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Say Something. A stern but proud father, Mohammed zealously oversaw his children's education. As his daughters grew older, he concluded that there was nothing in the Koran that required veils for women, encouraged them to go barefaced. But mostly he concentrated on his eldest son, Moulay Hassan. When only three, Moulay Hassan remembers, his father took him to a diplomatic reception and told him: "You must speak, say something, anything."; The little boy sat through the evening sucking his thumb. When the guests had gone, his father angrily thrust him into a corner. Says Moulay Hassan: "I'm not timid now."
When the young prince decided he wanted to study history in the university, his father argued that he should study law, finally fell silent. Hours later he turned to his son and said: "When you walk downstairs, you're careful not to fall. When you light a match, you're careful not to burn yourself. Why? Because you love yourself. You don't want to hurt yourself. But the love you have for yourself is nothing compared to the love I have for you." Moulay Hassan studied law. Now the heir apparent, intelligent and self-confident, Moulay Hassan collects fast cars, says, "I've never felt inferior to anyone except my father."
Mohammed was slower in educating himself in his responsibilities to his country. Closely watched by the French, he had little part in Morocco's first stirrings towards independence. Not until a delegation of Fez educators came to him in 1940 to complain that the French would not allow them to organize a school for girls did he realize that nonroyal Moslem girls did not go to school, promptly promised, "I will make my daughter Aisha the missionary of feminine emancipation." During the wartime Casablanca Conference, President Franklin Roosevelt invited him to dine. It was the first time Morocco's Sultan had been allowed to meet any foreign head of state, and though he would not agree to declare war against Germany, he got from the meeting an increased sense of his own policical importance.
"Morocco Must Realize." After the war, France sent tough Marshal Alphonse Juin to put the now restless Moroccans in their place. Juin began by arresting scores of Istiqlal (Independence) leaders, announced: "Morocco must realize that at the end of its evolution it will remain tied to France." The Sultan retaliated by always meeting Juin unshaven and by committing himself wholeheartedly to the Istiqlal, smuggling leaders into the palace, sometimes in trucks delivering groceries. In the classic divide-and-conquer style. Juin assiduously cultivated the antagonism of the mountain Berbers for the urban Arabs. He made a special ally of rich old El Glaoui, Pasha of Marrakech, who claimed to command some 300,000 fighting Berbers.