Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎480r] (84/238)

Morocco: the Sultan and the Bashadours. 297
the necessity for the employment of experts, not merely to
carry out administrative experiments of so novel a character,
especially for such an “ old-bottle ” country as Morocco, one
where the new wine must be poured into the ancient re
ceptacles with more than usual care, in order to avoid a
serious catastrophe to the antique skin with which the
would-be reformer is condemned to deal, but experts—and
who says “ experts,” knows that this “ subject must of
necessity be qualified by the adjective “ foreign,’ since,
among the natives of this degenerate land, no experts, save
in the matter of mendacity, are to be found—but experts,
as has been said, must be employed when the afore
mentioned public works are concerned, both engineers and,
more especially, financial experts, without whom it would
be impossible to obtain the large sums that are required
sums larger than either the Shereefian Treasury or the
Customs of the various coast towns can supply, since,
unfortunately, both Menebhi, during his recent ambassa
dorial excursions, and his Imperial master himself, have
been spending more freely of late upon toys of various
descriptions than has been quite prudent—toys ranging in
importance from jewels for the ladies of the harem to
motor-cars, and from “ bikes for practice in the Sultan s
private grounds to so costly a plaything as a hundred
kilometres of rails, with a neat selection of rolling-stock
not for commercial purposes, but, like the bicycles, merely
for private amusement—whilst for higher flights a balloon
figures in the list of orders.
In this emergency money must be found, and it may
therefore be assumed that the modest announcement
vouchsafed to the press, “ that England and Morocco have
agreed upon a modus vivendi, means, in reality, that a
loan in one shape or another has been, or will shortly be,
negotiated ; indeed, a rumour is current among the popu
lace that England is about to assume a virtual protectorate
over Morocco! In fact, a protectorate appears, not only
to the natives, but to many foreign observers as well, the