Ten to One in Morocco

Last week the plump sausage-shaped area defended by Abd-el-Krim was severely French-fried on its convex southern exposure. Early in the week French confidence and enthusiasm, in both Paris and Morocco, reached extraordinary heights.

It was rumored that Maréchal Pétain, copying the strategy employed by Foch in his final drive against the Germans in 1918, had been concentrating his forces first at one point and then at another, and was now about to consolidate the points of vantage in a final drive upon the heights of Bribane, which would sweep on until Abd-el-Krim surrendered.

As events transpired it became evident that Maréchal Pétain did indeed mean business by his drive upon Bribane. Tanks advanced, smashing through frail adobe huts like mastodons treading upon eggshells. French 75’s spotted the heights, and sent fragments of the rocky butte, deadly as shrapnel, splintering among the Moorish tribesmen. The whole mountain, which is topped by the stronghold village of Bribane, was enveloped by the smoke of burning crops and villages and the fumes of exploding shells. Armored cars and cavalry advanced up the easier slopes, while battalion after battalion of infantry stormed the steep western salient like a rising tide, preceded by a deadly, frothing foam of shrapnel.

Despatches indicated that the French advance outnumbered the Riffian defenders by ten to one. Nevertheless, the almost fanatically dauntless tribesmen, certain of Paradise if they die in battle, weathered the terrific preliminary barrage, attacked the infantry at close quarters with deadly curved knives, and finally had to be tracked, bayonetted and bludgeoned into submission. Abd-el-Krim, never backward at war, received a shrapnel wound in the leg while directing the defense of Bribane; was rushed by loyal tribesmen to a safe distance.

French officers, surveying the heights which they had so dearly won, discovered the chief immediate spoils to be a vast store of squawking chickens abandoned by the Riffians. Famished after their uphill fight, they fell to and swallowed many a pinfeather in their eagerness.

Results were two: 1) From El Brisbane, Maréchal Pétain commands stragetically a large territory, but any great advance, in view of the desperate resistance of the Riffians, will be extremely difficult, because the rainy season will very shortly open and transform the salient into a quagmire over which French war paraphernalia cannot be dragged; 2) politically the victory is of some importance because it has led to the surrender of the Beni Urriaguet tribe, whose territory the French now dominate.

It is regarded as certain that Maréchal Pétain will strengthen his present formidable line into, an impregnable winter position rather than attempt to gain an immediate victory. In Paris talk of Foch and 1918 has subsided.