MARSHAL LYAUTEY

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3401, 2 August 1932, Page 2

MARSHAL LYAUTEY

SAVED MOROCCO FOR FRANCE. To Marshal Lyautey, and to him alone France owes her great colony of Morocco. In 1914 the French Government ordered him to send back almost the whole of the army under his command and to evacuate the interior of the country, retaining only sufficient troops to hold the coast towns. Lyautey sent back every man the Government demanded, but he was deaf to the order for evacuation. He knew that withdrawal meant revolt throughout North Africa, and that Morocco would never again be brought under the French protectorate. And with the handful of men left to him, he actually extended the area under French control. German propaganda had prepared the Moors for a French panic. To their stupefaction flying columns were multiplied in the most unexpected places terrifying the disaffected, and throughout the war Morocco was held by a skeleton force so firmly that it gave no disquietude to the home Government. I was Lyautey's guest in Morocco just after the war, when his power was at its height, writes H. Warner Allen in a Home exchange. His word was law from the frontier of Spanish Morocco to the vast spaces of the Sahara, wherever the French flag flew.

Yet Lyautey was always accessible to all. His visitors passed first into huge rooms with ceilings richly fretted and of many colours, but their host received them in the intimacy of a small study, cut off from a throne room by a wooden screen.

There the ruler of Morocco received his friends and subjects in a sanctum decorated with wonderful works of art, and with a fire of vast cedar logs burning in an open grate, for the mountain air of Fez is chilly in the early spring. Lyautey, though he knew the value of pomp in dealing with an Eastern nation, has always been the simplest of men. We lunched together one day alone as men about to start on a journey. For him every moment was precious. The general (he was created Marshal of France the following year) as he took his seat planked his watch down on the table before him so that not a minute should be wasted. He is the only Frenchman I have ever known who drinks tea with all his meals, rounding them off with a glass of port. This great ruler and soldier is an artist to his finger tips. He is in his element discussing the atmosphere of Paul Veronese, his favourite painter, or Velasquez's "Las Lanzas." He walks among his collections with the delicate enthusiasm of the connoisseur, handling piously a chased Moorish gun and caressing with long, artistic fingers, ancient editions of the Koran which he saved from the rubbish heap. Lyautey was the destined protector of the art and beauty of Morocco. He drew a magic circle round the wonders 'of such ancient cities of Fez and Rabat, so that no European incongruity should blemish their fascination. Within the circle no European might own land or build. Modern cities sprang up outside the circle, where they did not clash with the beauties of the ancient order. Yet the artist is also a stern and brilliant man of war. The day before I arrived in Fez there had been one of those "regrettable incidents" inseparable from a colonial empire.

In the firing line Lyautey was short of speech and swift to decide. In half an hour he had summed up the situation, dispersed a gathering of the enemy with neat bombardment, put heart into the younger officers and inspired even the rawest black recruit with confidence by the magic of his presence. Lyautey succeeded because he combined military brilliance with consummate tact and a real love of the people he ruled. He describes his own policy as "the policy of the smile." In little things, as in great, he was thoughful for his subjects. When the great motor road round Fez one of the most splendid drives in the world, was built, he ordained that beside it there should run a path thickly screened with bamboos and olives, to protect humble pedestrians, donkeys and camel-drivers from the dust of passing cars. He left the municipal council of Fez all its powers, only putting in one of of his officers as mayor to advise and direct.