Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎481r] (86/238)

Morocco: the Sultan and the Bashaciours. 299
monstrous supposition, since all Morocco, or even ten times
all Morocco, would not compensate even the victor in such
an insane struggle for the tremendous losses entailed by a
war between these two great Powers. Yet—and this is the
never-to-be-forgotten point—nations are too apt to lose
their head and be carried away by purely sentimental
grievances ; and it must be remembered that the scheme
of a French united North African Empire, stretching from
the confines of Tripoli to the Atlantic Ocean, and rounded
off to the south-west by the French possessions of Senegal,
to which France is persistently devoting the most strenuous
efforts, is a Gallic ideal which dominates all Frenchmen
with an intensity quite equal to the counter-balancing
English conception of an uninterrupted right of way for
England from Alexandria to Cape I own.
There is no use in shutting one’s eyes to our neighbour s
point of view. The intelligent statesman will, indeed, be
careful to avoid so glaring a fault. It is to be hoped,
therefore, that those who direct the policy of England
where Morocco is concerned, may remember that the
attempt to launch the latter country successfully upon the
road to reform without providing against an open or
masked attack by France, her nearest and most powerful
neighbour, would be to act with little less than criminal
cruelty towards Morocco, since the Sultan, left to himself,
would be powerless to repel French aggression, in spite of
the force of Moorish troops supposed to be so carefully
«
drilled by Kaid Maclean.
This threat of the French occupation of Tafilelt could be
but too easily realized, especially when the railway, for
which even now material is being hurried forward, shall
have been completed to Figuig. Moreover, such an occu
pation once effected, might of itself and alone prove fatal to
the Filali dynasty in Morocco ; for it is from 1 afilelt that
the ancestors of Abd-el-Aziz issued forth to conquer the
kingdoms of Fez, of Morocco, of Sus, and of Draa, all of
which provinces are now incorporated in the Aiyala