(2 of 2)
At week's end, with this question unanswered, the celebrating went on in the palace courtyard, where crowds gathered and milled. Suddenly someone spotted Tayeb Baghdadi, Caliph (deputy) to the Pasha of Fez, who had come to Rabat to make amends to the Sultan for having supported his banishment. The mob closed in, kicked and beat him, ripped off his white silken robes. "The Sultan may forget, but we will not forgive you!" cried one. The Caliph fought for his life, but a rock on the head finished him.
Leaving two other stripped bodies on the pavement, the mob then surged through the gate, trampled two men to death and danced around their corpses. Another victim was doused with gasoline and set afire. Trembling with disgust and worry, Mohammed V emerged from the palace and pleaded: "Be calm, be calm!"
"Our Given Word." In Tunisia, the returned hero was Habib Bourguiba, no Sultan but a French-educated lawyer and the father of Tunisian nationalism.
An éloigné off and on since 1934, when he was first clapped into a Sahara prison, he returned last June from exile in France, bringing with him a pact with France which took Tunisia a long stride toward democratic self-government. He found himself locked in a struggle for leadership of the Neo-Destour (New Constitution) Party, which he had founded.
His rival was Salah ben Youssef (no kin to Morocco's Sultan), who in exile in Cairo had increased his hatred of the French and had come home preaching guerrilla warfare. Bourguiba ousted him as secretary-general of the Neo-Destour, and last week defended his action at a big party conclave in Sfax. If Tunisians start killing, cried Bourguiba, "world opinion will call us children. We must keep our given word, which is the source of our success. By discussion with France, everything can be settled."
His two hours of pulsating oratory ended with a fiery question: "Are you prepared to resume fighting under Salah ben Youssef?" The party's reply was a thundering no. Of course, Bourguiba has warned, if France welshes on her promises, "we will all become extremists and I will be the leader."
* A lineage also claimed by the rulers of Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya.