Those who are bored by history might do well to skip this chapter, for, though I shall do my best to brush away the accumulated dust of ages, so that the glittering romance of Morocco’s story may be seen, it is nevertheless a chronicle of past events rather than an account of present-day happenings and conditions. But a meal, to have any nutritive value, cannot consist wholly of sweetmeats; one must take a certain amount of meat and potato in addition to the dessert. And precisely the same holds true in the case of Morocco, for without the background of Moorish achievement, glory, and misrule, and of the French occupation, it is utterly impossible to understand the anomalous situation which exists in Maghreb-el-Aska, the Farthest West, as the Moroccans themselves call their country, where the descendant of five-and-thirty emperors still sits in state beneath the Shereefian umbrella, surrounded by visitors and eunuchs and concubines and all the pomp and luxury of an Arabian Nights court, while a quiet Frenchman, in a modest residency not a stone’s throw from the imperial palace, speaks with the voice of a ventriloquist and pulls the strings.

In order that you may have a clear understanding of the highly involved Moroccan situation, it would be well, it seems to me, were I to begin by clearing up several popular misapprehensions.

First of all, then, be it understood that the vast majority of the people of Morocco are not Moors at all, as most foreigners carelessly assume, nor are they Arabs. The very name “Moor” is a European invention, unknown in Morocco, whose inhabitants should properly be called Maghribin—that is, the people of Maghreb-el-Aska. The name that we apply to the country is but a corruption of that of the southern capital, Marrákesh, through the Spanish version, Marueccos.

Of the three races which inhabit the empire the most numerous and important are the aboriginal Berbers, who were already in possession of the land when the Carthaginians and the Romans came, and whose blood to a greater or less extent permeates the whole population. It was the sturdy Berber soldiery of Carthage which enabled the queen city of the South to hold at bay for upward of five centuries her great northern rival; it was an army of Berbers which, led by Hannibal, conquered Spain, devastated southern Gaul, crossed the Alps, and swept the whole length of Italy. It was the Berbers who thrice conquered Spain—once from the Visigoths and twice from their less stalwart coreligionists, the Arabs. Again, it was the Berbers, not the Arabs, who built those two immortal monuments—the Alhambra in Granada and the Alcázar in Seville. The popular description of the Moslem rulers of Spain as Arabs or Saracens (“Easterners”), is quite erroneous. The people who made themselves masters of the peninsula were Berbers, although their leaders often adopted Arabic names along with the religion of the Arabs. That Morocco, alone among the Barbary nations, should have succeeded in maintaining its independence for upward of eleven hundred years, and that in spite of piracy, brigandage, ferocious cruelty, misrule, and a defiance of all international obligations, was due in part, it is true, to the immense strategic importance of its position at the entrance to the Middle Sea, and to the jealousies among the European powers which sought its possession; but far more to its reinforcement by the virile and rugged Berber stock.

In spite of a history of foreign conquest, the Berber physical type and the Berber temperament and nationality have persisted since the Age of Stone. A common mistake is to regard them, or, indeed, any of the peoples of Morocco, as a black race, a very common misconception which owes its origin in part, perhaps, to the old English phrase, blackamoor; that is, black as a Moor. Racially they are not black, nor even brown. They are distinctively a white race, usually with brown and sometimes with blue eyes and not infrequently with tawny hair and beards, though their skins have been bronzed by generations of exposure to the fierce African sun. Their children and those who have lived in cities might, if clad in European costume, pass anywhere as Europeans.

It is commonly believed that Morocco was invaded by a great Arab horde which carried all before it, and that the Modern Moroccans are descended from these invaders. This is quite erroneous. It is true that in 682 the country was invaded by the great Arab conqueror, Sidi Okba, who gave it its name of Maghreb-el-Aska because it was to him the Farthest West. Though Sidi Okba’s stay in Morocco was of brief duration, it was long enough to have a profound effect on the country’s Berber inhabitants. Yet the Arabs and the Berbers, with a common religion, a common government, and with the same tribal groups, have failed to amalgamate to any great extent, the Arabizing of the Berbers being limited to little beyond their conversion to Islam. The Arab, transported to a soil which does not always suit him, and always a nomad at heart, so far from thriving, tends to disappear, whereas the Berber becomes more and more aggressive and yearly increases in numbers, at present forming at least four fifths of the population of Morocco. When Arabic is mentioned as the language of Morocco it is seldom realized how small a proportion of the country’s inhabitants use it as their mother-tongue. Berber is the real language of the empire, Arabic that of its creed and court.

The third race which may be considered native is the Jewish, consisting of two different branches: those settled among the Berbers from time immemorial, speaking their language and in addition Arabic in a hideously corrupted form; and those expelled from Spain and other European countries during the Middle Ages, most of whom have got little farther than the ports. These latter, who usually speak Spanish and Arabic with equal fluency, are the most progressive and prosperous of all the inhabitants of Morocco; they own banks and shops, they lend money at usurious rates of interest to the less thrifty Berbers and Arabs, and in their hands is most of the empire’s foreign trade.

