Abdelkrim Khattabi: verslag Times magazine in de jaren 20

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In the 1920s, Abd el Krim was a glamorous name on the world's front pages. A smallish, dark-skinned man with gentle eyes and a fringelike beard, he led his Riff tribesmen in the last romantic war of this century. In the U.S., the vision of Krim's snow-white turban, flowing djella-bah and spirited Arabian steed was put to music by Sigmund Romberg in Broadway's The Desert Song. In North Africa, his tenacious struggle against the armies of France and Spain sent a throb of nationalism through the Arab world.

Closed Cave. Born in the Riff mountains of northern Morocco, educated at a Spanish school in Melilla, a quiet employee of the Spanish Moroccan administration until he was 38, Krim became a rebel when the Spanish broke the peace with the Riff tibesmen by seizing the holy city of Xauen. In the subsequent fighting, Krim was captured and his father killed. Escaping from the Spanish prison in Melilla, Krim broke his leg and ever after walked with a pronounced limp. Gaining the safety of the mountains, he rallied the Riffs for a jihad against Spain and in 1921 won an extraordinary victory at Anoual, capturing a Spanish general and 20,000 soldiersâ€"most of whom were butchered on the spot. In the next four years, Krim repeatedly whipped the Spaniards and nearly drove them into the sea. When Krim declared the independence of the Riff and named himself sultan, Spain set up a puppet ruler of its own, the redoubtable Moroccan bandit Raisuli.* Krim promptly scattered another Spanish army, seized Raisuli and shut him up in a cave with his harem until he died.

Arrogant in victory, Krim next challenged the French and was finally overwhelmed by a combined Franco-Spanish army of 300,000 men led by Marshal Henri Petain, which blasted his mountain strongholds with artillery and bombs until Krim at last surrendered in May 1926. The Spanish army, one of whose officers was Generalissimo Francisco Franco, wanted Krim executed, but the French more gallantly shipped him off to exile on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean.

There, consoled by his two favorite wives and a monthly pension of $1,500, Krim languished for 21 years. In 1947 France relented and let Krim board a ship for the Riviera, where he would be under house arrest. The 65-year-old rebel jumped ship as it was passing through the Suez Canal, and was granted political asylum in Egypt.

Spurned Fortune. In Cairo, under Nasser's protection, Krim worked with other North African exiles for the independence of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. But he was disgusted by the terms on which freedom was won; he claimed they were too favorable to France. His Francophobia deepened with the years, and in 1957 he warned the U.S. against relying on France to defend Europe, adding querulously: "I don't know why the world doesn't catch on to those Frenchâ€"they're stupid, weak, stubborn and selfish." After Morocco won its independence. King Mohammed V tried to placate the old exile and persuade him to return home. He sent a donation of $14,000, but Krim refused the money and threw away the royal letter because it addressed him as a plain subject, not a prince.

In recent years, Abd el Krim has been confined to his home in a Cairo suburb, suffering from rheumatism, failing sight and heart disease, and listening grumpily to news broadcasts of a new world he disapproved of. Last week, at 81, the Lion of Morocco and survivor of 200 battles died quietly in bed of a heart attack, leaving behind one widow, eleven children, and a homeland saddened because his bones were laid to rest in a graveyard in alien Egypt.


* Who years earlier had earned his own footnote in history. He kidnaped a U.S. citizen named Perdicaris in May 1904 and held him for ransom, thus touching off President Theodore Roosevelt's ringing ultimatum a month later to the Sultan of Morocco: "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!"



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In the more carefree days of the '20s, when foreign quarrels were considered remote and romantic, Abd el Krim, the Rif fighter, was one of the glamorous newspaper heroes of the day. He is now a testy and unshaven old man of 76, withering away in Cairo exile, but last week he was back in the news.

For centuries, on the barren brown mountains that were once a part of Spanish Morocco, the Riffs have lived, a sturdy Berber breed whose way of life was war. Feuding and fighting among themselves, they were seldom united; but Abd el Krim in the 1920s managed to bring them together long enough to drive out the Spaniards. Only after Paris dispatched Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain to lead 160,000 French troops against him was Abd el Krim defeated in 1926. Taken prisoner, he escaped to Cairo, where since 1947 he has continued to rant, first against the French, and, since Morocco's independence, against King Mohammed V.

