered the friable rock and brought the roofs of the grottoes' down in avalanches upon the heads of -their unfbrtunate occupants." But the resistance on. the slopes of the Kerdous Valley was. finally overcome only by bombing with hand-grenades, carried out by parties of French troops, which succeeded in creeping up to close quarters. Hundreds of Berber dead were found in their positions when the 6000 survivors surrendered to the Fren«h." THIRST AS A WEAPON. Early' the French had another powerful weapon at their command — thirst. The tribesmen, driven to the heights,"had no longer any access to the streams in the valleys below. They ■were dependent for the water required by their, flocks and families solely upon the wnall wells and occasional springs ■which occurred here and there in the ravines and chasms of the mountain. „ . . It became the main objective to ' bring'as many of the points d'eau as possible under the fire of the French machine-guns, so as to deny the Berbers access to them. "Ther sufferings of the tribesmen, and (especially . of their wives and children^ limoiig the sunrbaked limestone rocks 1 were very severe; and at each-sunrise many a Berber corpse was to be seen lying around the springs which, during ;the iiight, were constantly swept by bursts of machine-gun bullets." So Ouskounti, the Berber chief, surrendered with the rest of the diehards. iThe hated Christian had not, as the ; Berber prophecy foretold, been overthrown by the gods themselves, "who twould turn his bullets to wax, his bursting shells to harmless puffs of i*moke, and the fire from his machineffeuns to streams of perfumed water." f One cannot help a feeling of sympathy I for the tribesmen. To visualise the ■ituation, says Mr. Ward Price,"one has to imagine that Great Britain, i which is one-quarter the size of Morocco, had been occupied and gradually i«mbdued over a period of twenty-five ■years by a nation different in race, but lot far superior culture and technical Resources, and that the last and most ■determinea Britons, with their families -and all their movable property, were making a supreme and desperate. final on the summit of Scawfell." Of his indomitable opponents a French [general said: "I like them; I admire Hheni; I kill them." t WHERE IDENTITY MAY BE LOST. The brunt of the fighting was borne by France's famous Foreign Legion. More rubbish has been written about the Legion than about any other corps in the world. Mr. Ward Price corrects 'much of this. All that France asks of 1 her Legionaries "is that they, shall be good soldiers. Their past career, their • present morals, and their political opinions are matters of complete mii difference to the French authorities. )■ No attempt is made to win the sym- !. pathies of the members of the Legion I for the country to whose service their f lives are pledged. Honours are renj Acred twice daily to the French trileolonr in every garrison, camp, and ieatpost of the Foreign Legion, but it if In to the regimental colours and not it© the national flag that the compli'inent is paid." Mr. Ward Price spoke to many i Xiegionaries, and, whilo he heard no cviMence of Ouida-esque pretty-pretty c-fetuff, there were few tales of deliberfate brutality. "Drink, cigarettes. }' women," according to a battalion comi maader whom Mr. Ward Price askea, > W« the main amusements in the Legiou. f'SThe men like their spirits neat: — " 'I should have thought thirsty men {.'•like that would want a long drink,' 1 ;said .to one of the Greek soukiers. • «Don't they over ask for beer?' " 'A Legionary couldn't taste beer,' \ "he replied. 'He wants something with fc kick in it.'" EFFECTS OF THE "CAFARD." The cafard, Mr. Ward Price tells us, is one of the few catchwords in tho. Legion stories that corresponds to the seal thing. Tho word means "cockroach," "for the cafard creeps like a Wack bug into the Legionary's brain. It is the result of climatic depression on nerves over-stimulated by the sun.

"All the gloom, remorse, and unavailing regrets that lie buried in the |R,v«rage Legionary's mind come seeping jto the surface. He looks back on a career that has been soured by poverty, wrecked by folly, or ruined by crime. . . . The past wasted, the pre■ent hateful, the future dark —all the grievances, rancours, and resentments of his laborious life come creeping with la cafard into his memory. It is in cirI eumstances like these that the LegionI ary deserts, commits murder,- or blows t'lis brains out." I Men of all olawes join the Legion:'s kMnb*- Some private soMierg-haro bad

long military experience behind them: "Some even have been officers themselves. A French general inspecting a battalion soon after the war asked a middle-aged Russian Legionary of distinguished bearing what he had been before ho joined. 'A general, General,' was the reply." BRITISH NOT SUITABLE. Every coutnry, too, is represented. In January, 1933, men of forty-five different nationalities might bo found j —including Americans, Australians, Peruvians, Chinese, Mexicans, Canadians, and Turks. British subjects seldom make good Legionaries. They "find it harder than the, others to leave their inherited tastes and prejudices behind with their civilian clothes." In the Legion the British soldier finds none of his great standbys—bacon, beer, and tea. The Legionary has to be of tough material, for he comes up against men equally tough. Cruelty i,s second nature to tho Berber: —

" 'What would you do to me if it was I who was hurt?' asked a French army doctor who knew something of tho language, when he was. tending tho injuries of a -wounded tribesman on tho hillside. 'Cut your throat,' was the prompt and frank reply." Tho women are as hardy as the men. The Berber tribesman, we are told, "goes to war en famille. His wife and children accompany him as closely as possible to the battlefield, and tho former maintains a domestic supply service, even during the heat of the combat. She crawls up with a gourd of water and a flat, brown, circular loaf of bread to refresh her husband's combative energy at midday, and continues to encourage him by shrill screams from a little distance to tho rear throughout the whole of the conflict."

But will the Berbers remain iv peaceful submission for long? Some think they would die of boredom with, no one to fight against. But tho Legion is always at hand to deal with emergencies. "What Franco owes to her Foreign Legion," says Mr. Ward Price, "is beyond estimation. Without it she would.never hava possessed that vast North African Empire which is now so solidly in her hands."