To these white races—Berber, Arab, and Jew—constant additions of a negro element have been made as a result of the slave-trade which Morocco until very recently carried on with the western Sudan. The introduction of negro slave-girls into Berber and Arab harems has produced a certain proportion of mulattos, whose dark skins and negroid features tend to confirm the European visitor in his misconception that the people of Morocco belong to a non-Caucasian race.

“But,” you ask, and with good reason, “are there then no such people as the Moors?” Whether the term Moor can properly be applied to any race is open to grave question, for those Moroccans whom the word is used to designate are ethnically hybrids, with the blood of Berbers, Arabs, and Spaniards coursing in their veins. Morocco, as I have already explained, was overrun by the Arabs in the seventh century, but the subsequent conquest of Spain was effected chiefly by Berber tribes, which, however, always had a strong admixture of Arab blood and in most respects became Arabized. These Arabized Berbers, settling in the peninsula which they had conquered, became known to the European nations as Moors. The race was also influenced considerably by marriage with the natives of Spain—even to-day the haughtiest of the Spanish grandees proudly boast of their Moorish blood, just as many of the great English nobles trace their descent from the Normans who accompanied William the Conqueror—and when the Moors were finally expelled from Spain they had become almost entirely distinct from their Berber kinsfolk, to whom they were known as Andalusians. While the mountainous regions of Morocco continued to be occupied almost exclusively by people of pure Berber stock, their refugee coreligionists from Spain, the “Moors,” flocked to the coast towns and the plains of Morocco and Algeria, where their descendants, usually referred to as Moresques, are readily distinguishable from the Berbers and the Arabs by their Spanish features.

Though the sultans never saw fit to order an enumeration of their subjects, and though, under the French administration, the occupation of a census-taker would not be a healthy one in certain districts, the total population of the empire is estimated at about six millions, including one hundred thousand Europeans, the majority of whom are French and Spanish. By way of offering a familiar comparison, it might be said that Morocco is slightly larger than Texas in area and slightly less than our six New England States in point of population.

On those of my readers who have stayed with me thus far, but who are doubtless impatient to get on to Fez and Marrákesh, I shall inflict the merest modicum of Moroccan history—two thousand years of conquest, cruelty, and corruption compressed into a tabloid, as it were.

We know from ancient records that when the Carthaginians, those indefatigable sea-traders, first planted their trading-posts and colonies along this coast, they were opposed by savage and inhospitable tribesmen, some of whom dwelt in caves; but the dolmens discovered on Cape Spartel and the curious megalithic monuments at M’zorah point to a still earlier race—the men of the Stone Age, perhaps. At the beginning of the Christian era, and for some centuries thereafter, the country which we know as Morocco was the Roman province of Mauretania, its northern portion crisscrossed by Roman roads and dotted with Roman cities, the most important of which, perhaps, was Volubilis, the ruins of which, not far from Mequinez, are now in process of excavation. In the fifth century Mauretania became subject to the Vandals, and in the seventh to the Goths, both of whom, judging by the scarcity of Roman remains, fully justified their reputations.

The coming of the Arabs under Okba in 682 was of far greater moment, and instilled in the natives the greed for conquest, and laid the foundations for their conversion to Islam. The force of ten thousand Arabs and Egyptians with whom Tarik, the Berber general who commanded the Arab armies in North Africa, held the Moroccan side of the Straits of Gibraltar in 710 was trebled by the recruiting of Berber mercenaries, his augmented force being large enough by the following year to permit him to cross the straits and invade Spain, burning his boats behind him. By 714 Tarik had pushed as far northward as the foot of the Pyrenees. In 718 the Moslem invaders, having subjugated Spain, crossed the mountains into Gaul, but their triumphal onsweep was arrested by the solid power of the Franks under Charles Martel, the Hammer of God, at Poitiers, which might be called the high-water mark of Islam. While the invasion of Gaul was still in progress, the Berbers who had settled in northwestern Spain revolted against their Arab rulers, and in 739 the Berbers of Morocco followed suit with equal success, throwing off the Arab yoke and setting up one of their own chieftains, Maisara, as an independent ruler.

The recorded history of the Moorish Empire does not really commence, however, until half a century later, when an Arab missionary, Mulai Idris ben Abdallah, a direct descendant of the Prophet, a fugitive who had fled from Arabia during the bloody struggles between the rival claimants to the caliphate, settled in northern Morocco and founded a city on a hill within sight of the Roman ruins of Volubilis. Islam had already been established in these parts for eighty years, and so Idris, by virtue of the sanctity attaching to him as a relative of the Prophet, experienced no great difficulty in uniting the Berbers of the region into a confederation which was greatly extended by his son, Idris II, the builder of Fez, which became the capital of the Idrisi kingdom. Meanwhile there was being founded in southern Morocco what later grew to be the kingdom of Marrákesh. Toward the close of the thirteenth century the kingdoms of Fez and Marrákesh became united under one ruler, whose successor, after numerous dynastic changes, Arab and Berber, is the present sultan of Morocco.