Hilltop Casbah. A couple of months ago the Riffs of Morocco began to complain openly against the King's government in Rabat. They resent the city-bred administrators that Rabat has sent to govern them, claim that non-French-speaking Moroccans have been frozen out, and that government police have used arbitrary methods, including "torture that even the French could not devise." Six weeks ago an organization called the Rif Liberation and Liquidation Movement suddenly came to light, patterned after the hierarchy of the Algerian rebels across the border.

Today the Rif mountains have become a sort of giant casbah, ruled by an underground that is becoming each day more highly organized. Last week TIME Correspondent Stanley Karnow received an anonymous phone call inviting him to visit their camp. A clandestine meeting with Riff leaders in Rabat was followed by a scribbled note of introduction in Arabic; he was led into the hills, first by car and then by mule, handed on from guide to guide. Rocks and bushes along the roads and paths turned out to be camouflaged tribesmen. Time after time he and his guides were stopped for identification, though recognized ("We're training them carefully," it was explained). Even government troops are working secretly for the movement.

"We Will Act." Though Abd el Krim remains the symbol, the real leaders of the movement are a far cry from the traditional chiefs of oldtime feuding days, reported Karnow. They have neither telephone nor telegraph, but they keep in touch through an elaborate network of signal fires and scores of runners who can relay a letter from 250 miles away within two days. One typical leader is a Madrid-educated lawyer known only as Sadek, who has stumped the region, whipping up the tribesmen with fiery speeches from balcony and rooftop. The chief of the Riffs' "central region'' is 33-year-old Mohammed Salem A'Mezzian, who claims he sent the King a list of 18 demands but never got a reply. Of all his demands, he regards as the most important the return of Abd el Krim. "If the other 17 points are accepted and that one ignored," he warns, "we will act."

Just what sort of action is never specified. The Riffs pose as serious a threat to the King as the dissatisfaction of the Istiqlal Party radicals in the cities. Last week the King made a small but significant act of conciliation. At a brief ceremony in the town of Alhucemas, 42 farms, confiscated by the Spaniards in 1928, were formally restored to the family of Abd el Krim. In broadcasting the news, the official Moroccan radio for the first time referred to the exiled rebel by his old honored title of emir (chieftain).

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In the relaxed years 1921-26, newspapers with not much else to worry about worried about the Riff war. Abd el Krim and his tribesmen kept a lot of Spanish and French soldiers and foreign adventurers busy in the hills of Morocco until he was finally subdued, and the world turned to more menacing matters.


Last week the New York Time's peripatetic C. L. Sulzberger had coffee with Abd el Krim in Cairo. The 68-year-old chieftain was still belligerent. He predicted that 25 million North Africans would rise up against the "imperialists." Although he is against Communists, Abd el Krim said he would accept Russian aid.

In spite of Abd el Krim's blusterings, a major North African revolt was unlikely. The voice from the past was mainly a reminder of happier days when the word "war" called up romanticized pictures of the French Foreign Legion, rather than nuclear horrors.



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A party of travelers to the small French island of Reunion just west of the great island of Madagascar were received, last week, in a luxuriant and exotic garden by Mohammed ben Abd-el-Krim, deposed "Sultan" of what is now French Morocco.

When his guests exclaimed that the garden is as lovely as Eden must have been before the Fall, the deposed Sultan quipped: "It is the difference between our religions, perhaps. Not until after my Fall did I have time for gardening."

That Mohammed ben Abd-el-Krim was wise when he accepted the French offer of exile in a private Eden (TIME, Sept. 20, 1926) was again demonstrated last week when some of the deposed "Sultan's" still rebellious fellow tribesmen in Morocco were once more thoroughly bombed by French airmen.

