Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎483v] (91/238)

304 Morocco : the Sultan and the Bashadours.
the aspect of an industrial centre, with a population of
several thousand foreign operatives and factory An East India Company trading post. hands,
amongst them a number of militant anarchists from Bar
celona and other Spanish towns. It is especially fortunate,
under these circumstances, that the Sultan, in accordance
with the advice of his European counsellors, has organized
a newly-equipped local force of 500 men at Tangier, and,
acting probably under suggestions from the same quarter,
Hadj Mohammed el Torres, the Sultan’s Delegate Minister
of Foreign Affairs at Tangier, has applied to the Foreign
representatives to know, in case of disorders arising from
their industrial troubles, whether he is authorized to use
force.
The answer was to the effect that, in case of refusal on
the part of the rioters to submit to arrest, the Moorish
officers and their troops were authorized to employ armed
force—in other words, to fire on the rioters. Whether the
Moorish officers, even on the strength of such assurances,
would take the risk of resorting to such extreme measures,
or whether their men would, on receiving the order, fire on
Europeans, remains to be seen.
In the meantime the various legations continued their
movement towards Rabat, whither the German Minister,
Baron Von Mentzingen, proceeded on board the North
German Lloyd passenger steamer IVittekind in order to
confer upon the Sultan the Order of the Red Eagle.
Of all these Embassies, the French, which was the last
to leave Tangier, was, perhaps, the only one likely to cause
the Shereefian Government any anxiety.
I hat France will not lack a pretext for breaking with
Morocco, should she at any time desire it, is apparent from
the assassination of two officers of the French Foreign
Legion, near the town of Duveyrier, in Southern Algeria,
Captain Gratian and Captain Cressin, alleged to have been
killed by men of the Beni S’mir, a Moorish Kabyle, an
incident reported from Oran, January 21, only a few days
before the French Minister, Mens. Saint Reni de Taillander,
embarked upon the battleship Le Charlemagne for Rabat.