The sixteen rulers of the Idrisi line, an Arab dynasty, controlled northern Morocco for nearly two hundred years, though they were in part supplanted by the Berber family of Miknasa in 922 and ousted altogether by another Berber dynasty, the Maghrawa, in 988. These last were exterminated in turn by a third Berber dynasty, the Murabti (or Almoravides, as they are better known), who added the remainder of Morocco, most of Spain and Portugal, and the sultanate of Tlemcen to their dominions. Their principal existing monument is the city of Marrákesh. In 1149 the Almoravide power was overthrown by the Muwahhadi (Almohades), another Berber horde. Under them the Moorish Empire reached its zenith at the close of the twelfth century, when it included, in addition to Morocco and the Iberian peninsula, what are now Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripolitania, its borders extending to the frontiers of Egypt, which the Moors were prevented from occupying only by the rise of Saladin. To them we owe the Alcázar, the Giralda, and the Torre del Oro in Seville, the Hasan tower at Rabat, the Kutubiya tower at Marrákesh, the castle of Gibraltar, and a portion at least of the Alhambra at Granada. Yet before the thirteenth century had reached the half-way mark the Almohades had been driven out of Spain and had lost all of their vast empire save what is now known as Morocco, whence they were finally ousted by the Marinides—a Spanish corruption of Beni Marin. The Marinides, Berbers like their predecessors, ruled in Morocco for something over three hundred years, yet they have scarcely left a mark upon the country. They were succeeded by the short-lived dynasty of the Wattasi, the chief episode of their reign being the expulsion of the Moors from Spain by the Catholic princes, Boabdil, the last king of Granada, and his followers taking refuge in Morocco, where they built themselves the city of Tetuan. The Wattasi was the last Berber line to reign in Morocco, being succeeded by the house of Sa’adi, whose members were Sherifs, or “nobles”—that is, descendants of the Prophet—and came originally from Arabia. This change of dynasties took place about the middle of the sixteenth century, and Morocco, though four fifths of its population is Berber, has been known as the Shereefian Empire and has been ruled by Arab sultans ever since.

Under the sway of the Sa’adi the Moorish dominions were pushed southward to Timbuktu, but the line ran out in drunkards and degenerates; another Shereefian family, the Filali of Tafilalt, was then invited to undertake the task of government and by 1649 they were masters of Fez. The reign of the Filali, more generally known as the Alides, who still hold the Shereefian umbrella, the present sultan being the twentieth of the line, has been, with very few exceptions, a record of cruelty, tyranny, debauchery, corruption, and revolution. The most beneficent of them, Mahomet XVI, had an Englishwoman in his harem, so that his successor, the wretched Yazid, whose reign was mercifully of short duration, was English on his mother’s side—a curious circumstance for an Oriental country. During the reign of Abd-er-Rahman II occurred the war with France, brought on by Morocco’s espousal of the cause of Abd-el-Kader, and as a result of this conflict the Moors renounced their claims to Tlemcen and France consolidated her Algerian possessions.

Upon the death of Sultan Hasan in 1894 there came to the Shereefian throne his son by a Circassian slave-girl: Abd-el-Aziz IV, then a lad in his teens. The young ruler showed himself sincerely desirous of bettering the condition of his distracted country by introducing foreign reforms, but lack of experience made him an easy prey for schemers and speculators, who pandered to his worst traits and squandered his fortune. This aroused the resentment of his people, and in 1902 the Berber tribes of the Algerian frontier rose in rebellion under the leadership of a fanatic named Jelali Zarhoni, popularly known as Bou Hamara, who claimed to be fighting on behalf of the imprisoned brother of the sultan. Finding himself powerless to subdue the rebellion, Abd-el-Aziz borrowed money from France to reorganize his army, thereby providing the French with an excuse which they used later on for intervention. To complete the demoralization of the empire, a local chieftain, Mulai Ahmed er-Raisuli, made himself master of the district round Tangier, terrorizing the country-side and holding even foreigners to ransom. His kidnapping from Tangier itself of a Greek named Ion Perdicaris, an American by naturalization, brought from President Roosevelt the brusque demand for “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead,” a demand which was backed up by an American naval demonstration in Moroccan waters.