The present reigning (not ruling) Sultan of Morocco, Sidi Mohammed, is a youth who obligingly acts as the puppet of

France. When he recently visited France his dignity was thought to require that he should do his shopping without mingling with the crowds in Paris shops. For this reason the great Parisian department stores, including Au Printemps, kept their entire staffs standing about for several hours after the usual closing time, in order that the Puppet Sultan might shop alone, except for the presence of a retinue of some 50 persons.



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At Fez, Capital of the French protectorate over Morocco, a French court martial sentenced to death last week a German who was perhaps the most striking Occidental in the Moroccan war between Abd-el-Krim and the French (TIME, May 11, 1925 to June 7, 1926.)

The condemned, Herr Josef Otto Klems, born in the Rhineland, later a French Lieutenant, finally Chief of Staff to Abd-el-Krim, asked last week that he be sent into life exile on Réunion Island, where Krim is now enduring that fate. The Court Martial replied that Herr Klems must suffer the fate of a deserter from the French army, ordered him shot.

Two years ago Josef Otto Klems, known to Moroccans as the Caid el-Hadj, told his extraordinary life story to a U. S. correspondent,* in part as follows:

"When I was 20, something happened: ... a Christian woman. She was a Christian woman in the sense that when she was tired of me, she went off with another man. No Arab woman would ever do that, unless she was sent away.

"[She had made me evade my German military service and take her to Paris. She left me when I was out of money.] So, I took service under the French in Morocco in 1912. . . . The French then did not care any more for Germans than they do now, but I was recommended as a German who had evaded his military service in Germany. ... By 1920 I was a lieutenant. I fought very loyally for the French. ... I risked my life for them thousands of times, but that meant nothing. Some of the officers could hardly keep from calling me 'Boche,' all because I was born in Germany. At last, at a little dinner in Fez, a certain French captain got drunk and called me a Boche. I knocked him down, and got out before the guards came to arrest me [and I deserted to the Moroccans].

"[At first I was treated as a captive and a slave.] One day a young French officerâ€"he was not more than 22â€"was captured. . . . He was buried alive up to the neck. The women brought a great bowl of thick brown honey and poured it over his head.

"I suppose I went mad when I saw how he would be tortured before he could die . . . long hours in the scorching sun . . . the insects . . . jackals eating his head. . . I grabbed a stick, and made for the grave. But in a moment ten or fifteen tribesmen had me down. [It was lucky I did not suffer the same fate as the French officer, who died two days later.]

"[Eventually] I was circumcised and made Mohammedan. ... I married the daughter of an old sherif, and became the recognized chief of my section of the tribe. She was a beautiful little creature of about 15, with great brown eyes and a Rosenknospe mouth. She was my first Arab wife. . . . Arab girls are always in love with the first white stranger they see. . . .

"I had kept my French uniform, and sometimes at night I would make my way across the hills to one of the French outposts while the officers were at dinner. . . . In my uniform I was able to make the rounds of the officers' quarters, collecting automatic revolvers, or anything else of value.

"It was my custom to scrawl on a piece of paper, 'El-Hadj Alemán,' (the German Pilgrim) and leave it prominently displayed. I must have done this 20 times.



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"When I burned down a French house, I made sure to put my name on the work: 'El-Hadj Alemán.' . . .

"I saved the lives of several Frenchmen at that time. ... I have no sentiment about that. . . . It seemed to me very foolish to kill, torture or castrate all the French captured. . . .

"At last the Sultan [Abd-el-Krim], gave me another wife, a mule and a house. . . . One of my wives, called Fat'ma, as half of all Arab women are, has a son, whom I have called Mohammed. . . . My son, I hope, . . . will never learn the evil ways of what you call civilization. . . . The only world fit for a man to live in is the Mohammedan world."

* Cf. AN AMERICAN AMONG THE RIVERâ€" Vincent Sheeanâ€"Century.



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News came last week that Abd-el-Krim, famed "Napoleon of Morocco," now exiled by his French captors (TIME, Sept. 20) upon Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean, a remote Elba, has turned for recreation to dictating his memoirs to a secretary who is also one of his guards.

