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To Moslems throughout North Africa, Sidi Mohammed ben Moulay Arafa, the French puppet Sultan, is a false prophet and usurper. Last month the Moroccans served notice that La Date Fatidique would be a day of prayer and demonstrations for Moulay Arafa's removal and Ben Youssef's return. Terrorist tracts, bearing the black crescent sign of the Arab underground, quickly made plain what this might mean. In the sacred name of Allah, the tracts urged all Moroccans to "avenge our dead heroes cut down by Imperialist French bullets."
Imperative Duty. The French were dismayed and alarmed. Since last month's riots in Casablanca (TIME, July 25), 60,000 of their troops have been standing guard in Morocco, but more, apparently, were needed. From its limited reserves in Europe, the French army flew a battalion of marines and a company of security police to beef up the Moroccan garrison. It even took space on commercial airliners to fetch hundreds of Senegalese NCOs from their units in Indo-China.
On the eve of La Date Fatidique, glittering Casablanca was closed down like a morgue. The wealthy fled to Tangier, the poor boarded up their doors. In the medinas from Fez to Marrakech, white-kepied Legionnaires set up machine guns and searchlights, covering the street intersections. Nationalist agitators sawed down telephone poles and tore down the street lamps, to ensure darkness for their escape.
The French commander of the Casablanca area, General André Franchi, broadcast an appeal for calm. "I am a man who knows and loves the Moroccan soul," he said, "but I have the imperative duty of maintaining order." Franchi ordered his troops to fire if disobeyed, then added: "I ask God to avoid this at all costs."
Burning Alive. All that night there was sporadic firing in Casablanca's slums. Next morning there was open revolt. A general strike paralyzed Morocco's principal cities; patriots broke out red Moroccan flags atop mosques and minarets. Out of Casablanca's teeming slums poured shrieking women and boys, some not ten years old. They waved pictures of Mohammed ben Youssef and shouted for his return. Hours before, similar gangs had caught an Arab who was suspected of collaborating with the French. They stripped and doused him with gasoline, then burned him alive. The French brought up 30 tanks and a battalion of green-bereted paratroopers. In the Carrières Centrales, a warren of packing-case tenements, the Arabs built barricades. Young men shot stones at the waiting troops from slingshots; others ripped open their shirts and dared the Legionnaires to fire. Sometimes the soldiers did fire, at first high in the air, then point-blank to kill. "I brought down three myself," said a French sergeant with a Tommy gun.
The French claimed that only four were killed in Casablanca, but at one Moroccan funeral, newsmen counted 35 coffins.