the French share in the "loan" was 40 per cent., the German was 20 per cent., the British 15 per cent., and the Spanish 15 per cent. The same kind of consideration had, doubtless, inspired the divers international groups which had been formed to exploit the mineral and other natural products of Morocco, such as the Union des Mines, which included several of the big French and German armament firms, Mr. A. E. Harris, of Harris Dixon, Ltd., London, Mr. W. B. Harris, correspondent of the Times at Tangiers, and Mr. Bonar Law. It is instructive to note that the plundering of the Moors went hand in hand with the plundering of the home public. Thus the participating French banks were allowed to take up the bonds of the new "loan" at 435 francs, while in the afternoon of the day of issue the bonds were driven up to 507 francs.
This tribute levied upon the Sultan, the Sultan could only meet by levying tribute upon his tribesmen. The latter, driven to desperation by exactions and cruelties incidental to the process, flung off the last vestiges of his authority, rose in revolt and besieged him in his capital, Fez. This result had, of course, been foreseen. Instantly there arose a bogus clamour, scientifically arranged beforehand, and subsequently denounced in the most scathing terms by the most distinguished of French journalists then living, M. Francis de Pressenssé, that the Europeans in Fez were in danger. A French force of 30,000 men was found in convenient readiness, set off to Fez, occupied it after a skirmish and… remained there. And that was the end of Morocco in one sense. But not in another.
••••••
The narrow, irregular streets of a Moorish town, into which shells from warships riding on the sparkling blue waters of the western Atlantic are falling in an incessant and murderous hail, smashing the white-walled, flat-roofed houses and splashing them all over with the blood of the white-clad inhabitants who sprawl in mangled heaps at the doors of their homes—between such a scene as this and the pitted, scarred battlefields of Europe to-day with the blasted stumps which once were trees, and the piles of masonry and timber which once were towns and villages, there appears at first thought no connecting link of circumstance.