Proud, always remote and exclusive, even from his own Moroccan people in the days of his "Sultanate," Abd-el-Krim is reported to hold scornfully aloof from the 172,000 inhabitants, mostly Creoles, of Réunion whose chief diversions are rum-swizzling and cinema-going.*



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Meagre despatches announced last week that Mohammed ben Abd-el-Krim, recently surrendered famed "Sultan" of the Riff (TIME, June 7), will be "exiled honorably but without favors or hardships on the island of Madagascar" by his Franco-Spanish conquerors.

Since the balmy isle in question which lies off the coast of Portuguese East Africa, would cover an area equivalent to that of an elipse passing through Manhattan, Des Moines and Richmond, the exact whereabouts of Krim's exile were but vaguely indicated



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Paunchy, shaggy-haired Premier Briand of France met taut-waisted, sleek Dictator-Premier Primo de Rivera of Spain at the Quai d' Orsay last week.

Each took a pen, dipped, scratched. By their dipping and scratching they validated in perpetuity a Franco-Spanish pact exiling Abd-el-Krim, famed captured Sultan of the Riff (TIME, June 7), to the island of Réunion or Bourbon.

Many a Spaniard was vexed at Dictator Primo's exalted connivance at providing Abd-el-Krim with opulent support for life on a balmy isle 45 miles long, 32 wide and only 380 miles off the coast of Madagascar. At Madrid the slogan, "Hamstring Abd-el-Krim!" has long attained a popularity rivaling the no-longer-touted, "Hang the Kaiser!"

Frenchmen consider that peace with Krim was cheap at the price, promised him comfortable support in his exile.



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Franco-Spanish troops, continuing their recent offensive against Abd-El-Krim from the South and East (TIME, May 17 et seq.), were astonished to discover one morning last week that the enemy had vanished in the night, that white flags were aflutter where Riffian machine guns popped when darkness fell. After conducting for five years one of the most stubborn "native revolts" of the present century against the encroachment of "civilized powers," Abd-El-Krim apparently decided last week that his jig was upâ€"sued for peace, surrendered unconditionally.

Krim's action was the more surprising because at the recent Oujda Peace Conference (TIME, May 10) his representatives haughtily refused comparatively liberal Franco-Spanish terms; and though the Riffi had been steadily pushed back since then, Krim himself was expected to hold out with his immediate followers for some time to come. The French Resident General in Morocco, M. Jules Steeg, therefore received with the greatest suspicion last week a message from Krim suing for immediate peace. Not until some 300 French and Spanish prisoners had been freed by the Riffi as an earnest of good faith, did the French seriously prepare to receive the surrender of Krim in person. Then a rumor spread that a majority of his adherents, frightened by the Franco-Spanish advance, had shown signs of turning upon their leader; had driven him to anticipate their change of heart by throwing himself upon the mercy of the French.

Krim Comes. At 5:00 on a raw chill morning last week the French sentry at Ize Marouene, an outpost north of Targuist, spied a cloud of dust which resolved itself into eight mounted men. Two were French officers, four were native riflemen. In their midst rode two portly figures in loose Riffian garments. One was the Sherif Hamedou Quedzani, chief of the Sanadas tribe, the envoy through whom the final details of submission had been negotiated. The second Riffian, a plump but well knit man with a shrewd impassive face and hard luminous eyes, was of course Mohammed ben Abd-El-Krim.

Reining in his white Arabian horse, he gazed for a moment tranquilly upon the troop of French soldiers, who stood rigidly at attention to receive him. With a swift and surprisingly graceful movement he swung off his horse and strode over a pile of stones and past a half dead fire to where General Ibos, Commander of the French Moroccan division, stood waiting. With a bow entirely courteous but neither hurried nor deferential, the fallen Sultan placed himself at General Ibos' disposal. After ten minutes of discussion as to the disposition of the captives' wives and personal suite, who he insisted should be brought from the hills to accompany him, Mohammed ben Abd-El-Krim set off with General Ibos for Taza, the intended scene of his formal surrender.