By 1904 the situation in Morocco had become so chaotic and intolerable that it seemed as though nothing could prevent intervention by the great powers. Now it should be kept in mind that the European situation had become peculiarly delicate at this time as the result of the outbreak of war between Russia, the ally of France, and Japan, the ally of Great Britain. But for some time there had been a movement on both sides of the Channel to reduce to a minimum the possible causes of conflict between the two countries, and, largely by reason of the efforts of King Edward VII, there was signed in London in April, 1904, a series of agreements between the two countries which marked the opening of the era of entente cordiale. Here we are concerned only with the joint declaration respecting Egypt and Morocco. With regard to Egypt the French government declared that “they will not obstruct the action of Great Britain in that country by asking that a limit of time be fixed for the British occupation or in any other manner.” The British government, on its part, announced that “it appertains to France, more particularly, as a power whose dominions are conterminous for a great distance with those of Morocco, to preserve order in that country, and to provide assistance for the purpose of all administrative, economic, financial, and military reforms.” It was further agreed that by virtue of her geographical position, and from her territorial possessions on the Moorish coast, the interests of Spain in Morocco should be taken into special consideration, the government at Paris pledging itself to effect an understanding with the government at Madrid. By May day of 1904, therefore, everything was harmoniously arranged. England was free to continue in occupation of the Nile country as long as it suited her to do so. France was free to consolidate her position in North Africa by making French influence supreme throughout the Shereefian Empire; an operation which, so the Quai d’Orsay announced, was to be effected by “pacific penetration,” but which, as every chancellery in Europe knew full well, would in fact be effected by penetration with the bayonet. Spain, which was just beginning to recover from the effects of her disastrous war with the United States, was to be appeased with a few all but worthless enclaves along the Moorish seaboard. Though the Declaration of London affected six hundred thousand square miles of territory and twenty millions of human beings, the cynical diplomatists of Downing Street and the Quai d’Orsay in perfecting the arrangements for this colossal land-grab deemed it quite unnecessary to consult the opinions of the peoples whom it directly affected, the Egyptians and the Moroccans themselves.

The wheels of the chariot of empire were greased and it was ready to start on its course of conquest when, early in 1905, a monkey-wrench was suddenly tossed into the machinery by a gentleman now known as Mr. William Hohenzollern. Germany had viewed with jealous eyes the growing influence of France in Europe, had seen herself threatened with political isolation by the rapprochement between France and England, but she had bided her time until the disasters suffered on the battle-fields of Manchuria by France’s Russian ally had, by removing the threat of a Muscovite attack from the rear, led the statesmen of the Wilhelmstrasse to believe that the hour had struck for Germany to proclaim herself the arbiter of European affairs. The Moroccan situation provided them with the pretext that they needed. Here was Germany’s opportunity to gain “a place in the sun.” A firm of German bankers, the Mannesmann Brothers, had obtained from the sultan mining concessions in the Sus, and to “protect” them a German gunboat, the Panther, was rushed to Agadir. Shortly before this the imperial yacht Hohenzollern had dropped anchor in the roadstead of Tangier, and the German emperor—“Hadji Guillaume,” as his Turkish friends flatteringly called him—had gone ashore for a conference with the representatives of the sultan, assuring them that Germany would insist on the maintenance of Morocco’s integrity and on the equality of European economic and commercial interests in that empire. Germany’s solicitude for Morocco was, of course, only a pretext to embarrass France, but it served its purpose, for Abd-el-Aziz, who had all along protested the right of France to interfere in Moroccan affairs, was emboldened to reject the scheme of reforms suggested by the French government and at the suggestion of the kaiser invited all the powers to advise him as to the needed improvements in his administration. To this the French foreign minister, M. Delcassé, strenuously objected, but the German chancellor, Prince von Bülow, used such threatening language that Delcassé resigned from office in order not to plunge his country into war.

So far German diplomacy had triumphed. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say German bluff. The conference asked for the sultan and instigated by Germany met in January, 1906, at Algeciras, a little Spanish coast town across the bay from Gibraltar, where the representatives of the powers spent the remainder of the winter in the delicate task of reconciling French claims for predominance in Morocco with the German demands for equality for all. The British delegates gave firm support to their French colleagues, while Germany was stanchly backed by Austria. The deciding voice was really that of the United States, which on this occasion took a part in European affairs for the first time. (It is an interesting fact that the chief American delegate, Mr. Henry White, was again one of the representatives of his country at Versailles, just thirteen years later.) President Roosevelt once told me that, in his opinion, it was largely the moderating influence exercised by the United States at Algeciras which prevented war between Germany and France over the question of Morocco.

With great difficulty a scheme of reforms was finally elaborated, but not until France had agreed to a rectification of the German frontiers in the Cameroons and Togoland at her expense in return for a free hand in Morocco. It was eventually agreed that a Moorish gendarmerie under a Swiss inspector-general should be instituted, that a state bank should be established for the protection of foreign loans, that the acquisition of land around the ports by foreigners should be permitted, that the authority of the state over the public works and public services should be recognized, and that the customs administration should be more efficiently controlled. The pact containing these provisions, whereby the Moroccans ceased to be masters in their own house, was signed by the representatives of the powers in April, 1906, and reluctantly accepted by the sultan in June.

