THE NEW MOROCCO.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 1600, 31 May 1924, Page 10

THE NEW MOROCCO.

*_._ FRENCH COLONISING. (Bv G. Ward Price, in London Daily Mail). ft is hard to believe to-day that only ten years ago the French were thought by a great part of Europe to be a declining nation. People used to shake their heads over the falling birth-rate of France as if the faculty of reproduction were the only measure of national greatness. Recognition of the immense reserves of courage, intelligence, and energy possessed by the French nation found expression, however, even in those days, in The Daily Mail, and a long series of articles and news telegrams which appeared in its columns reflecting the "New Spirit in France" did much to prepare the world for the magnificent mettle with which the French people faced the supreme crisis of its fate in the autumn of 1914. The depth of those reservoirs of French national vitality is revealed by the fact that even the drain of the Great War has not exhausted them. For. besides following an active and independent policy in Europe, France has continued since the armistice to carry out with vigour and success great schemes of Colonial expansion. It is in Northern Africa that the enterprise and organising genius of the French have been most strikingly displayed. Anyone who studies the map of that continent in the light of developments since the war will soon .realise that, while the British have been relaxing their hold on Egypt, the French have been strengthening and broadening the foundations of a great North African Empire. Pacification Marvels. From the 10th parallel of North latitude to the shores of the Mediterranean the greater part of Africa is in French hands. A traveller starting from the Atlantic coast could make a semi-oircular tour of 3500 miles down to below the Equator without leaving French territory. Yet in so doing he would not have touched lhe most important areas of Northern Africa that are under French rule. For lie would not set foot in Lower Senegal, where many of the native regiments of the French Army arc recruited, nor in that huge Sahara hinterland which was crossed for the first time by French motor cars, from Touggourt to Timbuctoo, 14 months a so.

Nor, above all, would this traveller under the French flag from the Guinea coast lo the L'ower Congo see anything of the rich and old-fashioned French Colonies of Algeria and Tunis, nor the new Protectorate of Morocco, where, in .12 years, 4 of which were years of lhe Great War, the French have achieved absolute .marvels of pacification and development. In all Northern Africa, from the West Coast, up to the frontiers of the Sudan, I here are, in fact, only three relatively small areas that are not French. Two of these, in the extreme North-West, are occupied by Spain, and the other, Tripoli—most of it unsubdued desert—is Italian. The Northern half of the African Continent, indeed, is as preponderantly French as the Southern is preponderant British. Rich New Territory. The creation of this vast French i Colonial domain in North Africa, and especially Hie recent addition to it of the rich and easily accessible territory *of Morocco, cannot but have a proround effect upon the future history of Europe.

The international interests of the Old World are regrouping themselves around lhe Mediterranean, after temporary transportation to the North Sea'and lhe Pacific Ocean. But the new situation thus developing differs in one respect from the old. France —lo modify Pitt's epigram-—has called Africa into existence to redress lhe balance of Europe. As the years go by the results of I his readjustment of the national equilibrium of France will become increasingly apparent. Henceforth one-third of the French Army is to consist of native troops, and in Morocco especially France has found a reserve of warlike and vigorous recruits.

From the Colonies which she is so rapidly developing on the Southern shores of the Mediterranean will be drawn a constantly increasing supply of raw materials and foodstuffs. For France, as for Great Britain, the Mediterranean has become the main artery of national prosperity, and a new era of co-operation should lie before us and our Allies to keeping that sea rree and open for world-traffic. Until France obtained the Protectorale by a treaty withthe Sultan Muley llafid. signed on March 30, 1912, the Moorish Government was an Oriental despotism unaltered for 1000 years. Barbarism 15 Years Ago.

Here, within sight of the shores of Europe, was a country conducted on linos of corruption, cruelty, and primitive custom. Only 15 years ago, in 1909, the Sultan, after suppressing a rising, ordered the right hands of all his prisoners to be cut off and the stumps plunged into bo'iling pitch. The Roghi, their leader, was exposed in an iron cage at Fez for several days, to he tormented by the populace, and was then torn to pieces by the tigers of the-palace menagerie in the presence of the Sultan, who looked on by torchlight.

It is some measure of the rapidity with which the French have established themselves in this country (hat unprotected tourists now m'ove about daily in the streets of Fez, mingling without the smallest risk among the very people who used to take delight in such exhibitions of barbarity, and who, in 1912, rose and massacred the French residents >of Fez under conditions of frightful barbarity. Twelve years ago the whole European population of Marrakesh—l 9 person,—was in prison under sentence of death as a result of an anti-Chris-tian uprising. Yet this week, while I was there, a well-known English peeress was looking for a site to build a villa at Marrakesh to which she could bring her children every winter, and the principal tourist hotel, which already has CO bedrooms, each with its bathroom attached, is so constantly lull that it is planning to add GO more.

In the constant mingling of striking contrasts between semi-barbarism and complete modernity lies much r>f the fascination of a visit to present-day Morocco. Here you sec people living under the immemorial conditions of Darkest Africa, in low beehive huts of rushes, scooping their primitive food out of Stone Age dishes of rough clay; while there, a hundred yards away, men and women in evening clothes are sitting down to a dinner cocked by a French chef. On on-; side of the market-square at Marrakesh huddled groups of squatting Arabs and black-robed Berbers from the snow-topped Atlas Mountains amuse themselves by watching snake-charmers or listening to monotonous repetitions of the Koran to the accompaniment of a tambourine: on the other side, in the

Cafe do France, Frenchmen and gfrls with bare arms, bobbed hair, and pretty Paris frooks are dancing to the tune of ''Yes, we trave no bananas," whose popularity is still undimmed here on the edge of Equatorial Africa. Two entirely different standards of existence —the social complex of 1924 and that of A.D. 1000—cut right across each other in this new French Protectorate. As far as is compatible with such elementary needs as military security, sanitation, and finance. Morocco has been left by the French to run itself exactly as it has been run for a thousand years. The French have set themselves no altruistic task of improving, elevating, or educating' the native such as we have thanklessly assumed in some narts of the world.