Krim. As the cavalcade wound through tortuous Riffian bridle paths, Frenchmen pondered the history of their captive. His fluent Spanish rose naturally to the lips of a Riffian born in easy circumstances, the son of a Judge, who until about 1917 served as a clerk in the Spanish Oficina Indigena (Bureau of National Activities) at Melilla and grew incensed at the shameless corruption of Spain's administration of northern Morocco under the protectorate convention of 1912.

The air of shrewdness characteristic of Krim betokened the born statesman who had summoned his brother M'hammed ben AbdEl Krim, unquestionably a born general, to lead the forces which they collected about them by intrigue among the Riffian chiefs between 1918 and 1921.

Then, in the latter year, came their astounding expedition at the head of 5,000 Riffi which surprised, captured and disarmed 20,000 Spaniards under General Navarro. With this supply of captured arms more than 20,000 additional Riffi were put in the field, and eventually an army numbering perhaps 80,000 was assembled, armed with captured or smuggled equipment. By 1924, Krim and his brother had driven the Spaniards out of almost the entire Riff. Shortsightedly they incurred the wrath of France by a raid on French Morocco in which their forces nearly captured Fez. Instead of thereby intimidating France, andâ€"as they appear to have hopedâ€"persuading her to exert pressure upon Spain to grant the Riff autonomy, they instead roused the French to an active fear lest Krim become supreme throughout both French and Spanish Morocco.

From this fear sprang the concerted Franco-Spanish action of the past year, which resulted in the disruption of Krim's power last week.

Formal Surrender. At Camp Giradot, near Taza, Mohammed ben Abd-El-Krim performed the official gesture of laying down his arms. A minimum of ceremony was observed by the French, since Spain has long exerted pressure to have the upstart "Sultan" treated as a mere tribal chief upon his surrender. General Boichut resolved this situation with great tact, announced that he had sprained his ankle, sent a group of subordinate officers to receive the sword of Krim.

Resident-General Steeg of Morocco is reputed to have secured Krim's surrender by promises of immunity; whereas at Paris and Madrid a considerable faction began last week to tout the slogan: "Hang Abd-El-Krim."

M. Steeg accordingly announced that, since Krim technically "rebelled" against the Sultan of Morocco at Fez instead of "attacking" France and Spain, the Sultan must decide his fate. As everyone knows, Sultan Mulai Yusef of Morocco is a mere puppet of the French. His "decision," unannounced last week, was presumably being drawn up at Paris by officials well informed of M. Steeg's reputed agreements.

To correspondents at Taza, Krim said:

"I am under the safe-keeping of France, whose sentiments toward the Mussulman populations I know well."

Asked how he had financed so long a war, he replied: "I obtained from Spain many millions of pesetas as ransom for prisoners."



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Formal peace negotiations began last week at Oujda, Morocco, between two Franco-Spanish plenipotentiaries (General Simon and Senor Olivan) and the Foreign Wazir (Minister), Si Mohammed Azarkhan, of the long embattled Riffian Sultan, Sidi Mohammed Ben Abd-El-Krim. (TIME, April 19 et ante.)

Wazir Azarkhan, bright-eyed, perpetually smiling, clad in loose flapping Riffian garments, arrived in a rattletrap motor sent into the Riff to fetch him by the French Government, and promptly showed himself a master at diplomatic higgling, an art known in native Riffi slang as "selling the carpet."

General Simon and Senor Olivan suggested that France and Spain now held the whip hand over the Riff, and that Abd-El-Krim, if he did not want to be wiped out, must disarm the Riffi, go into exile himself, exchange all prisoners, and, after renouncing his assumed title of Sultan, recognize "the true sultan of Morocco", whom the French and Spanish "guard" in vassalage to themselves at Fez.

To these harsh terms Wazir Azarkhan replied with a burst of smiles, arguments, threats, shrieks, and stormy tears. He said that not even Abd-El-Krim can disarm the Riffi, since each cleaves to his rifle as to his wife. He said that Abd-El-Krim might consent to go into exile "after two or three years, when things have quieted down, but not now." He said that the hearts of loyal Riffi are so constructed that they could not possibly turn from Krim to "the French sultan." He spoke uninterruptedly for hours, "sold the carpet" until it could not be seen which end was which.

