Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1900-05-19
THE FRENCH IN MOROCCO.
Resent Events Show That II +. rhetr
Design to Obtain Supreme
influence

While most Englishmen' are con-
centrating their attention upon events
in South Africa there are SIGNS that
the northwest corner of the mighty
continent will be the point of at
traction in the very near future.
News has reached London that the
French had seized Ain Salah, from
which down to the present the Tu-
aregs, a Berber tribe, have waged war
with all and sundry when occasion has
offered. Ain Salah is the capital of
the GASES of the Touat district. it's
wild inhabitants pay no tribute to
the sultan, nor does his writ run in
their territory, but while he has some
claim to the country France has none,
says the Chicago Chronicle.
France is steadily encroaching upon
Morocco, working all ways at once.
From Oran and Tlemcen, in Algeria,
the rail runs to Ain Sefra, and thence
France could pour an army into Fee,
which is within comparatively easy
reach.
The shereefs Of the holy city of
Wazzan, who claim descent from the
prophet and have a very great fol-
lowing in Morocco, are under French
protection. Without an order from
the French consul it is very difficult
for an Englishman to visit Wazzan.
France has extended her protection
among the most turbulent of the Mo-
roccan fighting tribes. She recruits
her Algerian army from among them,
and in return for military service on
the frontier gives protection to them
and to their families. The Riff Arabs,
who are VIGOROUSLY valiant and care
less, have some 80 per cent. of their
fighting men under the care of France
in return for an average term of one
years service. In connection with this
branch of French enterprise there is
a French military mission to the
shereefian court. Within the last 18
months France has given another I'M
mistakable proof of her intention to
extend her influence in the ill-gov-
erned country of Muley Abdul Aziz.
Through her representatives and,
some say, at her expense a Russian
embassy has been established at Tan
gier, but so far as the embassy can
discover there is but one Russian SUBJ
ject in Tangier.
A crisis is inevitable in Morocco.
The government is going from bad to
worse; corruption indescribable pre-
walls everywhere; justice is bought
and sold; weak tribes are destroyed
without mercy, strong ones are bribed
as we in old times bribed the Danes;
you can say nothing worse to a man
than "May Allah send the sultan to
you"-i. e., may you be robbed of all
you have and cast into prison, there
to rot. The sultan is not yet a man,
and he has a small intellect endow-
ment; the strong man, Abu Hamed,
may be stricken down at any moment.
Rebellion, famine and misery untold
and unimagined stalk hand in hand
through a land that yields in point of
agricultural and mineral possibilities
to no part of Africa.
The end may come tomorrow, it
can be no more than a few years dis
tant. France is prepared, and,
though seizure of Morocco by any
any power would cause such a war
as may not be contemplated without
horror, it must not be imagined that
all the French preparations, involving
an endless expenditure of time and
labor, have been undertaken for
nothing.