While the diplomats were wrangling at Algeciras, Morocco, only thirty miles away, was in a state of chaos. The weakness of the sultan’s rule was illustrated by Raisuli’s capture of the British soldier of fortune, Caïd Sir Harry Maclean, instructor-general of the Moorish army, who, after seven months in captivity, was ransomed by the British government for twenty thousand pounds. The activities of the bandit chieftain, who had long subjected the northern districts of the empire to a reign of terror, were brought to an end in 1906, however, by a Franco-Spanish naval demonstration off Tangier. The murder of a French physician at Marrákesh in 1907 provoked prompt retaliation by the French, who occupied the frontier town of Oujda. In July of the same year the Shawia tribesmen attacked the European laborers who were employed in improving the harbor-works of Casablanca and killed nine of them, whereupon French gunboats bombarded the town, and it was occupied by French troops, though thousands of townspeople were killed or wounded before order could be restored. The vigorous action of France at Casablanca fanned into flame the smoldering fanaticism and resentment of the tribes, and for the next year or so the French were engaged in constant fighting along the border.

While thus engaged on the eastern frontier and the Atlantic seaboard, France had been giving financial and moral support to Abd-el-Aziz, whose grasp on the Shereefian umbrella was threatened by his brother, Mulai Hafid, who had escaped from prison. Because of his acquiescence to the French demands and his failure to offer armed resistance to the foreign invaders, Abd-el-Aziz’s influence with his people had been steadily waning, and shortly after the bombardment of Casablanca the ulema of Marrákesh declared him deposed and Mulai Hafid sultan. There ensued a year of desultory fighting between the armies of the two brothers, but in August, 1908, while marching on Marrákesh, which was the hotbed of the rebellion, Abd-el-Aziz was defeated and fled for his life, taking refuge within the French lines. He talked vaguely of renewing the struggle, but ended by accepting a pension from his brother and comfortable exile in Tangier, Mulai Hafid being generally accepted by the Moroccans as their new ruler.

His rule was scarcely stronger than that of his brother, however, as was shown by his inability to control the Berber tribesmen of the Riff, who in July, 1909, killed a number of European laborers in the vicinity of the Spanish fortress of Melilla, on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco. To vindicate her authority Spain sent across the straits an army of fifty thousand men, thereby embarking on a war which has cost her thousands of lives and millions of pesetas, has wrecked such military prestige as she possessed, and continues in sporadic fashion to this day.

Though powerless to enforce his will in the Riff, whose fierce Berber tribesmen have always regarded the Arab sultans of Morocco as interlopers and usurpers, Mulai Hafid did succeed in defeating the forces of his former partizan, Bou Hamara, who was now seeking the throne for himself, and in capturing that pretender, otherwise known as El Roghi. Atop of a camel, in an iron cage constructed for the purpose, so small that he was forced to assume a cramped position, Bou Hamara was exhibited in city after city like a wild beast—I was in Morocco at the time—and finally taken to Fez, where the fiendish tortures inflicted upon him and his fellow-rebels horrified even the natives and elicited vigorous protests from the representatives of the European powers.

By this time it had become obvious to every one that the intolerable conditions which existed in Morocco could not long continue. The country was in a state of anarchy. No European’s life was safe a dozen miles in from the seaboard. The sultan’s feeble authority was mocked north, south, east, and west, and a large force of rebellious tribesmen was mustering in the hills to sweep down upon the capital city. France’s ambiguous position in Morocco had by now become unendurable. French citizens were being attacked and murdered; the Algerian frontier was constantly being threatened; and a final outburst of affronts and outrages brought the republic’s patience to an end. In Morocco France was confronted by much the same problem which we were called upon to solve four years later in Mexico, and to restore order she invaded the one just as we invaded the other. But with this difference: France coveted the country beyond the Mulwiya and intended to keep it; we did not covet and had not the slightest intention of retaining a foot of soil below the Rio Grande.

A French force under General Lyautey, who was destined to become resident-general in Morocco and a marshal of France, advanced on Fez; and on March 30, 1912, in the throne-room of the imperial palace of Bou Djeloud, surrounded by his white-robed, white-hooded ministers of state and faced by a little group of French officials and army officers in brilliant uniforms ablaze with decorations, Mulai Hafid, with sorrow and reluctance, wrote his sprawling Arabic signature from right to left across the bottom of the parchment which the French minister tendered him.

“Inshallah! It is God’s will,” the sultan sighed resignedly as he laid down the pen.