A Franco-Spanish "ultimatum" was despatched through the loquacious Wazir to Abd-El-Krim.



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The Franco-Spanish peace negotiations with the Riffian Foreign Wazir (Minister), Si Mohammed Azarkhan (TIME, May 10), were abruptly terminated last week when the Riffian Sultan, Mohammed Ben Abd-El-Krim, rejected a 48-hour Franco-Spanish ultimatum which demanded that he and his people acknowledge the sovereignty of the Franco-Spanish puppet Sultan of Morocco, Mulai Yusef, who resides at Fez.

Wazir Azarkhan dramatically informed the Franco-Spanish plenipotentiaries that Krim will continue to defy them, crying: "I am glad and happy of it! ... There is no justice in this world; I go back to resume command of my men!"

General Simon replied quietly in behalf of France and Spain:

"We take cognizance of the Riffian delegates' declarations and state officially that the peace pour-parlers are ended and that a state of war exists."

A few hours later, the so-called "Moroccan War" (TIME, May 11, 1925, et seq.) was again proceeding in desultory fashion. French aviators flew over Riffian mud-hovels dropping expensive bombs. French infantry advanced in the region of Kert conjointly with Spanish troops which moved upon Azib de Midar.

To all appearances the excessively freedom-loving Riffi, each of whom is accustomed to guard his personal freedom with his own rifle, cannot be made to covet the blessings which might or might not flow in Morocco under a Franco-Spanish administration.



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Five thousand Riff tribesmen danced and cavorted among the Riffian hills. "Mulay Mohammed ben Abd-el-Krim," they shouted, brandishing their swords, "Sultan el-Islam, dj'der ba-ba Spanol!"

For hours together they thus chanted their leader's name like an incantation: "Lord Mohammed, Son of the Slave to the Generous One, Sultan of Islam, Breaker of Spanish heads!" All this they shouted and much more during a week's rejoicing decreed to celebrate the marriage of Abd-el-Krim to the 23-year-old daughter of the Moroccan chieftan whom he deposed (TiME, Feb. 16, 1925, SPAIN), Mulay Ahmed ben Absalem ber Raisul, called by the press "Raisuli," self-styled "Prince of the West."

Such were the tidings in Paris last week when Captain Gordon Canning, official representative of Abd-el-Krim, arrived to initiate pourparlers for peace between the Riff and France (see CABINET NOTES). While Captain Canning dickered behind closed doors with M. Ponsot, the French Undersecretary for African affairs, pressmen drew from other English-born officers of the Riffian delegation many picturesque details anent the Riff:

English Officers. No fewer than 64 English officers, veterans of the World War, were said to be serving at present under Krim.

French native troops, mostly Senegalese, are allegedly often persuaded to desert to Krim by agents who penetrate the French lines and promise such deserters two young Riffian wives apiece.

Emeralds. The source of Krim's remarkable wealth was declared to be certain valuable mineral deposits in the Riff, which are allegedly worked by women when the fighting male Riffi are at the front. Emeralds and gold are said to be mined in quantities, except when the heavy winter rains cause flooding of the areas excavated.

Anesthetics. The Riffi were said to suffer terribly through a lack of anesthetics. One strapping Irish surgeon in Krim's service allegedly overcomes this lack by causing his patients to be held by attendents while he mercifully delivers a single jiu-jitsu punch which renders them unconscious long enough for him to operate.

Cool Krim. The Riffian Sultan was described by several of his English officers as "the coolest man I ever saw."

They declared that he is an inveterate smoker. When he cannot get his 100 cigarets a day, because of the blockade, he puffs for hours at a gold nargileh filled with rose water and engraved with an inscription from the Koran: "Take but little; it is best."

Latest Events. Despatches cabled from Morocco last week reported a strong Riffian surprise attack against the French in the North Taza region. A French counter attack later restored the original status quo. Both sides claimed numerous desertions to them.



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From the embattled Riffians, warring against France and Spain, a letter came last week to London, after being smuggled through the Spanish lines by a runner faithful to Abd-el-Krim:

"To the Editor of The Times:

"Peace.

