Foreign News: Moroccan Affairs

Last week the sheetlets of Madrid exploded into scareheads. “SPANIARDS CAPTURE AJDIR, CAPITAL OF ABD-EL-KRIM,” they trumpeted. To the heads of Spanish patriots rushed a hot, sweet surge of triumph.

At a window of his palace appeared King Alfonso, to receive a frenzied ovation from his people. The roars of shirtless .peons and the cheers of hidalgos forgetful of their dignity drowned his Majesty’s words in praise of General Primo de Rivera, “the Conqueror of Ajdir.”

Flushed with triumph, Alfonso declared privately: “Morocco is the keystone to the prestige of the white race and of the Christian civilization in North Africa …. Spain’s war is not merely ‘a little African war, as so many people seem to think …. Its consequences can be world-wide in effect!”

Astute observers then went quietly away and reflected that Spain, after having poured out millions of pesetas during a desultory struggle with 25,000 Riffians which has lasted seven years, is now celebrating the capture of an insignificant village, the so-called capital of Riff-land. Belgians, Serbians and Rumanians, they pointed out, found it quite possible to do a deal of heavy fighting after Brussels, Belgrade and Bucharest had fallen to the Central Powers. Abd-el-Krim is still at large. And the Spanish attack of last week, crowned by the fall of his “capital” though it be, represents an actual advancement of the Spanish front by a scant four miles.

Concurrently with Spain’s spectacular nibbling at the Riff from the north, the French forces under Marshal Petain made an advance, near Kifane on the southern war front, into virgin sloughs of Riffland never before occupied by Europeans. It was announced that last week’s French offensive had gained all its objectives in record time. Then French officers discovered that their airmen, who had hastily made for them the only available maps, had mapped too optimistically. The French lines, when exactly plotted, proved to be a couple of miles short of the advance that had been claimed. A few piles of scattered dung and slots, which had been “captured” and announced to be “Aknout,’ was discovered to be something and somewhere else. None the less, the recent French advance topped heights which form the watershed of Morocco. From now on they and the torrential rains of autumn will be moving down toward the sea. Despatches indicate that authoritative mappings placed the French and Spanish forces but 25 miles apart.

Last week Sidi Muhammad, brother of the indomitable Abd-el-Krim, called for foreign intervention in Morocco affairs. Said he: “To continue war means ruin, although we can stand another year at this rate … Is there nobody—America, England or Italy—who is ready to speak for peace?”

The U. S. airmen, Capt. L. C. Holden of New York and Dr. V. Sparks of Indianapolis, both members of the “Sheriflan Escadrille” (TIME, Oct. 5), were ambushed by Riffians and very nearly killed when they left their planes one day last week and ventured on a little pedestrian fighting.

Colonel Nelson Margetts, U. S. A., attached to the secret Intelligence Service of the U. S. General Staff, j became last week nominally a “war correspondent,” in order to become actually an “American observer” of the Riff war. No other foreign power has such an observer in Morocco at present.