By signing that treaty Mulai Hafid brought to an end the independence which Morocco had misused for eleven hundred years and gave to France an empire.

(A curious circumstance, is it not, that republican France, whose motto is Liberté, égalité, fraternité, should have become the most imperialistic of European nations? In a space of little more than ninety years she has extinguished the independence, and in some cases exiled the rulers, of Algeria, Cambodia, Tunisia, Annam, Dahomey, Madagascar, and Morocco. In every case, it is true, French rule has brought material benefits to the natives, but as an English statesman—I think it was Campbell-Bannerman—pithily remarked, “Most peoples prefer to be self-governed rather than well governed.”)

The ink on the Treaty of Fez was scarcely dry when the besieging tribesmen burst into the city and precipitated a massacre which cost three hundred lives, the murdered including more than three score Europeans. The fighting was fiercest in the narrow streets of the old city, where the French military mission and a company of Senegalese tirailleurs were beleaguered for some days by the tribesmen. After a desperate resistance—which is commemorated by a marble plaque set in the wall of the building—and after half of the tirailleurs were dead, the survivors were relieved by a force under Colonel Gouraud, now a general of division and military governor of Paris, who commanded the advance-guard of General Lyautey’s column. While Fez was being subdued another French force under General Alix crossed the Mulwiya and prepared to attack Taza, the stronghold commanding the pass which forms the gateway to eastern Morocco.

By this time the authority of Mulai Hafid had reached the vanishing-point, for his acceptance of the French protectorate had convinced his subjects that he had sold his country to the foreigners. The only course open to him was abdication, and he took it, being consoled for the loss of his throne with a lump sum of four hundred thousand francs and an annual pension of nearly as much more. In August, 1912, he stepped from the pages of Moorish history to disappear into the limbo to which so many other native rulers who had flouted the power of France had succeeded him, being succeeded by his brother, Mulai Yusef, the present sultan, an amiable and indolent gentleman of middle age who takes care to conduct himself as a well trained puppet should. From his mouth issue the suave words put into it by the resident-general of France, and he makes the proper gestures of friendship when the latter pulls the strings; but what he is thinking deep down in his Moorish heart is quite another question.

Under the direction of General Lyautey the systematic pacification of Morocco was vigorously undertaken. In the autumn of 1912 the harkas of El Hiba were smashed by the French, and the sultan’s standard—a green triangle on a scarlet ground—was raised over Marrákesh, the southern capital. Eighteen months later two French columns, one advancing eastward from Fez, the other westward from Oujda, effected a junction at Taza, thereby rendering secure for road and railway traffic the only practicable gateway between Algeria and northeastern Morocco. But the outbreak of the Great War in August, 1914, abruptly halted the ambitious plans of Lyautey, who was summoned post-haste to Paris to take the portfolio of minister of war. At the same time he received orders from the home government virtually to strip Morocco of European troops, every bayonet that could be mustered being desperately needed to protect the motherland.

To most observers it appeared inevitable that the protectorate must collapse in ruin, and that Morocco, evacuated by the French garrisons, would relapse into anarchy and barbarism. But, before he left for Paris, Lyautey summoned the Grand Caïds—the great native chieftains who are still all-powerful in the south—to Rabat. The precise terms of the bargain which he struck with them may only be surmised, but certain it is that he did not wave the tricolor and appeal to them on grounds of sentiment and patriotism, for most of them detested the French as invaders of their country and dogs of unbelievers. The shrewd old soldier-statesman, who understood the complex Moorish character as have few Europeans, realized that the way to reach the hearts of these men was through an appeal to their cupidity, by promise of power and wealth, for your Moroccan always has an eye out for the main chance. I imagine that he laid all his cards upon the table, for he is that sort of a man, admitting to his visitors quite frankly that the bulk of the French troops were to be withdrawn from the country, leaving the door wide open for a successful rising.

“If Germany should win this war,” I can picture him as saying, “nothing is more certain than that the Germans will annex Morocco; and their form of government will not be the benevolent protectorate which we French have given you, either. Ma foi, non! They will rule you with the iron hand, as they have ruled the natives of Togoland and the Cameroons, of East and Southwest Africa. They will enforce their ideas of discipline by wholesale seizures of property, by fines and floggings and hangings, as is the German fashion, until you, my brothers, will wish that Yazid the Bloodthirsty was back on the throne again. The best way for you to avert such a calamity, which could end only in your own loss of wealth and power, is to aid France instead of opposing her. If, with your own harkas, you will maintain law and order throughout the empire during the continuance of the war in Europe, protecting foreigners and upholding the authority of the sultan, I, speaking in the name of my government will pledge you that the broad powers you have hitherto enjoyed in your own territories shall not only be respected and increased, but that so far as gratitude can be expressed in terms of gold, your loyalty to France shall be lavishly rewarded. I have spoken.”

