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A Lafayette Escadrille was formed in Paris for service in Morocco. Granville A. Pollock of New Orleans and Charles W. Kerwood of Philadelphia volunteered to pilot bombing airplanes, and Charles Sweeney and Paul Rockwell, U. S. veterans of the Foreign Legion, volunteered as observers. Much comment was heard regarding the efficient and up-to-date methods by which Abd-el-Krim is conducting his campaign. His staff work seems of a high order, each attack evidently being-planned with great care and almost invariably at the weakest point of the French positions, made weak, of course, by the staff's strategy.
The greatest work is done by what is called "infiltration," which is used with considerable success to stir up the Moorish tribes in the rear of the French lines or actually in them: A single Riffian regular crawls in the night past the French outposts, visits villages in the rear to urge war upon the French and to promise rewards from his Chief, Abd-el-Krim. The visits are repeated nightly; and if kind words fail, threats are used, and occasionally an assassination is committed to terrorize the petty chieftains into submission. The Valley of the Wergha, along which the fighting is taking place, is noted for its rich iron deposits; and in the views of some the war is in reality for their possession, Abd-el-Krim supposedly being under the thumb of Germany, who has promised to import all the ores which the Riff chief can deliver.
Rire, Paris comic paper, takes a slightly different view. In a double cartoon called Tracts et Tractions (Ideals and Deals), it shows a Communist in Paris holding the Communist paper L'Humanite and shouting Le Rif aux Rifains (the Riff for the Riffians). In the other picture is an Englishman in conference with a Riff and the inscription beneath runs: "... et, bien entendu, les mines de Ouergha á une société anglaise!" ( . . . and, of course, the Wergha mines for an English company).
A story which made considerable bruit in Paris: The ferocity of the Riff attacks was accounted for by the part played by tribeswomen who, hands smeared with henna, race after their warriors shrieking hysterically and smearing any who hold back or in any ether way display cowardice. After each attack, the men are examined and those with henna stains upon them are summarily shot.
M. Charles Maurras, writing in the Royalist newspaper, L' Action Francaise, urged the use of poison gas against the Riffians. By dropping poison gas bombs, he said, France would have the Riffians begging for mercy within a few weeks—and "think of the expense in life and material that would be saved."
One thing that the war has done is to give an impetus to the French aerial medical services. Numberless lives have been saved by the transference of wounded soldiers (most of the French troops in Morocco are natives) by airplane from the front line to the base hospitals in the rear.
* Fez is sometimes called the capital of Morocco, whereas it is more correctly a capital. Morocco has four capitals, depending on where the Sultan maintains palaces. They are Fez, Marrakesh, Meknes, and Rabat, the last of which is the most important; for it is there that the Sultan spends most of his time and where the Resident General resides.