"We rejoice to communicate to you true information concerning the situation of our country. . . .

"Concerning what our enemies charge us with, that we are in relations with the Soviet and Germany and that foreigners are taking a hand in our country, all that is imaginary and is the fruit of enemy rumors. . . .

"We know nothing of politics or intrigues or roguery, but our opponents are masters of those things. They do not understand any ways but those of the fox, and this brings about misunderstandings on every occasion. . . .

"When we are in a dilemma and uncertain what road to take, we turn and carry out the Arab saying, 'The sword is more truthful than writings'. . . .

"Finally, we desire to assure you that although the enemy occupies a portion of our country and may, we suppose, advance and occupy other parts, all this does not detract from our faith, for we remain steadfast to our principles, even if only one mountain top may remain to us to occupy or to inhabit. We shall cause great loss to our enemies. . . .

"This is what we communicate to you, wishing you to publish it with anticipation of our thanks. Peace be upon you and great respect.

"(Signed) MOHAMMED BEN ABD-LL-KRIM EL KHATTABI."

Observers recalled that Abdel Krim, although a native of the Riff, is not only a trained lawyer who practiced for some years in Algiers, but a keen student of international affairs to whose desk are brought the latest copies of the principal journals of the world. Despite the quaint phrasing of his letter, Krim understands the ways of the fox quite as well as do his enemies.

The Ramadan. Since the annual period of 30 days during which faithful Moslems must not eat or drink between dawn and darkness, "The Ramadan," began last week, the armies of Krim have found themselves somewhat at a disadvantage. While Riffian stomachs were adjusting themselves anew to this yearly status quo, no engagements of note were reported.



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Operations amid the rain-soaked sloughs of Riffland (TIME, Nov. 16 et ante) were featured recently by the surrender of 800 tribal families to the French, in the region of Ouezzan, northwest of Fez. French communiques stated that the power of Abd-el-Krim, dauntless Riffian leader, is rapidly waning, as the Semadjas and other powerful tribes are submitting to the French. In the New Republic, U. S. weekly review, Poet Witter Bynner* wrote as follows:

To AMERICAN FLYERS IN MOROCCO

I have wished you wounded, I have wished you dead, I have wished you blackened by a wind of flame, But let me wish for each of you instead That he may live to cringe at his own name.



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At Targuist, little village on the northern slope of the Atlas Range, Abd-el-Krim, Riffian chief, was reported to be literally digging himself in for the winter. A subterranean refuge large enough to allow his automobile to enter and turn freely about has been constructed. And a star-shaped series of radiating trenches and dugouts extending for several miles has made of Targuist a stronghold which the Riffians are reported to consider impregnable. Cables assert that Abd-el-Krim has transported thither his treasures, arms, captives. Apparently Targuist is to replace Ajdir as his capital.

Torrential rains in the French sectors of Riffland brought all operations to such a complete standstill last week that Marshal Pétain entrusted the High Command of the French forces to General Naulin and set out from Fez for Paris. To correspondents at Marseilles he remarked, "The military action is terminated. I now turn over the task to the statesmen."

Meanwhile the French command in Morocco is organized as follows:

General Naulin and the staff of the French High Command will winter at Rabat, on the Atlantic coastline, a few miles north of Casablanca. There they will be well out of the muck and unpleasantness, but at the same time on the direct railroad to Fez and the embroiled uplands. General Boichut, commanding the extreme southern end of the French line, will likewise be exceedingly comfortable at Algiers on the Mediterranean. Meanwhile General Marty will be marooned high and wet at Taza; and Generals Pruneau, Hergault and Billotte will occupy a series of sloshy, uncomfortable positions to the west and northwest. Cables announced that the U. S. "Sherifian Escadrille," which has been fighting the Riffians to the annoyance of Secretary Kellogg (TIME, Sept. 28, THE CABINET), has been "disbanded" and the airmen are returning to Paris. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Kerwood of the Escadrille declared not long ago (TIME, Oct. 19) that he and his comrades will reassemble in Morocco as soon as rains slacken enough to permit effective flying



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