This proposal the great feudal chieftains accepted, and they faithfully kept their pledges, for throughout the four years of the great conflict beyond the Mediterranean law and order were maintained in Morocco by the Moroccans themselves, and this despite repeated attempts of German emissaries to instigate revolts and otherwise foment trouble. Not only this, but two divisions of tirailleurs were recruited in Morocco and sent to the battle-fields of Europe, where they were brigaded with American troops under General Daugan, and whence they returned covered with glory and wearing two fourragères—the only troops to win such distinction in the French army.

When, in the summer of 1917, Lyautey returned to Morocco bearing the baton of a marshal, he found the country, generally speaking, at peace, though the authority of France was still very shadowy in certain remote and troublesome districts beyond the Atlas. That this state of tranquillity was due to the lavish subsidizing of the native caïds and pashas, rather than to any deep affection they had for France, or any overpowering desire for a continuance of French rule, in no wise detracts from the great credit due to Marshal Lyautey, who, by his statesmanship, breadth of vision, sincerity, and knowledge of native character, held an empire for his country.

In the old, bad days, before the white helmets came, the form of government of the Empire of Morocco was an absolute despotism, unrestricted by any laws, civil or religious, the sultan—who is known to his subjects by the title of Emir-el-Mumenin, Prince of True Believers—being chief of the state as well as head of the church. As spiritual ruler, the sultan stands quite alone, his authority not being limited, as in most other Moslem countries, by the ulema—that is, the interpreters of the Koranic law—under a sheikh-ul-Islam. Since the establishment of the French protectorate, however, the sultan is required to follow in all matters the advice of the French resident-general, whose seat is at Rabat. In deference to native susceptibilities, le gouvernement chérifien remains, in form at least, substantially untouched, though the two most important portfolios are held by Frenchmen, the French resident-general being also Moroccan minister of foreign affairs, while the officer commanding the French troops in Morocco is likewise the Shereefian minister of war. In addition to the grand vizier, who also holds the portfolio of minister of the interior, the native members of the government include the ministers of justice, crown lands, instruction, religious foundations, and the president of the Shereefian High Court. These deal with the resident-general through the medium provided by the Bureau of Native Affairs, which consists of a large number of under-secretaries and technical advisers—financial, legal, agricultural, sanitary, and the like—all of whom are French. The final appeal in all matters relating to Morocco is not to the Ministry of the Colonies in Paris, as might be supposed, nor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but to the Ministry of War, for the administration of the protectorate remains wholly in the hands of the military. It is generally assumed, however, that the coming of M. Théodore Steeg, who became resident-general of Morocco in 1925 upon the retirement of Marshal Lyautey, means that military control will be replaced as soon as possible by civil control such as the former represented while governor-general of Algeria, whose affairs he directed with conspicuous success.

To save the face of the Moroccans, who are a proud, high-spirited people, the French have taken great pains to maintain the polite fiction that Morocco is still a sovereign state by official reference to it on all occasions as “the Shereefian Empire”; by requiring that all laws and decrees shall receive the approval of the sultan, who is their own passive instrument; by surrounding him with the pomp and circumstance which Oriental peoples expect of their rulers; and by permitting him to maintain a miniature, highly picturesque, and quite innocuous military establishment in the form of the famous Black Guard, or, as it is better known, the Garde Chérifienne. The solicitude displayed in safeguarding the sultan’s prestige, the constant catering by the French, in superficial matters at least, to native pride, serve to illustrate France’s administrative policy in Morocco, which is one of control as opposed to command, of direction instead of repression, of the velvet glove rather than the iron hand. The truth of the matter is that France occupies a highly delicate position in Morocco; she is seated on a volcano which, though quiescent, is not extinct; and in order to avoid stirring it into action she realizes that she must pick her steps with the utmost care.

In view of the disturbed conditions which still exist in certain districts, the country is at present divided into three administrative zones. In the first, military control has ceased altogether and the civil administration has been firmly established; in the second, which is in a somewhat less advanced state, the civil and military authorities work together; while in the third, which is closed to travelers and colonists, active military operations are still in progress and the army is in full control.

The purely domestic affairs of the country are under the Ministry of the Interior, nominally headed by a vizier, whose orders are executed among the tribes by caïds and in the cities by pashas. Criminal cases are now adjudicated in the French courts, which have set the natives an example of uprightness and justice undreamed of by them before; but civil actions are tried by native tribunals, a pasha sitting in judgment when the cases are of a secular nature, a cadi when religious questions are involved. The Jews have their own rabbinical tribunals, immune from Moslem interference; and the Berber hill tribes, with whose domestic affairs the French and native authorities alike wisely refrain from meddling, administer justice according to their own barbaric ideas and the customs of their fathers.

Finally there is a corps of controleurs civils whose duty it is to report on the condition of the country as a whole, on the crops, the roads, public health, and municipal administration, on the temper of the natives, the character and conduct of native officials. But the duties of the controllers go still further, for they are expected to educate and guide the native functionaries, to take a lively interest in agriculture and sanitation, to protect the peasantry from injustice and oppression, and to propose needed improvements and reforms. These French controllers are the eyes and ears of the Ministry of the Interior; they form what is in effect a bureau of civil intelligence, which keeps the central Maghzen constantly informed as to all that is being thought, said, and done in the districts under civil control, just as the officers of the army intelligence keep the general staff conversant with conditions in the regions under military administration.

It should be clearly understood, however, that the control of the southern districts of the empire remains almost exclusively in the hands of the Grand Caïds, those great feudal chieftains who even in the days of Morocco’s independence never gave to the sultans more than a perfunctory allegiance and who continue to exercise over their own half-savage peoples almost as harsh and tyrannical powers as they did in the worst days of the ancien régime. Such are El Glaoui, the khalifa of Marrákesh, and his two powerful colleagues, Mtouggui and Goundafi, overlords of the High Atlas and the Sus. In theory they are the khalifas, or viceroys, of the sultan, and are supposed to carry out his orders, but in reality they are virtually independent rulers, who regard the puppet-ruler at Rabat with a contempt which they take little pains to conceal and who treat on terms of perfect equality with the French. Their wealth is believed to be enormous; in their own territories their rule is absolute, and their decrees are ruthlessly carried out, for they exercise over their peoples the high justice, the middle, and the low. They have splendid palaces in the cities, filled with concubines, slaves, and guards; and in the inaccessible fastnesses of the High Atlas they have enormous fortress-castles, called kasbahs, where they dwell in a rude feudal grandeur reminiscent of medieval Europe. Undisputed lords of the southern marches, they make and administer their own laws, collect their own taxes, and maintain their own military establishments, it being said that between them they can place in the field an army of fifty thousand well armed fighting-men. Though on terms of amity with the French, who have bought their friendship with enormous subsidies, the Grand Caïds hold the whole Southland in their hands—and are perfectly aware of their power.

The negotiations between France and Spain as to their respective rights in Morocco came to an end in the Franco-Spanish Treaty of Madrid, signed in November, 1912. In this France acknowledged the right of Spain to certain spheres of influence in Morocco, the extent of which was clearly defined. The north Spanish zone, which is the only one of any importance, political or commercial, consists of a narrow strip of territory, about two hundred miles in length, with an average breadth of sixty miles, and having an area equivalent to that of the State of New Jersey. It occupies virtually the entire Mediterranean coast of Morocco and a portion of its Atlantic seaboard, stretching from the town of Alcázar (Al Kasar) on the west almost to the Algerian border. Forming the backbone of this peculiarly desolate and savage region, which is peopled by highly warlike tribes of Berber mountaineers, is a range of lofty mountains known as the Riff, which have been aptly described as Morocco’s balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. The zone is under the control of a Spanish high commissioner, being administered—mostly in theory, however—by a khalifa, or shereefian viceroy, chosen by the sultan from a choice of two candidates presented by the government at Madrid.

It was further agreed that, by reason of its immensely important strategic position on the Straits of Gibraltar, the city of Tangier and its immediate hinterland, consisting of 140 square miles, should be internationalized and its permanent neutrality guaranteed by Great Britain, France, and Spain. Its administration is carried on, accordingly, by two bodies: a committee of control and an international legislative assembly. The former consists of the eight consuls-general representing the powers, including the United States, which signed the Act of Algeciras; the latter of twenty-six members—four French, four Spanish, three British, and fifteen natives. The convention forbids the construction of fortifications of any sort, and the city is well policed by an international gendarmerie, but foreigners are subject only to their respective consuls-general, for the powers have refused to abandon their ancient extraterritorial rights.

Far down the Atlantic coast of Morocco is another Spanish zone, the little enclave of Ifni, with a population of some twenty thousand native farmers and fishermen and an area no larger than that of Rhode Island. Though ceded to Spain by Morocco in 1860, its occupation has been purely nominal, the small Spanish garrison having been exterminated in 1925 by tribesmen from the hinterland.

By the Franco-Spanish agreement of 1912 the frontiers of Ifni were extended southward along the Moorish coast to the River Dra’a, where they join up with those of the large Spanish territory of Rio de Oro, which has an area of 109,000 square miles but whose utter worthlessness is emphasized by the paucity of its population, which numbers less than five hundred souls. Rio de Oro, which is under the governorship of the Canary Islands but is administered by a sub-governor residing at Villa Cisneros, consists of three zones: the colony proper; the protectorate; and the occupied territory, whose northern boundary is the Dra’a, which likewise forms the southern boundary of Morocco, so that Rio de Oro is not within the confines of the Shereefian Empire.